2

Princess: the Hopeful

A Storytelling Game of Fighting Fear
When they told you that you were a Princess, you felt your childhood dream had come true.
Sometimes you want to shake your childhood self, and make her see how much hard work it is to be a
Princess.
They showed you how you channel your hope into magic.
You never imagined what magic really was like, how your own doubts could block your powers or
turn them against you.
They said you were going to help fix the world.
Some days, you can’t even fix your own life.
When you told them how you felt, they said it was OK to take a break.
But it’s not OK, because you could never forgive yourself if you let everyone down.

Princess: the Hopeful is a fan made roleplaying game for the Chronicles of Darkness. Players take on the
role of magical girls (or boys) who one day found themselves granted great magical power and the responsi-
bility to fix all that is wrong with the world. If they can survive the trauma of real battle, learn that not every
problem can be solved with a speech about friendship, and endure their enormous workload, then just maybe
they can make a difference.

Princess: the Hopeful is a collaborative effort of posters on the RPGnet forums. Our special thanks to Cru-
ton, Azunth, Michael Brazier, EarthScorpion, Luc “Nickname” French, hazard151, Huitzil, Leliel, Kearin, TheK-
ingsRaven, Naomi Li, MagicSwordsman, Martin Padilla, SaulotTheGentle, Jordy Vanderstukken and everyone
else on RPGnet and elsewhere who helped in the development of Princess: the Hopeful.
Princess: the Hopeful: A Storytelling Game of Fighting Fear
Edited by Michael Brazier

Publication date 2013-2018

Princess: the Hopeful is a fan-made roleplaying game for the Chronicles of Darkness, published by White Wolf
Publishing. The Chronicles of Darkness book is needed to use this book. At the time of preparation, that book is
available from DriveThru RPG.
The most current version of this book is available at https://sites.google.com/site/princessthehopeful/
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. To view
a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Com-
mons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA.
Cover art © 2016 Kaya Oldaker.
The mention of or reference to any company or product in these pages is not a challenge to the trademark
or copyright concerned.
This work uses the supernatural for settings, characters and themes. All mystical and supernatural ele-
ments are fiction and intended for entertainment purposes only. Reader discretion is advised.

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Contents The Dethroned ............................................
The Queen of Tears .....................................
320
328
Alhambra ................................................... 333
Ghost Princesses ......................................... 344
Introduction ...................................................... 7
The Queen of Storms ................................... 345
A Game Of Fighting Fear .................................. 7
Goalenu ...................................................... 350
How to use this Book ...................................... 9
Stormwracked ............................................ 359
Sources and Inspiration ................................... 9
The Queen of Mirrors .................................. 362
Chapter 1. Noblesse Oblige ................................ 11 The Dreamlands .......................................... 367
The Light and the Dark .................................. 11 Wardens .................................................... 383
Wearing the Coronet ..................................... 13 Amanojaku ................................................. 385
Wardens of the Marches ................................ 17 Shining Hearts: Beacons ............................... 388
Peers of the Realm ........................................ 18 Loyal Knights: the Sworn ............................. 389
Callings ........................................................ 23 Small Advisors: Shikigami ............................ 391
Champion ..................................................... 25 Blessed Places ............................................ 393
Grace ........................................................... 27 The Mystery of the Queens ........................... 396
Mender ........................................................ 29
Appendix A. Embassies ................................... 401
Seeker ......................................................... 31
Embassies in the Dreamlands ....................... 401
Troubadour .................................................. 33
Protectorates .............................................. 402
Queens ........................................................ 35
Embassy to the Arcane ................................ 403
The Queen of Clubs ....................................... 37
Embassy to Death ....................................... 406
The Queen of Diamonds ................................. 41
Embassy to the Dreamlands ......................... 408
The Queen of Hearts ..................................... 46
Embassy to the Economy ............................. 411
The Queen of Spades ..................................... 51
Embassy to Ephemera ................................. 416
The Queen of Swords .................................... 56
Embassy to Fortune .................................... 421
Embassy to Machines .................................. 425
Chapter 2. Coronations ..................................... 61
Embassy to Night ........................................ 428
Creating a Princess Character ......................... 61
Embassy to the Ocean .................................. 430
New and Modified Traits ................................ 64
Embassy to Stories ...................................... 432
Invocations .................................................. 72
Protectorate of Amethyst ............................. 437
Transformation ............................................. 74
Protectorate of Blue Topaz ........................... 440
Echoes ......................................................... 78
Protectorate of Fused Quartz ........................ 447
Merits .......................................................... 79
Protectorate of Heliotrope ............................ 450
Nations ........................................................ 90
Protectorate of Malachite ............................. 453
Chapter 3. The Power of Love .......................... 101 Protectorate of Novaculite ............................ 456
Charms and Invocations ............................... 102 Protectorate of Pyrite .................................. 459
Opposed Charms: Clash of Wills .................... 103
Appendix B. Conditions and Tilts ...................... 463
Charm Types and Modifiers .......................... 103
Conditions .................................................. 463
Appear ....................................................... 106
Phylactery Conditions .................................. 476
Bless .......................................................... 123
Tilts and Environmental Conditions .............. 478
Connect ...................................................... 134
Fight .......................................................... 151 Appendix C. Additional Rules ........................... 485
Govern ....................................................... 164 Athletic Feats .............................................. 485
Inspire ....................................................... 183 Deprivation ................................................ 485
Learn ......................................................... 198 Explosives .................................................. 485
Perfect ....................................................... 218 Fatigue ....................................................... 486
Restore ...................................................... 231 Size Changes ............................................... 486
Shape ......................................................... 242
Images and Bequests ................................... 263 Alphabetical List of Charms ............................. 487

Chapter 4. Fighting Fear .................................. 265 Cited Works ................................................... 489

Tainted Places ............................................ 265
The Dark World .......................................... 275
Creatures of Darkness ................................. 276
Example Dark Beings ................................... 303
Cults of the Darkness ................................... 316

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6
 Introduction
Using whatever strength I had left, I pulled off the covers, and reached for the pendant I had
hung on one antenna of the television.
“Please come with me, Dusty,” I asked of him. “I have to go save the world again.”
—Sailor Nothing

No matter how old we may be now, all of us were once young. The world was unexplored and exciting,
full of possibility. What we lacked in experience and wisdom, we made up for in possibility and enthusiasm.
We dreamed of fame, fortune, wealth, glory, respect. We wanted to be astronauts, cowboys, firemen, doctors,
singers, rock stars, or all of the above at once. After all, we didn’t know what was possible … and that meant
ANYTHING was possible. We looked at the world through guileless eyes, felt it as fully and intensely as anyone
ever could. When we came to a new idea, we embraced it zealously and whole-heartedly, convinced we’d found
the secret that would change the world. When we loved, we were convinced it was the most passionate ever felt;
when we hurt, we thought it was a tragedy the likes of which had never been seen. We were convinced that we
had the whole thing figured out, that we could make everything perfect if we just had a chance, if the grown-
ups would just listen. After all, we could do anything if we put our mind to it. We were fearless. We couldn’t wait
to grow up so we could grab life by the horns.
And as we mature, we realize the follies of our youth. We learn that our love and pain are not unique, that
everyone in the world has gone through the same; this was comforting, but it was also disappointing. We found
out that there are no more cowboys, that we didn’t have the money or determination for medical school, that
we couldn’t pass the physical to be an astronaut or that becoming a famous musician is just a matter of luck and
we’d probably have to get a job doing something boring, even worse, something LAME. We learned that growing
up isn’t about suddenly being able to do everything you ever wanted; it’s mostly about learning how stupid you
were when you were young. We learned from our mistakes and shook our heads, wondering how we could ever
be dumb enough to make them in the first place. Our potential was replaced with reality. We found out that no,
life wasn’t going to be an open book for us. We become jaded, we figure out we’re not that special, that the things
we love aren’t really the best things in the universe, that our fresh new ideas had been tried before a thousand
times. Our fearlessness turned out to be recklessness, so we cast it aside. We weren’t going to change the world,
we were just going to live in it.
Yet even after learning this, we still long for the fire and passion of our youths. Yes, we know that we’re not
that special and yes, we know the things we believed were silly… but wouldn’t it be nice if they weren’t? The
promises of our youth could never be fulfilled… but it still felt good to think they could, right?
They can. We didn’t get wiser when we grew up, we just became more cynical. We weren’t stupid back then,
and our greatest mistake, our only mistake, was telling ourselves that we were. We stopped putting all of our
selves into everything we did because we became too afraid of failing, of letting ourselves get hurt by the effort.
So we told ourselves that trying was silly. We abandoned the dreams we had rather than see them fail. We gave
in to our fears.
And now it’s time to overcome them.

A Game Of Fighting Fear

Princess: the Hopeful is a game about the promises of our youth fulfilled, inspired by the maho shoujo or
“magical girl” genre of Japanese anime and manga. Princes and Princesses are those who haven’t given in to that
fear of inadequacy and failure. They come from a world unlike the World of Darkness, a better world, a kinder
world, a just world. They come from the world we all wished we could make before we knew it was impossible
… and they seek to prove us wrong. A better world wasn’t impossible, and it still isn’t. As a Princess, power isn’t
a gift to you, it’s a responsibility.
You can fix problems…: There’s too much we just resign ourselves to. We say, “That’s just the way it is,”
and live with the pain. You don’t have to. You can do things, real things, to solve people’s problems. You don’t

7
have to feel frustrated. You can be their white knight against the cruel world. Few people have the power to do
this and the chance to see the world work the way we think it should is too tempting to pass up.
But some problems don’t want to be fixed. Life is a Gordian knot. There’s not always an easy way to do
things, even against apparently supernatural threats. People are complicated and confused. They will often act
against their best interests without thinking. Many insist on the status quo because they know how to live with
the status quo, and something new makes all of their supposed wisdom worthless.
Because doing good can be terrifying. An angel is another kind of monster. Those who do what they
believe is right, relentlessly, unapologetic, frequently frightening those around them. It’s understandable - you
have power and they don’t. No matter how kind you try and be, you’re taking the decision out of their hands. Not
everybody will be thankful. Many will try to destroy you or chain you down. They might be right. They might be
wrong. To act, you need the resolution to decide what is what and many will call that inhuman.
And sometimes the good guys can’t win. You’re powerful, but you aren’t all powerful. You can’t be every-
where at once. You can’t account for simple bad luck. No matter how much you want to believe otherwise, you
can and will fail. People will die. People will suffer. And because you’re in the thick of it, you’re going to feel their
pain worse than if you stayed at home and turned on the TV. Doing the right thing can be a trial without end.
But you can’t walk away. Because sometimes they do. Blissful ignorance is no longer an option. You can’t
hide behind the excuse that there’s nothing you can do. And sensitive to the hearts of others, you can’t shut out
their pain - or their joy. Those rare moments of beauty and happiness are what make the fight worth it. You need
to protect that, because without those occasions of hope, life is not worth living. Once your eyes are open to that
fact, it’s hard to shut them again.
Sometimes you find rewards where you weren’t looking for. Sometimes you find enemies where you
didn’t expect them. The world will never be the same after you. You are going to change things, even if you’re
too small for the cosmos to notice just yet. You’re a force of chaos, shaking people from the sleep they’ve been
in. Once you start performing your little miracles, people will take notice. Living with and for others means
you can’t always be discreet. You’re different. You’re not playing by the rules anymore. You’re laying down new
rules and once people understand them, they’ll try and exploit them, like they did with the old rules. You are
a revolutionary force.
You’ll just have to find out for yourself. In the end, a world of darkness is a world of possibilities. Many
of them are not pleasant - we’ve spent millennia creating societies of light expressly out of fear of them. Under
the blanket of night lies an undiscovered country. It might be empty, waiting for you to build your own palaces.
It might be flush with danger, patiently lying just out of sight. And it might be hiding the very treasures we’ve
thought were impossible. The darkness, the shadows, the occult - it is like Pandora’s Box. In it might lay evils
we can’t imagine. But slam the lid too fast and you lock away Hope forever.

Theme: Fighting Fear

Princess: the Hopeful is a game about making a difference. A Princess can defeat the monster, she can win the
election and start instituting reforms, she can rescue the cute boy. However to do it she’s going to have to face her
fears. The monster isn’t a harmless creature from a Saturday morning cartoon: Death is a real possibility, serious
injuries are likely nightmares are almost inevitable. The election isn’t won with a short speech about hope, it’s a
dirty campaign where her good name is viciously dragged through the mud. Sometimes the hardest part about
being a hero is just ignoring how embarrassing it is to stand up for what you believe in when everyone says
you’re wrong. A Princess can save the day, but she’s probably going to have to stare down her own nightmares
to do it.

Mood: Exhaustion
Sure you can solve one problem, but can you solve all of them? Can you find the energy to run for mayor,
mentor the people who need it and spend all night fighting monsters? When will you sleep, and when will you
have room for some desperately needed me time to think about your own problems? A Princess’ magic makes
her feel like every problem in the world is her personal responsibility; it’s an impossible burden that will wear
her mental, physical and even emotional stamina to nothing. The only way she can survive is if she can find
friends to support her and allies to share the load.

8 A Game Of Fighting Fear

How to use this Book
Information on the Nobility, and their obligations are divided into several sections.
Chapter 1, Noblesse Oblige provides information on the Nobility, their magic, their culture, and their world.
Chapter 2, Coronations explains how to create a Princess character, describes the innate traits of Princesses,
and gives several new Merits for them.
Chapter 3, The Power of Love describes the Charms, the magical powers the Nobility can develop.
Chapter 4, Fighting Fear lists the monsters and antagonists who oppose the Hopeful and all they stand for,
the people who are or might become their allies, and places they could travel to.
Appendix A, Embassies describes how some Princesses open diplomatic relations with alien things found
in the World of Darkness, and how this alters their magics.
Appendix B, Conditions and Tilts collects a variety of lingering conditions the Hopeful can produce or suffer
from.
Appendix C, Additional Rules is a summary of rules from the Chronicles of Darkness series of games which
are needed to play Princess: the Hopeful but not available in the core book.

Sources and Inspiration

Maho Shoujo
Sailor Nothing
Sailor Nothing is one of the oldest deconstructions, and also reconstructions, of the magical girl genre. Sailor
Nothing sets itself apart from many of the later deconstructions by showing the horror inherent in the concept
of young girls fighting monsters rather than relying on some dark secret at the heart of the magical girl powers.
With the focus given to mundane evils, and the importance of friendship Sailor Nothing is perhaps the quintes-
sential inspiration for Princess. It inspired us when we wrote Princess, and we hope it will inspire you as well.

Mai-Otome
Mai-Otome takes the magical girl genre into places it does not normally venture: politics. At heart Mai-
Otome is about two girls (one a literal princess) forced to grow up by the harsh realities of Realpolitik, and in
the process learning that being a magical girl is so much more than looking amazing. With friendship, growing
up, magical girls and Realpolitik Mai-Otome serves well as an inspiration for Princess: the Hopeful

Puella Magi Madoka Magica

As one of the most popular maho shoujo to be created in recent years, this list cannot be complete without a
mention of Puella Magi Madoka Magica. The truth at the heart of the Puella Magi makes it harder to use Madoka
for inspiration but around the edges, those Puella Magi who never learn the truth, show all the struggles and
heartache you might find in a Princess.

Film
Brave
A story about a rebellious princess with a difference. It shows the consequences when a princess rebels
against her obligations, that alone makes it a worthwhile inspiration for Princess: the Hopeful. The themes of
growing up, and the importance of family only sweeten the deal.

How to use this Book 9

Coraline
Coraline falls under the archetype of “girls underground” stories. This archetype provides themes for the
Dreamlands and for that purpose Coraline does not disappoint. Coraline’s adventures help her to grow as a per-
son, and she returns better able to face the real world. Her antagonist also provides the quintessential inspira-
tion for a Warden.

Peter Pan
Another “girls underground story”, Peter Pan (the live action film released in 2001) is a brilliant portrayal of
what we fear about growing up, and why we overcome those fears. It can serve as an inspiration metaphorically,
or more literally to show why living a utopian life in the Dreamlands isn’t always the perfect choice. Not even
for Beacons who have no royal duties to call them back.

10 Sources and Inspiration

 Chapter 1: Noblesse Oblige
I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles; but today it means getting along with peo-
ple.
—Mahatma Gandhi

The Light and the Dark

That’s the thing about morality, it’s complicated. Sages and philosophers have debated for thousands of
years to answer the simplest of questions. “What is good?”, “What is evil?” But is morality always so complicated?
Are there not easier questions to ask? For every tough question like “Is it justified to kill one to save five?” is
there not an easier question like “Is it justified to kill another for your own personal profit?”
Ask any of the Nobility and they will tell you that of course there is such a thing as objective good and evil.
To the Radiant the world they inhabit makes this as clear as daylight. A Princess draws her magic from the Light.
A force created by love, friendship, by effort to improve the world or just effort to help a stranger out. The Light
probably isn’t the absolute axis for all that is good, but if it could think you could say it’s making a sincere effort to
reach that exulted height. For the Nobility this is enough to point at for proof that good really does exist, because
what Princesses compare the Light to is the Dark. The Dark is the Light’s opposite in every way. It is a force of
banal corruption, it festers where people commit acts of cruelty and inflict suffering on each other. Everything
it touches is tainted with its own nature. If left unchecked it would cause an unending torrent of corruption
until the Dark finally succumbs to its own nature and starves upon an empty wasteland. The scholars among
the Nobility are divided upon one key question about the Dark: its origins. Some say that it is a dreadful alien
being, attacking our world through humanity’s cruelties for its own sustenance. Others say that we ourselves
are the Dark’s true origin, our sins created it and we shall forever be haunted by our crimes until such a day
as we rise above them.
The contrast between Light and Dark is something every Noble is glad for. For as much as they look to the
Light, even the Nobility live somewhere between Light and Dark. Sooner or later every Princess will have to
make some tough moral choices; it comes with the job. On a bad day a Princess could find herself trapped for an
unconscionable time with no clear answers. Struggling to stitch together some semblance of a moral solution
to an impossible problem. On those days the existence of the Light can be the only thing reminding them that
good exists, and it’s worth fighting for.

The Kingdom’s Fall

When the Nobility speak of the Kingdom they refer to at least eight sovereign nations: Alhambra, Andarta,
Aztallan, the Confederacy of Four Winds, Crystal Heril, Danann, Gonel and Wen-Mung. There were others, but
their names, histories and even their existence are debated with little consensus. Each lived the ideals of the
Light in their own way, guided by the Queen who ruled them. None were perfect but by all accounts they were
fantastic places to live, prosperous, just, kind and peaceful. Yet for all its Light the Kingdom did not last forever.
Even in a world of Light some things are universal, one is the necessity of compromise. A land of individual
freedom must accept a lack of organization as its due. Each of the Queens chose what they deemed to be good,
and accepted the cost. In time they forgot that this was a matter of preference and believed they alone had
chosen the one true way. In their own way each turned rigid and dogmatic, from this simple vice the Darkness
gained its first foothold in its eternal war against the Kingdom.
The Kingdoms rallied and drove the Darkness back to whatever terrible domain it came from as they had
done countless times before but this time they were blinded by their dogma. Small traces of taint were over-
looked, festering as “inevitable drawbacks” of the Light’s civilization. Rotting away in secret the Darkness began
to grow within the heart of the Kingdom. Its attacks became more frequent, more destructive, and every time it
was defeated the same growing rot remained unnoticed. In the end the Darkness broke over the Kingdom like
a tidal wave, the armies were routed and the cities fell, still trying to understand how the Darkness’ presence
was even possible.

11
 Today little remains of the Kingdom. The domains of the five Radiant Queens live on in the Dreamlands,
but the warping Gales make it hard to tell how accurate a portrayal it is. If any true records of the Kingdom
exists they would be locked away deep within Alhambra’s vaults, for of the Kingdom’s nations only Alhambra
has survived to this day, protected by its Queen’s formidable magic deep within the heart of the Darkness.

The Long Night and the Dream

The Darkness cannot create, it can only corrupt. This was always its greatest weakness. Those corrupted
however, would retain their ability to create for a while. Among those who were tainted by the Darkness during
the Fall were three mighty creatures known as the Red Queen, the White Queen and the Black Queen: the avatars
of violence, self loathing and despair. These creatures knew the Light intimately, they knew that even as the
Darkness turned upon itself the Light would build something new and wonderful to reclaim its place.
Guided by the Darkness’ instinctive opposition to the Light the three constructed a trap deep within the
Dreamlands, a mirror to reflect the Light of the world. The trap tricked the souls of the Nobility travelling to-
wards reincarnation and drew them away from Earth. They incarnated within the Dreamlands where wonderful
and elaborate illusions clouded their minds, letting them believe they lived and did their duties on Earth even
while the centuries ticked away.
The Radiant call this period of history “The Long Night”, and the trap that held them is simply called “The
Dream”. For much of human history the Radiant hardly had any presence at all. Reincarnations have always
formed the vast majority of the Nobility and with the reincarnations locked away anyone who Blossomed was
most likely alone and untrained. If they were lucky a group of friends might Blossom together. They would do
what they can, but standing alone there was little chance of changing the world.
Only the Twilight Queens created any form of continuity for the Nobility during the Long Night. The Lady
of Alhambra kept the last survivors of the Kingdom alive. The Seraphic General inducted mortal forces to throw
against the Darkness. The Queen of Mirrors searched for her True Heir. The Twilight Queens were a temptation
to the Princesses who Blossomed during the Long Night, but they were a temptation because they were so vital
- the only constant source of support a young Princess could turn to.

The War of Hope

In July 1969 mankind first set foot on the moon. The hope released by this single event was so great that for
the briefest instant the Light shone brighter on Earth than it did in the Dreamlands. In a flash every soul trapped
within knew that they were not on Earth as they believed. The five Queens mustered their armies against their
jailors and shattered the machinery of their prison. Their victory was swift and brutal, after centuries of impris-
onment the Kingdom was once again free.
The effects were far from instantaneous. The first reincarnated Princess to once again Blossom was in 1987
and the second was not until 1994. No one is even sure if the commoners of the Kingdom reincarnate at all, but
no one has turned up with accurate memories of a past life in the Kingdom so far. Today the Nobility are still
small in number, but they’re growing fast with multiple Blossomings a year. At this point they are a minor force
in the world, but have had some noticeable successes in areas where Princesses are common. (Blossomings have
shown a tendency towards geographical clustering.) The first generation of Princesses have now reached middle
age and many have gained positions of prestige and influence. In doing so they have caused a backlash from
established power blocks, both mortal and otherwise. The Twilight Queens have also experienced a renaissance,
each was active through the Long Night and were perfectly placed to take advantage of the release. New and
vulnerable Princesses have been eagerly snapped up by all three sides.
As the saying goes, we live in interesting times.

12 The Light and the Dark

Wearing the Coronet
Blossoming
Before her magic comes to her, there is little that marks a Noble, even to herself, from the people around her.
Nobles-to-be are, as a rule, selfless, generous and idealistic, prone to offer comfort to the suffering and to call
their tormentors to account; but there are many people who share those traits without ever becoming Nobles.
In these years after the Release, most Nobles-to-be have reincarnated and bear the memories of their prior lives,
which come out in dreams or in stories told in child’s play; but all children dream, and many invent tales of
magical adventure. The true significance of these childhood fancies is clear only after the crisis of Blossoming
discloses what the Noble truly is and was always meant to be.
The majority of Blossomings occur in times of great stress and change in one’s life. The youngest age that
it has been observed is the onset of puberty, but this is rare, and many consider this a mercy, because one so
young is ill-equipped, mentally and physically, to deal with the stresses of the life of a Noble. Perhaps the Light
is aware that its warriors require a certain maturity to handle the powers it grants, or perhaps one must have
a clear enough conceptualization of one’s self to be able to transform. Alhambran tales claim that the girl who
would become the Queen of Tears Blossomed at her birth, and the delay in Blossomings today is merely a sign
of the corruption of the world; but most Radiant Nobles dismiss this as the self-aggrandisement of the followers
of Tears, and choose to believe that it has always been this way.
Whatever the reason, there are several broad age bands in which Blossoming commonly occurs. The first
of these is from the mid-to-late teens, as the individual establishes their own social identity and goes through
the stresses of education. Such Princesses frequently (though, sadly, not always) have their parents as passive
support, but must suffer problems with their task and how it interacts with their youth and the demands that
society places upon them. Not too many people are pleased with their teenage children sneaking out, and are
even less pleased when they find out that the child has been going down to the area of town where the drug
dealers hang out, especially on a night when there are later reports of gang violence. At a slightly older age,
there are the young adults, typically at university or just entering the workplace. In some ways, they are luckier,
because they do not have to face the fact that they’re not legally adults; on the other hand, many a Princess has
lost her job or been forced to drop out of university due to the stresses and demands of her calling, and unlike
younger ones, they don’t have the same safety net of family, which means that the issue of rent and bills starts
to come up. In recent years, though, there have started to crop up the first few cases of elder Blossoming. The
causes of these Blossomings appear to be diverse indeed, and can be anywhere from moving to a new place,
falling in love, a messy divorce, pregnancy or becoming a parent, and onsets of mental sickness. Such older
individuals frequently have other responsibilities, and try hard to try to cling onto their old life.
And as for the traits that prompt a Blossoming? The Hopeful are even less sure. The individual must not be
a creature of the Darkness - but, then again, a few spontaneous Blossomings have been noted among individuals
who, of their own free will, managed to cast off the taint. Individuals with the Virtue of Hope, despite the name, do
not Blossom in noticeably more numbers than individuals with other Virtues; nor do the Vices seem to have an
overall effect. A common theme among Nobles interviewed has been this: when faced with adversity, they chose
to respond in a way that reaffirmed their conscience, or faced down something which would have threatened
either themselves or others. Many report a feeling that they could “never forgive themselves” if they had acted
any other way, as if they would be very disappointed in themselves. In almost all cases, the Blossoming can be
linked back to a single “stress point”, a single reaction which either immediately, or over the course of days or
weeks, led to the Blossoming, although among some of the youngest of the Enlightened appear to lack such a
critical event. Such a point is usually linked to their Calling; a Troubadour might inspire her friends to stand up
to bullies and, over the next few weeks, start to have odd dreams; or he might be beaten up while trying to rally
his fellow immigrant workers against oppressive employers, and in a flare of blinding light, suddenly straighten
up in the garb of a knight of old.

Common Lives
For most hours of the day a Princess exists as her mundane identity, with little in the way of magical power,
and for most Princess their activities during this time are as mundane as their bodies. They have work for school

Wearing the Coronet 13

or college, friends to see, and family to have dinner with. As a rule Nobles are social creatures; the kind of person
who’d cut contact with their friends and family to dedicate themselves to hunting monsters twenty four hours a
day is less likely to Blossom than one who’d want to balance their friends and family alongside their new duties.
What’s more, the good times and pleasant emotions she experiences eating a simple family meal are the fuel for
Noble magic. A competent princess cherishes and invests time into the friendships that give her strength.
The majority of Princesses are in their teenage years and frequently (though, sadly, not always) have their
parents as passive support, but must suffer problems with their task and how it interacts with their youth
and the demands that society places upon them. Not too many people are pleased with their teenage children
sneaking out, and are even less pleased when they find out that the child has been going down to the area of
town where the drug dealers hang out, especially on a night when there are later reports of gang violence. Even
Princesses whose duties do not involve violence still face scrutiny, for in the World of Darkness the supernatural
is known to be dangerous. A Princess’ protests that she’s just working as a hospital volunteer that happens to
have healing magic often fall on deaf ears. That said a lucky few Princesses have parents who’re willing and able
to help them keep their secret and provide assistance or act as the intermediary between their daughter and
the adult world.
But most Nobles keep their second life hidden. Other Princesses can help, and many Nobles have a system
of sleepovers or after school clubs where the Nobles who don’t have any duties today cover for the ones who do.
Magic is of course used too, and many Princesses use the intelligence or maturity of their Transformed self to
get through homework quickly. It’s not unknown for Nobles to impersonate each other with magical disguises
or weave illusions to hide their absence from family. Some Princesses even hide their Transformed identity
behind a screen when texting their friends or boyfriend, as the empathy and social acumen she acquires through
Transformation can help smooth the hurt from a hastily cancelled date.
At a slightly older age, there are the young adults, typically at university or just entering the workplace.
In some ways, they are luckier, because they do not have to face the fact that they’re not legally adults; on the
other hand, many a Princess has lost her job or been forced to drop out of university due to the stresses and
demands of her calling, and unlike younger ones, their social safety net of family is in another city which means
that the issue of rent and bills starts to come up. For every problem a young adult avoids through their increased
freedom they must face another one due to their increased responsibilities. However young adulthood is a time
of transition, and a disruption at this point in a Princess’ life is often easier than at other times. Drifting away from
friends you’ve met recently in university hurts far less than a Calling forcing a wedge between a Princess and
her parents. This is the age where Nobles find it easiest to transition into a new social circle that is compatible
with their duties. Either because it is full of people in the know, or just full of people who’re comfortable with
hectic schedules and share the Princess’ passion and Beliefs.
Nobles who Blossomed as adults can find it the hardest of all, even before they Blossom a Princess tends to
be outgoing and socially skilled, meaning an adult Princess is likely to have responsibilities, and perhaps even
a family of their own. While teenagers can have strict boundaries set by their parents, such boundaries often
allow regular sleepovers or nights out with friends. Sleeping regularly at a friends house is a whole different
question when you’re married with young kids. A teenager’s funds are more modest than an adult, but they can
easily transfer money spent on video games and socialising to fulfilling one’s Calling. Money tied up in school
fees and a mortgage is not so easily moved. Nobles who Blossomed younger then grew up into adulthood often
build their adult lives around their dual identities and make full use of the freedom and flexibility adulthood
provides, but those who Blossomed late are often too tied down to start a life of adventure; and instead balance
their Calling around their mundane life. The pain of knowing you can help, and knowing it’s your responsibility
to do so, but being too tied down can be devastating to these Princesses. Most think very hard about simply
telling their family.
Pre-teen Princesses can find it just as hard as adults. Many live in families who expect that they, or a known
trusted adult, will know where they are at all times. Even other Princesses can oppose their activities, teenage
Princesses are often as uncomfortable with a six year old fighting monsters as anyone else (for their part The
Radiant Queens have seen enough young Nobles to easily recognise who’ll sneak out to fight against a Queen’s
advice and teach them how to survive rather than waste their breath telling them to stay home). One thing that
must be taken into account is that young Blossomings (usually) don’t happen without a reason, so more child
Princesses than you might expect have parents who need their kid’s help and are forced by circumstances to be
open minded, this can grow into a partnership. With supportive parents and placement with a new peer group
that matches her quickly growing maturity there’s no reason a pre-teen can’t thrive. But when the Princess

14 Wearing the Coronet

doesn’t want her parents to know, or they know but insist their child has a normal childhood a young Princess
can be well and truly trapped.
No matter what age she is in balancing work and friendship will require skill, and quite possibly magic.
While Princesses can get lucky or build a life designed to be compatible with their second career, most Princesses
find that there can be as much drama and difficulty in their mundane life as there is in their magical life, if
perhaps not as much danger. While many Princesses wish to change society so the next generation will be free
from the problems they face, few begrudge the time and effort it takes to keep their mundane life and their
mundane friendships. If they were the kind of person who did, they probably would never have Blossomed in
the first place.

The Pain of the World

The first bloom of magic in a Noble is joyous, but soon she realizes the price she must pay for it. We all react
to other people’s emotions, when someone is happy, or angry, or hurt we feel something in ourselves; but most
people can shy away from suffering, suppress the natural response lest it overwhelm us. Not so for a Princess.
To the Nobility emotion is magic. Innocent pleasure, joy and love partake of the Light and give her strength, but
hatred, cruelty and pain resonate with the Darkness, and when a Princess encounters them her magic curdles in
her heart. The Hopeful cannot close their eyes to suffering, and in a World of Darkness there is so very much of it.
As a Princess’ magic grows her Sensitivity can quite literally make life unbearable. Simply walking among
people batters her with every cruelty, each and every one becomes her personal responsibility. If she is strong
enough she can bear the weight, helping to undo the damage she feels makes it all bearable and perhaps one
day she will find relief in a brighter future. And as for those who cannot bear the weight, their only choice is to
run and hide. Stick to the quiet hours, find a nice walled palace or quiet village somewhere away from all the
pain and cruelty.
Shadows are the painful product of Sensitivity, a cancerous train of thought that can grow and spread its
tendrils through her mind. A Princess with Shadows upon her soul not only feels sympathy for the cruelties she
witnesses, but internalizes them. She suffers flashbacks, at the worst moments she remembers the event that
created shadows and feels her confidence fade. If she couldn’t help then, why should she expect to do better
now? These thoughts become self fulfilling: Because she feels lesser, her magic becomes lesser. It can too easily
become the beginning of a vicious cycle: the Princess believes she cannot help, therefore her magic weakens,
therefore she has trouble helping people, therefore she believes she cannot help.
Fortunately, this cycle can be broken before it starts. At the moment a Noble sees someone suffer, and feels
the Shadows creep into her heart, she can act to bring aid to the suffering soul, or at the very least requital
for their suffering. And this is the first purpose for which the Nobility are given their power, after all. Normal
humans are often helpless in the face of others’ pain; they turn away because there’s nothing they can really do.
The Hopeful can’t turn away, but they are far from helpless.

Love is Magic
The same Sensitivity that can make a Princess falter at suffering also opens her soul to the Light when it
shines in others’ hearts. By connecting with what’s important - her friends and family, or her daily labor for the
benefit of other people - a Princess stores power deep within herself. She remembers why life matters and what
she fights for, and that feeling fills the gap in her soul. Her emotions return, pure, bright and beautiful. She’s
ready to face the new day.
Moreover, the mere presence of a Noble scatters a bit of the Light into those she meets, or those she loves.
This Echo will soften hearts, allowing an appeal to their better nature, when a Princess is only nearby. But that
isn’t the whole of it - by performing a noble act, a Princess can inspire those around her with a spirit of emulation.
(A great weight of Shadows, though, will twist a Noble’s Echo to corrupt, rather than uplift.)
Most of all, when she needs to unlock her true power, a Princess has the ability to Transform. With the
simplest effort she pushes her dreams and aspirations outwards from her soul. They flow through her body,
transforming her into the woman she always wanted to be. The Nobility often tell each other that Princesses
don’t do magic, they are magical and Transformation is the proof. In her mundane identity a Princess is hardly

Wearing the Coronet 15

recognizable as having any magic at all, but in her transformed identity. Ah, what a difference that is. Magic flows
through her body, it is on the level of blood or bone. Her magic makes her stronger, more charismatic, or smarter.
Even her personality is different, but not by much. Part of it is the just the natural result of her magic: She
is more confident because she is more capable, she makes more witty remarks because she can think of them
faster. Other changes come from the Transformation itself, nothing important changes. Both of her two selves
are fundamentally Her. The changes are little things, she uses different phrases and expressions to say the same
concepts, her mannerisms are different. Like the changes to her physical body these changes are an expression
of the person she wishes to be, drawn from her innermost hopes and made physical by her magic.

Charms and Invocations

When she is Transformed a Noble’s magic doesn’t just perfect her body and mind; it overflows into powers
that are quite beyond mortal ken, magic in the most obvious sense. And yet, to the Noble herself these Charms
are no more (and no less) magical than anything else she can do. One of the first things a Princess learns is that
she does not do magic. She is magical. A Charm that lets her take on another’s appearance might feel like she’s
an actress getting into character. A Charm that unlocks new ways of seeing doesn’t feel like she’s gotten a sixth
or seventh sense, but that she’s started to notice things she never paid attention to before. Even blatant magical
effects like learning to fly don’t feel that different from, say, learning to swim.
An observer might see a Princess jump to avoid a blade then throw a fireball, and conclude that the jump
was mundane while the fireball was magical. Yet to the Princess they wouldn’t feel that different. She chose to
jump and her body reacted, she chose to throw fire and her body reacted. No speaking in Enochian, no need to
memorize arcane principles of correspondence or chant spells in her head. The observer might even be wrong;
if the Princess put all her hopes and Belief into that jump it could be a more magical action than throwing fire.
So, if magic is not a skill what does it feel like to learn a new Charm? A new magical ability already exists
within the Princess as raw potential, she only has to discover it. Practice it until it becomes second nature. Any
of us has the potential to read a foreign language, if we practice then over time we no longer see meaningless
symbols. We look at the page and see meaning. Even if that’s not actually supernatural it is amazing enough that
it deserves to be called magical. Learning a Charm is much the same.
A Princess might have the ability to sense ghosts but not to see them, so she practices interpreting her
senses until she no longer feels a ghost as a picking on the back of her neck. The symbols are now meaningful,
she sees the ghost as clear as you or me. Charms often don’t come from a deliberate attempt to produce a specific
effect either. A Princess comes across a new problem and tries to solve it, sometimes the solution she reaches
is a new Charm: She cannot defeat a Darkspawn in combat so she returns to her Palace to practice her swords-
manship. As she experiments and tries new things she might realize that the deft twist of her wrist she just
stumbled upon will slip under her opponents guard, or she might come upon a strike that sets her blade alight.
A Charm can feel like a mental trick she performs in her own head, an attitude she applies to a problem, a
new physical ability that came with practice like learning to cross your middle fingers. It could feel like anything,
the only constant is that there is always some emotion behind her Charm (though truth be told there’s nearly
always an emotion behind anything a Princess does), it’s not always the same emotion behind the same Charm.
Simply that, a Princess must Believe and Feel in her actions for the magic to flow. A Charm that will cause vines
to burst forth and entwine her foes will only function if she wants to trap her foes on an emotional level. Which
emotions she feels will flavor the Charm: the vines will be more vicious and visibly threatening against a foe she
hates and wishes to entwine in battle than when she invokes the same Charm with the excitement of a tough
but enjoyable practice match.
Invocations are a different matter. So long as a Queen exists, her philosophies resonate through the souls
of everybody who shares her ideals. For those Princesses and Sworn with an innate connection to the Light this
resonance allows her to draw upon a measure of the Queen’s magic. Through their shared values she feels the
reassurance of knowing a trusted authority supports her actions, and through her shared values she channels
the magical power of the Queen. Both emotionally and magically her Invocation forges a stronger Charm. The
Invocations are a magnification of something we’ve all felt, of how our beliefs and conviction give us strength.
When we fight to save someone we love our love gives us strength, and when a Princess versed in Fuoco fights
to save someone she loves the Invocation focuses those same feelings into her magic making her strength all
the greater.

16 Wearing the Coronet

Dreams of Better Things
Within her dreams a Princess travels beyond her mind, and into the very soul of humanity. Within the
Dreamlands the hopes and aspirations of mankind take life; they form vast cities, beautiful vistas with all the
incomprehensible forms of a dream. The Dreamlands are more than just a metaphor, they are a true world. The
inhabitants have lives and hopes, and dwell in functional societies. Many Princesses are surprised to discover
something so ordinary amongst dreams and flights of fancy, but is it really so surprising than a Princess’ dreams
would form after how she sees the world? For the Princess who cares so much about friendship and community
when she is awake, what else would she dream about?
Travelling to the Dreamlands offers many practical advantages to a Princess; she can find friends and men-
tors among the population including the Radiant Queens. Objects of power, often created and traded by Dream-
landers can be formed into Bequests. However the Dreamlands is not just frolicking and sunshine, once it was
used by the Darkness to construct a trap for the souls of the Kingdom. Though the trap is broken its creaky ma-
chinery and the remnant of the prison’s old Wardens still seek to imprison the Enlightened in a blissful dream.

Wardens of the Marches

If the Darkness had an influence only over the human heart, a Noble’s mission would be - well, not easy,
but certainly far less dangerous. The Hopeful may be the representatives of the Light on Earth, but the Darkness
has servants of its own, humans and beasts corrupted into dreadful monsters; and patches of land rotted out
from below when human sins let the Darkness infect them. There are even people who worship the Darkness
- who make sacrifices to it in hopes of gaining power, or who preach life-denying creeds to the gullible to spur
them to self-destruction.

Taint and the Dark World

The Darkness comes to every place where one person makes another suffer, and where people sink into
despair. At sites of enormous cruelty - where depraved scientists performed dreadful experiments on human
subjects; where kidnapped girls were sold into sexual slavery; where hardened killers waited to ambush their
victims - the call of pain and fear brings it in crashing like a wave of foul water. Lesser evils, if constantly repeated
- offices whose managers wield their authority to reduce everyone to quivering bootlickers; streets haunted
by muggers who strip passersby of valuables; houses of drunkards and addicts who think of nothing past the
next fix; quiet suburbs full of backbiters, talebearers and petty rivalries - let it drift in and build up slowly, like
thickening smog.
Quickly or slowly, once the Darkness has its grip on an area, it pulls the virtue out of it. It’s just so much eas-
ier to slip into habits of cruelty when hope seems far away, when the light in the air is flat and dirty, when every-
one seems so coldly indifferent. The Darkness ensures that those who walk where it has touched are blighted
and overshadowed; it sows temptations in their path, and tightens its hold if they yield. And as its corruption
grows, a Dark World, a ruined mockery of the Earth frozen under a flickering ember where the Sun ought to
shine, grows a little warmer as the Darkness brings it the stolen virtue, and the monsters stir and hunger.

Monsters of the Dark

When a place sinks within the Darkness, people soon come to avoid it - if they can. Even if the foul acts
that summoned it have for the moment ceased, the presence of the Dark World’s Taint unsettles the soul. But
it isn’t always possible to stay away from a Tainted area. Those who go there, particularly those who remain
there, may well grow accustomed to it - especially if they harbor a wish to do themselves the things that brought
the Darkness there. These are the Darkened: they have caught a spiritual sickness, the Darkness grows within
their hearts.
The infection of the Darkness can be cured, but if it isn't the patient will surely die, either in the body or in
the soul. A dying body will rise again to serve the Darkness as a bestial monster: one of the Darkspawn. For the
Darkspawn the Earth we know is a hunting ground, but the only true home is the Dark World; billions of them

Wardens of the Marches 17

rest there, frozen until stolen life and joy drips onto them from the world above. A dying soul turns what’s left
into a moral monster, a Mnemosyne: a being still human in appearance, but lacking a conscience, who possesses
a keen but mad intelligence and takes joy in inflicting pain.
But the worst monsters that walk the Earth in the Darkness’ service are the Cataphractoi, and they rise
not from cruelty, but self-destruction. When a man or woman can no longer bear the weight of living, when
they slit open their veins or take poison or jump from a great height, their despair may let the Darkness claim
what’s left of them and raise a Cataphract, a captain in its armies. These dreadful beings are the chief enemies
of the Hopeful, for they have not only power in themselves that rivals a Noble’s, but an influence over lesser
monsters as well.
Rarest and most potent of all are the Dethroned, former Nobility who despaired of their calling, abandoned
the Light and fled to the Dark World’s shelter. Fortunately, none of them can break their self-imposed exile;
the Dethroned are bound within the Dark World, and can go only where the Darkness has spread its Taint. But
they are idols for every Dark creature that cross their path, and where they go Tainted places boil with their
corrupted worshippers.

Iniquitous Mysteries
Assaults from creatures of Darkness tend to be blatant - any Noble will know what to do when a Darkspawn
stalks the streets. More insidious opponents are the cults who bow down to the Darkness and entice people
to enter Tainted areas or participate in depraved rites, with destructive doctrines or offers of occult power.
Mnemosyne are often expert at founding or spreading these anti-human religions, and at supplying innocuous
disguises for them: self-esteem counselors, purveyors of "exotic pleasures", even activists for odd causes, might
all be fronts for a Dark cult. And some people don’t need a Mnemosyne to find ways to call the Darkness and
offer it their service. There are hints of a power of corruption in books on the occult, and in this age many of
those books have been electronically scanned and posted on the Internet where any fool can study them.

Peers of the Realm

A Princess who has to face the Darkness alone seldom lasts long; the Darkspawn of a strongly Tainted
area, the machinations of an entrenched Dark cult, even the enmity of mundane criminals or armies eventually
bring her down. In the Long Night, when Nobles Blossomed so rarely that one was incredibly lucky to meet
another, the Hopeful who declined the Twilight Queens’ offers of support for service worked for a few years
before cracking or being killed. In these latter days, though, the Hopeful meet far oftener; it’s a rare Princess
who knows no others of her kind, and in some cities there are hundreds of Nobility. No Noble today is forced
to bear her burdens alone.

Nakama
No one understands a Noble’s mission better than another Noble. The bonds that form between Princess-
es who have faced down the Darkness together last for a lifetime. In Japanese the word nakama means any of
“colleague”, “compatriot”, “friend” or “comrade”, or a group of such. Among the Nobility (if they aren’t Japanese)
nakama has a more restricted sense: the small cliques of Nobles who were thrown together (perhaps all Blos-
soming in the same town, or facing the same great crisis) and have become something very close to a family
because of it. They share more than the Hopeful’s duty - they intertwine their mundane lives, as well as their
Noble calling. As youths they go shopping, see movies, plait each other’s hair; as adults they sit for each other’s
pets and children.
A Nakama can and often does also include the actual families of the Nobles, as well as their nakama in the
full Japanese sense - people with no trace of magic in them, but who are intimate parts of the Nobles’ mundane
lives. This is especially true if, as sometimes happens, the mundane companions are brought into the secret of
the Nobles’ magic and true role.
The primary purpose of a Nakama is to help Nobles destress after the pressures of the job, by providing
friends who understand what it means to be a Princess, and occasionally forcing a Princess to get a good night’s
sleep no ands, ifs or buts while another member covers her responsibilities. For the most part it is rare for a

18 Peers of the Realm

Nakama to sit down and create elaborate plans for improving the world. Most Princesses have strong convictions
on the subject and would rather have a supportive friend than long arguments with coworkers. However when
Princesses are reacting to a problem, be it the Darkness, the Twilight Queens or something mundane like an
earthquake, a Princess’ first call to form a team or a task force is often her Nakama. They trust each other, know
each other well enough to work well together, and of course they all have each other’s phone numbers.
Frequently a just-Blossomed Princess’ meetings with her first fellow Nobles aren’t left to chance; it’s a
common thing for the first Princess of a future Nakama to meet an unusual creature in the days before they
Blossom - commonly an animal that’s clearly tame but not obviously owned, and is more intelligent than other
beasts of its kind. The creature will follow or lead the Noble-to-be to a private place, where he speaks, introduces
himself, warns her of the new world she is soon to enter, and offers himself as a guide. In the loose network of the
Hopeful community these magical teachers and companions are named Shikigami. Once a Shikigami has arrived
and befriended his first Noble, he usually becomes something between a boon companion and a mentor to her,
and to several other Hopeful in the area who Blossom at about the same time; experienced Hopeful, indeed,
have come to expect that, where a new Shikigami appears, multiple Blossomings will soon follow.

Sympathizers
The Hopeful aren’t called to oppose the Darkness in only its overt shapes, though it’s those that their powers
are best for defeating. They also have to disperse the shadow of evil that lies on every human heart; and on that
side, Nobles can scarcely act without mundane allies. Unfortunately, while fighting the Darkness in its obvious
outbreaks is something every Noble agrees on, the best way of bringing Light into human affairs is a matter of
sharp disagreement. Even the Radiant Queens themselves are divided on the ideal form of society. In a particular
situation every member in a Nakama might have a different idea of what the trouble really is and how it should
be dealt with. So, it’s fairly uncommon for a Nakama to work together on any mundane issue; far better for one
Princess and three mundanes to cooperate with enthusiasm on a plan they agree on than for four Nobles to
reach a grudging compromise.
A common way for Nobles to bring the Light to bear on mundane issues is to work on those issues as mun-
dane people. It’s a great deal easier, if one wishes to expose official corruption, to become a private investigator
or journalist; if to heal the sick, to become a nurse or physician; if to defend the innocent, to join the police or
learn criminal law. The Nobles who follow such careers find not only that their magic gains by it, but that their
mundane colleagues share many of their views and can sometimes be trusted with knowledge of the Light and
Darkness.
A second way to influence the world for the better is through proxies. In the course of their work against
Dark creatures and cults Nobles often end up saving ordinary people who happened to be in the Darkness’ way
- or being saved by such a person’s timely aid. One of the Charms the Hopeful can learn allows them to open a
mundane’s eyes to the Light, if they are willing to oppose the Darkness; these are the Sworn, who can borrow
magic from the Nobility. And sheer good luck might lead a Princess to find a person who has seen a glimpse of
the Light on their own; these Beacons inspire and uplift their neighbors much as a Noble does, and share their
Sensitivity to suffering.
Still another way lies open to the Nobility who combine heartfelt dedication to a cause and the ability to
persuade others to support them. Such Nobles may call on the Light to bless their cause and form what the
Hopeful call Nations: special sects that, by convincing people to work for a worthy cause, also initiates them into
mystical techniques that spring from the Light, as shaped by the Nobles’ will. In many ways a Nation resembles
the mystery cults that spring up around occult phenomena in the World of Darkness - the main difference, in
fact, is that the typical Nation can announce its true purpose to the public, keeping secret only the powers at
its disposal.

Camaraderies
A single Princess and her mundane allies can resolve problems on the personal level. A full Nakama can
keep the peace for a neighborhood or two. But the really big problems need many hands to tackle - and that’s
where the larger networks of the Hopeful came from. The first of the Camaraderies were ad hoc alliances of
many Nobility to respond to forces threatening whole cities, usually from the Darkness (powerful Cataphractoi,
entrenched Dark cults, a few Dethroned.) Having once discovered each other, the assembled Nobles quickly saw

Peers of the Realm 19

the advantages of cooperating to face future threats, and of actively searching for other Light-touched, in their
own homes and elsewhere.
The most common tasks taken on by Camaraderies are helping with secure communication, discovery and
tracking of Darkness, discovery and training of new Hopeful and other light-touched characters, and promotion
of resource sharing between members. Security is a frequent concern of Camaraderies because discovery by
dark forces can spell disaster for its members, but this depends largely on the themes of the individual Chronicle
and should be adjusted to taste. A Camaraderie that has less to fear from discovery can afford to be less paranoid.

Nobles’ Jargon
The Hopeful are for the most part a young culture, and even the parts of it that regularly communicate
haven’t got any formal body to standardize language. While there is a linguistic legacy that predates the
Release, two in fact, one is the Royal Tongue (which many Princesses find cumbersome, or just annoying)
and the other is Alhambran (which many Radiant refuse to use on principle). Consequently the Radiant use
a fast changing system of slang, memes and technical terms that vary across geographical regions and even
parts of the internet. The language of the Radiant is young enough that most words can easily be traced
back to their origin. The special terms we use in Princess: the Hopeful are usually used by Princesses in the
anglosphere, having been spread across that portion of the internet. Some of the more specific terms are
unique to American Princesses.
Terms in Japanese originate from Bonnie Getsuei, an American (and complete japanophile) who forged
much of the Radiant community in San Francisco and even provided a common entry point to the online
Radiant community for English speaking princesses (presumably actual Japanese Princesses also use their
native tongue).
Italian words can often trace their origin to the Queen of Hearts’ earliest followers in the United King-
doms (The Court of Hearts had a late start in America, as the first impressions of that court often clash with
America’s national ideals. Today few Princesses even remember what the fuss was about) influenced by
Andartan culture. Those Princesses chose to use a romance language, and since they didn’t want to use
French, Princesses everywhere sprinkle their magic with Italian terms.
Greek and Latin words both share origins in the Court of Diamonds; the early Lights were the first
to attempt to begin classifying and studying Hopeful magic and related phenomena. This project was split
between those who were more influenced by their Queen and wanted to use Greek, and those who were
more influenced by human academia and wanted to use Latin. The argument was never settled and various
words from both languages have become part of the Princess lexicon, mostly for things a Princess can go a
while without encountering as everything else was named through informal, and therefore faster, channels.
Exceptionally nerdy Princesses sometimes use Greek instead of the Latin terms or Latin instead of the Greek,
and Latin or Greek instead of English, Italian and Japanese terms.
The Embassy to the Dreamlands, perhaps the only lasting Radiant organization to exist through the
Long Night, tended to use names taken from people, living, Dreamlander and even fictional (note that the
three are rarely distinct categories). Few of these terms are still in use.
Finally English is, obviously, the de-facto language of English speaking Princesses. Anything that did not
get a catchy enough name quickly enough is likely to be in English. One unusual, and uniquely American,
fact about English is that many Princesses adopt a more “royal” manner of speaking in their Transformed
identity, which is to say a British accent ranging from “BBC English” to “not even the Queen lays it on that
thick”. Princesses who are actually from the United Kingdom usually use their natural accent, though as the
British will parody anything some have been known to play up, or adopt, incomprehensible regional accents
when around Americans.

The Hopeful on the Net

The Internet, developing almost congruently with the rise of Blossomings after the Release, has proved
an invaluable tool for the growth of Camaraderies. Frequently, Camaraderies will run one or more websites
exclusively for the use of its Light-touched members. Sometimes these sites are accessible by the public and
the Princesses who use it do so without revealing their nature, discussing magical topics under the guise of

20 Peers of the Realm

more mundane concerns. Sometimes they are completely private, which lets the Hopeful talk frankly, but puts
its members at risk if it is ever compromised. Of course, nothing stops individual Princesses from running their
own sites as well. The need for communication, education, and simple desire to vent has caused a sprawling
magical culture to emerge across a network of blogs, forums, and social networking sites.
Despite this, the Internet still has its dangers. Many Princesses eagerly flock to debates about occult theory
or magical phenomena, but a wise Noble doesn’t contribute to them. A Princess’s emotional understanding of
her magic often clashes with more accepted occult principles. The resulting arguments can draw the unwanted
attention of experienced supernatural beings who recognize their magical style for what it is.
As useful as the Internet is, it is extremely unusual for it to be a Camaraderie’s lone method of communi-
cation. Snail mail and phone calls have their own benefits and drawbacks, and nothing can replace face-to-face
conversation. Depending on how clandestine they need to be a Camaraderie might have regular meetings where
the members show up transformed and vote on policy changes or they might meet in secretly in small groups
to quickly exchange important information before departing.

Finding Darkness
All Princesses need to keep the Darkness in mind. Even if a Princess isn’t focused on fighting monsters or
cleansing Taint, the Darkness is a threat to her. Camaraderies provide an invaluable service to Princesses that
would rather spend their time healing the sick or re-socializing abused dogs by keeping track of the forces of
Darkness.
Members of a local Camaraderie are almost always expected to report every encounter with Dark creatures
or new Tainted areas to the Camaraderie, to ensure that knowledge of the enemy doesn’t die with them. Some-
times compiling this information and notifying its members is as far as the Camaraderie goes, but they might
also dive deeper into analysis and prevention, tracking the movement of Darkspawn, researching Dark cults,
and compiling profiles on prominent Mnemosynes and Cataphractoi.
Mapping of Taint is a major part of tracking Darkness. In addition to simply reporting the places they’ve
happened to encounter, Princesses might also scan the news for events that may have caused Taint, go on scout-
ing missions, or use divination magic. Characters with the Taint Awareness Merit are particularly valuable to
the cause. Prevention may also be a priority, with the Camaraderie locating places that are likely to become
Tainted in the future, and urging members to make appropriate countermeasures.

Finding Light
Early in her career, a Princess’s greatest defense is knowledge. Without that knowledge, a newly-Blos-
somed Princess is especially vulnerable to the monsters lurking in the shadows. Some Princesses are lucky
enough to have Shikigami that seek them out before or shortly after their Blossoming to give them the run-
down. Others must hope that their peers find them before the Darkness does.
Finding and training new Princesses usually falls to the local Camaraderie(s). Any reports of vigilantism,
girls in unusual costume, or displays of magic usually merit immediate investigation. That being said, the Veil can
be a powerful thing, and even other Princesses can fail to pierce it. Magic is helpful in finding and recruiting new
Princesses, and certain clever combinations of Charms have succeeded in bringing them to the Camaraderie,
but nothing is ever certain. Even after contact is made, some new Princesses, especially those that have gotten
by on their own for too long, are slow to trust.
A Camaraderie can be especially useful to Princesses who Blossom while still in school. Even when they
aren’t actually charities nearly all Camaraderies offer volunteer positions, so Noble minors can report their work
for them as volunteer hours. Many a late-night excursion has the understandable excuse of staying late to help
out, and an adult will back up the teenager’s story if necessary. It gives the impression (actually pretty accurate)
that one’s child has become active in the community, and many families take pride in that.
Alongside finding new Nobility, Camaraderies frequently locate and protect Beacons, Sworn, and Blessed
Places. In addition to the moral necessity (they attract the attention of the Darkness nearly as much as Princesses
and are less able to defend themselves), the Light-touched are valuable allies and resources. Once it's existed
for a few years a local Camaraderie will know of almost all the Hopeful in the city, and many other Light-touched
as well - which allows it both to call on all of them in an emergency, and to introduce Nobles with interests in
common to each other.

Peers of the Realm 21

Organization and Policies
As a rule, a Camaraderie’s organization is entirely dependent on the circumstances of the setting and the
personalities of the Nobility that administrate it. In a low-tension setting, the core of a Camaraderie might be a
single Nakama that handles communication and organization while the rest of the city’s Hopeful focus on their
Vocations but provide assistance when asked. A high-tension setting might give rise to a rigidly organized and
secretive Camaraderie where membership is required and Nakama are assigned tasks by their superiors. Some
cities may have no Camaraderie at all, while some might have two or more. The following guidelines are only
frequently true.
• A Camaraderie’s policies are not defined by a single person. Sometimes a single Nakama votes internally,
but usually every member has a say. That might mean there are strict rules about voting or that the members
discuss it until they can come to an agreement.
• Camaraderies don’t have explicit ranks (apart from Princess, Sworn, Beacon, and mundane, and some-
times not even that). Merit, experience, and contribution are usually recognized informally and members in
high regard have more pull than others, but this is true of any group of people.
• Camaraderies assign duties to those willing to do them. Only when no one volunteers are nominations
called for, and even then Camaraderies are usually reluctant to force the issue, preferring to rely on guilt when
withholding resources will likely just hurt others.

Mundane Members
Although Camaraderies are primarily concerned with magical issues, their membership isn’t necessarily
comprised only of the Light-touched. Anyone willing to pitch in is accepted as a member, whether or not they
have magic powers. While membership can be more dangerous and less beneficial for mortals, Princesses have
a deep respect for those who would fight the Darkness without magic to defend them.
Regular people who join a Camaraderie usually do so in order to have their time and money directed to
the place it can do the most good. They can expect that their concerns are listened to with the same weight as
a Princess and can make the same kinds of requests. Often, mundane members are made into Sworn, if such a
thing is within the Camaraderie’s capabilities and the mundanes have proven themselves.
Some Camaraderies, especially those with a front organization, have employees. Because they aren’t usually
aware of the Camaraderie’s true nature, they’re not usually considered full members, but Princesses make sure
to pay attention to their troubles and opinions. While some might treat mundanes as second-class citizens, most
are aware of this temptation and do their best to resist it.
A Camaraderie’s open handed nature extends to other supernatural beings as well. While it would be quite
unusual for a blood-sucker to join, it wouldn’t be inconceivable. Every World of Darkness game line has charac-
ters with the potential to do good and make the world a better place. They’re granted the same benefits and
duties as any mundane member, though they might be watched with more suspicion at first.

Principalities
An important variation of Camaraderies appeared somewhat later, when the Hopeful applied the princi-
ple of mutual aid to more normal issues than intrusions from the Darkness. In several cities the leaders of the
first Camaraderie tried to expand its mission to include such issues, and touched off political quarrels and bad
feelings that split the Camaraderie or threatened to. The veterans of those early divisions are wiser now; they
encourage groups of Nobles who share the same passions to form groups of their own, each to its own issue. At
first these groups were also called Camaraderies, and some Nobles still do, but the differences in their objects
and structures has led most to use a different name: Principalities.
Unlike Camaraderies, Principalities tend to help members with their Vocations rather than the general du-
ties of a Princess. A large Principality of healers (Mender and otherwise) might put their skills and resources to-
gether to assist medical efforts, while a smaller one might tie thespians of various stripes from multiple Nakama
to support a community theater. Due to their more mundane aims, Principalities are far more open to mundane
members - it’s even common for them to appear inside a mundane institution when a few Nobles who happen
to belong to it discover each other’s presence and decide to collaborate. For the same reason, Principalities are

22 Peers of the Realm

very likely to become Nations so mundane members can benefit from the Light. (Camaraderies generally are
not built around Nations, because their goals aren’t easily explained to mundane people. Only places where su-
pernatural threats are overwhelming will have Camaraderies that are Nations as well.)
Successful and long-lasting Principalities tend to grow beyond the city where they were founded, and some-
times even beyond the control of the Nobles who created it, as the mundane side of the organization dilutes
their supernatural contributions. This is normally a sign of success, as it implies that large numbers of mundane
people are being guided by the founders’ ideals; but it can lead to trouble if the mundane members interpret
those ideas in ways the founders didn’t intend.

Breaks
Eventually, there will be disagreements. It’s an unfortunate truth of humanity. A group of Knaves disagrees
with the rigidity of the Camaraderie’s structure breaks off to form a group with a more personal structure. A
Champion, dissatisfied with the return on her investment, founds a Camaraderie for those who agree that all
members should contribute equally. Because Princesses are generally pretty good at putting their differences
aside and working together, it’s important to think about what differentiates separate Camaraderies, whether
its philosophical or practical.

Founding a Camaraderie
Creating a Camaraderie, especially in an area without one, is a perfect goal for a Nakama of player char-
acters. They’ll need to convince local Hopeful, establish infrastructure, gather resources, and make a name for
themselves. Characters forming a new Camaraderie can represent their gradual efforts with the Allies, Contacts,
or even Staff Merits, representing the characters they’ve recruited. Once they’ve reached a certain point, those
Merit dots should be traded for Status dots.

Callings
A Princess Blossoms when she is faced with a crisis and chooses to act; she accepts responsibility for the
problems surrounding her and declares it is her duty to fix things. Through accepting duty and responsibility
the Princess finds the inner strength she’ll need to fulfil her new role, and unlocks her magic. Although Blos-
soming (usually) has no effect on a Princess’ brain development or hormonal balance many Nobles consider
their Blossoming to signify the moment they became adults: Ready to handle their own responsibilities, make
their own decisions to govern their life, and go out into the world to make their mark.
This combination of a Princess’ new duties and the strength and magic that flow from them is called her
Calling, the foundation stone of any Princess’ power. Through her Calling a Princess can recharge her spent
magical and emotional energy: By fulfilling the responsibilities she has accepted she refreshes her spirit and
her surety about her place in the world. A Calling also brings a Princess affinity for the magic that is most helpful
to fulfilling her duties, making it easier for her to learn those abilities. Finally a Calling also imposes a code of
behavior, for a Princess has magic to help her fulfil her purpose and make the world a better place, not to indulge
herself in the privileges of noble rank.
A Calling does not confine a Princess into a narrow role, and few Princesses would argue that it should.
The world is chaotic and always has more problems than Princesses so the ability to step outside your comfort
zone to deal with a different kind of crisis is always praiseworthy; while accepting a Calling makes it easier for
a Princess to learn certain types of magic, it does nothing to hinder her exploration into other fields. Perhaps
most importantly of all a Calling is an understanding and an acceptance that a Princess’ duties are not a job she
performs or a role she fills. A Princess’ duties are who she is, and who she wants to be.

The Three Oaths

Each Calling defines three sacred oaths, listed in order from the most important to the least. If a Princess
breaks any of the oaths of her Calling, she immediately reaches a breaking point. Usually, breaking the third
oath is a compromise with no modifier, breaking the second is a compromise with a -1 penalty, and breaking

Callings 23
the first is a compromise with a -2 penalty. The Storyteller is of course free to adjust the modifiers to reflect
the situation in the game.

24 Callings
 Champion
Be strong for the weak
Champions epitomize the ancient concept of a hero - those who accomplish. In the Kingdom, they were the
defenders and the conquerors, the dragon slayers and the chain smashers. Their counterparts in the Reborn
world value strength for altruistic reasons. They serve the weak. Moreover, they enjoy physical accomplishment
for its own sake - Champions frequently sprout from athletes, those with a penchant for construction or day
labor, and even brawlers. Anyone who loves to push their body to the limit or appreciates the simple need for
a sturdy pair of hands makes for a grand Champion.
Given their emphasis on physique, some tend to mistake Champions as simple-minded or naturally violent.
Rather, they just look for direct solutions. To them, a problem is something that needs to be done. If they can’t
find a physical solution, something they can flat out do, then Champions will break the situation down until they
can. They cut the Gordian knot, instead of puzzling over it. If there is a weakness that stems from this tendency,
it’s that Champions tend to be blind to someone’s more sublime pain or motivations, but it also makes them
refreshingly straightforward and realistic.

Dreams
Champions dream of victories on a grand level - armies defeated single-handedly, mountains knocked
down, rivers wrestled from their paths, buildings held up for days at end. Their exploits are the stuff of Gil-
gamesh, Hercules, and Samson. But when they dream of the Cataclysm, they see weapons snatched from their
hands, their own bodies turning sickly and weak, and dark throngs they overpower and humiliate them.

Magic
Champions have affinity to the Bless, Fight and Perfect Charm families.
Starting Champions get one transformed Attribute dot in either Strength or Resolve.

Duties
Champions regain magic whenever they perform a task for somebody who physically incapable or over-
whelmed and don’t have the time and/or resources they need. This can mean doing chores for an elderly neigh-
bor, working for a charity or volunteer effort, protecting a classmate from a bully, or otherwise making a sacri-
fice of your time and effort for someone else’s benefit.
Champions also restore their magic by protecting the innocent. Wiping out a nest of Darkspawn, defending
a child from a wild animal, even walking the beat as a police officer can all fulfill a Champion’s duties.

Oaths
First Oath: I must never abandon those who need my protection. Even if someone isn’t staring down a
horrible creature of Darkness right now, the chance remains that they could in the future. If someone needs to
be watched over, they need to be watched over, and I can’t ignore that need.
Second Oath: I shall swear my loyalty to a cause. Might is never the end, only the means. My cause shall
determine when violence is acceptable, and for what reasons a sword may be drawn. I may change my cause
but I must always have one, and once sworn I must uphold the values and laws enshrined by my cause.
Third Oath: I should never back down from a challenge. I am a Champion - I succeed where others may fail,
I triumph against overwhelming odds. Unless some greater cause demands my attention, I should never back
down from hardship or accept defeat; if I can’t win at something, I should train until I can.

Champion 25
 Stereotypes
• Graces: You want the truth? Ask a Grace. You might not like what you hear, but you probably need
to hear it.
• Menders: Fine, you tend the wounded. I’ll go get you some patients.
• Seekers: By the time you get done talking about how to kill the bad thing, I will have already killed it.
• Troubadours: Why are you just standing there singing? Hit something!
• Vampires: We have a word for these where I come from - “targets.”
• Werewolves: Nice doggy… we’re on the same side, remember?
• Mages: Don’t make me come over there.
• Prometheans: I feel sorry for you, really, but you have to move on now.
• Changelings: Yes, your life sucks. Now what are you going to do about it?
• Sin-Eaters: If you narrowly escape death, but then make yourself a slave to a dead thing, you haven’t
really escaped death at all, have you?
• Mummies: You can’t remember why you’re fighting, I wouldn’t want to be you. Not for all your power
and immortality.
• Beasts: Spare me the bullshit. Are you going to stop hurting people or are we going to fight?
• Mad Scientists: So, could you show me how to use that thing?
• Leviathans: Keep hitting it, try everything! Something’s got to work!
• Hunters: You guys are crazy! How can I help?
• Mortals: My job would be a lot easier if these guys would step up, but some of them just can’t. That’s
why I’m here.

Inspiration
The Sailor Senshi (Sailor Moon)
Nagisa Misumi (Futari wa Pretty Cure)
Buffy Summers (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
Shoutan Himei (Sailor Nothing)
The Magic Warrior archetype in general

26 Champion
 Grace
Be light for the world
If we lost anything in the Fall, it was each other. People now wrap themselves in an shell of cynicism and
distrust to save themselves from humiliation and risk. They carry popular opinions like armor, not with con-
viction. People can’t save each other if they can’t understand each other and they can’t save themselves if they
don’t even know who they are.
Graces are the maidens of revelation. In ages past, they were teachers, leaders, lawmakers and judges who
helped a species of almost-monkeys become a civilization. Now they continue their duty, although muted, in the
modern world. Graces force those around them to look inside and confront what they find there. They are not
malicious and they are not cruel they know there can be pain, but they only want to show everybody what they
can already see: the golden light that could shine in all of humanity.
Graces are people people. They like to know people, they like to hear about people, they like to be around
people, and they like when people are people. Nothing pains them so much as someone denying their own
humanity. Others would describe them as “intrusive” or “presumptuous” always nosing into other people’s
business and offering advice when none is solicited. A Grace might be written off as naive or idealistic, for all her
proselytizing about honestly. They due tend to be outspoken and emotional. They never restrain themselves
from speaking what’s on their mind or in their heart and might be no strangers to embarrassment because of it.

Dreams
Graces dream of fantastic journeys across the world, witnessing moments of beauty and love unique to
civilizations they’ve never even dreamed of. They walk in the shadows of Divine Idols and sit at the feet of Holy
Teachers whose mysterious but weighty words seem to hold all the solutions to their problems, if they could
just decipher them. But as the wind turns cold and the stars fall from the sky, the people turn into silent shadows
who drift about in a monochrome haze and everywhere she travels is the same unending dusk.

Magic
Graces have affinity for the Bless, Connect and Govern Charm families.
Starting Graces get one transformed Attribute dot in either Presence or Manipulation.

Duties
Graces recover their magic whenever they convince someone to open up and act on their virtuous impulses,
instead of suppressing them out of fear or shame. This covers situations such as convincing an addict to seek
out help, easing the anger between antagonistic relatives, getting a classmate to study for her own sake instead
of cheating, or even just helping someone act on their crush.
Graces also refresh their magic by governing an organization or society. Turning a petition into a law, mak-
ing executive decisions in a company or working as a judge are all sacred duties to the Graces.

Oaths
First Oath: Whenever people ask “Why doesn’t somebody do something?” - they mean me. I must make
sure that things get done and vital needs are met; if no one else takes responsibility and I can do the job, I am
responsible.
Second Oath: I cannot isolate myself from the people I wish to help, how can I improve their lives if I don’t
even talk to them about those lives?
Third Oath: I must be honest, not manipulative. Mine is the magic to build trust and bring people together,
not the power to turn people into tools.

Grace 27
 Stereotypes
• Champions: What will you fight for? Me perhaps?
• Menders: You can only do so much by treating the symptoms.
• Seekers: Look as much as you want, I have no skeletons in my closet.
• Troubadours: I’ll lead them, you shall inspire them.
• Vampires: Explain to me again how your civilization is anything of the sort.
• Werewolves: I might never know loyalty like you, but your pack has five. In a week I could make
fifty friends.
• Mages: Their magic isolates them from their fellow man. Nothing good can come of it.
• Prometheans: You want me to teach you how to be human? Well you’ve come to the right person.
• Changelings: If you’re not careful a faerie can turn your words on you.
• Sin-Eaters: This mythology was stolen from Dragonlance, and it sounds like you wrote this code of
honor while you were drunk! Is there nothing of substance to your society?
• Mummies: A leader and a servant, I would like the dichotomy. If only it wasn’t so dysfunctional.
• Beasts: I’ve dedicated my life to helping people unlearn the lessons you teach.
• Mad Scientists: So if I get the institute to apologize for laughing at your research will you destroy the
killbots? No? Do you even know what you want?!
• Leviathans: A society is its citizens not its leader. If you don’t believe me just look at those monsters.
• Hunters: Defending yourself is admirable, but fighting outside society can lead to dark places.
• Mortals: Stop calling it cheesy when it’s true. The power really is inside you if you just believe in
yourselves.

Inspiration
Hinamori Amu (Shugo Chara!)
Madoka Kaname (Puella Magi Madoka Magica)

28 Grace
 Mender
Save those who cannot save themselves
All of the Reborn feel the pain of others, but Menders are those who can’t bear to live with it. Their first im-
pulse is always to treat pain, either physical or spiritual. These were the great sages and physicians of the King-
dom, who studied the science of the human conditions on levels undreamt by modern science. A good Mender
is always looking around to see how she can make those around her better. The Fallen World is like a ravenous
beast, they say, and it mangles us all, all the time. Without care, none of us will ever be strong enough to break out
of the mire that swallows us whole. Nobody should be made to lie crippled as their dreams run on ahead of them.
Menders are typically described as either motherly or child-like - always blindly over-protective or naively
concerned with the problems right before without seeing the big picture. They are natural caretakers. They
easily take responsibility for those around them and are quick to worry. Often, they will display great maturity,
although they are also frequently overcome by feelings of failure or helplessness in a crisis. Some are even
pacifists, although an equal number wish they had the power themselves to punish those who would harm
innocents. Their uniting characteristics are a deep respect for life and horror in the face of suffering. The latter
may sometimes be a weakness, but the best turn it into an iron resolve.

Dreams
Menders’ dreams are messianic in tone. They see themselves healing the sick and the lame with a touch or
consoling those who cry and comforting those who mourn. In the Cathedrals and Temples of the Kingdom, they
nurse even the most far gone patients back from the edge. As the skies darken, though, all around them rot in
their living graves and beg for death in a resounding chorus deafens the would-be healers’ very thoughts.

Magic
Menders have affinity for the Perfect, Restore and Shape Charm families.
Starting Menders get one transformed Attribute dot in either Intelligence or Dexterity.

Duties
Menders regain magic whenever they provide consolation, comfort, and aid. They can volunteer their time
as medical facilities or to provide home care, work as part of emergency hotlines, be a shoulder for someone
beset by loss and grief, or do any other number of things to relieve the pain of others.
A Mender can work with machines as well as people, a cut brake line can cause as much suffering as a
broken rib. In the end though, it really does come back to suffering. A Mender builds and repairs machines to
help people rather than the simple joy of creation.

Oaths
First Oath: I will help all who request it. No matter what, I am here to heal. If anyone requests my aid, I will
help them, no matter how I feel about them or what they have done in the past. Now, I don’t have to be stupid
about it - if a dangerous creature seeks my aid, I can take precautions to protect myself and my friends even as
I administer that aid, and I don’t always necessarily need to give aid in the particular manner requested. But I
am here because people are hurting, and to allow that pain to continue is to betray my Calling.
Second Oath: I have a sacred duty to healing, I shall do no harm and respect the autonomy of all my patients.
The healer’s sacred duties have survived the fall of our kingdom and I am proud to uphold their traditions.
Third Oath: I should not suffer any pain to continue. If I see anyone suffering, even if they don’t ask for my
help, even if they don’t want my help, even if I don’t want to help, I should do something to mitigate that suffering.

Mender 29
 Stereotypes
• Champions: Bring the wounded back here, I’ll be ready.
• Graces: Stop making speeches about the stars and look at how people live in the gutter.
• Seekers: Seeing the truth isn’t enough, you’ve got to do something about it.
• Troubadours: Just keep their spirits up for me.
• Vampires: Incurable.
• Werewolves: You could do so much good if you’d just let me try and duplicate your cellular regen-
eration.
• Mages: Give me one good reason you’re not curing somebody’s cancer right now, just one good
reason.
• Prometheans: Bringing the dead back to life… growing replacement souls… it’s possible? I need to
know more.
• Changelings: Why do those feathers make me think of scars?
• Sin-Eaters: I know you had one miraculous recovery, but as your doctor I must recommend you cut
back on the drink, and the drugs, and the unprotected sex.
• Mummies: I could help you remember yourself, why are you only interested in the wands I make?
• Beasts: I’ve fixed up enough of their students to know the lessons aren’t worth the cost.
• Mad Scientists: Do you want to talk about it? Of course I’m not calling you mad!
• Leviathans: I can’t decide if they need healing or cutting out.
• Hunters: If you want, I’m willing to listen to why you’re so hurt.
• Mortals: No this isn’t going to sting, I’m better than that.

Inspiration
Shamal (Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha)

30 Mender
 Seeker
Remember for those who forgot
The desire to know is universal human trait, embedded in the heart and soul and genetic code of every
man and woman on the planet. What isn’t common is the will to keep chasing after those answers when things
start getting dangerous. That’s what sets the Seekers apart. In their previous lives, Seekers were the detectives,
scientists, and scholars of the Kingdom. Their dreams of the Kingdom are filled with colleges where the secrets
of the universe are revealed and cities where no lie is uttered and not even the smallest misunderstanding is
present to obscure the truth. When they dream of the Cataclysm, they see grand libraries and academies burned
to the ground, and lies entwined with lies in a web of deception so deep that even the most fundamental truths
are uncertain.
Seekers are a varied bunch. Many Seekers act like detectives or journalists, ferreting out crime and decep-
tion from the communities under their protection. Others resemble the scientist-heroes or adventurer-archae-
ologists of the pulp era, braving danger and using the secrets they discover to fight evil and better the world.
Some Seekers act as stoic guardians of Things Man was Not Meant to Know, keeping forbidden knowledge out
of unworthy hands. A few are tricksters, walking paradoxes who use deception to befuddle their enemies and
unearth hidden things. But no matter how they approach their duty, all Seekers share the common goal of un-
earthing hidden secrets and more importantly, using those secrets to make the world a better place.
Seekers often prioritize mental attributes to aid them in their search for the truth. Resolve is prized by all
Seekers to keep searching after the truth despite hardship or weariness. Wits, Larceny, and Investigation are
prioritized by Seekers who favor classic detective work, along with Manipulation, Empathy, and Persuasion to
tease the truth out of reluctant witnesses or suspects. Those who were scientists or scholars before Blossoming
often possess high Intelligence. Subterfuge comes in handy when a Seeker needs to investigate things without
creating suspicion.

Dreams
Seekers dream of secrets and discovery. They walk within libraries beyond imagination and delve deep into
forgotten temples to uncover the lore of the past. With the knowledge they uncover the people build magnificent
edifices and intricate devices that amaze and bring joy to people’s lives. Then, a Seeker’s dreams turn inwards,
the secrets she uncovers speak only of her own failings and the failings of that she holds dear. She desperately
searches libraries for answers that do not exist while the darkness creeps ever closer.

Magic
Seekers have affinity for the Appear, Govern and Learn Charm families.
Starting Seekers get one transformed Attribute dot in either Intelligence or Wits.

Duties
A Seeker regains Wisps whenever she uncovers new facts or information, and whenever she teaches an-
other something that they do not know. A Seeker could be a scientist or explorer uncovering secrets no man has
ever known. She could be a detective or journalist uncovering that which unscrupulous individuals try hard to
keep hidden. She could be a teacher passing what she knows to the next generation.
Many Seekers do a little of A and a little of B. A reporter uncovers a political scandal, then she publishes it.
A Professor does exciting scientific research, then writes a paper and gives lectures on it.

Oaths
First Oath: My eyes shall always be open to the truth. I will never stop investigating for fear of learning
that which I do not wish to know.

Seeker 31
 Second Oath: The knowledge I learn serves a higher purpose than satisfying my own curiosity. I will never
hold back information that could aid society or save a life, unless revealing that information also risks causing
serious harm.
Third Oath: The world is full of mysteries and they should not be left unexplored. I shall work to increase
my understanding of the world every day.

Stereotypes
• Champions: I understand how you feel, but punching people isn’t the solution.
• Graces: If only they asked any questions that actually mattered…
• Menders: I admire your dedication, but you’re treating the symptoms, not the disease.
• Troubadours: Stop prattling on about art and actually do something.
• Vampires: Friggin’ lying bastards hurting people and lying all over the friggin’ place. I hate them.
• Werewolves: Great sources of lore if you convince them not to bite your head off.
• Mages: All that knowledge, all that power, and all they do is squander it.
• Prometheans: Don’t blame them for what they are. Who’s the bigger monster, the creature or Dr.
Frankenstein?
• Changelings: They’re full of valuable insights. It’s gaining their trust that’s the chore.
• Sin-Eaters: They probably have useful information to share. If only we could get them to talk about
anything but doom and gloom.
• Mummies: The truth is still there, burred beneath the sands. I could help you find it.
• Beasts: Something isn’t right here. If they were created to teach lessons why are they so bad at it?
• Mad Scientists: You’d be surprised how much they know, if they ever bothered to remember there’s
a difference between what they know is real, what they think might be real and what they think is cool.
• Leviathans: There are some things even I don’t want to know.
• Hunters: They’re great in a fight, but half the time they keep shooting up what I’m looking for!
• Mortals: People have been lying to you your whole lives. I’m gonna put an end to that, just you wait
and see.

Inspiration
Yuki Nagato (Haruhi Suzumiya)
Sakura Kinomoto (Cardcaptor Sakura)
Ms. Frizzle (The Magic School Bus)
Yuuno Scrya (Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha)

32 Seeker
 Troubadour
Be inspired by the silent
The soul is not a silent, static egg that we must shelter from the outside world until the time comes for it to
hatch. Troubadours know the truth - the soul is a living, breathing maelstrom and unless we open up and let it
out, it can smother to death within us. And the Troubadours have the keys to let it out.
Each Troubadour is a master of some artifice - singing, dancing, painting, sculpting, cracking jokes, or even
just folding paper cranes. In their past lives, they were the queens of bards, storytellers and chanters, masters
of divine instruments who imparted the wisdom of the ages in grand halls and shady groves. Now their mission
now is to set us free from ourselves. Art, the Troubadours teach, gives shape to things that people can’t or won’t
express themselves. Every song or painting or performance lets the silent and unassuming realize and crystallize
the beautiful internal forces they otherwise overlook. The people of the Fallen World suffer through with souls
buried under the rubble of the Kingdom. The Troubadours are archaeologists of Joy.
Most people would describe Troubadours as people with their heads in the clouds. If they aren’t visual-
izing a statue or planning a new routine or reviewing the forms of a plot, then a Troubadour is admiring the
natural art of the world around her - the patterns woven out of everyday life and the people who populate it.
Troubadours are vibrant, expression personalities, not shy about baring their souls. Their chosen art tends to
consume their life and they want to involve as many people as they can in It. Unfortunately, they are artists first
and foremost - they easily get lost in a world of symbols and frequently can’t understand people’s impatience
with their “frivolous” hobbies.

Dreams
Troubadours dream of their own artist ambitions displayed on an epic scale - murals that span cities, songs
that resonate to the heavens, whole countries dancing. In these dreams, they are the puppet-masters that make
the whole world come to life with their energy and enthusiasm. The Cataclysm descends and they find them-
selves singers in the land of the deaf, painters in the land of the blind, clowns under the flag of melancholy,
wandering a cold world as they starve in rags.

Magic
Troubadours have affinity for the Appear, Inspire and Shape Charm families.
Starting Troubadours get one transformed Attribute dot in either Presence or Dexterity.

Duties
Troubadours draw magic from the release of others’ souls. Their duty encompasses providing art that in-
spires or consoles those who otherwise draw into themselves, encouraging and teaching those looking for a way
to express themselves, and energizing those around them with their own vibrant talents.

Oaths
First Oath: I will use my talents to awaken, not tranquilize. My art must always carry the sting of truth and
the spark of life. It must never be used to make people afraid of their own identities or trick them into silence.
Second Oath: My art will ever be for my audience. I must not become so wrapped up in my own ego that I
forget the people around me. Without the mortals who need it, my art is merely a selfish exercise in solipsism.
Third Oath: I will devote myself to art. The Art is my life. As long as I draw breath I shall not cease creating
and sharing my art.

Troubadour 33
 Stereotypes
• Champions: When you can use it to aim public opinion at a threat to the community, a song is a
sharper weapon than a sword.
• Graces: We both tell the truth, I just express it more creatively.
• Menders: Tell me how I can help.
• Seekers: Do you remember your teacher’s lecture on the states and their capitals? No? Do you re-
member that song from Animaniacs? Yeah, it’s like that.
• Vampires: You dress yourselves up and act so elegant, but you’re really just wearing funeral makeup.
• Werewolves: Such strong emotions, hold still. I need to get this on canvas.
• Mages: I don’t understand, if you experienced a revelation like that how can you not be shouting
it from the rooftops.
• Prometheans: To literally touch god through your creations…
• Changelings: They’re very secretive, but you can see their pain in their art if you know how to look.
• Sin-Eaters: Such a dynamic and energetic people, pity there’s no substance behind it all.
• Mummies: I admit it, I’m jealous. My works haven’t stood for thousands of years.
• Beasts: I used to tell my little sister monster stories when she was naughty. I still have the books,
they never knifed anyone and stole their wallet.
• Mad Scientists: I know how it feels to be inspired, but there’s really no excuse for what you did.
• Leviathans: That’s just horrible, and maybe just a little bit beautiful. Wait! What am I saying?!
• Hunters: You fight monsters? Without any special powers to help you out? And you win? [bites lip]
Do you want my number?
• Mortals: I’ve got something to show you, I think you’ll quite like it.

Inspiration
Creamy Mami (Creamy Mami, the Magic Angel)
Princess Tutu (Princess Tutu)
Fancy Lala (Fancy Lala)
Lucia Nanami (Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch)
Haruhara Haruko (FLCL)
The EBA (Elite Beat Agents)

34 Troubadour
Queens
It is not known exactly how many Queens and Kings once ruled the Kingdom; of this unknown number only
eight still have the power to affect the world. Five are dead, two are living and one is… Transformed. Collectively
the five dead Queens are known as the Radiant, for they remain loyal to the Light in spirit as well as word; for
centuries the Radiant Queens were trapped deep within the Dreamlands, but now their trap has fallen. From
their palaces within the Dreamlands they call out to Princesses, seeking Hopeful agents who will restore the
Light upon Earth. The three Queens who were not trapped, but stayed active in the world throughout the Long
Night, have all been compromised by the Darkness, or by what they’ve done to fight it (depending on who you
ask) and, taken together, are known as the Twilight Queens.

Choosing a Queen
It is rare for a Princess to ever agree with her Queen on every single point, and it is almost universal for
a Princess to have some affinity for the teachings of several Queens. This can make it hard for Princesses (and
players) to know which Court is right for them. Should a naturalist join the court of Diamonds with her fellow
women of science, or the court of Clubs with her fellow nature lovers? In all likelihood such a Princess will show
her shared ideals by acquiring both the Acqua and Legno Invocations, but the player still has to decide which
Queen goes on the top of the character sheet. The answer is which Queen shares her approach to making a
brighter tomorrow:
If you believe that …
• … self discovery and mutual understanding brings people together in harmony you will always be wel-
come in the court of Clubs.
• … clear and careful thought will lead us to a better tomorrow you’ll find minds that think alike in the
court of Diamonds.
• … a Princess’ role is to build and lead communities into the light then you have a place in the court of
Hearts.
• … spreading good cheer and laughter is the way to heal the world’s ills then you’ll fit right in at the court
of Spades.
• … the world needs individual heroes led by all consuming passion then you can proudly join the court
of Swords.
The Twilight Queens also have an approach.
If you believe that being a Princess makes you the most important and special person in the world, and a
utopia is just going to happen because you’re around then consider the Queen of Mirrors.
If you believe that the Darkness must be destroyed no matter what it takes you are ready to enlist in the
armies of Storms.
Finally the Queen of Tears would say that if you believe in protecting your people no matter the cost, bring
them to Alhambra where they will be safe.
Yet remember that of all the Queens only the Lady of Alhambra rules a kingdom that survives to this day.
She asks, and offers, more than any other Queen. A Princess who believes in protecting her people no matter
what should still think if she wishes to be a part of Alhambra, and if not she should choose another Queen.

Practical Magic
Each Queen confers a benefit, unique to her, on the Hopeful who follow her. While this benefit is a super-
natural ability, a Noble may use it in either her mundane or transformed states. Nobles with a strong Belief
generally find their Practical Magic grows in power.

Queens 35
Courtless Princesses
Princesses who follow no Queen are rare, but they do exist. They lack affinity to any Invocation. They have
their own form of Practical Magic; while in mundane form, a courtless Princess may spend a Wisp to activate
their transformed dots that apply to an action’s dice pool.

Changing Courts
Some of the Nobility discover, in the course of their labors, that the ideas of the Queen they first swore
to follow don’t fit with their experiences any longer; the philosophy of another Queen is truer to their present
character, or possibly none of the Queens seem appropriate and she prefers to live outside the Courts. Should
this happen a Princess always has the option to return her oath, and to beg audience with a Queen more har-
monious with her new-won principles.
For a Princess, entering a Court is a simple matter of speaking to its Queen and offering fealty. With a
Radiant Queen doing so involves a trip through the Dreamlands to her seat. The Queen of Storms speaks in the
hearts of all who wish vengeance; any of her followers can tell a Princess how to listen for her and speak to
her, and if such are not around a Princess can find the method with independent study. The Queen of Mirrors,
disconcertingly, always turns up just when a Princess most wants to find her. Only the Queen of Tears poses
a real difficulty; as she never leaves Alhambra, a Princess must travel there to swear to her, which normally
involves begging a ride from an outpost. Nonetheless, it’s just a matter of time.
Leaving a Court is another matter. Recognition that the ideals and principles you fought and worked for
in the mission to resist Darkness are mistaken, wrong-headed, unsuited to the problems you must solve, is
mentally and morally disturbing; and the more you’ve dedicated your life and magic to those principles, the
more serious the moment of crisis is. When a Princess abandons her current Queen she reaches a breaking
point, and makes a compromise roll, taking a penalty to her dice pool equal to her dots in the Invocation favored
by the Queen she’s leaving. The effects of the compromise are the same as any other compromise - the Princess
leaves the Court whatever the result of the roll turns out to be.

36 Queens
 The Queen of Clubs
AKA: The Matron of the Forests, The Queen Mother
Kingdom: Forests of Wen-Mung
Followers’ Epithets: Wilds, Turtles
In any battle your greatest foe is yourself. You must ask yourself why you fight, what can you
hope to gain and is it worth the risk of what you might lose? The enemy who says you cannot back
down is none other than yourself, overcome it and look at the other options. You could surrender,
often it costs you nothing but an apology and some pride. You could examine yourself, what did
you do that lead up to this moment. Why couldn’t you live here in peace? If you can learn to live in
harmony with your surroundings, isn’t that a better result than whatever you could win in a fight?
You can’t fix the world by yourself, but the best place to start is within.

The Queen of Clubs leads those Princesses who seek balance and harmony, they believe that a better world
can be achieved if we just learned to live peacefully with each other, with the world around us, and most impor-
tantly: with ourselves.

Tales of Wen-Mung
The Queen of Clubs has no palace and wears no crown. Her court travels at a slow walking pace through the
forests of Wen-Mung. Wherever they rest their tired feet the trees grow to shelter her from the elements. With
nothing but bare soil for a throne the Matron of the Forests welcomes her subjects. Of all the Queens she is the
most intimately connected with the eternal cycle of life, death and rebirth. She allows herself to age naturally
beyond her early twenties and in her current iteration of the cycle has grown into a slightly plump middle aged
woman who radiates warmth and kindness. She wears only clothes gifted to her by the working women of her
kingdom and rejects all finery. When she speaks her words are plain but carry the wisdom and empathy of
lifetimes.
A good way to describe a conversation with the Queen of Clubs is patient; protracted works too. The Matron
of the Forests sees no need to hurry. She lets the Princess speak at her own pace and get to the end of her story
before she replies. When presented with a tough problem she likes to work up to it, focusing first on a minor but
easily solved parts of the issue. This usually includes coaching the Princess about the right attitude to a problem
before fixing the problem itself; though it must be said that the Matron of the Forests sees the first as a vital
part of the second.

Philosophy
The Queen of Clubs asks a question: "The world speaks to us. Have you ever stopped to listen?"
Through Harmony, Light: The world is a place of conflict. Not just the obvious conflicts where nation
fights nation but also the conflicts that arise from the simple act of existing. The Queen of Clubs teaches her
daughters that they and everything in existence has a nature. It is from the struggle to be true to this nature
within the confines life imposes that suffering arises. Through introspection and self discovery a Princess can
find a way for her nature to exist in harmony with the world and free herself from suffering.
Things Change, My Dear: Harmony is not a destination, it is a way of moving with the world. Everything
has a nature and change is part of that nature: Water flows, plants grow and planets dance around the stars.
With great effort a Princess can maintain a harmony by opposing negative change but this is a false path. The
true harmony is effortless. A state of grace where every action moves with the world and every change creates
a new harmony free from discord. When the world changes the court of Clubs must move with it, and they shall
becomes greater from the experience.
Be The World You Wish For: To the Queen of Clubs the world is the lives and actions of every living being.
From this simple truth she forms her final philosophy. Harmony cannot be won through conflict for the very act
that claims to create a world free from conflict becomes part of the world. To create a better world a Princess

The Queen of Clubs 37

must become a teacher and a mediator who lives a life of harmony and helps others achieve the same through
her example and guidance.

Duties
A Turtle’s Duties are to bring things together. People certainly but that’s only a small part of it: Man and
nature, reason and emotion, city and countryside. The Wilds dream of a world where what were once opposing
opposites are now part of a balanced whole.
Champions of Clubs help people directly. They are park rangers and wilderness guides who help people
brave the dangers of the natural world so that they may see it’s beauty first hand. More than any other Calling
it is the Champions of Clubs who earn the epithet of Turtles. In battle they favor defensive tactics and seek to
gradually wear their opponents down with a minimum of harm.
Many Graces are environmentalists who seek to preserve natural world and preach the importance of liv-
ing in balance with our surroundings. Other Graces are mediators without peer who work to bring conflicting
parties togeather in a harmonious balance. The lessons of harmony are not limited to those with an external
enemy. The Queen of Clubs teaches that harmony begins with inner balance and many of her Graces are teachers
who help their students learn to live in harmony with themselves and the world around them.
In the Court of Clubs Menders are rarely simple healers. Under the Queen’s philosophy the disease itself is
often a symptom and her Menders teach their patients to live a lifestyle that avoids further sickness. The court’s
focus on the natural world attracts membership from vets and environmentalists who work to clean pollution.
Partnerships between Menders and Graces are common, the Mender deals with the physical symptoms and the
Grace teaches a way of life that removes root cause.
Seekers delve deep into the jungle seeking new herbs, undiscovered animals or just beautiful vistas while
others travel beyond the borders of earth. Delving into the lore of the Spirit wilds, the hidden half of the natural
world, and try and use the lore they find to shape and heal the spirit community around them. A few Seekers
blur the lines between Clubs and Diamonds as they work on renewable energy and cleaner technology.
Troubadours are inspired by nature and paint magnificent scenes of the natural world, others work with
nature directly as landscapers, flower arrangers or bonsai artists. A surprising number are architects and urban
planners who attempt to reintegrate nature with cities in the most literal manner.

Background
Appropriately for a Court so focused on Harmony, the Wilds are often classified into two groups with little
conflict or divisions between them. On the one hand you have the naturalists: Everyone from professional park
rangers and conservationists to people who really love their pets. They are drawn by Clubs’ belief in harmony
with the natural world, and often leap for joy when they learn how Legno lets them talk to animals.
On the second hand you have the spiritualists: From gurus and philosophers to pacifistic hippies and sub-
urbanites yearning for something with more meaning than materalism. That is not to say that every spiritual
Princess is drawn to the Wilds. The Court of Clubs has its own philosophies which draw students interested in
learning about harmony, balance and the quest for inner peace.
When the Court of Clubs gathers it is not rare for a laboratory biologist to talk long into the night with a self
taught student of Taoism, each delighting seeing the world though eyes that on the first glance are so different
from their own. The Queen herself knows that the two sides are both the inevitable result of each other, and
smiles every time one of her sons or daughters experiences the joy of learning so for themselves.

Character Creation
Composure is highly desired among the Turtles to examine their own feelings while it takes considerable
Resolve to always keep striving for self improvement. Wilds always put at least some effort into keeping them-
selves fit, meaning that Physical Attributes are at least average. Most wilds make a point of familiarizing them-
selves with nature, so skills such as Survival and Animal Ken are common. Athletics come in handy during hiking,
swimming, climbing, and otherwise navigating around in the wilderness (or at least the state park). Wilds who

38 The Queen of Clubs

wish to convince others to embrace the natural world often pick up Persuasion and Expression, while those who
have a theoretical understanding of nature often possess Science. Wilds interested in spirits often pick up Occult.
Socially the Court of Clubs tends to have fewer dots in Status than Contacts. It is the way of Clubs to co-
exist, not control. Circle however is often staggering as the Court’s focus on coexistence brings them closer to
whoever is around them. It is not unknown for a Wild to count an entire community as their Circle, whether
that community is an ordinary suburban neighborhood or a commune built on principles of friendship and love
seems to make little difference.
Heraldry: In their Transformed state, Wilds tend to be more subdued than other Princesses. White, green,
and blue are common colors, although occasionally red, orange and yellow make appearances for those with an
autumn theme. Ivy and leaf motifs are also common, with water themes being only slightly less popular. Outfits
tend toward the elegant and practical, the Wilds favor tough clothes well suited for the outdoors, but also with
a sense of balance that lends grace to their appearance.

Practical Magic
The Queen Mother teaches her students to bend before force and redirect it, rather than stand against it
and break. When a Wild meets violent opposition, either physical or verbal, and tries to calm that violence or
direct it to her own purposes, she gains an exceptional success on three successes.
When a Wild is in combat, she may spend 1 wisp reflexively to dodge attacks [CofD 88-89] for the rest of
the turn without using her action for that turn. She cannot do this if she sacrifices Defense. With high Belief
the Wild evades violence gracefully. At Belief 8 she adds 1 to her Dodge dice pool; at Belief 9 she adds 2, and
at Belief 10 she adds 3.

Invocation: Legno
The Queen of Clubs teaches the principles of harmony and inner strength in the form of Legno and the
Turtles find it easier to master than any other. Legno encourages a Princess to work with, not against. To find
balance not overpower. To defend not attack. It also guides a Princess to seek inspiration in the natural world.
Legno applies at no cost when the target of a Princess’ Charm is a living plant or wood, and when her
Charm’s target is a natural, non-sapient animal. It also applies without cost when a Princess intends to restore
things to their natural state, to restrain the reckless and calm the fearful, to defend another from harm, to con-
serve and cultivate over time, and to influence without drawing attention to herself.
Those who would make use of Legno must live for harmony in all things. A Princess who attempts violence
against someone not involved in combat, or who helps another to do so, may not apply the Invocation until the
next sunrise. Self-defense, protecting a non-combatant, and using Charms to stop a fight without violence are
unexceptionable, but if a Princess gives tactical support to an ally and the ally attacks one who has not begun to
fight, she loses access to Legno just as if she had struck the blow herself. Creatures of Darkness, however, are
so far from the natural state that Legno ignores violence against them. Attacking the Darkened, who can still be
saved, breaks the ban, but all other Dark creatures may be attacked with impunity.

Stereotypes
• Diamonds: They seek knowledge only for the sake of knowledge. They build a future with no idea
where it leads. Yet we must ask ourselves: Would we have time to contemplate without their agriculture?
Would we understand the life of the butterfly without their tables of numbers? Ask them to free us from
necessity, our work comes after.
• Hearts: They are living in traditions built for the world of yesteryear. Either they can hold the world
back or the world can trample them underfoot. It cannot end well.
• Spades: Flexible, adaptable they can fit anywhere yet they lack the permanence to ask the same
respect of the world. Somehow I don’t think that matters to them.
• Swords: If you are strong enough, you can move the world, but unless you teach the world to move
itself it will always return when you remove your hands.

The Queen of Clubs 39

 • Tears: The world changed, until you can change with it you will suffer. I would like to help you, but
only you have the power to help yourself.
• Storms: When you learn to take every blow the Darkness throws at you, then you will learn to fight
without falling to hate.
• Mirrors: You claim that you shall solve every problem yourself by the virtue of your crown, but your
claims of strength are to hide from a weakness within. It is an appropriate paradox, in a mirror everything
is back to front.
• Vampires: We’ve all heard the tales, that they are creatures of pure Darkness who run away from
the Light’s touch. I didn’t want to believe them. Then I met one.
• Werewolves: I have heard the howls and seen them from afar. Beware, some beasts are rabid and
may bite even a caring hand.
• Mages: I met a man once, who could speak to the trees and sing storms unto stillness. When I tried
to talk to him about how much he could help with his power he said: “We are all trapped in this broken
world, child”. I have not seen him since, but I keep wondering what he meant.
• Prometheans: I met one once. It’s been the only time in my life where I was sure I had met something
that couldn’t belong in an harmonious world. It made me feel ashamed of myself.
• Changelings: Once I walked into a party while walking the woods at night, the fairies were nice and
their food nicer. I have dreamed of it every night since.
• Sin-Eaters: Behind their denial of death is a clear understanding that death is a natural part of life.
• Mummies: I can think of no curse greater than an unchanging immortality.
• Beasts: They adapt to new environments by finding justifications to avoid change. Is it any wonder
why they bring harm to all they touch?
• Mad Scientists: My biology teacher grew strange fungus-men in his basement. In the end we had
to… we had to… I don’t want to talk about it.
• Leviathans: They say that there are things that live in the deeps, things that don’t belong in this day
and age, living lives unchanging from ages past. I can’t but hope that the Dreamlands haven’t turned us
into this.
• Hunters: They came out of nowhere, armed to the teeth and called me witch. Had I not run away I
don’t know what would I have had to do… or what they would have done to me.
• Mortals: We live the world we want for them so it may come to be. It’s not easy, but I believe they
are worth it.

Inspiration
Nausicaä (Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind)
You can’t control the world, but you don’t need to.

40 The Queen of Clubs

 The Queen of Diamonds
AKA: The Crystal-eyed One, Lady of Clear Water, The Philosopher Queen
Kingdom: Danann Archipelago
Followers’ Epithets: Crystals, Lights, Hope-Engineers
Contrary to popular belief, people aren’t stupid. It’s just that people don’t think, or they don’t
know how to think, or they just didn’t have the right facts. If you don’t think, you miss all the flaws
in your plans. If you don’t have all the facts, you make stupid assumptions because you didn’t
know any better. If you don’t think and don’t understand the world around you, you’ll put all your
efforts into a plan that simply won’t work. And then things go wrong. Sometimes, they go very,
very wrong.
That’s why thinking and knowledge and education are so important. If you know why a prob-
lem happens, you’re halfway to solving it. If you think clearly, you can find that solution. And if
you educate people, you give them the ability to solve their own problems. By understanding the
world, and teaching others to do the same, we can find a way to make it brighter.
So. Want to help build a better future?
The Queen of Diamonds rules from the Academy, and from there she and her servants seek to illuminate
the world. She teaches that the Light of Hope is best accompanied by the twin lights of Knowledge and Reason.
The Nobles who follow her believe that with those two lights acting as Hope’s heralds, they can spread the light
far and wide.

Tales of Danann
From her seat in the Academy the Queen of Diamonds rules the Danann Archipelago. Upon a throne of
whale ivory and pearl sits The Philosopher Queen: Regal as a glacier: Six foot tall and adorned with in the latest
sleek future-chic fashions of her court. Here she judges the petitions and arguments of her subjects. Her replies
are lengthy and explain the facts, theories and reasoning behind every decision. Every word spoken by The Lady
of Clear Water is precise and rehearsed, as calm as a moonlit pond.
Those who know the Queen in private see a very different person. Barely reaching five foot stands a young
woman just entering her twenties wearing casual clothes, unkempt mousy hair and a tee shirt adorned with an
obscure and highly technical joke. She even wears glasses having never bothered to fix her eyesight. Far from
the regal Philosopher Queen she stumbles over her words, gushing like a bubbling brook in her excitement over
the latest technical and scientific discoveries. When gifted with some unseen device or research from Earth she
squees, yes squees, in delight. Among her many friends and frequent one night consorts she values nothing more
than someone with whom she can share her boundless passion for learning.
The Lady of Clear Water tends to assume that the sort of Princess who pledges to the Court of Diamonds is
the kind of person she can introduce to her private self; she is usually right. When talking to the Queen in her
public persona it is best to speak as she does, clear, precise, with a focus on the facts and an explanation of your
reasoning. In private talking to the Queen of Diamonds is like sailing down a river; her excitement leads the
conversation and the Princess must choose whether to follow or fight the currents to steer the conversation in
more practical directions. Some Princesses become tributaries, their own excitement joining with the Queen’s
to become greater than either alone; it is these Princesses most likely to win the Queen’s friendship and the
royal favor.
Wherever the Queen travels Plato, her ever-loyal owl, is sure to follow. To her court, and even her close
friends Plato is nothing more than her pet and her idea sounding board. In truth Plato is the Queen’s spymaster.
Among the Academy’s denizens the wise owl is second only in intellectual might to the Queen herself and among
the strongest magical practitioners.

Philosophy
The Queen of Diamonds has taken as her motto, You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

The Queen of Diamonds 41

 Through Understanding, Triumph: Everything has a cause; everything has a purpose; nothing that hap-
pens is inexplicable. The servants of the Philosopher Queen take the duty of finding causes, purposes and ex-
planations, and bear it with pride. The Crystals would inquire, as a rule, for the sheer love of knowledge even if
no benefit could be expected. Nonetheless there usually is some practical use to the Lights’ studies. When they
come across a work of the Darkness, the Hope-Engineers analyze it carefully, and reach as complete an under-
standing of it as they can; then they strike, cut the problem off at the root, and watch it wither away. Analysis
is obligatory, since an ill-planned strategy is usually worse than none; when analysis is done, plans must be
carried out quickly and thoroughly, for it’s intolerable than people be left to suffer a moment longer than they
must. The more widely a Crystal has studied, the more swiftly she takes hold of a new problem, to supply its
correct solution.
Guide the River’s Path: When the Crystals discover some problem during their studies - a work of the
Darkness, or a simple human error - they are of course obliged to do something about it. The proper Hope-
Engineer solves the problem for ever: though a temporary fix or stopgap might be all that’s possible, she is not
satisfied until the root of the trouble is dug up and killed. Moreover, the full gifts of the Light were always given
to few, even in the Kingdom’s day, so any solution that requires a Princess’ powers constantly is inferior. For
that reason (among others) the Lights admire and prize the technology of the modern world. A Charm can cure
plagues in one person at a time, but no Princess ever managed to eradicate a plague from the whole Earth - the
banishing of smallpox was a feat of mortal science. Such triumphs as that are the Philosopher Queen’s model.
The elegant solution to any problem is one that sustains itself: design a machine, or an institution, or a code of
laws, that anyone can use and everyone will want to use, for that will endure even if magic fails.
Light Shines Through Clear Minds: However unusual a fact is, however much a theory encompasses, it
has no power if people know nothing of it, or lack the training to understand it. So, the Hope-Engineers take the
further duty of education, and of clear communication. Knowledge and reason are invariably good, lack of either
a weakness, withholding of them the worst of crimes. A Crystal pushes everyone she has any influence over to
learn, to think, to question, and to test everything, herself first of all; and she will not deceive those who listen
to her, or tolerate lies from them. And, while she values the wisdom to be gained from time-honored customs
and venerable authorities, a Light doesn’t assume such wisdom is complete or final, or follow it blindly. Unless
faced with urgent peril, Crystals look for the reasons behind any command given to them, and will flout them
if no reasons are given; once in authority, a Hope-Engineer analyzes the traditions of her society as thoroughly
as she does any other fact before her, and tests them as carefully as she does her own theories. Only thus does
the light of reason truly illuminate the world …

Duties
The Lights’ Duty is to use her brain. The Courtiers of Diamonds seek positions where problems can be
solved with thought and intelligence alone. Sometimes it falls upon them to personally implement the solutions
they conceive. Sometimes society expects them to start at the bottom and “learn the ropes”. Whatever situation
she finds herself in, the ideal is to earn a Mandate to use her mind.
What Champions of Diamonds lack in combat power they make up for in strategic ability. As much a general
than a fighter the Champions of Diamonds has the mind to plan a grand military campaign and organize the
logistics of keeping her army fed and battle ready. When battle is joined her quick wits let her adapt to changing
circumstances and match her foes gambit for gambit. If so many Champions of Diamonds are seen with shield
and spear in hand against the Darkness, that’s because so few of them have an army to lead. While her Nakama
will benefit from a well thought out plan to raid a Darkened cult, a group of five can scarcely afford to leave their
Champion away from the front line.
The Graces in the Diamond Court might not be the best at managing people but they are the best at man-
aging their kingdoms. The Grace’s pen closes loopholes in the tax code, defines laws in clear and understand-
able terms or just balances the national budget. So long as she can keep her head above the confusing tangle of
special interests and the reins of policy away from those who pander to badly thought out populism she should
have no trouble running a kingdom.
Seekers of Diamonds are perhaps the purest expression of Diamond’s Philosophy. They truly believe that
knowledge is inherently good and only application can be evil. Deep within their ivory towers the Seekers of
Diamonds study everything, from atomic physics to the Twilight Invocations. The future is built on what they
discover.

42 The Queen of Diamonds

 If Seekers of Diamonds are scientists, then her Menders are the engineers. A Mender of Diamonds is more
likely to be found in a laboratory researching new cures and vaccines than in the hospital, helping patient after
patient. Rather than fixing a broken machine, she will design a new machine free of the fault that broke the first
model. The Hope Engineers can be found in research and development teams, developing technological policy,
contributing to open source and running crisis response centers.
The Troubadours of Diamonds tend to dedicate their talents in a very specific direction. Their duty is sim-
ple: make learning fun! Whether they write a sci-fi epics where the plot hinges on an accurate understanding of
science or whether they’re the cool chemistry teacher who manages to tie every topic into a practical that ends
with something blowing up. When Troubadours of Diamonds are teaching, you might not even know you’re
being educated.

Background
No matter what cultural or geographical background they come from, the Court of Diamonds were always
people who appreciated the importance of thinking things through. Access to education is not nearly as impor-
tant as some might think, but whether she was educated in a first world university or taught in a third world
slum, a would be Light tends to make the most of whatever opportunities she had. The Hope-Engineers recruit
heavily from the ranks of teacher’s pets, library bookworms and self professed nerds. Professors and PhD stu-
dents are rarer, most Princesses Blossom before graduation.
Despite their Queen’s love of science and technology, it is not necessary for a Hope-Engineer to be (or aspire
to be) a scientist or work in a technical field. The Court welcomes anyone who believes in the value of thinking
things through. Only around half the Court can be said to work directly in an academic or technical profession,
which includes a large crop of librarians, teachers and other educators. Regardless of background, most of the
Court sincerely believes in the potential for technology to create a better world.

Character Creation
Intelligence and Wits are both highly prized among Crystals. Intelligence is vital for making sense of data,
while Wits is valued for spotting patterns and noticing important details. Many also focus on Composure or
Resolve, either to keep their heads clear and emotions under control, or to keep one’s mind on the facts no
matter how strong their emotions run. If a Light doesn’t have Investigation, he tends to pick it up fairly quickly in
his efforts to get the facts of whatever problem he’s facing. Many Crystals have at least a few dots spread across
Computer, Crafts, Academics, and Science. Those who seek to understand the strange things of the World of
Darkness often take dots in Occult. Persuasion and Expression also are fairly common, Persuasion for convincing
other to follow the plan a Light has made, and Expression for explaining and teaching. Larceny and Stealth see
use in getting information that can’t be obtained any other way. Of all Nobles, the Crystals are the most likely
to learn Firearms.
Socially the Court of Diamonds favors Contacts, for the access to information it provides. Many find them-
selves joining scientific or engineering projects and a tight community with shared goals can easily lead to both
Mandate and Alies. More than any other Court the Hope-Engineers enjoy access to mental Merits. Many have
strange abilities such as an eidetic memory or common sense granted to them by their Blossoming; others have
studied all their life and have abilities like Encyclopedic Knowledge to prove it.
Heraldry: Lights often have a scientific, technological, or futuristic feel to their Regalia. For some, their
regalia calls to mind science fiction; computer readouts built into sleeves or gloves, gadgets such as scanners,
energy weapons, or palmtop computers, clothes made from metal, plastic, or some strange material that defies
categorization. The “superhero” look is fairly common among the Hope-Engineers, with colors tending towards
white or the brighter shades of blue. Many Regalia shed light in some manner. Others have a Regalia that call to
mind professions of learning; many Lights wear glasses as part of their Regalia, whether or not they normally
need them. Some have long coats reminiscent of a lab coat, while others have vests, boots, and practical looking
clothing suitable for explorers, archeologists, or others who look to learn things far from a lab. No matter the
style, the Regalia of many Crystals features a distinct lack of anything that would be inconvenient or unwieldy
a normal costume, despite the fact Regalia doesn’t have to obey such rules.

The Queen of Diamonds 43

Practical Magic
The Philosopher Queen exhorts her followers to think and observe at all times. When a Crystal makes a
Perception roll, or is actively looking for patterns and anomalies in a mass of data, she gains an exceptional
success on three successes.
A Crystal may spend 1 Wisp to split her consciousness, allowing her to think about two things at once. She
may carry out two extended actions at the same time, provided neither action is physically strenuous. When
used this way the Practical Magic expires when both the actions have been resolved. High Belief lets the Crystal
sustain her doubled consciousness for longer times. At Belief 8 she may make one additional roll when taking
extended actions; at Belief 9 she may make two, and at Belief 10 she may make three.
Alternatively, during a scene she can take one instant Mental action reflexively in a given turn, provided that
the action requires no physical exertion or physical tools. (For example, composing a speech, doing calculations,
or solving a tactical problem.) In this case the Practical Magic expires at the end of the scene.

Invocation: Acqua
The Philosopher Queen focuses the lights of knowledge and reason into the Invocation of Acqua, and the
Crystals gain mastery of that Invocation more swiftly than any other. It is linked with the virtues the Crystal-eyed
holds dear, such as clarity of mind, honesty in word and deed, and deep understanding, and to the emotions
of curiosity and wonder. It is also tied to the classical element of water, and to liquids in general. The invoked
Charms and upgrades based on Acqua relate to these things and to phenomena connected to these.
Acqua applies at no cost when the target of a Princess’ Charm is water or ice, or when she has spent at
least one turn studying her target during the scene, and nothing significant has happened to it since. It also
applies without cost when a Princess intends to teach someone, to master a body of knowledge, to prove or
refute a theory, to discover things previously unknown to anyone, and to carry out a strategy she has previously
formulated.
The Invocation aids only those who are open and candid in all their dealings. A Princess who deceives
another person in any fashion, be it simple falsehood, sophistry, or material omission, cannot apply Acqua for
the rest of the scene, unless the deception is necessary to shield an innocent from harm, or to keep a secret given
her in confidence. A Princess may reserve what she knows, if it isn’t relevant and no one asks her to inform
them, and apply Acqua; she may not, however, cause another to believe what is untrue.

Stereotypes
• Clubs: You’ve got some good points, but I have absolutely no idea what you’re trying to accomplish.
• Hearts: We can learn a lot from the Kingdom, but you can’t just imitate its ways blindly and expect
them to work today.
• Spades: They’re excellent when it comes to making you think … but are they never serious?
• Swords: When you need a grand, dramatic gesture, call for them. When you need subtlety, call for
someone - anyone - else.
• Tears: Look, it’s obvious - if you didn’t live in that dank hole, you wouldn’t need to steal the world’s
hope. Why don’t you move out?
• Storms: The ones who let their hate and anger control them, I can deal with. They ones who are still
rational, I understand - and that scares me like nothing else.
• Mirrors: Someone needs to deflate their egos before they get someone killed.
• Vampires: You’re a problem. I solve problems.
• Werewolves: I’ll stay out of your way, try and stay out of mine.
• Mages: They’re dangerous - not because they have fireballs, but because their understanding of
reality is fundamentally wrong.

44 The Queen of Diamonds

 • Prometheans: What are you?
• Changelings: The more I learn, the less sense they make. Thankfully, they don’t seem to be an issue.
• Sin-Eaters: They know a lot about working with the dead, but they don’t seem to understand how
death works.
• Mummies: It sounds like your magic was far better understood than ours. Don’t let that be lost to
history - teach me.
• Beasts: One of us has studied psychology, educational theory and gets informed consent. The other
needs to turn themselves in to the police before I shoot them.
• Mad Scientists: They’re dangerous - not because they have death rays, but because their under-
standing of reality is fundamentally wrong.
• Leviathans: Find wonders in the deeps … whoever said that can’t have known what’s really in the
deeps.
• Hunters: They do study mysteries, I’ll give them that. I wish they weren’t so quick to shoot them.
• Mortals: If we can teach them to think, they will make the world perfect.

Inspiration
Ami Mizuno (Sailor Moon)
Washu Hakubi (Tenchi Muyo!)
Tony Stark (Iron Man)
Watanabe Eriko (Saga of Soul)
Your heart can show you where you need to go, but only your head can get you there.

The Queen of Diamonds 45

 The Queen of Hearts
AKA: The Rose Bride, The Gentle Patroness, The Queen Regnant
Kingdom: City-states of Andarta
Followers’ Epithets: Jewels, Flowers (female), Gallants (male), Rocks (often derogatory)
Once upon a time, the world was happy and at peace. In the ages when the Light shone clearly,
the people trusted their governors the Queens, and the Queens were worthy of that trust; in those
ages, the cities blossomed into gardens, and the people sang in joy as they worked; in those ages
champions fought bravely, scholars gave wise counsel, judges blended justice with mercy. The
world forgot it long ago, but I remember.
You’re looking skeptical - naturally, these days. People fear and mistrust each other, and
become what they fear; one threatens violence because he fears violence, another lies because he
doesn’t believe in honesty, a third steals because he cannot face poverty. I don’t expect you to trust
me, right this minute. And yet … haven’t you always wished there was someone you could trust?
Someone who knows how we ought to live with each other?
Listen, as I tell you how it was, and you’ll see how it can be that way again. We have only
forgotten the Kingdom - we haven’t lost the Light, and as long as we have Light, the Kingdom is
not lost forever.

The Queen of Hearts bids her subjects to restore the Kingdom’s spirit to the modern world. The followers
of Hearts believe a better world has already been built on the back of principles of civilization and by serving
the people as judges, leaders and lawmakers the Jewels believe they can make it better yet.

Tales of Andarta
The Queen of Hearts rules the city states of the Andarta plains from her palatial estate. Within the Queen
presides over her court from a throne of red granite and gold. She is everything a Queen could be. Regal, digni-
fied, just, kind, possessed of a gentle sense of humor and easy upon the eye. Her skin is delicately adorned with
ointments and perfume. She is clad in elegant and extravagant styles drawn by the royal tailors from all across
the world and history to show the reach of their lieges influence. However she presents herself she is as com-
posed as a flawless diamond, every word and action is deliberate. When she hears the request of her petitioners
her court fills with the rustle of paper as an army of clerks search through scrolls and tomes for precedent of
similar problems long since solved.
It is easy for a Princess of Hearts to talk with her Queen. She can learn the protocols in advance and be use
their predictability for reassurance. She will call the Queen by her title, and the Queen will call the Princess with
her title. It helps that the Queen of Hearts can spot nervousness or awe a mile away and deftly puts the Princess
at her ease. When the Princess speaks the Queen is an active listener, guiding the Princess with short questions
but never taking the conversation until it is her time. In turn she expects the same courtesy from the Princess.
While the formality and protocol can make it hard for a Princess to connect with the women beneath the crown;
as two crowns talking for the good of their peoples it could not be more ideal.
The Queen of Hearts is a Queen wearing a mask. She is not a woman wearing the mask of a Queen, the few
people who have seen her in private all agree she is a queen through and through. No, the Gentle Patroness is a
Queen with a crown for every occasion. In times of peace she is a public speaker without peer and a patron of
charities and the arts. In times of uncertainty she is a diplomat, a peacemaker and a rock of stability. In times of
war she is a warrior-queen, the first to charge and the last to retreat.
Among her titles is The Rose Bride. How the Queen of Hearts gave her own heart to another is a tale sung
by bards throughout her kingdom. In her very first life, many many incarnations before she became a Queen,
she married a young Prince. Their devotion to each other was so strong that in every life that followed the two
fell in love and wed anew. Not once in any of their lives has either been unfaithful to their marriage. Though a
diplomat by nature he is known as the Queen’s Champion. He does not defend his wife’s life, for any foe that can
threaten a Queen has nothing to fear from a Noble. He defends the Queen’s honor, for in the court of Hearts it is

46 The Queen of Hearts

considered proper that the stronger fighter in any duel takes a handicap. When one is as powerful as a Queen
the only possible handicap is to send a Champion to fight in your place.

Philosophy
At the core of the Queen of Hearts’ creed is the virtue of trust, and of faithfulness to a trust. The principles of
her creed express the need to inspire trust, and to keep intact what has been entrusted. Everything she teaches
follows from a single principle: “A crown is a responsibility.”
Flourish in Community: No one can stand alone against all the Dark, and survive; but people who trust
each other prevail against anything evil can do. The Jewels take it upon themselves to weave webs of trust,
standing with friends and allies, obeying rulers, and guiding followers; in these webs they hope to catch the fitful
gleams of Light that fall into the world and collect them into eternal beacons. They build and tend communities,
write codes of law and establish customs for people who have none of their own, or have abandoned the societies
they were born in. The ordered community, in which everyone has a role and no one is an exile, is the strongest
possible bastion the Light can have.
Honor Tradition: Tradition is a trust - a store of wisdom laid in by past generations, to guide us in the
present, and be handed on to the future. More than that, traditions are also our shared social identity. The
Jewels do their best to breathe life into the rules and customs of the societies they find themselves in, especially
the one they’re born to. They are reluctant to flout a convention, especially when they don’t know the reasons
for it. However, the Radiant are here to improve the world, not preserve it as it is, and when the Flowers see
a Tradition they cannot condone they seek to replace it rather than remove it. The Gallants often use those
Traditions they remember from past lives in the Kingdom when they need a substitute, but they can just as easily
borrow something from the neighboring culture (especially if they wish to bring them together) or formalize
that awesome party their friends repeat every year.
Authority Must Be Earned: A Princess of Hearts, by her nature and training, becomes the keeper of many
people’s trust; therefore she must be worthy of it, both in her own conduct and in the behavior she tolerates.
More than any other Hopeful, Jewels are expected to hold authority and wield it responsibly. When a threat to a
whole society appears, Flowers are the ones who rouse its members to action, coordinate their responses, and
ensure everyone does what’s needed. In ordinary times, Gallants are courteous, friendly and compassionate to
all, lest they give anyone pain; but they have their burden, heavier than most, and don’t allow themselves to
forget it. Moreover, they must not take their position for granted. If her society rejects a Jewel’s rule, or deposes
her from it, the fault is hers not theirs; and if they proceed to disaster that she would have avoided, her failure
to gain their trust is all the more grievous.

Duties
A Jewel’s duties can be to build societies, to guard the traditions of the past, or even to stand vigilant at the
border, but they always share one common theme. A Jewel’s duties revolve around people.
Champions of Hearts lead from the front, they specialize in inspiring and leading their troops. On the bat-
tlefield tactical acumen and a strong commanding voice are as important as a good sword arm. Off the battlefield
a Gallants must know how to keep moral high and foster a spirit of brotherhood among her troops. If she is
skilled at her tasks a Gallants’ fighting prowess shows itself through every one of her companions.
Graces of Hearts are sometimes called Hearts of Hearts for the Queen and Calling fit together hand in glove.
A Heart of Hearts builds societies, they lay down and exemplify the virtues people aspire too. They are both
diplomats and leaders. It’s a huge amount of work, but you are expected to have help from your friends.
Menders of Hearts focus on human problems. They are more likely to be counselors and therapists than
doctors or nurses. The tools of a Mender are a good common sense understanding of people, words of encour-
agement and a winning smile.
Seekers of Hearts seek to understand their societies from tip to toe. They can be historians unearthing
long forgotten traditions, reporters and bloggers who speak about the lives of their fellows. Yet to the Gallants’
understanding is not for its own sake, it is for a purpose. They understand not only the unwritten rules of society,
but the purpose of those rules and they use that understanding to purge corruption and fight abuses of the
system in all their forms.

The Queen of Hearts 47

 Troubadours of Hearts incorporate the themes and virtues of their society into their work. They honor the
heroes of old and create monuments to the ideals people aspire to. But at heart their work is simple, through
their art the Troubadours bind people together with a strong group identity.

Background
Even before they Blossomed the followers of Hearts often had a lot of respect for the institutions of society.
They (or at least their parents) have backgrounds in politics or law. Others cut their teeth with the codes and
institutions of the playground or come from tight knit communities whose values fit neatly into the Court of
Hearts. A lot of Princesses are attracted to the court because they wish to be one of the glamorous leaders they
see among the Gallants, but the Court’s belief that leadership is hard work and duty means few stay. However
the Court of Hearts does have a number of converts from the other Courts who felt working with mortals and
building societies provided a way to work on the big picture their own Courts had lacked.
Regardless of their background Flowers are always OK with the idea of others depending on them. Nearly
all have some prior experience in being the responsible one, even if only to a younger brother or sister. While
the Court doesn’t exactly reject introverts or the socally unskilled it does expect them to work hard to overcome
these limitations. Even the Gallants who have prior experience in taking responsibility for another have rarely
held another’s life in their hands, and they better start preparing for that first time.

Character Creation
Flowers and Gallants try to involve themselves in the lives of people around them, so many have above
average Social Attributes. Those who actively strive to lead people emphasize Presence, while those who prefer
more low-key or personal means focus on Manipulation. Empathy is a vital skill in order to notice the feelings,
undercurrents, and motives of the people a Gallant wishes to help. Socialize and Persuasion are common, allow-
ing a Flower to integrate herself into a group and sway others into doing the right thing and upholding the ideals
of the Kingdom (whether they know of the Kingdom or not). Politics is also a common skill, used to improve the
local political situation or simply use existing bureaucracies to their own ends. Subterfuge sees occasional use,
mainly to keep important information from people who would use it selfishly or to protect the identities of a
Princess’s allies from those who would persecute them.
Gallants who see merit in the society and political structure of the Kingdom frequently lean Academics to
better understand both the society of the Kingdom and the modern world. Many old traditions generally involve
art or music of one kind or another, so Expression is fairly common even for non- Troubadours. A Flower often
places Mental attributes over Physical ones in order to better understand society and guide the people around
her; Champions are the exception here, who emphasize their Physical attributes in order to fulfill their roles
as protectors.
Of all the Courts Flowers are the most likely to have social Merits. Allies, Contacts and even Status are
common, as are Circle and Mandate, for the Flowers do their best work among existing social structures.
Heraldry: Regalia for the Nobles of Hearts strongly favors clothing in traditional styles, particularly formal
dress. Elegant ball gowns and elaborate jewelry for phylacteries are very common among the Flowers, as are
flowers or flower designs (roses especially) as accents, and pastels, rose-pink or -red, and shades of white. (It’s
not unknown for this sort of regalia to be mistaken for a wedding dress.) Many Gallants follow the complemen-
tary mode of mens’ formal wear, appearing in tuxedos, or in white tie, top hat and tails. The more practically
minded (usually Champions) go back farther, and model their regalia on styles more archaic but less confining;
the swashbuckling Cavalier, the wuxia hero, the knight in shining armor. These turn up on both sexes. In all
cases, a Jewel is dressed well, showing off the best appearance of a high and civilized age.

Practical Magic
The Queen Regnant teaches that excellence comes of playing one’s part within society. When a Jewel is
carrying out her duties to an organization, or actively performing a role which her social context recognizes as
hers, she gains an exceptional success on three successes.

48 The Queen of Hearts

 A Jewel can draw on her Queen’s social graces to open paths. When beginning a social maneuver, a Jewel
may spend 1 Wisp to improve her impression by one step, unless it begins at hostile. High Belief helps her in
the resulting negotiation: at Belief 8 her first roll to open a Door gains a +1 bonus, at Belief 9 it gains +2, and
at Belief 10 it gains +3.
Alternatively, the Jewel may spend a Wisp to use Empathy or Socialize reflexively once each turn, unless
her action that turn is physically demanding. This form of the Practical Magic lasts until the scene ends.

Invocation: Terra
The principles of the Queen of Hearts find their magical expression in the Invocation of Terra, and her
Flowers and Gallants learn it more easily than any other. It is bound up with the things the Queen values: mutual
trust and peace, the responsible use of authority, sensitive compassion, and punctilious courtesies. It is also tied
to earth and stone, especially when it has been refined and property constructed for human service, as proud
cathedrals, elegant jewellery or solid stone walls.
Terra applies at no cost when the target of a Princess’ Charm is earth or stone, including all forms of gem-
stones; and when her target is a non-supernatural human being who gives informed consent to the Charm. It
also applies without cost when a Princess intends to resolve a conflict without violence, to make someone or
something beautiful, to give requested aid without expecting any return, to coordinate the efforts of several
people in a project, or to help a lawful authority in their mandated duties.
Terra requires both decorum and consideration for others. A Princess who is rude or insensitive to another
person without cause, or who knowingly breaks a rule of formal etiquette, cannot apply the Invocation for the
rest of the scene.

Stereotypes
• Clubs: Rough and unmannerly, but their hearts are in the right place.
• Diamonds: Those towers of abstract reasoning leave me cold. You can’t keep faith with real people
by a theorem.
• Spades: Yes, I suppose the mayor does deserve to have something happen to him … why are you
giggling?
• Swords: Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
• Tears: I don’t care about their provenance - the Kingdom was not about bleeding the world to save
yourself.
• Storms: At least the Swords only risk themselves …
• Mirrors: For the Light’s sake, grow up and be responsible for once.
• Vampires: Not all traditions are worth preserving.
• Werewolves: Herd? Damn right I’m part of the herd. A herd billions strong who’ve claimed this whole
earth. Now tell me, what is your little pack going to do about that?
• Mages: You talk about Atlantis a lot but you only ever talk about its magic. What were the people
like? Were the citizens content, the rulers just and the judges fair?
• Prometheans: They share a culture, even when they haven’t met another of their kind. There’s some-
thing we’re not seeing, something important.
• Changelings: They had nothing to work with but scars and they built it into a society. Respect them
for that if nothing else.
• Sin-Eaters: You don’t snub death by laughing in its face. You snub death by building something that
will last long after you’re gone.
• Mummies: Our kingdoms have both fallen, but I’m trying to rebuild mine.
• Beasts: Teaching is a position of trust and authority. That is why we have so many rules about it,
and you broke all of them.

The Queen of Hearts 49

 • Mad Scientists: How did you convince him to turn himself in… An equation for the human mind?
That can’t be right, I don’t believe it! I won’t believe it!
• Leviathans: Every city you build eats itself alive, you can’t even live with your own family and that’s
why I’m not afraid of you!
• Hunters: If you claim to serve the Light then work in the Light not the shadows.
• Mortals: It’s their world, they just need someone to teach them that.

Inspiration
Queen Serenity (Sailor Moon)
Minky Momo Magical Princess Minky Momo)
Princess Celestia (My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic)
We’re not calling ourselves Princesses because our childhood fantasies came true. Nobility
means something.

50 The Queen of Hearts

 The Queen of Spades
AKA: The Queen of Knaves, The Queen of Thieves
Kingdom: Confederacy of Four Winds
Followers’ Epithets: Knaves, Rogues (affectionately derogatory), Scoundrels (affectionately derogatory)
Why does everyone think we knaves are lazy? Being a Knave is hard work, last week I had five
parties, five! That was a lot of planning, and dancing all night really tires you out. Then I spent
all last night watching great stand ups and making notes. I know everyone in school’s name, that
took weeks of work, I had to write songs to help me remember, and then there’s birthdays and
everyone’s favorite foods and what kind of jokes they like. After all that you have to keep yourself
full of energy because any time something goes wrong people expect you to be the fast thinker,
and you can’t do that when you’re tired.
But it’s all worthwhile when I see my friends smile.

A lot of the world’s problems aren’t nearly as hard as we “know” they are. If we could just step outside
the box and give ourselves space to look at other ideas, space to breathe, we could accomplish so much. The
Queen of Knaves leads a Confederation of Princesses who challenge common knowledge and teach people to
laugh at the absurdities of the rules which define them. They do the Light’s work with a quick wit, nimble hand
and lateral thinking.

Tales of Four Winds

Drifting above the mountain-side settlements that form The Confederacy of Four Winds the Queen of
Spades rules from a palace carved out of the clouds themselves. Blessed with limitless energy the Queen breezes
through her palace and amusements trailing courtiers and petitioners in her wake. Her regal presence comes
not from her appearance but from her character. She is youthful, yet she possesses a presence that blows from
her; carrying with it a sense of confidence and power, the smell of windswept desert sand, spices and the Queen’s
infectious laughter. Fashion at the royal court is a turbulent affair. The Queen changes her style frequently; al-
ways trying to keep one step ahead of fashions. This has memorably led to her occasionally preceding over a
court of punks and ravers while dressed in ermine robes.
In conversation with her Princesses the Queen of Knaves breezes from topic to topic; she actively resists
her Princess’ trying to pin her down to a single topic. It’s a game to her and unlike the citizens a Princess is
expected to be skilled enough to play. Asking the Queen to stay focused (or worse, get annoyed) is the fastest
way to lose the game. If a Princess keeps her wits about her she may discover the Queen has answered all her
questions (though not always in the order the questions were asked; and the answers may be hidden in riddles
or metaphor). The Queen favors Princesses who play well, any Knave who can adopt her Queen’s breezy style
of casual conversation and trick the Queen of Knaves into answering a hidden question scores highly indeed.
Her enemies say that the Queen of Knaves was a rebel before her coronation and remains a rebel at heart.
Her supporters and citizens ask who better to lead a nation of tricksters, scoundrels and merchants than the
Queen of Thieves herself? However the weight of truth travels with these accusations. The Queen is nostalgic for
her days as a rebel and frequently leaves her throne unattended to travel her kingdom as a commoner, playing
pranks and jokes before departing with the winds. She’s infamously responsible for about half the graffiti in her
kingdom. Her supporters again retort that what she lacks as an administrator, she makes up for by being the
laughing heart of her people.

Philosophy
The Queen of Spades shows that you can solve any problem with an open mind and a smile.
Find the Center of the Problem: The Queen of Spades delights in unorthodox solutions. She has reached
infamy for immediately suggesting one sentence solutions to complicated problems and insisting her followers

The Queen of Spades 51

prove it won’t work or else carry it out. Many of these suggestions are obviously absurd but it doesn’t matter,
their purpose is not to solve the problem. By playing the devil’s advocate with a bad idea she forces her followers
to question “obvious” assumptions and ingrained dogma and so learn the first of her Philosophies: To look
beyond the obvious and the assumed, to question what the real problem is, and to act only when she has found
it. If the best answers are obvious after they’ve been found, then they are already obvious to she who just looks
in the right way.
Free As the Wind: Power carries within it the seed of tyranny. The Queen of Spades sees no virtue in
submitting to the demands of an authority. Moreover, it’s wrong to make such demands on those who have
promised nothing. If the only way to get a thing done is to hold a blade to someone’s throat until they do it,
well, that just shows it shouldn’t be done, or that you’re meant to do it yourself. The Queen of Spades holds
it meritorious to frustrate those who oppress and extort service, and to release those who suffer in bondage;
becoming free as the wind yourself is necessary, and working to free others is glorious.
Laughter is the Best Medicine: You can’t change the past, but you can choose how you react to it. Who
would prefer to cry than to laugh? To the Queen of Spades laughter really is the best medicine, and a positive
attitude is just the thing to get a Princess who’s feeling down out the door and fixing her problems.

Duties
Champions of Spades often rely on speed and agility in favor of raw power, if they have a weakness it’s a
tendency to rely on their ability to avoid a blow and consequently Knaves can’t take a hit as well as some other
Courts. When fighting alongside other Princesses many specialize in harassing their foes support while their
allies fight the main battle. Outside of combat Champions of Spades are peerless scouts and messengers, before
the spread of modern communication systems they served as a vital backbone in communication, trade and
governance. Their powers of speed and flight made the knaves vital despite their carefree attitude.
Graces of Spades are not the teachers, mentors or diplomats you’d find in the other Courts. They don’t want
to change the way you think, a Grace of Spades just wants to turn that frown upside down! The life of every party
and the first onto the dance floor; everyone has a great time if there’s a Grace of Spades around. Graces of Spades
are often called upon by their counterparts in the other Courts, especially when they’re working with large
groups of mortals. It is easier to keep people’s attention when they’re enjoying being here but it’s a double edged
sword for the Knaves bring a party atmosphere that can be counterproductive when the Princess is working
on serious matters.
Menders of Spades have an unusual focus, but a vital one. They heal the ills people inflict upon themselves.
Closer to a teacher than a psychiatrist the Menders seek out those who’ve internalized harmful views of them-
selves; whether it’s a cruel parent’s insults or a demeaning cultural stereotype. They subtly and deftly they force
their patents to confront their opinion again and again until they realize at last that it was no more solid than
a dark cloud before the sun and vanishes in a puff of wind.
Seekers of Spades are taught to be open minded and to keep there eyes open. Often the answers to the
toughest problems is just lying out in the open, just waiting to be seen by someone open minded enough to
accept it. In a Nakama a Seeker of Spades is the one to come up with the plan, directing the group to unorthodox
but effective solutions, they do their best work with small focused goals.
Whatever medium she uses, a Troubadour of Spades is the mistress of two arts: How to make people laugh
and how to make people think. Some are out there day after day in the worst, most deprived areas showing
people how to laugh despite it all. Others are renowned for art that looks at old ideas in new ways and finds fresh
answers to questions that were long thought solved. The very best combine thought with laughter as peerless
satirists who can have you laughing riotously at your ideological foes until you realize the jokes been on you.

Background
The free spirit of the Knaves is usually evident even before they Blossom. The Court of Spades draws its
members from various countercultural groups (or as close as it can get given the young age of the average
Blossoming), quite a few members were even outright criminals who Blossomed through a heroic effort to turn
their life around. Even when they aren’t actually members of countercultural groups would-be Spades often have

52 The Queen of Spades

some of the attitude. They are the self proclaimed jokers, slackers and class clowns who fight with authority,
usually for the fun of it.
Joining the Court of Spades encourages these traits, but also softens them in its own way. Declaring war
upon “The Man” is less of an issue when you can just fly away, and when you can live on magic instead of a
nine to five job. Knaves are more likely to make fun of what they see as wrong in society than they are to take
up arms, and when they do decide to make a change their approach is often subtle, finessed and sometimes
incomprehensible to others. It is usually delivered with a smile.

Character Creation
As befitting a Court built in individualism and independence Knaves can be incredibly varied. Most have
high scores in at least two Finesse attributes: Wits to live life outside the normal systems, Manipulation to get
away with it. Dexterity isn’t always favored but if it is needed it tend to be high. Skills often emphasize the free
spirited lifestyle: Survival to live on your own wits, Streetwise to make a fast buck without getting tied down to
a nine to five job. Many Knaves mix Persuasion and Subterfuge to talk their way out of trouble. For Merits many
a Rogue’s dashing charm and witty nature leads to a high Circle, which compensates for how her philosophy is
at odds with the responsibilities of a Mandate. Knaves often have very broad Contacts, especially Graces for she
who throws great parties shall never want for friends. Physically Fleet of Foot and Fast Reflexes come naturally
to a practitioner of Aria.
Heraldry: The Heraldry of Spades is the light blues of wind, the greys of the clouds and the oranges and
browns of falling autumn leaves. The Knaves tend to be very individualistic in their choice of Regalia but light
breezy outfits mixed with countercultural symbols are common. So are subtle visual puns for the observant
viewer.

Practical Magic
The Queen of Knaves is a friend to the outcast, the downtrodden and the rebellious, and teaches her fol-
lowers how best to aid them. When a Knave wishes to help someone escape the wrath of an authority, she gains
an exceptional success on three successes. She may use this to help herself, or another person. The authority in
question may be a single person, an institution or the general opinion of the public; it must, though, have real
power over the person the Knave wants to help.
A Knave may shroud her acts in magic to evade scrutiny. She may spend 1 Wisp reflexively while taking
another action to conceal that action from any person not directly involved. If her action would normally draw
attention, onlookers must make a successful Perception roll to notice it; otherwise they ignore it completely.
The action’s targets, if any, perceive it normally. The shroud hides only the action, not its results past the imme-
diate moment (e.g. the Knave can take things without being seen, but their absence will be noticed.) High Belief
thickens the shroud; at Belief 8 onlookers take a -1 penalty to notice a concealed action, at Belief 9 they take a
-2 penalty, and at Belief 10 they take a -3 penalty.

Invocation: Aria
The Invocation of Spades is Aria, the enviable lightness of being. It is the principle of detachment, the para-
doxical unity of speed with forethought, and the laughter in the wind. Aria is taught by the Queen of Spades and
her followers learn it easiest of all.
Aria applies at no cost when a Princess is blown by strong winds, moves at running speed or faster, or is at
risk of falling from a height; and when the target of her Charm is the air, or other gases. It also applies without
cost when a Princess intends to catch someone by surprise, to make someone laugh, to cast doubts, to expose
pretensions and humiliate arrogance, and to subvert formal rules of an organization or society.
Aria will not support any assertion of authority over another person. A Princess is free to advise, to per-
suade, to appeal to friendship, and even to deceive (within the limits of Belief) while using Aria, but if she issues
a command she cannot apply the Invocation for the rest of the scene.

The Queen of Spades 53

 Stereotypes
• Clubs: Good-natured sort, by and large - except when they’re not. The little groan from a “Let’s go
clubbing” joke never gets old.
• Diamonds: I probably shouldn’t take quite so much pleasure in pointing out when they’re wrong. It’s
a rare enough thing that it’s a treat, though.
• Hearts: Too static and too reactionary to really quite get it. She sometimes gives the impression she
cares more about organizations than the people in them.
• Swords: Passionate and vivacious; oh, what fun!
• Tears: The last part of the Kingdom? Hardly. It’s nothing more than a rotting paper-mache mockery
of anything that was good.
• Storms: Hate is like a ball-and-chain around their legs. Even if they start bludgeoning people with
the weight, they’re still trapped by it.
• Mirrors: Look at them, staring into their looking-glasses. Of course they only see themselves wher-
ever they look.
• Vampires: They seem to be at the heart of any rotten power structure. I wonder; do they corrupt
things, or are they just drawn to such things like flies to meat?
• Werewolves: Discretion is often the better part of valor when a pissed-off eight foot monster is on
the prowl. But sometimes you just have to get between them and their victims to draw them off.
• Mages: Look at the puppet-masters, making society dance on strings to their tunes. Never let them
catch you with scissors.
• Prometheans: I met a girl made from a hanged woman once. She wandered the world as free as a
bird, and no matter where she went people tried to trap her. I was tempted too… I don’t like the side of
me I showed there.
• Changelings: Tricksters and lawyers to a man. Don’t try to beat them at their game of words and
promises unless you’re sure you’re very good, or they’ll ensnare you.
• Sin-Eaters: I’m not sure what to make of them. It’s a little… creepy that things so morbid can be so
cheerful.
• Mummies: What would happen if I woke you and commanded you to see the world and decide who
you want to be?
• Beasts: Yeah, you’re a troll, an internet troll. You’re not scary, you’re pathetic.
• Mad Scientists: Oh, don’t mind us. We’re just watching but um, can we like, be the beautiful lab
assistants and shout “It’s Alive!” or something?
• Leviathans: Um, right, yeah, living in the sky is starting to look like a good idea.
• Hunters: Such a mixed bunch. Some of them are just people; others are as bad as the monsters.
Some of them are monsters. If you extend the hand of friendship, be ready to pull it back if it looks like
they’re going to cut it off for use in medical research.
• Mortals: People of the world, cast off your chains!

Inspiration
Arsène Lupin (the Arsène Lupin stories)
Psiren (Fullmetal Alchemist)
Meimi Haneoka (Saint Tail)
Felicia Hardy (Black Cat)
Ikuto Tsukiyomi (Shugo Chara!)
Pinkie Pie (My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic)

54 The Queen of Spades

Aladdin (One Thousand and One Nights)
Lighten up! This will be fine, and if not we’ll just run for it.

The Queen of Spades 55

 The Queen of Swords
AKA: The Brightly Burning One, The Faithful Marshal, The Queen Errant
Kingdom: Aztallan Alliance
Followers’ Epithets: Adventurers, Heroes, Martyrs
Fire, fire gets a bit of a bad name these days, but fire is really life. Almost every living thing
on the planet owes its life to the sun, and we owe everything that makes life worth living to the
fire inside us. Life is meaningless if we don’t feel anything from it, laughter, hope, wonder, even
sadness. Without them what’s the point?
I guess, what I’m trying to say is. I love you, won’t you come on an adventure with me? We’ll
see the world, try new things and maybe get into a few scrapes on the way. Even if we get burnt,
pain is part of life and I wouldn’t miss it for the world.

Just as their magic lets them master the fire without, those who follow the Queen of Swords are consumed
by the fire within. They are blazing heroic figures, driven by their passions. They will follow their hearts wher-
ever it leads, even to their own deaths.

Tales of Aztallan
In the jungles of Aztallan the Queen of Swords dwells in her capital built upon an artificial plateau atop a
mighty pyramid. Here the Faithful Marshal rules from an obsidian throne and burns through the royal itinerary
in bored and clipped, but supremely competent tones. She is a powerful looking woman, beneath her skin lie
defined wiry muscles, her eyes positively smolder with power. Outside the excitement of a crisis the Queen
Errant makes little attempt to pretend she wouldn’t rather be digging up new insects in the jungle; usually she
appears before her court in rugged outdoor wear. The Queen of Swords is skilled at managing her image, she
just usually doesn’t care; but when it is required (and she always knows when it’s required) she’ll appear before
her court dressed in anything from formal robes to full military uniform. Her household servants quickly follow
suit, decorating the palace and statues of past heroes to match. Visiting Princesses are expected to dress and act
with appropriate formalities until things return to normal.
The Faithful Marshal treats her Princesses with the same unpolished honesty she treats her court. Though
she is never actually rude she won’t hide her emotions if she feels the Princess’ petition to be uninteresting
or something that the Princess should have been able to solve on her own. If the Queen comes to befriend a
Princess it colors her public interactions just as much as her private interactions. The Queen of Swords has the
unique ability to simultaneously be running her kingdom and relaxing with her friends (or even canoodling on
the throne).
Whenever the opportunity presents itself the Queen Errant leaves her throne and wanders her kingdom,
righting wrongs, doing odd jobs and exploring the jungles which she claims dominion over. She sleeps rough, or
in whichever subject’s house is close at hand. While her people are never quite comfortable with their Queen
asking for a job (how does one give orders to his own Queen) they have at least had plenty of time to get used
to her habits. When she can’t get out the palace she enjoys study, gymnastics or spending time with one of her
many consorts. It is said that long time residents of Aztallan can tell when the Queen falls in love anew from
cities away by watching the wheels of government slowing down. Famously she will not kiss a man or woman
unless she is deeply in love.

Philosophy
The Queen of Swords only ever gave one order. “Whatever you do, do it out of love”.
In the End, Only People Matter: The Queen of Swords is not one for abstract morality and long Socratic
debates about what is good and what is evil. Nor is she fond of formal systems of morality, duty or obligation,
referring to them as either training wheels or a crutch. To the Queen of Swords morality can be reduced to a
simple idea that everyone with Light in their hearts knows intuitively: If it hurts people then it is wrong. So don’t
do that. Furthermore the Queen believes that if one does not hold this truth in their heart then no amount of

56 The Queen of Swords

rules or regulations can make them good, but if a person is at heart good forcing them into an inappropriate
social construct can crush their light. And so she teaches her followers to do what’s right regardless of the rules,
and she trusts them to know what’s right.
Specialization is for Insects: A Princess of Swords should be able to: Compose a sonnet, survive a ship-
wreck, design an aircraft, recite the epic poems, win her true love’s heart, set a bone, clean a building, cook din-
ner, give orders, take orders, fight like a gentleman in the arena, fight dirty in the streets. The philosophy is a lot
more complicated than just saying you should be able to do everything; rather it consists of two related ideas.
The first and simpler is simply to always be broadening your horizons, try new things, learn new skills. The
second, like all the Brightly Burning One’s philosophies is about people. While she has nothing against relying
on another, Queen of Swords teaches that dependence must always be a matter of convenience not necessity.
True dependency is a chain, it allows others to force you away from being true to yourself. That path leads away
from the light.
Love Like a Flame: The Brightly Burning One teaches her followers that they should always have some-
body in their life that they love, whether it is their one True Love, a lesser romantic love, bromantic love, broth-
erly love, sisterly love, parental love or any other form of love. Furthermore she teaches that their love should
be like a flame, it should light the way and bring warmth to the Princess and those around her; but she must be
aware that like a flame if unattended her love will consume all before dying. The Princess should always know
when it is time to let go lest she consume herself. Yet when something threatens her love before its natural time
her efforts to protect her love should burn everything in her path, even herself - like a flame.

Duties
The followers of Swords are defined not so much by common duties but by a common approach to duties.
They seek positions where they are free to follow their own methods and their own moral compasses rather
than toe the line. Many see their duties as much about growing themselves as a person as it is about helping
others and so seek to always find a new approach or a tougher challenge to stretch their limits.
Champions tend to find jobs outside of the normal social structures. They’re more likely to be a private
detective than a policewoman. More likely to specialize in deep sea rescue than be a fire fighter. They boast the
most full time Darkspawn hunters of any Court. Champions of Swords are often trained to work independently,
having the intelligence to plan, the strength to fight and the charisma to turn whoever is around them into an ally.
Graces often mentor on an individual level, seeking the maladjusted or the outcasts and helping them find
where they can belong even if it’s just a space within themselves. While often less versed in diplomacy than the
other Courts Graces of Swords have some of the best connections to a verity of different cultures on a personal
level thanks to the courts wanderlust and tendency to go adventuring. In more than a few cases they have turned
someone’s life around simply by encouraging them to move to a culture to which they are better suited. Graces
who focus on larger scale projects are often exceptional at inspiring the public, but often they lack the skills to
direct the passion and energy they provoke.
Menders are more likely to volunteer in a small African village than a major, regulated, hospital, those who
work with machines often do the same working in oil rigs or digging wells, or they specialize in obscure but still
important technology where their unique skills let them demand to work their way. In both cases they are likely
to become experts at doing more without much resources.
Seekers often specialize in fields that blend academic learning with either demanding physical or social
requirements. Archaeology in war torn parts of the world, private detectives knowledgeable in both forensic
science and the seedy underworld, botanical trips through the Amazon rain forest or they are successors to
the great and dangerous explorations of the past delving deep into the Underworld or the Shadow. More social
exploits can include living with remote tribes for years or finding other cultures closer to home, no few Seekers
of Swords have spent time living with dangerous criminals or supernatural predators simply to learn of their
lives.
Troubadours of Swords are like a change on the wind. They breeze into town smelling of foreign and exotic
ideas if you travel enough you can be foreign and exotic everywhere. Their art challenges norms but rarely
opposes them (though some do take a delight in finding and shaking up repressed societies). She isn’t saying
the status quo is bad, only that it isn’t the only way. Most take the effort to leave behind at least a few people
who’ll continue in the styles she teaches.

The Queen of Swords 57

Background
Many members of Swords were adventurers before they Blossomed; they may not have faced terrible dan-
ger or performed heroic deeds but from backpacking across Europe to teaching English in China they showed
the Court’s spirit of adventure and self reliance. Others tapped into a confidence they never had before their
Blossoming, when you gain magical powers and a new body that’s stronger and smarter than your old one con-
fidence is a natural result. Regardless of when they discovered it, Heroes are comfortable living on their own
abilities and often eager for new experiences or just to push themselves further.
Just as the Swords are the most adventurous of the Radiant, they are also the most passionate of the Radiant.
Even before Blossoming they thought with their emotions, or really wished they had the confidence to do so.
The court is overflowing with incurable romantics and people who are confident enough to follow their hearts
into adventure, danger and whirlwind romances. While the Heroes are hardly stupid, they put little emphasis
on personal safety when the alternative is an adventure.

Character Creation
Swords favor Intelligence, Strength and Presence equally and most are skilled at combining them in unusual
ways to solve unusual problems. Heroes often have one or two dots in a wide variety of Skills to be self sufficient
and because of their unusual, transient lifestyles. Survival is common among members who take the title of
adventurer literally, as is Streetwise to find one’s way around cities from London to Hong Kong. Many Heroes
know how to fight, and Persuasion is often favored for finding allies or peaceful solutions.
The Martyrs often favor physical Merits, social and even mental Merits are harder to cultivate with an in-
dependent lifestyle. The Retainer Merit is surprisingly common, often representing a Sworn travelling compan-
ion. The philosophy of Swords makes it easy to form attachments. However it also teaches that one cannot live
forever in another’s shadow so Princesses of Swords see this time as almost an apprenticeship where they teach
and broaden their companion’s horizons with a grand adventure before parting ways.
Heraldry: The Court of Swords tend to favor blazing Regalia. Reds, golds and whites are common. While
it would not be accurate to call them flamboyant the Heroes wear their hearts on their sleeves. Their Regalia
often contains iconography that boasts of virtues they uphold and heroic deeds in their past.

Practical Magic
The Queen Errant teaches that passion overcomes all obstacles. When a Martyr’s action directly serves one
of her Aspirations or Vocations, she gains an exceptional success on three successes.
A Martyr can work and fight without resting. When she would otherwise roll to resist fatigue, a Martyr can
spend 1 Wisp to stay awake without a roll. Moreover, her fatigue penalty does not increase when she does so.
High Belief increases the time she can stay awake; at Belief 8 the Martyr can go without sleep for 12 more hours,
at Belief 9 she can go 24 more hours, and at Belief 10 she can go 36 more hours.

Invocation: Fuoco
The Queen of Swords raises passionate devotion into magic in the Invocation of Fuoco, and the Adventurers
learn it more easily than any other. Love, heroism and sacrifice are its fuel, the noblest things the Queen Errant
knows. It is equally bound to literal fire, heat and light.
Fuoco applies at no cost when the target of a Princess’ Charm is a flame, on fire, or hot enough to burn;
and when the target is someone or something the Princess loves. It also applies without cost when a Princess
intends to aid a person she loves, to strike at enemies with her full force, to take great risks for great gains, to
inspire others to heroic endeavors, and at the culmination of a major campaign.
The Invocation abandons Princesses who abandon their beloved. A Princess who betrays or otherwise
injures a person she loves or has loved cannot apply Fuoco until the one she has hurt forgives her for the injury,
or until a full lunar month has passed.

58 The Queen of Swords

 Several Fuoco Charms create flames out of the love one person feels for another. The nature of the love
determines the color of these flames, and the love’s strength fuels their heat. See the Heartfire Condition when
a Princess uses these Charms.

Stereotypes
• Clubs: I think after spending so much time trying to be part of everyone else, they’ve forgotten who
they are.
• Diamonds: Good at writing a theory, but unable to take it out of the ivory tower and into the real
world.
• Hearts: Sometimes traditions and etiquette are just a crutch. If you really know who you are and
what mattered to you then you wouldn’t need them. Not like they do.
• Spades: Great for a laugh, just wish they cared more deeply.
• Tears: There’s no love in what they do, it’s nothing but fear.
• Storms: Find something to love, then fight for it. If you do it the other way around you’ll end like
these girls.
• Mirrors: You’re not supposed to love only yourself.
• Vampires: I think the reason fire hurts them so much is that it reminds them what they’ve lost. They
really are dead. On the Inside.
• Werewolves: If I was sure they wouldn’t rage and splatter my intestines everywhere, I’d be their
closest friend.
• Mages: I don’t care how long your theory is, it’s still wrong. If anything is real it’s what’s in your heart,
not magic.
• Prometheans: See! I told you, it all comes down to the same thing. Fire and Humanity.
• Changelings: You loved something so much it let you defeat gods and escape hell. You can’t give up
now!
• Sin-Eaters: Keeping the flame alive in the face of death; I’d respect that, if I thought it meant anything
to them.
• Mummies: I’m only sort of immortal, but at least I’m alive.
• Beasts: “If it hurts people then it is wrong.” That’s all they do and all they are.
• Mad Scientists: I think they are missing something. I think that they became what they are to try
and find it and they’re still looking.
• Leviathans: Everyone changes other people just by being near them. If we’re all like beautiful stars
orbiting each other then these are black holes drawing in and giving nothing back. Pure perfect evil.
• Hunters: HEY! Why the hell are you shooting at me!? I’m on your side, here!
• Mortals: I’m going to take you on an adventure and break you out of that shell. Just you watch me.

Inspiration
Haruka Tenoh (Sailor Moon)
Nanoha Takamachi (Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha)
Billy Batson (Captain Marvel)
Henry Walton "Indiana" Jones (Indiana Jones)
Sayaka Miki (Puella Magi Madoka Magica)
I have no regrets. I’m doing this because I love you.

The Queen of Swords 59

60
 Chapter 2: Coronations
Therefore I am sure that this, my Coronation, is not the symbol of a power and a splendor
that are gone but a declaration of our hopes for the future, and for the years I may, by God’s Grace
and Mercy, be given to reign and serve you as your Queen
—Queen Elizabeth II
A Princess is still human, and she is able to use all of humanity’s varied and dangerous talents to her own
advantage. A Princess is also magical, and she is capable of focusing her hopes and beliefs into all sorts of unique
and potent advantages. This chapter and the next present the special rules and conditions which apply to the
Hopeful, and the process of creating a Noble character. The Nobility’s innate abilities and traits, the Merits avail-
able to them and their allies, and the mystical societies called Nations that they can create are covered in this
chapter; the Charms that serve as a Princess’ most potent tools and weapons are explained in the next.

Creating a Princess Character

Begin by designing the Princess as a mundane character: allocate Attributes, Skills and Merits, calculate
the derived traits, and choose a Virtue, a Vice and three Aspirations. As a Princess, the character gets 3 more
Merit dots, for a total of 10, to allow her to have some of the Merits open to the Nobility. Then, add the Hopeful
template.

“Do I have to play a girl?”

Princess: the Hopeful usually speaks of the Hopeful as female, mainly because nearly all of our inspira-
tions have girls as their protagonists, and the genre’s very name is “magical girl”. We would like to empha-
size, therefore, that you are not required to play a female PC. By default Blossoming has no connection with
gender, and a new Noble is just as likely to be a boy as a girl.

Calling
The first step in creating a Princess is to choose her Calling. A Calling is the fundamental way the individual
Princess brings hope to the world; her Calling gives the Princess a free dot in one of two Transformed Attributes,
and affinity for three families of Charms. There are five Callings available to choose from.

Calling Attributes Affinities

Champions: Defenders of the weak and helpless. Strength or Bless, Fight, Perfect
Resolve
Graces: Elegant and noble, the voices and diplomats of the Reborn. Presence or Bless, Connect, Govern
Manipulation
Menders: Those who take wounded flesh and wounded hearts and make Intelligence Perfect, Restore, Shape
them whole. or Dexterity
Seekers: Hunters of truth, banishers of lies, revealers of the hidden. Intelligence Appear, Learn, Govern
or Wits
Troubadours: Artists and exemplars who inspire greatness in others. Presence or Appear, Inspire, Shape
Dexterity

Queen
Once the five Radiant Queens governed their Kingdoms in the name of the Light; now they are dead but
their minds and souls live on in the Dreamlands. From beyond the veil of sleep the Queens mentor the Radiant.

61
A Princess can accept a position in a Queen’s court, a bond of both personal loyalty but also mystical affinity
that enhances a Princess’ magic.
There are five Radiant Queens that a player can follow.
• Clubs: The Queen Mother leads the coven of Princesses who seek to live in harmony with the world.
• Diamonds: The Philosopher Queen leads the conclave of progressive-minded Princesses who believe in
constantly adapting and refining the Kingdom’s techniques.
• Hearts: The Queen Regnant leads the court of Princesses who focus on communities, and their place
within society, first and foremost.
• Spades: The Queen of Knaves leads a confederacy of winking scoundrels and good-hearted rogues who
believe the best application of the rules is to break them.
• Swords: The Queen Errant leads the company of Princesses who believe that inner strength and passion
should always light the way.
In addition there are three Twilight Queens who are not usually available to player characters.
• Tears: The Last Empress rules the city of Alhambra, hidden in the heart of the Darkness, and taxes the
world of its hope to preserve it.
• Storms: The Seraphic General sends her sworn guard to war against the Darkness, and calls on the world
to sacrifice everything to defeat it.
• Mirrors: The Heirophant knows the true heir to the Kingdom will defeat the Darkness, and the Nobility
can accomplish anything if they just believe in themselves.

Invocations
All Princesses draw magic from their Beliefs and hopes, but when a Princess becomes a Queen her beliefs
and philosophies echo across the souls of humanity. Any Princess can feel that echo within her own soul and
draw on it to enhance her own magic. Each Princess starts with three dots in Invocations, one of which must
be placed into her Queen’s own Invocation. Courtless Princesses have a free choice of Invocations, but they may
not place all three of their dots in the same Invocation.
There are eight established Invocations, each favored by a Queen.
• The Queen of Diamonds focuses the lights of knowledge and reason into the Invocation of Acqua.
• The Queen of Spades teaches the Invocation of Aria, the enviable lightness of being.
• The Queen of Swords raises passionate devotion into magic in the Invocation of Fuoco.
• The Queen of Tears has embodied the laws and requirements of her city within the Invocation of Lacrima.
• The Queen of Clubs teaches the principles of harmony and inner strength in the Invocation of Legno.
• The Queen of Mirrors uses the Invocation of Specchio to cultivate those who may be the Kingdom’s heir.
• The Queen of Storms distills rage against Darkness into the Invocation of Tempesta.
• The principles of the Queen of Hearts find their magical expression in the Invocation of Terra.

Charms
Every Princess knows Charms, A Princess starts with nine dots in Charms; at least three dots must be for
Charms in the families the character’s Calling has affinity for, the others may come from any family. A Princess
may take upgrades for any Charm she knows; each upgrade costs 1 of her starting Charm dots. She may not take
Charms higher than 3 dots, or upgrade a Charm above 3 dots. If she takes an invoked Charm or upgrade, she
must have the prerequisite dots in the Invocation. The ten families of Charms are:
• Appear Charms change a Princess’ appearance, and produce other illusions.

62 Character Creation
• Bless Charms enhance people, pushing their abilities to a peak and bringing their actions to perfection.
• Connect Charms trace and use the connections between people, or make and break such connections.
• Fight Charms enhance a Princess’ ability to fight.
• Govern Charms control supernatural powers and those who possess them.
• Inspire Charms lift people’s hearts, spark their passions, and exhort them to action.
• Learn Charms confer knowledge, and reveal what has been hidden.
• Perfect Charms grant new personal abilities.
• Restore Charms repair damaged objects, heal the injured and tend the sick.
• Shape Charms shape materials as you will, or make things out of nothing.
Should the player wish she may use Charm dots to buy transformed traits, after taking her three affinity
Charms. A transformed Skill dot costs 1 Charm dot; a transformed Attribute dot costs 3 Charm dots.

Optional Rule: Free Affinity

Some players have character concepts that don’t fit neatly into the five
Calling Affinities
Callings, for they need Charms from two families favored by no single Call-
Champion Fight, Perfect ing. For instance, a D&D paladin needs both fighting gear (from the Fight
Grace Bless, Connect family) and healing magic (in Restore); a phantom thief requires illusions
(from Appear) and the athletic enhancements in Perfect; a gadgeteer de-
Mender Restore, Shape
tective has equal use for Learn and Shape Charms.
Seeker Learn, Govern
To accommodate such concepts the Storyteller may rule that each Call-
Troubadour Appear, Inspire ing favors only two Charm families, while each Noble also has affinity for a
third family, chosen freely from the remaining eight. The Callings’ affinities
become those listed in the table here. A Noble’s third affinity is chosen at character creation and cannot be
altered in play, any more than her Calling can.

Inner Light
A Princess’ magic shines out of her soul to illuminate the world. The raw power of her hopes and feelings
is represented by her Inner Light. A starting Princess has one dot in Inner Light, but she may spend 5 Merit dots
to increase her Inner Light to two, or her full allotment of 10 Merit dots to increase it to three.
Among other things, Inner Light allows a Princess to use a few Charms in her mundane state. One of her
one-dot Charms is Practical; she may use this Charm without transforming. With Inner Light 2 a second one-
dot Charm becomes Practical, and with Inner Light 3 a third one-dot Charm becomes Practical. Only the basic
Charms are Practical, not any of their upgrades.

Wisps
Wisps are the fuel for a Princess, a measure of both raw magic and emotional energy. A Princess begins
with half her starting Wisp pool, as measured by Inner Light, plus the higher of her Circle and Mandate Merits.

Belief
Belief replaces the Integrity trait for Princesses. It measures her confidence that her ideals and principles
can survive in the World of Darkness. A Princess begins with one dot of Belief for every dot of Integrity she
possessed when she Blossomed. When creating a new character this means she will start with seven dots of
Belief.

Character Creation 63
Vocation
In addition to the three Aspirations of a mundane character [CofD 28] a Princess may take a fourth Aspira-
tion as her Vocation. A Vocation must be related to the Princess’ Calling, and it should be a task for which the
chief benefit, if completed, goes to someone else. A starting Princess may leave her Vocation blank, to be chosen
during play when an appropriate goal emerges, if her player doesn’t have something in mind yet.

Daddy's Little Princess

The mahou shoujo genre has a long and proud tradition of child and early teen protagonists. If you wish
you can combine Princess with WoD Innocents; the Princess template will function as intended if applied to
a character built using the rules in Innocents. Any Charm that uses Science or Academics will use the Study
skill instead (or if you prefer, you can split your character’s Study dots into Academics and Science upon
transformation).
Child Nobles are limited to three mundane dots in Skills unless they have one of the three Prodigy
Merits; this limitation does not apply to transformed dots, and the cap on mundane Skills is increased by one
at Inner Light four and five. In addition, so long as a Princess has at least one relevant transformed dot, she
is considered to be an adult for all rules purposes related to that Attribute or Skill while she is transformed.
The same applies to anyone who has 6+ dots in an Attribute or Skill, such as anyone under the influence of an
appropriate Bless Charm. (A complete list of special rules for adult-child interactions can be found at p. 193
of WoD Innocents.) How this manifests is up to the player. A Princess with transformed Composure might
acquire adult emotional maturity every time she transforms or overcome her fears through a supernaturally
potent child-like sense of adventure.
With a little cunning Nobles can have access to Social Merits that are usually off limits to children. A
Troubadour could earn Resources by working as an artist for commission; nobody can see that she’s nine
years old over e-mail and her work will likely put grown adults to shame. Similar tricks, and if necessary the
occasional Appear Charm to disguise oneself as an adult, could allow a Princess to acquire 4+ dots in Allies
or Contacts. However, all such Merits must be limited to her transformed identity.
All this assumes that the young Noble doesn’t become an adult upon transformation. If she does then
just treat her in that form like any other grown-up.

Character Advancement
Trait Experiences Trait Experiences
Mundane Attribute 4/dot Affinity Charm 1/dot
Mundane Skill 2/dot Other Charm 1/dot, + 1
Transformed Attribute 3/dot Charm upgrade 1
Transformed Skill 1/dot Favored Invocation 2/dot
Transformed to mundane 1/dot Other Invocation 3/dot
Merit 1/dot Inner Light 5/dot
Willpower (repurchased) 1/dot Belief 2/dot

New and Modified Traits

Becoming a Princess does not just grant you magical abilities, it is a fundamental change to your state of
being. Many Princesses use the phrase “Magical Girl” to emphasize this point. A Princess is not a girl who uses
magic, she is magical. Magic is as much a part of her as blood or emotions is a part of any human. As a Princess

64 New and Modified Traits

learns grows in wisdom and experience she learns to use her nature to its fullest extent, but also must face its
unique drawbacks.

New Advantages: Vocation and Luminous Experience

The magical powers of the Hopeful come with a general notion of the proper way to inspire hope and
conquer fear, represented by their Calling. Nearly every Noble also has more specific goals in mind for improving
that part of the world she finds herself in; and in the course of accomplishing such goals, she also deepens her
connection to the Light and her fervor for its cause.
To represent this a Princess has a fourth, special Aspiration called her Vocation. Like other Aspirations the
Vocation should be phrased as an active achievement, and should be something the Princess can accomplish
within the intended scope of play. There are two further constraints on a Vocation: it must be a specialization
of the Princess’ Calling, and it should be a task for which the chief benefit, if completed, goes to someone else,
not to the Princess herself. Each time the Princess makes significant progress towards her Vocation, she takes a
Luminous Beat. It’s possible for the same event to grant both a normal and a Luminous Beat. In other respects
(e.g. social maneuvering) the Vocation has the same effects as the three mundane Aspirations.
Five Luminous Beats become one Luminous Experience. Luminous Experience, once gained, may be spent
to raise Inner Light or Belief, to buy transformed dots, Invocations or Charms, to remove dots of Shadows, or
to buy the Virtuous Merit [CofD 46]. Luminous Experience may also be used to buy Merits which represent
relationships to other people, typically people a Princess meets while fulfilling her Vocation. Of those listed in
the Chronicles of Darkness, Allies, Contacts, Fixer, Hobbyist Clique, Mentor, Mystery Cult Initiation, Retainer,
Staff, Status and True Friend qualify. Of the Merits listed in this book, Circle, Entwined Destiny, Firm Anchor,
Mandate, Troupe Magic and Unison qualify. Mundane characters who have gained Luminous Experience may
spend it to raise Integrity or the qualifying traits which are open to them, or to remove Shadows.
While the personal Vocation is the chief source of Luminous Experience for the Hopeful, it isn’t the only
one - Blessed Places give access to new Vocations, and not just to the Nobility; Nations give a Vocation to their
officers, Noble or mundane; and there are a few places in the Dreamlands where the Light manifests itself in a
pure form, and a Princess can gain Luminous Experience by going to those places to examine her soul.

Modified Advantage: Virtue

Under the oppressive dominion of the Darkness, mundane people find it easy to yield to temptation, and
cruelly hard to answer the call of their better nature. Hence they may fulfill their Vices on the slightest occasions,
but fulfill their Virtues only at moments of great crisis. Not so the Hopeful: while a Princess can still be tempted
as easily as any mundane character, the Light shows her ways to follow her higher calling in the small matters
of daily life, and she may take heart from them nearly as easily as from her besetting sin.
Thus, the rules for fulfilling Virtue are somewhat different for the Nobility from those in the Chronicles of
Darkness. (The rules for Vice do not change - only Virtue is altered.) A Princess may regain a single point of
Willpower from an act in accord with her Virtue once per scene, without restriction. She may also regain all
spent Willpower at most once per session by an act that reflects her Virtue and poses her difficulty, danger or
risk, much as a mundane character does.

New Advantage: Inner Light

When a Princess’ power first blossoms, it is barely the tiniest of sparks deep within her soul. However,
as time passes and the ancient spirit within her awakens, her power begins to shine like a roaring fire, strong
enough to support great magics and bright enough to become an invisible presence in the material world. Inner
Light is the Hopeful “power level” trait, and gives her Supernatural Tolerance [CofD 70].
As Inner Light increases, it not only gives a Princess more magical ammunition to throw around, but also
represents her past life bleeding into her mental and physical world. Characters with high Inner Light experi-
ence more vivid dreams about the Kingdom and the Cataclysm and can have physical prowess beyond the limits
of mere humanity. High Inner Light also increases the strength of a Princess’ Echo, and the number of people
affected by it. Finally, high Inner Light makes a character more vulnerable to Sensitivity and Hauntings.

New and Modified Traits 65

Inner Light 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Ability Maxa 5/5 5/5 5/6 5/6 5/7 6/7 7/8 8/8 9/9 10 / 10
b
Wisps / Turn 10 / 1 11 / 2 12 / 3 13 / 4 15 / 5 20 / 6 25 / 7 30 / 8 50 / 10 75 / 15
c
Charm Max 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
d
Practical 1/1 2/1 3/1 5/2 7/2 9/2 11 / 2 14 / 3 17 / 3 20 / 3
e
Sensitivity 1 Die 1 Die 2 Dice 2 Dice 3 Dice 3 Dice 4 Dice 4 Dice 5 Dice 5 Dice
a
The highest a regular attribute or skill may be raised using XP. The maximum level of any attribute or skill in normal form is before the
slash; the maximum including bonus dots from Transformation is after the slash.
b
The maximum number of Wisps a character may have available in their pool and the maximum number they may spend in a single turn.
c
The highest level at which a Charm may be purchased. Basic Charms do not go beyond 5 dots, but a Charm’s effective rating can be increased
through upgrades. Inner Light caps the effective rating.
d
A small part of a Noble’s power is available without transforming. The total number of dots in available Charms is before the slash; the
highest available level of Charm is after the slash.
e
The base number of dice rolled when a Princess’ Sensitivity to suffering is invoked.

New Advantage: Wisps

A Wisp is a mote of virtue and determination, an itty-bitty ember of the Human Spirit given off by positive
emotions and general happiness, that Princesses use to fuel many of their abilities. The maximum amount of
Wisps a Princess can store, as well as the number she can spend in one turn, is determined by her Inner Light.

Spending Wisps
Quickened Transformation: A Princess may spend a Wisp to transform automatically as a reflexive action,
bypassing the usual roll.
Practical Magic: A Princess may spend one or more Wisps to activate her Practical Magic.
Charm Activation: While transformed, a Princess may spend Wisps to activate Charms; the cost varies
with each Charm.
Holy Shield: While transformed, a Princess may reflexively spend Wisps to resist an injury as she receives
it.

Call of Duty
A Princess normally regains Wisps by going out and making the world a better place in a way that fits with
her Calling. A Mender could work as a nurse or in a soup kitchen, a Troubadour might perform in public or
display her art, a Grace could mentor a youth, et cetera. Once a scene, if a Princess attempts an action related to
her Calling duties, before rolling her player may declare that she will regain Wisps from the task. For a simple
action, this adds the following results to the roll, beyond its mundane consequences.
Dramatic Failure: The Princess fails so badly that she loses 2 Wisps, instead of gaining any.
Failure: The Princess neither gains nor loses Wisps.
Success: The Princess regains 1 Wisp for each success rolled on the action. Extra successes [CofD 72]
don’t add to her Wisps.
Exceptional Success: The Light’s blessing confirms the Princess in her beliefs; along with Wisps, she
gains a Luminous Beat.
When an extended action fulfills a Calling duty, the Princess regains Wisps equal to the action’s required
successes if she completes it properly, and loses 2 Wisps if she gets a dramatic failure. She can gain only one
Luminous Beat from an extended action.
In addition during downtime a player can say that her character spends her time fulfilling her Calling duties,
in-between school, family or other commitments. By sacrificing a non-trivial amount of time and energy on an
appropriate task, the Princess may make an appropriate roll for that task: Intelligence + Medicine for a nurse,

66 New and Modified Traits

Presence + Expression for a performer, Strength + Crafts to build homes for the poor, and so on. She regains
Wisps from this task as above. As a rule of thumb, these tasks should take up roughly an hour of a Princess’ time.
If the Princess upholds her duty in a way that honors her Queen’s philosophy, she gains 1 additional Wisp
from the task, provided she scored at least one success.
Some Princesses focus on a specific way to fulfill their Calling duties; the Mandate merit represents this.

Circle of Light
Princesses with mundane families and friends often find that spending time with them, sharing their trou-
bles or happiness, refreshes them for the supernatural fight. The Circle Merit represents these relationships;
see that Merit for a full explanation.

Inner Strength
When the chips are down and the situation is dire, a Princess can call upon her own inner reserves of
determination and draw out power she didn’t know she had. As an instant action, she spends a Willpower point
and rolls Belief. This ability can only be used when the Princess is in immediate danger, such as in combat, and
is not meant to be an everyday means of regaining power - a good rule of thumb is, if it doesn’t matter that this
action is Instant and thus takes up a character’s action for the turn, it’s probably not dangerous enough to work.
Dramatic Failure: The Princess’ will collapses. She immediately takes the Beaten Down Tilt [CofD 87].
Failure: The Princess gains nothing from her Willpower, but may continue fighting.
Success: The Princess refreshes her magic; she regains Inner Light Wisps plus one Wisp per success.
Exceptional Success: On top of the Wisps, the Princess surges back into action. On her next turn, she
adds a +3 bonus to her dice pool.

New Disadvantages: Sensitivity and Shadows

A Princess is, by nature, sensitive to the suffering of others. When she sees someone in pain, she cannot
help but feel it herself; when she witnesses cruel or callous acts that cause suffering in others, the light within
her dims and flickers. The sympathetic pain echoes in her mind afterward, as a Haunting; she may continue to
see the face of the victim or relive the moment over and over. Food tastes like dust, her favorite music is nothing
but a cacophony, and headaches won’t leave her. Worse, the most severe Hauntings leave behind a lasting injury
to her magic, represented as the Shadows trait.
A starting character has Shadows 0. Dots in Shadows impair a Princess’ access to her powers in two ways.
First, they are subtracted from her transformation roll, which becomes Belief + Inner Light - Shadows. Shadows
also impair a Princess’s ability to recover Wisps: all the dice pools she rolls for that purpose subtract 1 die for
each dot in Shadows she possesses.
To qualify as a tainting (the name for events a Princess has Sensitivity to) an action must cause suffering
in a self-aware being. It’s the mental and emotional suffering, not the physical pain, which matters. Damage
inflicted on a prepared fighter defending himself generally won’t trigger Sensitivity, but the same damage taken
by a helpless victim, or one who thought himself safe, will. Similarly, forms of suffering that aren’t physical at
all, such as deep grief at the loss of a loved one, trigger Sensitivity when the Princess meets the sufferer.
The level of sympathetic pain a Princess feels at a tainting depends on her Inner Light, the moral gravity
of the act itself, how she learns about it, and the degree of responsibility she bears for it. When her Sensitivity
triggers, a Princess rolls a dice pool of half her Inner Light, rounding up, and modified as follows.

Modifier Form of tainting

+0 Simple injury: lethal damage, disabling pain, loss of a loved one
+1 Grievous injury: aggravated damage, permanent impairment, betrayal by a loved one
+2 Heinous acts: death, prolonged torture

New and Modified Traits 67

Modifier Form of tainting
-1 Tainting is caused by unintelligent beings (e.g. animals, natural disaster)
+0 Tainting is accidental or due to neglect
+1 Tainting was intended to give pain
-1 The Princess hears a detailed report of the tainting from unaffected witnesses
+0 The Princess meets a person suffering from the tainting
+1 The Princess witnesses the tainting in person
+0 Tainter is unrelated to the Princess
+1 Tainter is an ally of the Princess
+2 Tainter is the Princess
9-again Small group of people suffer due to the taint
8-again Large group of people suffer due to the taint
Rote Crowd of people suffer due to the taint

Dramatic Failure: As normal failure.

Failure: The tainting does not impair the Princess.
Success: The Princess undergoes a Haunting. She takes one of the Conditions Demoralized, Enraged or
Hypersensitive. If the number of successes is less than or equal to her current Shadows dots, the Condition
resolves the first time the Noble takes a Beat from it. If the successes exceed her Shadows, the Condition lasts
until resolved in the stated way, and the Princess also gains a new Shadows dot and the Haunted Condition.
Exceptional Success: The Princess gains a new Shadows dot and the Haunted Condition regardless of
her current Shadows dots. She may take one of the Conditions Demoralized, Enraged or Hypersensitive, which
last until resolved. Alternatively, she may trigger a catharsis to decrease her burdens. She takes one of the
Conditions Abdicated, Maddened or Magicless, clears the Haunted Condition, and rolls her Shadows; each
success removes one Shadows dot.
If a Princess’ Belief falls too low a tainting becomes increasingly likely to inflict Shadows or a catharsis:
a Sensitivity check achieves an exceptional success on successes of either 5 or the Princess’ Belief, whichever
is lower.
Resolving Haunted is the simplest way to remove a Shadows dot; once that Condition ends, though, a Shad-
ows dot can’t be lost so easily. If a Princess with Shadows regains all Willpower by fulfilling her Virtue, she may
remove 1 dot of Shadows as well. A Princess may also spend Experiences to remove dots of Shadows - sacrificing
1 Experience gets rid of 2 Shadows dots.

Modified Advantage: Belief (Integrity)

Being a Princess is not something that just happens at random, a fortunate circumstance that gives you
neat-o magic powers to do whatever you want with. You are here on Earth with a purpose: to make the world a
better place and bring the Light of Hope to everyone suffering. The existence of the Kingdom proves to you that
it can be done, and a Princess’s conviction is one of her greatest assets. She works to save the world, because
she believes, she knows, the world can be saved. She sides with good over evil because she believes that good
will always triumph in the end. She fights not merely because she believes she can win, but because the battle
must be fought. If her beliefs begin to slip, as doubt creeps into her mind over her cause or ability, the Inner
Light within her is beset by the darkness of the world.
Belief tracks the strength of a Princess’s convictions, her belief in herself and her cause. Characters with
high Belief are confident, assured, able to draw on their power more readily due to the strength of their certain-
ty. They inspire confidence in everyone around them. Characters with low Belief are wracked with doubt and
despair, losing their confidence that the world can be saved and that they have the ability to do it, afraid there
is no hope for victory, if there was ever any at all. At first, this is only a minor loss, and characters may believe

68 New and Modified Traits

it healthy to learn of their own limitations and view the world more realistically. As Belief continues to drop,
though, hope begins to abandon the character, her powers seem further away, across a widening gulf of gnawing
doubt, and she may begin to project an aura of uncertainty and depression on those around her.
The Belief trait replaces the Integrity system from the God-Machine Chronicle. Starting Hopeful characters
begin with a Belief of 7, representing idealism and confidence in a world beset by darkness and despair. Should
a mundane character Blossom in the course of play, their Belief is equal to their previous Integrity, for psycho-
logical stresses suffered before one Blossoms still interfere with one’s conviction and confidence after it. The
two traits are compatible - in any situation where a character’s Integrity would be relevant, a Princess uses
Belief instead.

Breaking Points
Though Princesses share many moral concepts and experiences with mundane society, they are necessarily
aware of a larger context and a higher purpose. Mundane people find it disturbing to encounter the supernatural,
but for one of the Hopeful, whose life the Light has transformed, nothing shakes composure merely because it
lies beyond mortal ken. However, firm faith and serene hope that the world can be redeemed and the Darkness
driven back are the heart of a Princess’ mental balance, and anything which sows doubt or inspires despair may
easily break her, where the typical person would be unmoved. Breaking points for Princesses fall into these
broad categories:
• The Princess performs an action which violates her conscience, or her understanding of what the Light
requires;
• The Princess witnesses a victory of creatures of the Darkness over the virtuous or innocent;
• The Princess discovers good reason to doubt her calling or her prior actions while following it.
During character creation the player of a Princess character should answer the following five questions,
and define one of her breaking points from each answer. Players are free to add more breaking points for their
characters beyond these, if they should discover any appropriate for their characters; and the Storyteller may
declare that an experience falling into one of the categories above is a breaking point even if it doesn’t match
one of those listed on a Princess’ character sheet.
• What does the Princess believe a world redeemed from Darkness would be like? Every member of
the Nobility has some notion of what the world ought to be, and how the Darkness is corrupting it. Even when
they can’t explain it in words, this vision form the guiding principle when they transform or call upon the
Light. Abandoning this vision will shake her soul, and working against it is likely the worst deed imaginable.
Describe the Princess’ ideal world, and why in her opinion the real world isn’t like that. Failing to live by that
ideal defines the first of her breaking points.
• Who has given shape to the Princess’ character and convictions? A Princess doesn’t acquire her
principles in a vacuum, any more than an ordinary mortal does. Someone has taught them to her, whether by
precept or example - her parents, a brother or sister, a teacher in her school, an enemy (demonstrating what
not to do), occasionally a long-dead author whose books she found in a library. (Not infrequently a Princess
has had several of these; you’re obliged to name one, but feel free to give her as many as you like.) Whoever it
was, they had certain expectations which the Princess feels she ought to live up to, and she reaches a breaking
point if she doesn’t.
• What did the Princess experience that prepared her for her Blossoming? While Blossoming itself
is a joyous moment, it’s invariably preceded and inspired by a time of adversity, danger, troubles or strife.
Describe the stressful circumstances which led to the character becoming an active Princess. Some Princesses
overcome the trouble which brought about their Blossoming; their breaking point should be something that
calls their solution into question. Others find their trouble persisting, even with the Light’s help, and they
have a breaking point derived from that unresolved tension.
• What did the Princess experience that made her doubt her cause, or her fitness to be a
Princess? This experience can be drawn from any point in the Princess’ life, from before or after her Blos-
soming - or, if you like, from her memories of a past incarnation in the Kingdom. It must, however, be in
some respect a failure on her part. Either she had an important goal which through her own fault she did not
achieve; or, in a deeper failure, she completed some great project in the Light’s service, only to see it wrecked
or corrupted. The breaking point reflects the manner of her failure.

New and Modified Traits 69

• Who (or what) does the Princess care for, beyond her duties to the Light? None of the Hopeful can
dedicate themselves completely to a single cause, however worthy it might be. The Princess had a life, and
certain obligations from that life, before she Blossomed, and she cannot be truly effective for her principles
if she neglects these connections. Still, there’s always tension between the mundane and the magical aspects
of a Princess, and when it flares up her dedication may crack. A threat to whatever the Princess holds most
dear in her mundane life, especially if it comes from her magic or the enemies she fights with it, puts her
Belief in peril.

Compromise
Belief Modifier When a Princess experiences a breaking point, her player checks for a compromise,
by rolling her Resolve + Composure with a modifier derived from her current Belief
8-10 +2 rating. Practical Magic cannot be used on this roll.
6-7 +1 The Storyteller also imposes modifiers based on the severity of the breaking point.
4-5 0 The chart below applies for the typical Hopeful, but the Storyteller and player should
2-3 -1 develop their understanding of a Princess’ ideals and principles to the point that they
can customize a chart for her. The total of modifiers for severity should not exceed +/-5
1 -2 dice.
Dramatic Failure: The Princess succumbs to despair. She loses a dot of Belief
and gains one of the Conditions Broken [CofD 288], Fugue [CofD 289] or Cynical; or invent a persistent Con-
dition with the Storyteller’s approval. Also, the Princess takes a Beat.
Failure: The Princess’ faith is compromised. She loses a dot of Belief and gains one of the Conditions
Guilty [CofD 289], Shaken [CofD 290] or Doubting; or invent a Condition with the Storyteller’s approval.
Success: The Princess’ faith is mildly disturbed. She gains one of the Conditions Guilty, Shaken or Doubt-
ing; or invent a Condition with the Storyteller’s approval.
Exceptional Success: The Princess passes through the breaking point with her faith and hopes renewed.
She gains the Inspired Condition [CofD 289] related to the breaking point.

Modifier Breaking point

-1 Injury to another, whether accidental or otherwise
-2 Inflicting major hardship on another (lost employment, broken families, serious injury)
-3 Unplanned or reckless killing (manslaughter)
-4 Deliberate killing (murder)
-5 Torture
-1 to -5 Advising an ally to actions that cause them to lose a dot of Integrity (or equivalent)
-1 Neglecting friends or family (once/session)
-2 Abandoning friends or family
-3 Betraying friends or family
-0 Violating the Third Oath of one’s Calling
-1 Violating the Second Oath of one’s Calling
-2 Violating the First Oath of one’s Calling
-1 to -3 Losing a battle against a supernatural force anathema to humanity and the Light (the Dark, the Abyss,
the Maeljin, etc)
-2 Meeting one of the Dethroned (once/Dethroned)
-3 Dealing with a supernatural force anathema to humanity and the Light in a non-hostile way short of
direct aid
-5 Helping a supernatural force anathema to humanity and the Light against the Light or human beings

70 New and Modified Traits

Modifier Relevant circumstances
+1 The Princess is working against a tainting
+1 The Princess is protecting a mundane character
+2 … from a supernatural force anathema to humanity and the Light
+1 The Princess is acting according to her Virtue
-1 The Princess is acting according to her Vice
-1 Those harmed by the action are innocent (have not done the like themselves)

Effects of Belief
As Belief rises, the Hopeful’s inherent magic glows more brightly and grows more potent; as Belief falls, it
dims and weakens. Belief modifies a Princess’s dice pool when she competes in a Clash of Wills. High Belief also
enhances a Princess’s Practical Magic.
As Belief falls, the lash of Sensitivity leaves deeper marks, as if to replace the Hopeful’s fading conscience.
A Noble with Belief less than 5 achieves an exceptional success on a Sensitivity check on successes equal or
greater than her Belief.
The Echo of a Noble carries traces of her psyche into everyone she meets, without any conscious effort on
her part - indeed, she can no more stop that influence than she can stop breathing. The level of a Noble’s Belief
and her dots in Shadows control whether her influence works towards the Light, or against it.

Falling to Belief 0
I used to think that you were a guardian angel, come to answer our prayers… But Lucifer
was an angel too, wasn’t he?
—Professor Emil Hamilton, Justice League Unlimited

When a Princess loses her last scrap of Belief, the keystone of her self is shattered. Her soul, scarred and
blemished by horror, retreats and becomes obscured even as her Inner Light starts to gutter and fade. Her Phy-
lactery shatters, suddenly age-rotted, and she forcefully de-Transforms, back to her normal identity. Without a
Phylactery, she cannot Transform. She is barred from the Dreamlands; the Queens can offer no comfort. Even
the Twilight Queens are disgusted by a Noble who falls this far, for Tears sees her as a threat to Alhambra, Storms
as just another Dark creature waiting to happen, and Mirrors as a failed True Queen to be discarded.
Many would say that this is enough of a curse; that, stripped of rank and privilege, she is left to wander the
Earth. It may be. But that is not the end. Before long she is not merely a fallen Princess but a fallen human, little
more than a shuffling husk that drifts through life; something barely recognizable as one who once championed
the cause of the Light. Stripped of all drive she may just lie still until she starves, unable to see the point of eating.
If she is pushed she will go about her life, she is too empty inside to say no, to say I hurt too much to do this. She
is a hollow shell of a woman, lacking the strength to fight for what she believes in, always folding at the least
pressure, unable to even cry for help.
In effect, the moment a Princess’ Belief falls to 0, she acquires the Soulless [CofD 290] and Enervated Con-
ditions, and will become unplayable when her permanent Willpower falls to 0. As long as these Conditions per-
sist the Princess cannot transform or use Practical Magic; all her powers are closed to her. Since her soul is just
obscured, not actually gone, trying to give the Princess a new soul with magic does nothing for her. Once she
loses all Willpower dots, indeed, nothing can be done for her. Before that point, other Princesses may be able to
guide her back to the Light, if they know her well and can speak to her. The rescuers use the Social Maneuvering
rules [CofD 81-84]; the number of Doors they must open equals the lower of the Princess’ Resolve and Compo-
sure, plus her Shadows dots. If all the Doors are opened, and the Princess spends 2 Experiences, she sacrifices a
Willpower dot to remake her Phylactery, her Belief returns to 1, and the Soulless and Enervated Conditions end.
A soul-dead Princess who does not get help from others faces a final choice when her last dot of Willpower
fades: to die as a mundane human, or to yield to the Darkness and rise as a horror. To determine which, the
Storyteller rolls the Noble’s Shadows as a dice pool. If the roll fails, the Princess drops into a coma from which
she never wakes - her heartbeat ceases within a day at most. If it gains even one success, the former Princess

New and Modified Traits 71

attempts to Transform despite her lack of a Phylactery. She turns towards the Dark to fill the empty void where
she once held her Light. She focuses on everything that hurt her, everything that went wrong in her life and
focuses on the grief and bitterness they invoke, for in her deranged state even that is better than nothingness.
The mad will of a Princess in this state is a terrible thing to behold. She laughs with pure grief, she cries tears of
crystal clear despair. Her feelings echo around her, calling pure Taint up from the Dark World and shaping it into
twisted reflections of her own life. She even calls the Taint into her own body, fuelling her final Transformation
into a being drawn from the depths of her own nightmares.
A Transformation in this manner should not be possible. Properly, it is impossible, for no Princess could
do it, none could take this Last Transformation. But those who do so are no longer among the Enlightened, they
are no longer even human. They shed their mortal forms, as Darkness rushes into the void within them which
the Light once filled, and are both twisted and empowered by this blasphemous process. They wear blackened
crowns on monstrous heads; they become the Dethroned.

Invocations
Invocations are archetypal forces from which the Hopeful learn to draw power. A Princess may buy up to
5 dots in each Invocation. Each Queen favors one Invocation, and the Hopeful sworn to her find that Invocation
easier to learn than any other. Due to this intimate tie to the Queens, the Invocations are described under the
Queen who favors them. Invocations are deeply intertwined with Charms - they add to a Charm’s power, and
many Charms and upgrades can’t be learned without studying them.
Learning an Invocation gives a Noble insights that go beyond a Queen’s philosophy, unlocking new varia-
tions of Charms, or pushing ordinary training to superhuman levels. Each time a Noble buys an Invocation dot,
she also gains an upgrade to two of her Charms. She may add both upgrades to the same Charm, or trade one
or both upgrades for transformed Skill dots. The upgrades may be general, or require the Invocation the Noble
just learned, at a level equal to or less than her new dots. An upgrade that requires any other Invocation may
not be learned this way, even when the Noble knows the other Invocation.

Invoking for Willpower

Aside from adding power to Charms, an Invocation can inspire Nobles who strive to live up to its principles.
If the Storyteller agrees that a Princess’ actions during a scene reflect the archetype of an Invocation the Princess
has learned, and she hasn’t broken its ban, the Princess rolls her dots in that Invocation as a dice pool. (This
pool cannot be modified in any way - she may not spend Willpower on it, and no magic or Condition affects
it.) She may do this once per session, for each Invocation separately. She need not be transformed to use her
Invocations this way.
Dramatic Failure: The Princess’ recent actions feel a bit hollow; she doubts the ideals that inspired
them. Until the scene ends, she may not spend Willpower on actions that reflect the Invocation.
Failure: The Princess goes on with her life.
Success: The Invocation confirms the Princess’ actions. She regains one spent Willpower point.
Exceptional Success: The Invocation revives the Princess’ flagging will; she regains all spent Willpower.

Choosing your Invocations

The choice of Invocations is an important one, an Invocation shapes and empowers a Princess’ magic. The
easiest trap for a Princess to fall into is jump to thinking which Charms she wants. Invocations are not a neatly
packaged source of power for any Princess who likes the look of a certain Charm. Rather, an Invocation is the
ideals and Beliefs of a Queen given form, resonating in the souls of mankind through the inherent magical nature
of a Queen.
When choosing Invocations a player should think about what views and beliefs a Princess shares with a
Queen. The more a Princess has in common with a Queen, the more she upholds a Queen’s ideals, the brighter
the Invocation shines within her. With practice (represented by spending Experiences) she can draw on that

72 Invocations
Invocation to enhance her magic. The Queen’s philosophies can provide a yard stick. A Princess who only follows
one of the Queen’s philosophies is unlikely to advance beyond one or two dots in an Invocation. Agreeing with
two philosophies can reach three or perhaps even four dots. A Princess who broadly agrees with and lives up to
all three philosophies can with time master an invocation. (For Lacrima, a Princess is considered to uphold the
philosophies if she applies similar ideals to her own friends, family or Nation instead of Alhambra.)
And what of the Twilight Invocations? Not every philosophical ideal of the Twilight Queens is pure evil to
be rejected by any right minded Princess. Protecting your nation or opposing the Outer Dark in all its forms
are ideas commonly found among the Radiant. So what stops a Princess waking up one morning and realizing
she now has a dot of Lacrima? The answer is choice. A Princess who believes in protecting her nation can feel
a connection to Lacrima deep within herself and knows she can draw power from it, but she can choose not
to. The connection to an Invocation does not shape her beliefs, it is shaped by her beliefs. An Invocation she
chooses not to use, or vows to stop using, cannot turn her to the dark side.

Dancing in Twilight
One of the dirtier secrets of the Radiant is the sheer number of Nobles who, at one point in their life
or another, dabble in the Invocations of the Twilight Queens. Dabbling in this case can be anything up to
buying two or three dots in the Invocations; more requires a strength of commitment to the ideals of the
Queen which is largely incompatible with remaining a member of the Radiant (for one, one’s own Queen
will tend to object). The truth is that, the flaws in the Twilight Queens are ones which are within the hearts
of man as a whole, and so most of the Enlightened have felt the same urges at some point in their life. Note
that, however, such dabblers still consider themselves part of the Radiant, and, in the case of those who feel
affinity for the Queen of Mirrors, see no contradiction at all in what they do. They still oppose the Darkness,
and will fight against the loyalists of the Twilight Queens. One of the greatest topic of debate in the multiple,
disparate groups of the Enlightened is how to respond to people who use Twilight Invocations, and whether
or not they’re doing anything wrong.
The Invocation of Lacrima, tool of the Last Empress, the Queen of Tears, is an object of fear and mistrust
to the vast majority of the Radiant. It is apparently evil, in a way that neither Specchio nor Tempesta are,
because many of its Charms cause Hauntings when invoked, and to many, it is irrevocably tainted by the
fact that it has the Charms used to drain Light from the world or transform oneself into a creature of the
Dark. But, nevertheless, there are those Princesses who learn it, and who do not follow the Queen of Tears.
One of the fundamental things about Lacrima is that it can always be used to protect your own Nation,
and to a Princess who wants to do exactly that, the expediency of methods means that Lacrima can look
tempting. When a friend died because you pushed your views on someone and so Legno was sealed off, the
universal applicability of Lacrima for your Nation starts to look very tempting. The dabblers are typically more
experienced, and more able to justify the risks to themselves, in part because the Lacrima Charms which
dabblers can learn and use tend to create mild Hauntings, and so there’s less of an objection. Moreover,
there exists a notable sub-faction of the followers of the Queen of Diamonds who specifically learn Lacrima
for its use in studying the dead and the Underworld, and, aggravatingly to some others, the Queen has even
given her support to the practice. Such dabblers often have a strict moral code restricting their use of the
Invocations to only using it to study the dead - never to harm, and they point to the gains in knowledge
that they have provided to the Radiant; their detractors point out that once the power is there, it can be
hard to resist.
The Invocation of Tempesta, tool of the Seraphic General, the Queen of Storms is for most of those
who dabble in it, purely a weapon. It is something that is learned as a tool against the Darkness, and it is
used for that role. It does not (generally speaking) heal or right wrongs, but it does eliminate the followers of
the Darkness and of Alhambra. In Atlanta, in the mid-90s, almost an entire generation of Radiant Princesses
knew at least the basics of Tempesta. So hard-pressed were they by the Darkness and a major, well-organized
Alhambran outpost that it became unofficial policy for elder Enlightened to guide each newcomer towards it,
because the universal applicability and raw power of the Invocation in such circumstances was too much of a
boon. That large numbers of Nobles in the city were driven towards extremism was viewed as an acceptable
price, even if by the end, and the arson of the Alhambran Outpost, there were Enlightened just as callous
as the worst of Storms, still officially among the Radiant. For those Princesses in the know, too, Tempesta
can also be seen as the most moral of the Twilight Invocations, because the innate costs to it, the damage
it does to the user, is known, and only affects the self. The common consensus is that it is dangerous, and a

Invocations 73
 sign that a Noble is starting to spiral into extremism, but whether the use of it should be enough to ostracize
one of the Radiant is a lot more contentious, especially since in areas where it is done, there are frequently
not the Enlightened to spare.
The Invocation of Specchio, tool of the Crown’s Custodian, the Queen of Mirrors, however, is the most
subtle and insidious of the Twilight Queens’ influences. In part, it is because of the lack of an overall enemy
that the Invocation is linked to; while both the Ravens and the Furies provide a highly visible ”there but
for the grace of the Light I go” example which other dabblers can keep away from, the egotism and self-
righteousness implicitly promoted by the Queen of Mirrors, and the lack of a solid adversary is hard to fight
against, especially since many Princesses have tendencies in that direction naturally. Dabblers can slip into
following the Queen of Mirrors much more easily, especially since the Queen does not demand fidelity,
which means that some elder Radiant are much more harsh in opposing its use. There are those who argue
that, unlike Tempesta and Lacrima, use of this Invocation makes you a de facto follower of Mirrors’ agenda.
And on the other hand, there are those who count the Queen of Mirrors as among the Radiant Queens,
despite the objections of the other five. Moreover, there us also a faction in the Court of Diamonds who
study Specchio for the unique sources of information it provides, or even to study the strange achronal or
spacewarping Charms unique to Specchio; once again the Queen has given her consent. These dabblers
protect themselves from the risk of madness by carefully rationing their use and taking the time to relax
after every use. Of all the Twilight Invocations Specchio might be the easiest to learn, too; all one needs for
it is self-belief in ones own cause, and a spark of the brilliance needed to reshape the world. And neither
are rare among the Enlightened.

Transformation
The most essential expression of a Princess’s power is the ability to transform. She calls on the magic she’s
gathered to herself and assumes the form of her “perfected self”, an idealized version of herself unfettered by
this world of sorrows. Although she can only maintain this immense power for a limited time, a transformed
Princess is a force to be reckoned with.
The first time a Princess transforms is called her Blossoming. This is an unconscious act, usually in response
to some great need or danger. After her Blossoming, a Princess’ Phylactery will manifest; she must have her
Phylactery with her later to transform. This is the physical representation of the power sealed away inside of
her, and may take the form of any small simple object. Despite its size, a Phylactery is extremely hard to damage;
it has a Durability of Inner Light and a Structure of Inner Light + Belief, and takes no damage unless specifically
targeted. Also, any supernatural power that targets the Phylactery triggers a Clash of Wills in which the Princess
rolls her Inner Light + Resolve, with the bonus for an effect lasting more than a year. A Princess always knows the
location of her own Phylactery and cannot be fooled by imitations, even ones made with supernatural powers;
on the other hand, the Phylactery has an unbreakable Intimate sympathetic connection to her transformed
identity, so anyone who has it can apply magic through that link, until she returns to her mundane self.
The destruction of a Phylactery does not permanently rob a Princess of her powers. If she takes a full turn
concentrating, doing nothing else (and losing her defense against attacks) and spends a Wisp and a point of
Willpower, the destroyed Phylactery is created anew. However, a Princess can’t create a second Phylactery un-
less the first one has been destroyed - a lost or captured Phylactery is a far worse problem than a destroyed
one. Should a Princess lose her Phylactery beyond recovery - for instance, it’s been dropped in the ocean - she
may destroy it from afar by sacrificing a Willpower dot, then re-create it.

The Transformation Action

To transform herself, a Princess must have at least one Wisp. She may either spend a Wisp to transform
effortlessly as a reflexive action, or concentrate on transforming without spending a Wisp and roll a dice pool
of Belief + Inner Light - Shadows:
Dramatic Failure: The Princess’s Phylactery dissolves.
Failure: The Princess fails to transform and spends the full round.
Success: The Princess transforms as an instant action.

74 Transformation
 Exceptional Success: The Princess transforms as a reflexive action.
A Princess can return to her ordinary self at any time as a reflexive action. She must de-transform if she has
no Wisps at the end of a scene, or when she falls asleep (though falling unconscious because her Health track has
filled with bashing damage does not force de-transformation.) Also, transformation grows harder to sustain as
time passes. When a Princess reaches the end of a scene transformed, or after half an hour spent transformed,
she rolls Belief + Inner Light - Shadows:
Dramatic Failure: The Princess returns to her mundane self and her Phylactery dissolves.
Failure: The Princess must spend a Wisp to remain transformed in the next scene, or the next half-hour,
and future rolls to remain transformed take a -2 cumulative penalty until she ends a scene in her mundane self.
Success: The Princess remains transformed at no cost.
Exceptional Success: The Princess remains transformed, and need not make this check at the end of
the next scene, or for a full hour.
Transforming both changes the Princess’s body, and clothes her in an iconic outfit, usually symbolizing her
calling or character. The outfit replaces what her mundane body was wearing - what happens to that clothing
is unknown, but it comes back intact when the Princess resumes her mundane self. (Other items on her per-
son don’t vanish.) The Princess can remove her costume if she likes; however, each piece of her clothing has
an unbreakable Intimate sympathetic connection to her transformed identity. She can recall removed clothing
to herself with a successful transformation action, and when she returns to her mundane self all parts of the
outfit vanish, wherever they are. The outfit is no more durable than ordinary cloth, but any damage to it will
be repaired when the Princess next transforms from her mundane identity. (Regalia that manifest as clothing
replace this costume, wholly or partly. The above holds just for clothes that aren’t Regalia Charms.)

Practical Charms
In her mundane state, a Princess’ abilities are almost entirely suppressed, but not quite. A few of her Charms
- the total dots and maximum ratings are both set by her Inner Light - remain open to her as Practical Charms,
along with the Practical Magic taught by her Queen. A Princess can change which of her Charms are Practical
each time she gains a dot of Inner Light; she doesn’t have to keep all the Charms she picked before. She’s not
required to mark an upgrade as Practical when she marks the basic Charm. However, if a Charm or upgrade has
prerequisites, she can’t mark it as Practical unless she also marks the prerequisites.

Transformed Abilities
While transformed, a Princess has full access to all of her Charms, Practical and not, as well as her Practi-
cal Magic. She also gains her transformed Attributes and Skills. Next to each Attribute and Skill on a Princess’s
character sheet, in addition to the five blank dots normally present, there are another set of dots in parentheses.
These dots represent the additional Skill or Attribute dots the Princess has while transformed. Each Princess
gains a dot to one of her Attributes while transformed based on her Calling, and may purchase additional Trans-
formed Attributes and Skills by spending Experiences.
While transformed, a Princess’ Transformed Attributes and Skills are actually added to her normal Attrib-
utes and Skills; this can change Advantages such as Speed, Willpower, Initiative and Health, so record these
values for both the mundane and transformed identities. If a Princess takes damage in Health boxes derived
from transformed Stamina, she may spend Wisps to heal that damage when she returns to mundane form - if
she doesn’t do so, the damage wraps around, as per usual for temporary Health. Willpower points derived from
transformed Resolve and Composure can be spent only while a Princess is transformed; however, if she has
spent them, she can regain them at any time. If a Princess has spent both mundane and transformed Willpower,
she regains the mundane Willpower first. If she sacrifices a Willpower dot, she loses a transformed Willpower
dot first.
A Princess’ total Transformed ability may not exceed the maximum rating for Transformed abilities as
determined by her Inner Light. Also, she cannot have more Experiences in Transformed abilities than 3 x (Belief
+ Inner Light). Her starting Transformed dots count towards this limit. If losing a Belief dot takes a PC over the
limit, the player converts the excess dots back to Experiences at the end of the current session.

Transformation 75
 Optional Rule: Transformed Dots
As the Hopeful are prone to Blossom as teenagers, who lack the training and knowledge of an adult, the
Storyteller may want starting PCs to have fewer mundane Skill dots to represent their youth. If so, at char-
acter creation PCs should have the option (or be required) to trade mundane Skill dots for transformed Skill
dots, gaining 2 transformed dots for each mundane dot. Transformed dots may not be moved to a different
Skill category - Physical dots trade for Physical, Mental for Mental, and Social for Social. We recommend
that PCs limit trading to 3 mundane dots in their primary category, 2 in the secondary category, and 1 in
the tertiary category.

Holy Shield
In her transformed state, a Princess can withstand blows that would destroy most mortals, invoking the
Light to preserve her. An attack could be turned aside from a vital spot at the last second, grazing her instead
of striking home, or could be visibly stopped by a shower of sparks and light. The Princess reflexively spends
Wisps at the moment she takes damage; each Wisp spent downgrades the damage from one external source -
aggravated damage is reduced to lethal, lethal damage is reduced to bashing, and all but the first box of bashing
damage is negated altogether. Holy Shield applies after any Armor the Princess has on.
Holy Shield does not, however, prevent further damage from wounds a Princess has already taken, illness,
or dangerous substances. If the Princess is suffering from a personal Tilt or Condition, Holy Shield can’t prevent
any of its effects, including periodic damage. Holy Shield can resist damage from prolonged exposure to extreme
environments, electricity, fires, falls [CofD 96-98] and environmental Tilts or Conditions, but all effects other
than damage, like penalties to dice pools, remain in force.

Dual Identity
One aspect of the Hopeful’s transformation is subtle but amazingly convenient: the mundane and trans-
formed selves appear to be different people, and those who have seen one of the Princess’ forms generally fail to
recognize her in the other form. A simple perception roll never reveals a Noble’s identity; to discover it requires
active investigation, and a reason for suspicion based on her behavior.
Even supernatural senses and tracking abilities are baffled by transformation - a vampire who’s tasted one
identity’s blood doesn’t notice any resemblance to blood shed by the other, a werewolf scenting one identity
won’t recognize the smell of the other. Supernatural sympathy to one of the Princess’s forms does not connect
to her in the other form, even for those who know her secret; even the Hopeful’s own Charms, when modified by
Sympathy, respect another Princess’s privacy. If a power is currently targeting a Princess through a sympathetic
connection, transforming ends the power’s effect on her.
Dual Identity partly protects a Princess from being recognized as a Princess in her mundane form. When
she isn’t transformed, a power that discovers the type of a supernatural creature describes her as only a Beacon,
and reveals only those powers she can use while mundane. During her transformation, such powers reveal her
true nature.
The protection of Dual Identity even extends to direct magical compulsion. If a supernatural effect is used
to force a Princess to reveal her mundane identity while transformed, or vice versa, or to probe her mind and
extract facts which would connect her identities without her conscious consent, it provokes a Clash of Wills. The
Princess uses her Resolve as the effective Charm rating, and gets the bonus for a permanent effect.
Dual Identity does not protect a Princess from being caught while transforming - if someone sees her chang-
ing, he’ll know who she is thereafter - or from mundane investigation. If the PCs should find it necessary to
identify one of the Hopeful, we recommend that the Storyteller use the Investigation system [CofD 77-81] to
resolve the identification attempt; the number of Clues needed should not be less than the higher of the Noble’s
Manipulation or Subterfuge. Some appropriate complications would be offending the Princess in question, or
revealing her identity to an authority (or worse, the Darkness.) The Veiling and Palace Merits apply against the
dice pools rolled to find Clues in such investigations.

76 Transformation
The Need for Discretion
The life of a Noble is difficult and dangerous. She must oppose the plots of powerful Dark creatures, along
with simple human wickedness that adds to the Darkness’s power; she must also form and preserve her ties
to ordinary people to keep her sanity and fuel her magic, and protect those people from the things that lurk
in shadows. Few Princesses can keep their heads and carry the fight to their enemy when their loved ones are
threatened - and the tools of the Darkness are well aware of that. Thus whenever a Noble Blossoms and takes up
her Calling, creatures of Darkness will appear, trying to identify, isolate and destroy her. Moreover, supernatural
forces and powerful conspiracies fight their own battles beyond the public eye, and a Noble who demonstrates
her powers too openly can be pulled into those battles with very little warning.
The general level of supernatural activity in a campaign, and the public awareness of it, is represented by
a Tension trait, running from 1 to 10. Usually Tension starts at 1, but the Storyteller can raise it higher for a
campaign where the Darkness has already grown strong, or the occult is under special scrutiny. When a PC
does something obviously supernatural in the presence of mundane witnesses, or that draws the attention of
creatures of the Darkness without defeating them (though not more often than once a scene) the Storyteller
rolls Tension as a dice pool, adding bonus dice for acts before many witnesses and shows of great strength.
Dramatic Failure: Impossible - this dice pool cannot be reduced to a chance die.
Failure: The incident passes without notice; Tension is unchanged.
Success: The incident raises concern from Dark creatures, or others with reason to watch for the occult.
Tension rises by 1.
Exceptional Success: The incident raises alarm. Tension rises by 2.
Lowering Tension is considerably harder than raising it - those who are watching for supernatural activity
must be convinced to let the Nobles alone. The Darkness, of course, is an implacable enemy; only a victory in
battle will do. Permanently cleansing a potent Tainted area or rooting out a cell of a Dark cult is often enough to
remove a point of Tension. Destroying a powerful Mnenosyne or Cataphract who has risen to command most
of the Dark creatures in a city should be awarded by removing multiple points at once.
Tension from sources other than the Darkness could be removed in a similar way; sometimes, though, the
investigators are benign, or at least not opposed to the Hopeful’s mission, and the PCs should choose to reduce
Tension by offering cooperation and a modicum of trust. Finally, the simple passing of time may let memories
fade, so the Storyteller may, at the end of a story, choose to lower Tension by 1; he may also choose to raise it
by 1, to show that supernatural NPCs have been stirring things up.
Tension becomes personally relevant to Nobles who slip up and leave behind evidence linking their mun-
dane and transformed identities, or suggesting their participation in the long war against the Darkness. The
Indiscreet Condition represents the accumulation of such evidence. When a PC’s actions during a scene may
rouse suspicion, the player and Storyteller make a contested roll of the PC’s Wits + Subterfuge vs. Tension +
the PC’s levels in Indiscreet. Strongly suggestive clues of a relationship between the identities can add +1 or
+2 to the Storyteller’s pool; higher bonuses are used for serious breaches, like claiming friendship with one’s
transformed ID while mundane, or leaving a driver’s license where one’s mundane ID has never been. On the
other hand, the Palace and Veiling Merits both penalize the Storyteller’s pool.
Dramatic Failure: Player - resolve the PC’s Indiscreet Condition; Storyteller - remove one level of the
PC’s Indiscreet Condition.
Failure: When both rolls fail, the PC’s actions pass unnoticed.
Success: If the player gets more successes, the PC lulls any suspicions; otherwise, add one level to the
PC’s Indiscreet Condition. (Ties go to the Storyteller, if his roll succeeds.)
Exceptional Success: Player - if she wins the contest, remove one level of the PC’s Indiscreet Condition;
Storyteller - if he wins the contest, resolve the PC’s Indiscreet Condition. Again, ties go to the Storyteller.
The player can choose to resolve Indiscreet instead of attempting the contested roll. When an Indiscreet
Condition resolves, an investigator has learned the Noble’s secret - at a minimum, that she is not mundane. The
Noble must accept one of the Blackmailed, Broken Circle or Nemesis Conditions, or (with Storyteller approval)
a similar persistent Condition when Indiscreet resolves.

Transformation 77
 The Storyteller should take note when a PC has acquired a high level of Indiscreet, as this means a discovery
is likely imminent, and drop hints of approaching trouble based on the clues the PC dropped. Depending on
which Condition he expects to impose, perhaps strangers pop up looking for someone in the neighborhood, the
Noble’s friends start asking her awkward questions, or disturbing figures follow her about. Similarly, growing
levels of Tension manifest in people’s general behavior, as an attitude of suspicion, mistrust, or actual fear of the
strange, and reluctance to go out after dark, or unarmed; and in a rising number of weird, unsettling incidents,
disappearances and mysterious deaths.

Echoes
The people whom the Light has touched become lesser lights in their turn; echoes of the Light are cast
into the hearts of their friends and acquaintances. Any Noble, if her heart is untroubled by the Darkness, can
raise an Echo of the Light in the people around her through a symbolic gesture. This will lift the hearts of all
who witness it, inspire them with a wish to act on her principles, and (for a short time) help them excel in their
attempts to do so. However, a Princess infected by Shadows finds her Echo going wrong, spreading the fear and
despair that lies on her heart to those near her, and inspiring them to imitate her darker impulses, instead of
her ideals. In addition, Nobles and Beacons (but not Sworn) with a high degree of Belief constantly influence
their intimates for the better, while those with scant Belief share their despond with all who know them; this
too is part of their Echo.

Raising an Echo
Raising an Echo takes an instant action; the Noble demonstrates, through an expressive action, the ideal
closest to her heart - the act must reflect her Virtue - mentally calls on the Light to imbue her act with power,
spends a Willpower point and rolls Resolve + Inner Light. (For instance: a Courageous soldier says “Follow me!”
and charges into battle; a Patient craftswoman demonstrates the careful use of her tools; a Generous traveler
drops a large bill in a busker's hat.) If she succeeds, any witnesses to her act gain the Inspired Condition [CofD
289] for actions related to her Virtue. On an exceptional success, the Noble gains Inspired herself.

If your Noble PC has a Virtue of Just, and you want her to raise an Echo by declaiming “In the name of
the Light, I will punish you!” - you have our blessing.

As with the other aspects of Noble magics, the tracks left by Hauntings impede and twist the Echo. A Princess
whose Belief is less than or equal to twice her Shadows can no longer inspire others towards her Virtue. Instead
she may imbue an action that expresses her besetting temptation - an act in accordance with her Vice - with
the power to inspire witnesses, using the same system. (For instance: a Violent man starts a fight; a Pessimistic
woman declares a situation hopeless; an Arrogant socialite contemptuously dismisses an inferior.)
A Noble may, if she chooses, resist the raised Echo of another Noble, rolling her Resolve + Inner Light re-
flexively. This roll acts as a contested action against the raised Echo - if the Noble matches or beats the successes
rolled for the raised Echo, it doesn’t affect her. Also, many supernatural beings possess auras, innate abilities
that, like Echoes, influence the people they meet, and a Noble may resist them as she does an Echo from another
Noble.

A Still Small Voice

Degree of Sympathy A Noble’s Echo sounds constantly in the hearts of all who know her;
Inner as her connection to the Light strengthens, it takes less and less acquain-
Light Mundane Transformed tance with her to hear that Echo and be swayed by it. A Princess’ Inner
1-3 Sensory Intimate Light determines a degree of Sympathy; any character who has at least
that much of a sympathetic connection to her hears and is touched by her
4-6 Intimate Known
Echo. Thanks to the Echo’s impairment in mundane form, though, char-
7-8 Known Acquainted acters who are connected only to a Princess’ mundane identity need a
9-10 Acquainted Encountered stronger level of Sympathy before her Echo can reach them. Consult the

78 Echoes
table below for the degree of Sympathy required.
The strength of the Princess’s Belief contends against the Shadows on her heart to determine whether her
Echo inspires those who hear it towards the Light, or whispers messages of temptation and despair. As long
as the Noble’s Belief is more than twice her Shadows dots, the characters who hear her Echo can draw on her
Virtue to aid them; if they are acting in accord with the Noble’s Virtue, they may apply the 9-again quality to the
dice pool for one action. However, if the Noble’s Belief is not more than twice her Shadows dots, hearing her
Echo instead inspires people to emulate her worst qualities; they may add 9-again to a dice pool, but the action
must be in accord with the Noble’s Vice. A character cannot benefit from a Noble’s Echo in this way more than
once per scene, even if he can hear multiple Echoes; and a Noble is never affected by her own quiet Echo.
Beacons, through whom the Light shines naturally, and Sworn, as vicars of the Nobles and Queen they’re
vowed to, create a constant Echo like that of a Princess with Inner Light 1 in mundane form. Their Integrity
substitutes for Belief to determine which way their Echo works.
One other effect of the Echo must be mentioned: anyone who hears a Noble’s Echo is Light-touched enough
that Dark beings are attracted to them, though not enough to rouse their specific hostility. No rules are provided
for this, but it’s the chief reason why creatures of the Darkness show up where the Hopeful are, without neces-
sarily planning to confront a Princess. At low levels of Inner Light a Noble only draws out Darkspawn who were
already in the neighborhood through her Echo. On the other hand, a Noble at the peak of her power touches so
many people with her Echo that Dark beings will be drawn to her town from miles away, like a plague of locusts.

Merits
The Nobility are still human, and therefore able to use all of humanity’s varied and dangerous talents; they
are also magical, and therefore capable of focusing their hopes into a number of unique and potent advantages.
Nearly all the Merits available to mundane characters are open to the Hopeful, and several new Merits are de-
tailed here to define a Princess’ relation to her personal magic.
Since every Princess has a double life, one mundane, the other magical, a new Hopeful character is given 10
Merit dots instead of 7 at character creation. Almost all the Merits given in the Chronicles of Darkness are avail-
able. The main exceptions are the Supernatural Merits - if a Noble had talents of that kind before Blossoming,
they were in truth hints of her bond with the Light, and the full realization of that bond subsumed them into the
Inner Light and Charms. Also, a Princess may not take Vice-Ridden [CofD 46] at character creation; anyone so
deeply stained by the Darkness that she has two Vices cannot Blossom. (The opposed Merit, Virtuous, is open
to Princesses. Indeed, people saintly enough to have two Virtues are excellent prospects for Blossoming!)

Modified Merits
A few Merits work differently for the Nobility than for mundane characters, or have unusual applications
in their case.

Alternate Identity
The inherent ability of the Nobility to transform themselves makes it difficult for them not to develop a
double life. Therefore the Alternate Identity Merit [CofD 50] is cheaper for them than it is for mundane charac-
ters. A Princess may purchase Alternate Identity •• once for just 1 Experience, or Alternate Identity ••• for 2
Experiences, to get her perfected self a set of convincing identification and paperwork. Extra Alternate Identi-
ties, beyond the first, cost full price. (Nobles do not get Alternate Identity • for free - their double identities have
a stronger protection from discovery, especially from magical methods.)

Mentor
The Mentor Merit [CofD 51] focuses on relations within mundane or supernatural society. While both of
those can be of great help to a Princess, a further option is available to a lucky few: personal mentorship from
their Queen. Even though a Queen cannot leave the Dreamlands, she still has such a wealth of power and expe-
rience that she would be far beyond a five dot Mentor. However the Queens have many obligations that demand

Merits 79
their time besides tutoring a Princess. Therefore when applied to a Queen, the Mentor Merit represents not her
skill, but how much of her attention she will bestow upon the character. As a general rule you may assume a
Princess gets at least one session with her Queen per week for each dot she has in Mentor (the Queen). A session
can be just a few moments before the throne, but at high dots it can be significantly longer.
Even without any dots in Mentor, a Princess is always welcome to attend court, but unless she has important
business the Queen will focus her attentions on those who do. When the PCs have an emergency they can usually
get a chance to explain and some advice; the amount of time received depends on how serious the emergency
is, and whether the Princess should be able to handle it or needs significant help. (Remember that both of these
are opinions and two Queens might see the same situation differently. The Queen of Swords considers losing a
boyfriend as roughly equivalent to a small crisis. Even her own followers often think that’s taking things too far.)
When portraying the Queens the Storyteller should always remember that they have had no contact with
Earth for millennia and are consequently out of touch. Therefore no matter how many dots a Princess has in
Mentor and no matter how important it is, the Queen of Hearts cannot teach her followers how to navigate the
Chinese political system. She simply does not have that knowledge. She can teach the Princess Skills or direct
her to appropriate Charms, but it would be up to the Princess to translate that into an appropriate plan of action
for the modern day. For similar reasons, a Radiant Queen cannot buy equipment or services on Earth for one of
her followers - Resources is not available from a Radiant Queen as a Mentor.
A Princess must follow a Queen before she can place dots in Mentor in a Queen. Neither Storms nor Mirrors
will serve as Mentors. A follower of the Last Empress cannot place more than three dots of Mentor into her
Queen - the Queen of Tears’ kingdom is under siege and conforms to the normal rules of time, she just does not
have enough time to spare. On the other hand, the Queen of Tears can give her favored agents modern money
or valuable goods.
With one dot a Princess can usually get the occasional snatch of time whenever there is a lull in court
proceedings, enough time to talk about recent events or ask questions and get a brief bit of advice.
At three dots the Queen often has your character’s name in the royal itinerary for time with her alone, or
perhaps group sessions with her Nakama. She has the opportunity to talk at length about her progress in the
war of hope and receive private tutoring. She also knows what her queen is like when she has an opportunity to
take off her crown, so to speak. Generally speaking a Princess with three dots of Mentor has something special
about her that caught her Queen’s eye, something the Queen is especially keen to nurture. She may be the only
Onceborn in the Court or run the largest Nation among the Queen’s followers. Perhaps she was someone the
Queen respected in a past life or maybe the Princess works full time as one of the Queen’s agents upon Earth
and must report in often (This can be especially helpful for beginner players as it both justifies clear goals for
the character and advice from the Storyteller).
At five dots your character is spending at least an hour or so with the Queen most nights, and if they don’t
show up the Queen may even get worried and send one of her other followers to check on the Princess. This
level of attention is exceptionally rare and characters who have five dots are either vital to the Queen’s agenda
or have an exceptionally strong personal connection. Perhaps the Queen believes the Princess might become a
Queen herself and has dedicated herself to making sure it happens. The Princess may be the first Ambassador
to a concept the Queen cares for greatly. Alternatively the Queen and Princess might have an immense personal
bond of friendship, or maybe the character is the Queen’s consort (though this is usually only an option for
followers of Swords).

Retainer
An experienced Princess can have Retainers [CofD 53] who belong to another Light-touched template. Bea-
con Retainers need no special rules, since they’re very close to mundane. Sworn Retainers, however, gain magic
from their connection with the Light, and are therefore more capable than a mundane Retainer. When a Sworn
becomes a Retainer, add one Invocation dot, and one Bequest dot for each dot of the Merit after the first.

Shikigami as Merits
As previously mentioned, it’s common for a new Nakama to be brought together by a Shikigami, and
therefore a Shikigami is often a prominent NPC in a game of Princess: the Hopeful. To encourage this, the

80 Merits
 Storyteller may allow his players to define their characters’ Shikigami as a set of shared Social Merits, chosen
from Allies, Mentor, Retainer, Staff and True Friend. A Shikigami bought in this way should be designed by
the players collaboratively, with the Storyteller’s help.
Merits purchased with shared dots are available to any character who contributed at least one dot.
However, Merits with limited uses don’t allow double-dipping - if a Shikigami is a shared Mentor, for exam-
ple, only one character can call on him to act as such in each session. If a character dies, or is otherwise
removed from play, the dots she contributed are no longer available to the other characters, and shared
Merits must be reduced by that amount.

Status
In the towns and cities that have Camaraderies (many don’t, even now) Camaraderie Status normally re-
flects reputation among the local Hopeful, not an official position; Camaraderie Status 5 implies a Noble spends
a lot of time helping and guiding other Hopeful and can expect their gratitude when she’s in trouble herself. As
a rule, then, that form of Status generally provides services (time donated by local Nobles) and not material or
magical resources - Camaraderies haven’t been around long enough to build up private funds or collect magical
objects. On the other hand, there’s nothing whatsoever keeping a Beacon or Sworn from having Camaraderie
Status at any level. All that’s required is being well-known and generally respected by the local Hopeful.
With one exception, the Hopeful don't have organizations with a regional or global scope, so there’s no
such thing as a Status for the Radiant or individual Queens - but that exception is a doozy. Alhambra, the seat of
the Last Empress, has a status system of Byzantine complexity, small outposts scattered all over the world, and
collections that have been maintained and expanded for millenia. A Noble of Tears, unless she’s broken with the
City entirely, will have Alhambra Status almost forced on her, and access to the resources of a small city-state
that’s existed for all recorded history.
A character with Alhambra Status can requisition services, or the temporary use of some Merits. This uses
a system like the Resources Merit; the Storyteller sets an Availability rating for things the character can requi-
sition, and she treats her Status as if it were Resources when she asks for them. Availability ratings assume the
service or Merit will be assigned on a temporary basis, for a single story. The city assumes she’ll return it when
done with it, or make amends if it’s destroyed or lost. The typical Merits available from Alhambra are Anonymi-
ty, Library, Mentor, Retainer, Safe Place and Staff from the CofD core; and Bequest and Mandate from this book.
Alhambra even has Bequests in its stockpile which were made before the Kingdom fell, and can’t be repli-
cated now because they used Invocations that no longer exist. These Bequests are far harder to obtain than their
power levels would suggest, precisely because they are irreplaceable; the Storyteller should set their Availabil-
ity ratings at least 2 dots higher than Bequests of extant Charms.

Unseen Sense
Mundane characters can have an Unseen Sense [CofD 60] for the Light or the Darkness. An Unseen Sense
(Light) registers the presence of transformed Nobles, Shikigami, Blessed areas, Images and Bequests. It does
not, however, recognize a Beacon, Sworn or untransformed Noble as supernatural. An Unseen Sense (Darkness)
registers the presence of Tainted areas, and all varieties of Dark creatures except those under the Darkened
Condition.

Form-limited Merits
Fairly often a Princess has Merits which apply only to her perfected self, or only to her mundane self. She
might be significantly more attractive when transformed (a fairly common thing, that) or be able to ignore pain
and fatigue, or gain a photographic memory. And beyond the people a Noble trusts with her life, almost all her
social relationships will be restricted to a single identity.
When a Princess buys a Merit that represents a form of natural talent or specialized training, she may
choose to limit the Merit to one of her two identities. If she does this she’s refunded a Beat for each dot she
purchases. Merits that have two or more levels can be purchased partly for both forms and partly for one; e.g.
a Princess can have Striking Looks at one dot for both identities, and two dots when transformed. Transformed

Merits 81
Attribute and Skill dots can be used to meet a Merit’s prerequisites, if the Princess limits that Merit to her per-
fected self; but not, naturally, for Merits she can use in her mundane identity. Finally, Merits purchased for one
identity can be expanded to cover both, if the Princess puts in some effort; e.g. a Princess whose perfected body
is Fleet of Foot could train herself for running in her mundane body. This costs nothing more than repaying the
Beats given for taking a limited Merit: one Beat for each dot.
Merits that represent a character’s social position and connections with other people - nearly all the Social
Merits qualify - cannot be purchased at a discount in this way; these Merits instead are limited to one identity,
unless the Noble’s player wants the people in question to know of both her identities.

Form-Limited Conditions
A player may want a Noble character who suffers from a disability while mundane, but whose transformed
identity is whole and healthy. The game represents disabilities as persistent Conditions, and it’s legitimate for a
Noble to have Conditions like Blind, Crippled or Mute only when mundane. As with form-limited Merits, persis-
tent Conditions that represent a physical impairment can be taken for just the mundane identity; their effects
lapse during the Noble’s transformation, and she can’t gain Beats from them while transformed. It isn’t possible,
however, to limit such Conditions to the transformed identity - transformation never reduces a Noble’s capa-
bilities.
Conditions like Notoriety, based on social relationships, naturally apply to only one identity, but may be
taken for either. Purely mental Conditions like Obsession, and Conditions related to the Noble’s supernatural
status, can’t be limited to a single form, as the mind and the Light persist through transformations. In ambiguous
cases (Addicted, for example, may be a physical or psychological Condition, depending on the drug) the Story-
teller decides whether the Condition can be limited to one form.

Noble Merits
These Merits are reserved to the Hopeful.

Circle (•-•••••)
The human mind was not designed for large numbers. When the suffering of millions feels incomprehen-
sible, your character can turn to the small every day problems and triumphs of friends and family to remind
herself what she is fighting for. The Circle Merit represents healthy relationships between a Princess and her
family, close friends, or mentors, who are ordinary mortals (not supernatural in any way.) The more dots a
Princess has, the more or the stronger these relationships are; describe the people your character is intimate
with when you buy dots in Circle.
Your character may spend at least an hour in the company of some of her intimates, having a pleasant
conversation, helping them with daily chores, or venting her frustrations with the troubles of a Princess’ life.
After the encounter is over, she regains Wisps equal to her dots in the Merit. Your character can regain Wisps
from her Circle at most once a session, or once a day, whichever is longer.
Dots in Shadows weaken the pleasures of good company; a shadowed Noble needs more time with her
friends to refresh her Wisps properly. Each dot in Shadows adds one hour to the time your character must spend
with her Circle before gaining Wisps - two hours with one dot, three hours with two dots, and so on.

Destiny (•-•••••)
Your character’s thread stands out in the skein of Fate. Like the hero of an epic she is destined for great
triumphs, but she also has a Doom that hangs over her head and threatens to turn her tale into a tragedy.
Each chapter, you have a pool of Destiny equal to your dots in this Merit. You may use a point of Destiny
either to gain the rote quality on a single mundane roll chosen before you roll, or to reroll a single mundane
action after you see the result of the roll (although you must take the second result.)
Drawback: Your character has a Doom. This is the means by which destiny brings her life as she knows
it to a tragic end; it either kills her, or leaves her alive and suffering. (See the Fate optional rule [CofD 177] for

82 Merits
examples of Dooms.) Whenever you spend Willpower to avoid the Doom, you add two dice instead of three (or
+1 to a static value). However, whenever you spend Willpower on an action that will further the Doom but the
roll fails, you immediately regain the spent Willpower. The Storyteller is the arbiter of which actions delay or
hasten your character’s Doom.

Exemplary Regalia (•)

A Noble’s Regalia is often designed to a fantastical or archaic pattern, which in the modern day can make a
poor first impression; many Hopeful have been asked by strangers where the costume party is being held when
they had urgent business. With this Merit your character avoids the problem - when transformed, her appear-
ance becomes so obviously the expression of her personality that all who meet her can’t question her choice of
apparel. While her Regalia has its default form, she takes no penalty on Social rolls from being inappropriately
dressed.

Mandate (•-•••)
Every Calling has its special duties, the means by which a Princess feels is her duty to help the world. Your
character has taken one particular aspect of her Calling duties and made it her own; the Light supports her when
she intends to fulfill it, and empowers her when she has done so. Describe a regular activity in your character’s
mundane life related to the duties of her Calling. (For example, a Champion could have a job on the police force,
a Mender might be a nurse, a Seeker could post regularly to a blog.) When she regains Wisps by carrying out
that activity (as described under Call of Duty) she adds her Mandate dots to her dice pool.

Minor Invoker (•-•••••)

Although your character doesn’t believe in its ideals, she has learned enough of one Invocation that she
knows how to use one of the Charms tied to it. Choose a Charm and an Invocation. Your character may ignore
Invocation prerequisites up to her dots in the Merit when learning the chosen Charm and its upgrades. The
Merit does not stack with actual dots in the Invocation (e.g. Minor Invoker •• and Aria • doesn’t allow learning a
Charm that requires Aria •••.) However, whenever the Charm’s rules use dots in the Invocation, your character
instead uses her dots in this Merit.
A character may purchase this Merit multiple times, each for a different Charm/Invocation pair; it may even
be purchased multiple times for the same Charm, if the Invocations are different. If your character gains enough
dots in the chosen Invocation to meet the prerequisites for the Charm and all its upgrades that she knows, the
Merit dots are refunded as per Sanctity of Merits.

Onceborn (••)
Incompatible with Postregnum
Your character is one of the rare people who Blossomed, and became one of the Hopeful, without any mem-
ory of a past life as a Princess; her soul was never trapped in the Dreamlands, and the bitter memory of the Fall
is not hers. This unshadowed innocence grants an unusual level of moral clarity. Your character’s Belief begins
at 8, not 7. Available at character creation only.
Drawback: Your character cannot draw on experiences from a past life.

Palace (•-••••)
There is a difference between a house and a home. A Palace is not a place to live, though a Princess may
live in one. A Palace is a place with such an intimate emotional connection to a Princess that her magic works
better there than anywhere else. At one dot, a Palace automatically has the Consecrated Condition, which lasts
indefinitely just so long as the Princess’ emotional connection to it remains strong.
Something odd happens to some Palaces, when its mistress deliberately associates her domicile with her
mundane self and avoids associating it with her Transformed self. The effects of her Dual Identity seeps into her

Merits 83
home, preventing others from connecting it to her transformed identity. At two or more dots, any attempt to
find the location of the Palace when searching for the home of its mistress’ transformed identity takes a penalty:
-1 at two dots, -2 at three dots, -3 at four dots. Searching for her mundane identity’s home takes no penalty.
Anyone inside the home suffers the same penalty on Perception rolls to notice evidence of the Princess’ double
life. This is not infallible; a -3 penalty is not enough for her to greet guests in full Regalia, and though she might
get away with leaving her magic wand on her desk, don’t risk it.
In addition, any Princess within the Palace is shielded from curious eyes, with respect to her actions inside
it. Every Princess in the Palace gains the benefits of a Veiling Merit of one dot less than the Palace’s dots until
she leaves. Princesses with their own Veiling use the better of the two ratings in the Palace.
A Palace may also be a Safe Place [CofD 54], storage for a Library [CofD 46] or Esoteric Armory [CofD 139],
comfortable housing or a workshop for a trade, or any combination of those and similar things, but those Merits
and equipment are bought separately.

Postregnum (•)
Incompatible with Onceborn
Your character is the reincarnation of a Noble who Blossomed during the Long Night. She lost the moral
clarity given to the Onceborn in her first life; but she also has no personal memory of the Fall, and without that
trauma details from that former life are slightly clearer. Take two extra Skill Specialties. Like transformed dots,
your Noble may use these Specialties only when transformed. Available at character creation only.
Area of Expertise [CofD 44] and Interdisciplinary Specialty [CofD 45]may be applied to the Specialties from
this Merit, but must be bought as form-limited Merits. You may spend 1 Experience and cash in this Merit to
learn both Specialties normally.

Second Calling (•)

Your character has a personal vocation that leads her to goals outside of her first Calling as a Princess.
Choose a second Calling for her; she may recover Wisps from activities related to that Calling just as well as
from activities related to her first, and she may take the Mandate Merit based on the second Calling. She may
also take a Vocation related to the second Calling, on top of the one from her first. She does not gain an extra
transformed Attribute dot or affinity to any Charms from her second Calling. No Princess may take this Merit
more than once. Available at character creation only.
Drawback: Your character is bound by the Oaths of her second Calling, just as much as those of her first
- both sets of Oaths are breaking points for her.

Tomoyo’s Touch (•)

Your character is unusually adept at manipulating her Regalia. Once per turn, she may summon or dismiss
pieces of Regalia as a reflexive action, without spending a Wisp.

Troupe Magic (•)

Your character belongs to a nakama who have worked magic together long enough that they can contribute
to and support each other. When members of the nakama are together, they may use the teamwork rules on
the rolls for activated Charms. However, doing so requires extra time to coordinate; Charms activated with an
extended action double the interval between rolls, and all Charms require a minimum of one minute to activate.
The primary actor must know the Charm she wishes to use, but secondary actors need not; however, if they
don't know the Charm, secondary actors take a -2 penalty to their dice pool. All actors must apply the same
Invocation, if they apply any. Only the primary actor spends the cost to activate the Charm; each actor who
applies an Invocation spends the Wisp to do so herself, if it’s needed.
Drawback: Unlike most Merits, three or more Princesses must purchase Troupe Magic together to benefit
from it. Any subset of the nakama with the Merit may use teamwork to activate Charms, but members of different
nakama may not, even if both nakama have the Merit.

84 Merits
Veiling (•-•••)
Some Hopefuls’ perfected selves differ so much from their mundane selves that they are excessively difficult
to identify, even beyond the norm. Your character is one such; whenever an observer tries to connect her two
identities, or she commits an indiscretion, the opposing dice pool takes a penalty equal to her dots in the Merit.
Supernatural attempts to discover her nature as a Princess while she is not transformed face a Clash of Wills,
in which her dots in the Merit substitute for the Charm rating.

Supernatural Merits
These Merits are not reserved to the Hopeful. Like the supernatural Merits listed in the Chronicles of Dark-
ness, a mundane character who becomes a supernatural being loses any Merit in this section, allocating the lost
dots to other Merits (per the Sanctity of Merits rule.) Becoming a Princess is an exception to this - Merits which
are open to the Hopeful are not lost when a mundane character who has them Blossoms.

Bequest (•+)
Open to the Hopeful
Your character possesses an object, within which has been bound a Charm. This might have come from
within her own soul, to be granted to another or used to boost her own powers, or might have been obtained
on a quest to the Dreamlands. Some senior members of the Nobility (such that there are) make a habit of gifting
trusted friends with them for, despite the cost, they can give a Princess access to powers that she might not
otherwise be able to reach.
A Bequest’s base Merit dot cost is equal to the level of the Charm (so, for example, Charge, a Govern 2 Charm,
is a two-dot Merit as a Bequest), plus one dot per upgrade, plus one dot if the Bequest is Duty-Bound. For more
details on Bequests, see Images and Bequests and the Living Image Charm.

Dream Travel (• or •••)

Your character can reliably project his mind into the Dreamlands. At one dot, your character begins with
an average impression when looking for new entrances to the Dreamlands. At three dots, he begins with a good
impression.
Drawback: Doors allow travel both ways. Your character is especially accessible to astral threats like
Amanojaku; powers that open ways to his mind from the Dreamlands, such as Ivory Gate, gain a +1 bonus. Hope-
fully he has the training or gifts to defend himself. Also, he is vulnerable to the Gales - their dice pool against
him has a +1 bonus.

Entwined Destiny (••)

Incompatible with Vice-Ridden [CofD 46]
Open to the Hopeful
Your character was bound to another before she was born, and both events and her inmost will urge her
towards a specific role in his life. Choose the nature of your character’s relationship with its subject - true love,
rivalry, protection, loyalty, and enmity are all possible, and if none of these fit you may define your own, with
the Storyteller’s approval. You may also choose the subject’s name and general nature, or leave that up to the
Storyteller to decide. When the Storyteller judges that your character’s actions during a scene reflect her des-
tined role, she regains 1 point of Willpower; she cannot benefit from this, however, if she has indulged her Vice
in the current scene.
Entwined Destiny cannot directly influence a person’s choices, but Fate will attempt to nudge a character
with the Merit in certain ways. For example, if she has an Entwined Destiny of love Fate cannot make her feel love.
Instead Fate can and will create coincidences where she and her destined bump into each other in circumstances

Merits 85
appropriate for heart to heart talks. If the destiny is natural it can also be assumed that the character and her
destined true love are compatible people.
Drawback: Denying a destined role is akin to denying yourself. Deliberately forgoing an opportunity to
fulfill her role is a breaking point for your character, with a penalty depending on how far her actions depart from
what the Entwined Destiny expects of her. For example, if her destined rival challenges her, she must accept; if
she discovers her destined enemy’s plot, she must oppose it; if her destined ward is in peril, she must rescue him.

Firm Anchor (•-•••)

Requires a Vocation
Open to the Hopeful
Your character has a mission that sustains him in adversity. At one dot, when he reaches a breaking point
while trying to accomplish his Vocation, he applies 9-again to the breaking point roll. At two dots, he applies
8-again. At 3 dots, he applies no quality but gets an exceptional success on three successes instead of five. If
the character ever resolves his Vocation, or abandons it, he loses the Merit. The Merit can’t be taken twice - a
character who gains two or more Vocations must choose which one this Merit is tied to.
Drawback: His mission is integral to the character’s psyche. Acting against his Vocation is a breaking point
with a penalty equal to his dots in the Merit.

Royal Tongue (•)

Requires Hopeful, Sworn or Shikigami
Your character knows how to produce the Royal Tongue. She can use it to enhance her Charms, or to sway
a crowd of mortals.
As languages go the Royal Tongue is unique, it is quite possibly the densest language there is. Meaning is
conveyed not just by words but also tone and the placement of stresses, two different words could be completely
identical except for where it’s grammatically acceptable to use them. A monosyllabic prefix or suffix can com-
pletely change a word within its conceptual space; the Royal Tongue has over a thousand words for friend, (and
just as many for lover or sister or brother) each defines the exact details of the relationship and not only do they
all come from the same root word, they all sound like that root word.
The hardest thing to do with the Royal Tongue is speak a straight sentence. Between the grammatical rules
and the enormous amount of information in every word a simple sentence like “thank you for helping” would, if
translated into English, look like two paragraphs of flowery purple prose about the inherent virtue of teamwork.
When asked how such a language came about the Queen of Hearts implies that it was deliberate, the Queen of
Spades bursts into laughter and the Queen of Diamonds (who’s fluent in, and prefers, most Earthly languages)
gives a put upon sigh.
Mundane characters can hear the Royal Tongue but they cannot understand it. Many Princesses swear blind
that the Royal Tongue uses magic as well as sound waves as a carrier to pack even more information into each
word. The cost of this is that only the Light-touched can understand the Royal Tongue. Beacons can’t even speak
it. To anyone else it sounds like someone singing in an unknown melodic language. The Royal Tongue can’t be
recorded either - a Princess who hears a recording of the Royal Tongue catches at best the occasional word, it
sounds as though someone has removed 40% of the syllables and all the grammar. This is considerably more
confusing than it would be in a normal language.
The most useful aspect of the Royal Tongue is to enhance a Princess’ Charms (though some Troubadours
insist its use in lyrics and poetry is more useful … Deep purple prose is an acquired taste.) If your character
spends a turn speaking the Royal Tongue, declaring that she will use a Charm on a target, and forcing the qualia,
the experience and feeling of what she is about to do, into the musical speech, her activation roll for the power
gains the 9-again quality.
In dire situations, an appeal to the Light for aid or a declaration of resolve, when spoken in the Royal Tongue,
can strengthen a Hopeful heart. When a Noble draws on Inner Strength, she may add the 9-again quality to her
roll by pouring out her heart in the Royal Tongue.
Use of the Royal Tongue is a supernatural ability, and can be detected as such.

86 Merits
Taint Awareness (••)
Requires Beacon, Hopeful, Sworn or Shikigami
Your character’s sensitivity to corruption from the Darkness is so finely tuned that she can perceive it from
miles away. Whenever a creature of the Darkness leaves the Dark World within Inner Light miles of your char-
acter (1 mile for a Beacon or Sworn), or the Size or Severity of a Tainted area within that distance increases,
your character suffers a sharp pain, a bout of nausea, or something equally unpleasant, which she recognizes
as a sign of the Darkness at work. She may roll Wits + Sensitivity to acquire a sense of the direction and rough
distance to the Tainted area or the place where the creature crossed over.
Dramatic Failure: Your character misinterprets her sense for Taint, and directs her attention to an un-
related location chosen by the Storyteller.
Failure: Your character loses track of the taint before she can fix its location.
Success: Your character senses where the taint happened within an error of 10% of its true distance
from her, or wide enough that she’ll need to search for a scene to find the exact location.
Exceptional Success: Your character senses exactly where the taint happened; she can walk straight to
the place without a pause.
Drawback: Each time your character actually enters a Tainted area, her senses are overborne by the place’s
corruption, and she takes the Stunned Tilt [CofD 286].

Unison (•-•••••)
Requires Beacon, Hopeful, or Sworn
Your character has formed a bond with a Shikigami which allows them to fuse into one being. When the
character and Shikigami are fused, the character gains free tranformed dots with a value in Experiences equal
to twice his dots in this Merit, within his trait caps. Also, if the character lacks a pool of Wisps, fusion supplies
one that holds Wisps equal to his Resolve + Presence. However, the Shikigami cannot take actions while fused
- he shares the character’s senses and may mentally speak to him, but the integrated body is controlled by the
character.
Fusing with a Shikigami is quite similar to a Noble’s transformation, and uses almost the same rules. It
takes an instant action to fuse and the Shikigami must be touching the character; the player does not roll. The
Shikigami maintains the fusion, so the player rolls twice his dots in the Merit to sustain a fusion past a scene’s
end. Dramatic failure on this roll leaves the Shikigami exhausted, and blocks use of the Merit until he has spent a
full scene or an hour resting. During a fusion, the character’s clothes, body or both gain aspects of the Shikigami’s
appearance that disguise him, giving the character the protection of Dual Identity.
While the benefits above are automatic, the Shikigami can cultivate the bond to let his partner draw on
the Light deliberately. The character may learn Charms with an effective rating up to his dots in Unison, paying
Experiences equal to that rating. He may also buy 1 Invocation dot for each dot in Unison, if he otherwise lacks
that ability. However, he may use these Charms and Invocations only while fused with the Shikigami - they are
really the Shikigami’s powers, that require a human partner to activate. If the character permanently loses his
partner, the Experiences spent on Charms and Invocations are refunded under the Sanctity of Merits.

White Rabbits (•-•••••)

Requires reliable access to the Dreamlands, such as Dream Travel • or being Hopeful or Shikigami
Your character has an especially strong connection to the Dreamlands; when she sleeps she is called to wit-
ness prophecies and portents applicable to her life and her goals. To consult the White Rabbits, your character
must go to sleep for long enough to reach REM sleep since the last time she did so; nor may the Princess look
for White Rabbits more often than once per session. Your character rolls Wits + Empathy - Shadows; if she has
not found a Crawlspace entrance near her current resting place the roll is at -2.
Dramatic Failure: Your character is called to the Dreamlands by a March Hare, or perhaps even a Black
Rabbit, that she mistakes for a Prophecy Rabbit.

Merits 87
 Failure: No Rabbits appear that night.
Success: Your character is called to the Dreamlands by a Prophecy Rabbit and witnesses a prophecy
concerning a question or topic chosen by the player. The Princess will receive at least one clue per dot of
White Rabbits, though the clue may be hidden behind signs or portents.
Exceptional Success: In addition to the regular benefits your character also gains an instance of the
Informed Condition [CofD 289] related to the clues in her prophecy.
Taking this Merit implies a degree of practice in the art of finding a White Rabbit - your character can look
for them deliberately. She can also try to find a Memory Rabbit to recover a memory relevant to her current
situation instead of a prophecy; the benefits are the same.
The Storyteller is free to introduce White Rabbits for characters without this Merit. Even a Princess without
any dots in White Rabbits can experience the occasional prophecy or past-life flashback if it’s important enough.
See the Dreamlands section in Chapter 3 for more details on the White Rabbits.

Social Merits
These Social Merits are entirely mundane, open to any character type.

Populist Rhetoric (•-•••••, Style)

Requires Presence 3, Manipulation 3
Your character has been trained in making friends and influencing people. She might be a politician or a
cult leader, even if she is not she sees words as tools to make people do what she wills. Such power can be used
for both good or ill.
Anecdote (•): Your character brings up a heartwrenching story. Arguing against her is like arguing against
Little Orphan Annie. She rolls Presence + Expression - her targets Composure; on a success the target has a -2
penalty to Social dice pools against her on this topic for the rest of the scene.
Polispeak (••): Your character can talk at length while saying nothing. By spouting a never ending stream of
ambiguous statements and platitudes she can dodge questions while appearing to give answers. When someone
is debating against her, she may reflexively forgo her action for a turn to subtract her Manipulation from her
opponents Persuasion or Expression dice pools. This works best at stalling for time or when she can’t win a
debate and hopes to simply minimise the scale of her loss.
Catch Phrases (•••): People are naturally tribal and like a social chameleon your character can fit in any-
where by spouting catchphrases and speaking with the correct lingo. Once per scene, she may spend a point
of Willpower to gain a bonus of half her Subterfuge to all Social dice pools with a certain group of people. This
cannot be done if the target group has prerequisites your character does not meet - an adult could not join a
teenager only group for example. Using this technique is not declaring loyalty to a group (in fact it’s probably
best to avoid doing so) but if she’s good people will naturally feel more comfortable around her.
Drawback: By getting in with a group your character is placing herself outside other groups. She gains an
equal penalty to those who dislike the group, for example if she creates a bonus with Republicans she’ll take a
penalty while talking to Democrats for the rest of the scene.
Encouragement (••••): Your character can convince people to associate what they like about themselves
with herself. You try to treat all people politely, that’s not because you’re a good person. That’s because you’re a
Christian/Liberal/Humanist/Feminist/Conservative. Using the same dice pool as for the Inspiring Merit [CofD
51] your character gives listeners a variant of the Inspired Condition; a listener resolves the Condition only for
an action in line with his Virtue, but when he does so and your character is engaged in a social maneuver against
him, she opens one Door without a roll.
Rally (•••••): Your character can play the crowd like a fiddle, alienating and isolating her opponent in an
argument. Both your character and her opponent pick a Social merit that gives influence over people (usually
Allies, Fame, Mystery Cult Initiation, or Status, though others may be allowed.) The people represented by that
Merit must be present, be they in the audience, waving placards outside or posting comments on the blog with
the debate). Roll Presence + Persuasion + Merit Dots. Until the maneuver ends, for every (target’s Composure +

88 Merits
Merit dots - your character’s successes) Social rolls the target must spend one point of Willpower not to concede
in the face of such hostility. This does not count against the target’s one willpower per turn.
Example: Gwenaëlle is a columnist having a public debate about obesity with Desmond, the
director of public relations in a greedy fast food chain. Gwenaëlle rolls Presence + Persuasion +
her Status in the newspaper to fill her next column with metaphors that sound a call to arms.
She gains four successes. Desmond has a Composure of 3 and chooses to play his Status 4 in the
corporation, getting subordinates to ghost write and give him some emotional distance. Every
third roll Desmond loses a Willpower point as his corporate blog is hammered with aggressive
comments by Gwenaëlle’s supporters.

Regal Bearing (•-•••••, Style)

Requires Composure 3, Socialize 3
Your character carries herself with an air of sophistication and grace. Whether she rubs shoulders with
European royalty or commands respect by walking through the door of an inner city church in Sunday best
there’s no denying she is noble.
Figure of Authority (•): Your character was born to authority and wields it well. Whenever she adds Status
to the dicepool of a mundane action she gains an additional die.
Effortless Elegance (••): Your character knows every unwritten rule of manners. In a formal situation So-
cialise specialties also provides their full bonus to Composure, so long at the roll is mundane and not supernat-
ural. On a roll of Composure + Socialise the specialty applies twice.
Stiff Upper Lip (•••): A gentleman is not a fancy suit and elocution lessons; gentility is a way of life. At any
time you can spend a point of Willpower to lessen the effects of a Condition representing a mundane mental or
emotional effect upon your character. For the remainder of the scene any dice penalties that Condition applies
to Social rolls are reduced by Composure. This Merit cannot affect Conditions representing a supernatural or
physical effect (such as wound penalties or intoxication).
Dry Wit (••••): Whether your character looks down her nose at the help or reminds the room that an
old family name does not make a pompous buffoon into a gentleman, she does it with such grace and subtlety
that nobody can accuse her of impropriety without desecrating their own dignity. Any attempt to tarnish your
character’s reputation based on her words, but not her deeds, takes a penalty equal to her Expression. This
bonus does not apply when her words provide evidence of her deeds.
Manners Maketh Man (•••••): Your character radiates authority and poise, she is a pillar of strength in
times of chaos. Whenever your character begins Social Manoeuvring with a character who currently has a non-
Persistent Condition representing a mundane mental or emotional effect they automatically open a number of
doors equal to half their Composure, rounding up. This Merit provides no benefit when the target is suffering
from Conditions representing supernatural or physical effects (such as wound penalties or intoxication).

Scientific Rhetoric (•-•••••, Style)

Requires Intelligence 2 and either Academics 3 or Science 3 (or 2 with a specialty in academic methodology
or practices)
For your character a debate isn’t about winning or convincing others, it’s about spreading the truth. Scien-
tific Rhetoric works best against the open minded, even if your character loses the debate she learns something.
First Principles (•): Quantum nonsense, pyramid power, “I’m not a doctor but I play one on TV”. People
have been using scientific lingo to promote rubbish for years, and to a real scientist it usually sounds ridiculous.
As a reflexive action your character may inflict a -1 penalty on anyone making an argument based on science or
academics (the fields, not the skills). This does not work if their science is sound; as a rule of thumb, assume that
a relevant specialty or three dots in a relevant skill confers immunity, unless the target is consciously misleading
his audience.
Citation (••): Your character doesn’t need to prove his point, he just points to someone else who has already
proved it for him. He may add dots in the Library Merit to Social dice pools, if he has access to his Library and

Merits 89
is permitted to fetch books. Internet access is worth +1 die, unless your character has a Library of bookmarks
to hand.
Just the Facts (•••): A quick tongue doesn’t matter, for the facts speak for themselves. Your character may
fall back to established facts, allowing him to reroll one failed Social action per scene, provided it is on a scientific
or academic topic.
Burden of Proof (••••): Your character stands his ground and insists debate will be decided on the facts.
When entering an argument, he may make a contested Manipulation + Persuasion roll (or a Presence + Expres-
sion roll when debating in front of an audience). If he wins, everyone involved in the argument, including him-
self, must use an appropriate Mental Skill (such as Science or Medicine for a debate on evolution) instead of a
Social Skill in dice pools connected to that argument.
Scepticism (•••••): There is a reason reproducibility is one of the principles of the scientific method. After
a social maneuver has opened one of your character’s Doors, he can take the time to double check the other
guy’s claims. Is that salesman’s product really the best in its field? He takes an extended research action with a
threshold equal to the dice pool used to open the door. If the action succeeds, and the claim in question wasn’t
true, that door closes again. Scepticism may be applied only once to any opened Door, and has no effect when
the facts support the investigated claim.

Spiritual Discipline (•-•••••, Style)

Requires Composure 3, Academics 2 and a specialty in an appropriate school of thought
Your character is attuned to the spiritual side of the world. She may be a Buddhist monk, a Christian monk,
or simply read a lot of paperback philosophy. Her spiritual attunement helps him above the temptations of
everyday life. Spiritual Discipline excels at resisting persuasion, it is least effective when directness is a virtue
and against those who cannot understand its hidden meanings.
Unclouded Eyes (•): Like the fool your character favors the simple explanation. She plays little attention
to distractions or complex word games. Ironically this makes her exceptionally hard to fool; all Subterfuge dice
pools against your character take a -1 penalty.
Cessation of Desire (••): By focusing on the spiritual your character has freed herself from temptations.
Mundane social actions gain no benefit from tempting her with her Vice, unless she has gained Willpower by
acting in line with it during the current scene.
Mediation (•••): Your character speaks peace to the world. So long as she gives her full attention to me-
diating a conversation all characters involved in it treat their impression as one level higher. As soon as your
character stops the impressions return to their usual level. Your character cannot use Mediation on her own
social maneuvers.
Example: Two people with an average impression can roll to open doors once per day, pro-
viding that each roll was made while your character is mediating.
Koan (••••): Your character tells a short story or a riddle with layers upon layers of hidden meaning and
a kernel of wisdom hidden at its core. During a social maneuver, she rolls Expression + the target’s Wits. On
a success the target gains the Informed Condition; however, when they resolve the Condition your character
opens a Door. Understanding and following her koan is another step along her path. Koan may be used once
on each social maneuver.
Inner Peace (•••••): Your character has risen above desire, she could live comfortably on nothing but bread
and water. This lack of desire makes it incredibly hard to push her into anything. In any Social action where
your character’s only goal is to resist she may roll Composure + Integrity (or equivalent) instead of the usual
dice pool.

Nations
As the representatives of an ancient Kingdom, and agents of the Light, the Hopeful may forge themselves
and people who look to them as an example into an organized body, dedicated to a common purpose. These are
commonly called the Nations. As they rise in a Nation, the members’ wish to achieve its purpose opens their
hearts to the Light, and they learn ways to draw on it, even if they have no other link to the Light’s magic.

90 Nations
A National Chronicle
From tiny acorns grow great oaks. A Nation begins when a group of people, led by one touched by the Light,
swear a vow by powers of good to perform a lifelong work. To the Hopeful and their Shikigami, the technique to
give such vows effect is fairly obvious; once she forms the intention to gather a team for some important goal, a
Princess will eventually realize how to bind them together as a Nation. Beacons and Sworn have a considerably
harder time figuring it out. A Beacon on his own might lead his friends into swearing a proper oath without
knowing it and create a Nation by accident; but in general Beacons or Sworn can found Nations only with help
from someone with stronger ties to the Light than theirs. (For this reason Nations were vanishingly rare before
the Release.)
The players in a game may choose to have their characters begin as the leaders of a Nation. This implies
a fair amount of shared backstory among them, so the players should go through a second stage of character
creation - they make not only the Nation the PCs govern, but a number of supporting characters who belong to
it, and a web of relationships among them and the nakama.
After each player has finished creating his Noble character, the players get together and introduce their
characters to each other, giving a short description of their mundane lives and transformations. Once everyone
has a clear idea of who the main cast are, each player in turn proposes a way in which his character is connected
with someone else’s. The other player can refuse the connection, in which case the first player makes a different
proposal, or suggest modifications; this continues until both players are satisfied with the link.
Now that the players have woven a web of connections between their characters, they should have the
start of an idea for the cause that brought them together, and the Nation they founded to serve it. This, then,
is when the players can begin choosing the traits for their Nation. The Storyteller can make suggestions, and
help resolve any disputes between players, but the players together have the final say. When they’ve come to an
agreement, each player in turn gets to add a supporting character, a person of some importance to the Nation
or the nakama. These characters may be played by either their creator or the Storyteller, and are given stats less
potent than the main characters - Beacons, Sworn and Shikigami can all be introduced in this phase.

Supporting Cast Traits

• Choose two Aspirations. One should define the character’s role in the Nation; the other can be any-
thing.
• Choose a Virtue and a Vice.
• Distribute Attribute dots as for main characters.
• Distribute 15 Skill dots.
• Distribute 5 Merit dots.
• If the character is Light-touched, apply the appropriate template.

After the players have finished their supporting characters, they once again go in turn, proposing a connec-
tion between their new character and a character created by someone else. They may choose a Noble or another
supporting character, but not their own Noble.
A third round of creation takes place after all the supporting cast have received their connections. The char-
acters made in this phase are purely Storyteller characters, given highly simplified traits, and play a peripheral
role in the Nation. They are given just one Aspiration each, and three activities with fixed dice pools. When at-
tempting the first action, a minor character rolls 5 dice; for the second he rolls 4 dice; and for the third he rolls
3 dice. On anything not covered by those three actions the minor character rolls only 2 dice. The players can
continue making more minor characters if they like, or stop with a single round.

Nation Building
Nations are represented by a set of traits, somewhat like those of characters, but describing the group as
a whole.

Nations 91
Attributes
Nations use the three simplified Attributes of Power, Finesse and Resistance, similar to those of ephemeral
beings. Power represents the Nation’s capability for direct action; it’s rolled for tasks where a character would
use Strength, Intelligence or Presence. Finesse represents the Nation’s capacity for subtlety, and its indirect
influence; it’s rolled for tasks where a character would use Dexterity, Wits or Manipulation. Resistance repre-
sents the Nation’s mutual loyalty and its commitment to the common goal; it’s rolled for tasks where a character
would use Stamina, Resolve or Composure.
A player-controlled Nation begins with 1 dot in each Attribute, plus 6 more dots distributed among the
three. During play, a dot in an Attribute costs the Nation 6 Experiences.

Advantages
Nations have two Advantages, Standing and Morale. Standing represents the Nation’s relative importance
and the scale of its operations; it limits the Nation’s ability to act as a body. A player-controlled Nation begins
with 1 dot of Standing; during play, a dot of Standing costs the Nation 5 Experiences. Morale represents the
Nation’s current cohesion and overall well-being; it’s the analogue of Health for characters. A Nation’s Morale
equals 5 + its Resistance.

Standing 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
a
Attribute Max 5 5 7 7 9 9 12 12 15 15
b
Projects 1 1 2 2 3 3 4 4 5 5
c
Tasks 3 3 5 5 7 7 9 9 9 10
d
Invocation 0 1 1 2 2 3 3 4 4 5
e
Charms 0/0 1/1 2/1 3/1 5/2 7/2 9/2 12 / 3 15 / 3 18 / 3
a
The highest an Attribute may be raised with Experiences.
b
How many projects a Nation can undertake during a story.
c
How many tasks a project can include.
d
The number of Invocation dots the Nation has. Members may learn the Invocation up to this rating.
e
The maximum number of Charm dots is before the slash; the highest available level of Charm is after the slash.

Merits
A Nation’s Merits represent its possessions, connections and talents - which aren’t necessarily those of its
members. Resources for a Nation, for instance, may refer to a member of means who makes purchases on its
behalf, but may also mean the membership as a whole pools contributions when something just has to be bought.
Status (police) can indicate most of the members are police officers, or that a high-ranking officer belongs to the
Nation. Player-controlled Nations begin with 7 dots of Merits, and may buy more in play for 1 Experience per dot.
Each Nation is a mystery cult, and thus has a Mystery Cult Initiation Merit; every member has at least one
dot in this Merit. When the players control a Nation, they design the details of its Initiation Merit. Each PC gains
the first dot in that Merit for free.

Aspirations and Vocation

The Nation’s Aspirations are the goals it works toward and the ideals it desires. Actions in accord with an
Aspiration earns National Beats, which accumulate into Experiences that can be spent to advance the Nation.
Aspirations also constrain the Nation - working against an Aspiration sows doubt among the members, and a
Nation can’t change its Aspirations without provoking a crisis of faith or sacrificing a portion of its powers. A
Nation has three Aspirations, phrased as goals to be achieved - although generally, a Nation’s goals will take a
long time to attain.
Specifically, at the end of each session, for each Aspiration that the Nation has achieved or advanced during
that session, it gains a Beat. If the Nation takes an action that directly opposes an Aspiration, or one of its leading
members (e.g. a character with Mystery Cult Initiation (the Nation) at 3+; a PC, in a Nation she founded) does

92 Nations
so openly, the Nation takes the Disturbed Condition. (If a leader secretly opposes an Aspiration he gains the
Embarrassing Secret [CofD 289] Condition; the organization takes Disturbed when the secret comes out.) An
Aspiration can be freely replaced if the Nation completes it; as long as something remains to be done, though, a
Nation must sacrifice a dot of its Standing or resolve the New Dreams Condition to abandon an Aspiration.
A Nation’s Vocation is like an Aspiration, only more so - it’s the lodestar the Nation follows. As with Aspira-
tions, a Nation gains a Beat at the end of each story in which it advanced or did significant work on its Vocation.
In addition, any member of the Nation may take its Vocation for his own at the beginning of a story, in addition
to his Aspirations (and other Vocations, in a Noble’s case.) Deviating from the Vocation, however, is unthink-
able. A Nation cannot take any action opposed to its Vocation, and if a leader does so the Nation both takes the
Disturbed Condition and takes 2 lethal damage. Also, the Nation can’t change its Vocation at all; it pursues that
goal unless and until it disbands.
When player characters belong to a Nation, they can turn their experiences from their own labors for the
Light into lessons for their compatriots. A PC may donate Luminous Experiences to the Nation she belongs to,
to improve its traits; each donated Experience counts as one on the Nation’s tally, equal to those it earned from
its Aspirations and Vocation.

Virtue and Vice

A Nation’s Virtue is the personality trait its members recognize as highest and best, and most worth endur-
ing trials to act upon; its Vice is the temptation its members are likely to yield to, gaining a moment of comfort.
A Nation may fulfill its Vice once each scene, when it acts as a body in accord with the Vice; each participant in
that action regains one Willpower. A Nation may fulfill its Virtue once each session, when it acts as a body in
accord with the Virtue in the face of difficulty or risk; each participant in the action regains all spent Willpower.

Nation Building Summary

• Choose a Vocation and three Aspirations.
• Choose a Virtue and a Vice.
• Power, Finesse and Resistance begin with 1 dot each; distribute 6 more dots among the Attributes.
• Choose 7 dots of Merits.
• Standing begins at 1; Morale begins at Resistance + 5.
• Design the Nation’s Mystery Cult Initiation Merit.

Damage and Recovery

Morale acts as a Health track, with bashing, lethal and aggravated levels of damage. Bashing damage rep-
resents simple stress from minor obstacles, or distractions stealing the members’ attention; it fades at a rate
of 1 box/2 days. Lethal damage represents serious disagreements between members, obscuring the common
purpose; it heals at 1 box/week. Aggravated damage represents rifts that threaten to splinter the Nation; it heals
at 1 box/month. If a Nation’s Morale fills with bashing damage, it gains the Disturbed Condition - which, if not
addressed, leads to the Coup or New Dreams Conditions. If its Morale fills with lethal damage, it takes the Strife
Condition. A Nation disbands if its Morale fills with aggravated damage.
Morale and damage also determine how well Commonalty Charms will work on the Nation. A Nation with
2 or fewer undamaged Morale boxes is nearly falling apart - its Commonalty is Casual. With 3, 4 or 5 undamaged
Morale, the members cooperate but lack enthusiasm; their Commonalty is Interested. With 6, 7 or 8 undamaged
Morale the organization is in good order, and its Commonalty is Concerned; finally, with undamaged Morale of
9 or more the members have their hearts in the work, and their Commonalty reaches Dedicated.
To resolve Coup, New Dreams or Strife, the Nation’s leaders may (and, for Strife, must) force a crisis: a
moment that, though it diminishes the organization, at least settles the quarrel. Three methods are available
to them:

Nations 93
 Purge: In a show of power, the leaders throw the dissenters out. This violent method leaves resentments
among the members and blackens the Nation’s reputation; the Nation loses a dot of Resistance and gains the
Notoriety [CofD 290] Condition.
Favors: The leaders use the Nation’s social connections to shore up their position, calling in favors and
making promises in its name. This method ties down the Nation’s strength, leaving it in debt to others; the
Nation loses a dot of Power and gains the Leveraged [CofD 289] Condition.
Compromise: The leaders reach an accomodation with the dissenters in the name of the Nation’s Vocation.
This method reduces the leaders’ discretion and the ways they can exert influence; the Nation loses a dot of
Finesse and gains the Insubordinate Condition.

Projects
A project is a set of actions taken by the Nation’s members in cooperation toward a desired outcome. Each
project is represented as a sequence of tasks, which are activities carried out over at least a scene; the number
of projects a Nation can undertake in a story, and the number of tasks that can be part of one project, are both
limited by Standing. However, if a Nation truly needs to take on a project past its limit, it may; but it takes 1
lethal damage for each task it completes.
Any project is a long-term effort (so using a Merit, for instance, is never a project) but how long they take
varies. Small projects that would occupy the time of a single character for a few days need just a few tasks to
complete. Massive projects that involve coordinating hundreds of people over weeks or months are represented
by a long sequence of tasks - in fact, one too long for all but the largest of Nations to complete in a single story.
Players who want their Nation to attempt such projects will have to break them into parts. Indeed, most of the
activities of large organizations aren’t single projects in the mechanical sense, but series in which each project
is a milestone, leading up to an ultimate goal.

# Tasks Example Projects

1 Change the vote of a city councilor. Organize a band’s performance at a bar. Collect food donations from
a neighborhood and deliver them to the needy. Purify a Tainted area of Size 0 or 1. Recruit members from
the local population.
3 Persuade a town council or company to change a policy. Hold a concert at a venue seating hundreds.
Supply food and shelter to a small town destroyed by fire. Purify a Tainted area of Size 2 or 3. Expand the
Nation’s influence throughout a city.
5 Become an important political faction in the local government. Organize a tour of concerts through a
region. Rescue and supply the needs of people trapped by a great flood. Purify a Tainted area of Size 4.
Establish branches of the Nation throughout a region.
7 Persuade the national government to enact a new policy. Turn a Nation member into a national celebrity.
Rebuild a town destroyed by natural disaster. Purify a Tainted area of Size 5. Recruit members throughout
a region.
10 Become a player in national politics. Invent a new genre of music and inspire popular devotion to it. Re-
store order to a region suffering social collapse. Purify all the Tainted areas in a city.

The Nation completes tasks to generate points of Effort. Effort can be spent during a project to create tem-
porary Social Merits to help the project, at a cost of 1 Effort/dot; such Merits last for the current session. How-
ever, Effort is also needed when the project ends, to keep problems from arising. A task is normally resolved
by rolling the Nation’s Attribute + Standing.
Dramatic Failure: The Nation gains an adverse Condition, and if other Tasks depend on this one the
project’s task limit becomes 1 lower.
Failure: The Nation gets no Effort, and a complication arises. Any task depending on this one takes a
-2 penalty.
Success: The Nation earns 1 Effort.

94 Nations
 Exceptional Success: The Nation earns 2 Effort and gains a beneficial Condition related to the task.
The PCs may choose to perform a task on their Nation’s behalf, rather than let the Nation work. If it’s just
one PC doing so, the Storyteller picks a dice pool for the player to roll, replacing the Nation’s. If the whole nakama
takes over a task, the Storyteller should resolve the task as a full scene, and award Effort and other consequences
based on how things play out.
When all the tasks of a project are completed, the project resolves, bringing about the desired goal. The
accumulated Effort determines the price the Nation pays for its prize: if Effort equals or exceeds the number of
tasks, the project succeeds with no problems. If it doesn’t reach that mark, the Storyteller imposes penalties on
the Nation: for each point that Effort falls short of the number of tasks, one complication appears. Complications
arising from failed tasks count towards this number. A Nation can choose to abandon a project at any point
before completing its last task. While it loses the goal, it also evades the problems that would arise if it fell short
of the necessary Effort - only the complications from those tasks the Nation has completed remain.

Sample Complications
• The task severely taxes the members’ morale; the Nation takes 2 lethal damage.
• The Nation’s members question its leaders’ judgement; the Nation gains the Insubordinate Condi-
tion.
• The project cost more than anticipated, and the Nation goes into debt; it gains the Leveraged Con-
dition.
• The Nation comes to public notice, in a poor light; it gains the Notoriety Condition.
• The Nation makes an enemy by pursuing the project.
• The project revealed a greater, previously unsuspected, problem.

National Merits
A Nation may take many of the Merits open to characters. From the Chronicles of Darkness, Nations may
have Allies, Anonymity, Closed Book, Contacts, Encyclopedic Knowledge, Eye for the Strange, Fame, Fixer, Good
Time Management, Hobbyist Clique, Language, Library, Multilingual, Resources, Safe Place, Staff, Status, and
Untouchable. From Princess: the Hopeful, Nations may have Palace and Troupe Magic. Some of these Merits have
different rules for Nations:
Allies: A Nation rolls Finesse + Standing + Allies when calling on its Allies.
Contacts: A Nation rolls Finesse + Standing + Contacts to consult its informants.
Encyclopedic Knowledge: A Nation rolls Power + Standing to recall a relevant fact.
Eye for the Strange: A Nation rolls Power + Standing to recognize the otherworldly.
Good Time Management: A Nation with this Merit reduces the Effort needed at a project’s end by 1, to
a minimum of 1.
Hobbyist Clique: A Nation gains 9-again on project tasks that fall under the chosen Skill.
Staff: A Nation may use its Staff to carry out minor actions outside of its projects, but not on any task within
a project.
Library, Palace, Safe Place, Troupe Magic: Any member of the Nation gains the benefits of these Merits.
There are also a few Merits that only Nations can have.

Enthusiastic (•••)
The Nation’s members throw their hearts into its business. Add one box to its Morale.

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Supernatural Membership (•-•••••)
The Nation’s membership includes people with extraordinary abilities. Any NPC members of the Nation
created with simplified rules (that is, with general dice pools instead of Skills) may be given Supernatural Merits,
with dots up to twice the Nations rating in Supernatural Membership.

National Magic
As Nations grow, they learn to draw on the Light to bless their efforts, letting their members accomplish the
near-impossible. A Nation with Standing of 2 or more acquires its own Invocation, similar to (but significantly
weaker than) the Invocations of the Queens. Any member of the Nation can purchase dots in its Invocation at
the affinity cost of 2 Experiences/dot, and use it in the same ways as any other Invocation. The Invocation is
free to use on actions directly serving the Nation’s Missions and Vocation, and is locked out to anyone who acts
against its Vocation for the rest of the current story.
However, both the Nation’s overall Standing and members’ position within it limit how high they can reach.
The Nation gains Invocation dots as its Standing rises, and members can’t have more dots in its Invocation than
the Nation has. Moreover, a character must have at least as many dots in the Nation’s Mystery Cult Initiation
Merit as in its Invocation. If a Nation’s Standing falls or a character loses dots in its Initiation Merit, he loses the
excess Invocation dots (the Experiences are refunded, as with Sanctity of Merits.) Finally, learning a Nation’s
Invocation doesn’t grant a Noble any Charm upgrades.
A Nation, as a corporate body, can call on its Invocation for aid in its projects. For one task in each project it
undertakes, the Nation’s leaders may come together for a ritual confirmation of its identity, history and purpose,
relate those to the task immediately at hand, and ask the Light for blessing and guidance; on doing so, the Nation
adds its Invocation dots to the dice pool for that task.
Nations may also gain a small number of Practical Charms as their Standing rises. A Nation buys all Charms
at the out-of-affinity rate, and members can use the Nation’s Charms if they have dots in its Invocation equal to
or greater than the Charm’s rating. They do not need any supernatural quality other than that - even a mundane
member can cast the Nation’s Practical Charms (if he has the Wisps, or a Charm doesn’t require them) and Noble
members don’t have to transform. Nations may change their Practical Charms when their Standing changes. If
a Nation’s Standing drops below the level that can support the Charms it has, it loses the excess dots, and their
cost in Experiences is refunded.
It’s even possible for Noble members of a Nation to invent Charms that draw on its Invocation, or upgrades
to other Charms that do so; and the Nation itself can acquire those Charms as Practical, if its Standing permits.
Such Charms naturally need to be tied to the Nation’s Vocation or Aspirations in some way. Variations of Charms
that require other Invocations, if thematically appropriate, can be adapted to the Nation as well. When players
control a Nation, they may develop custom Charms for it that require dots in its Invocation, up to the Nation’s
own dots. Such Charms will still work if the Nation disbands and its Invocation is lost, but can’t then be taught
- they have to be recreated independently.

National Conditions
Disturbed (persistent)
The Nation’s members entertain real doubts of its current direction. When the Nation’s members fulfill its
Virtue, they regain only one Willpower. At the start of each session, the Storyteller rolls (10 - Resistance) dice
and keeps any successes; when he accumulates 10 successes, or this Condition is inflicted again, replace it with
either Coup or New Dreams.
Causes: The Nation violates an Aspiration, or learns that one of its leaders has done so; the Nation’s Morale
fills with bashing damage.
Resolution: The Nation gains a dot of Standing; the Condition is replaced.
Beat: Internal quarrels disrupt a project - the Nation accepts failure on a task that should have succeeded.

96 Nations
Coup (persistent)
The Nation’s leaders have lost the members’ confidence, and new leaders have stepped up to challenge
their positions. All the Nation’s actions in projects are reduced to a chance die. Once a session, the Storyteller
may introduce a complication related to the coup: a block on one of the leaders’ Social Merits, an attack on the
leaders, etc.
Causes: The Disturbed Condition worsens.
Resolution: The Nation goes through crisis or disbands; the present leaders step down and are replaced.
Beat: The Storyteller introduces a complication from the coup.

New Dreams (persistent)

New doctrines are spreading among the Nation’s members, threatening to replace the old ideas. The Nation
gains a new Aspiration; each time it gains a Beat from it, the Storyteller notes it. All the Nation’s actions in
projects become contested, with the opposed pool equal to the number of Beats earned from the new Aspiration
- if that pool wins, the new Aspiration gains Effort instead of the project. If the new Aspiration earns more Effort
from a project than the project itself did when it completes, the Nation replaces one of its existing Aspirations
with the new one.
Causes: The Disturbed Condition worsens.
Resolution: The Nation goes through crisis or disbands; the Nation abandons an Aspiration and adopts
the new one.
Beat: The Nation advances the new Aspiration.

Strife
The Nation is tearing itself apart. All projects are abandoned, and none may be initiated. The Nation up-
grades 1 box to aggravated damage each day the Strife continues.
Causes: The Nation’s Morale fills with lethal damage.
Resolution: The Nation goes through crisis or disbands.

Insubordinate
The Nation’s members continually question their leaders’ choice of plans. At the beginning of each project,
some leader must spend 1 Willpower to suppress the internal debate and get the project moving.
Causes: A complication from a project; the Nation goes through crisis.
Resolution: The Nation fulfills its Virtue; the Nation completes a project without complications; the Nation
gains a dot of Standing.

Mundane Organizations
Ultimately, the World of Darkness will not truly change until people have changed - ordinary people, with
no hint of the paranormal about them; people just like the ones you see in the street every day; the people who
close their eyes to any hint of the strangeness and wonder of the world, because too much of it is perilous to
notice. Every Princess learns in time that she must understand and persuade ordinary people if she wants to
push back the Darkness.
But no man is an island, and no one stands completely alone. Everyone acts not just by and for themselves,
but in cooperation with others; the most magnificent things ever done are the work of thousands of hands. To
accomplish her mission, a Noble cannot limit herself to one person at a time; she must deal with the organiza-
tions in which, through which, they live and act.
The systems described above can represent mundane organizations of small to medium size - groups with
sway ranging from a small neighborhood to a city - with minor changes. A mundane group doesn’t have a Vo-

Nations 97
cation, an Invocation or Practical Charms (those are gifts from the Light) and defines a Mystery Cult Initiation
Merit only if it is a cult; but it does have all the other traits of Nations, and can take actions in the same way.

Opposing Projects
Just as PCs can act on their Nation’s behalf, PCs can try to block an organization’s actions. Such an attempt
is best resolved as a sequence of scenes, with each scene representing one task of the project the PCs want to
frustrate. In such scenes, if the PCs succeed in their goal the organization fails the task, gaining no Effort and
facing a complication; if they fail, on the other hand, the organization earns its point of Effort and the project
continues unimpeded. Spectacular success or failure on the PCs’ part maps to dramatic failure or exceptional
success on the organization’s roll. It’s up to the Storyteller whether the PCs’ interference with an organization’s
work causes it to abandon a project.
A player-controlled Nation will also sometimes come up against other organizations, with their projects
interfering with its own, or discover that another organization’s work has to be stopped. Whenever one orga-
nization opposes another’s project, the rolls for that project’s tasks become contested; only the winner of the
contest gains any Effort from that task, even if both succeed. An organization must start one project to oppose
another’s project - merely wishing the other group will fail has no effect. But if two organization’s projects are
naturally opposed resolve the conflicting tasks with contested actions, and the group with the least shortfall of
Effort at the end achieves its goal, while the other gains only what remains consistent with that achievement.
When organizations of different Standing contend, the one of lesser Standing can’t contest any more tasks than
its limit per project, leaving the rest unopposed, but it may pick which tasks are contested.

Violence
The ultimate form of conflict between organizations comes when one determines that the other must be
destroyed. An assault on an organization often takes the form of violence against its members, but human death
isn’t the point - the goal is to break the opponents’ morale and sense of corporate identity. A war of organizations
is a project much like other projects, though neither organization has a set goal. Instead each battle in the war
is resolved as a contested task, and the organization that wins the contest inflicts 1 lethal damage to the losing
group’s Morale. Both organizations must respect the limits on tasks per project and projects per story of their
Standing, but either organization may continue fighting when a project runs out of tasks by starting another
project.
Organizations can also harass each other by means short of violence - propaganda campaigns, legal ma-
neuvers designed to block the opponents’ normal activities, attempts to lure away critical staff, and so forth.
These are resolved like wars, except that the winner of each contest deals out bashing damage, not lethal, to the
loser. One party to a conflict can inflict bashing damage, while the other does lethal; an organization may choose
to respond to harassment by declaring war, or meet a violent attack with gentler correction. An organization
decides which form of damage its attack will inflict before resolving the contest.

Social Maneuvers
Organizations can’t perform social maneuvers; when they want to persuade a character into a course of
action they start a project. However, characters can use social maneuvering against organizations. When trying
to convince an organization to act with a social maneuver, the number of Doors required starts equal to the
organization’s Resistance. Aspirations affect that number as they do for characters. Virtue and Vice have the
same effect as for characters. A goal that would require the organization to take damage to its Morale affects its
Doors as a breaking point does a character’s Doors.

Camaraderies and Nations

The majority of the organizations founded or led by the Hopeful aren’t full Nations. For instance, a
Camaraderie that embraces most Nobles in a city generally isn’t a Nation - its goal of mutual support against
the Darkness doesn’t call for the life of dedication that a Nation requires, outside of a few cities where the
Darkness rules and Nobles must fight desperately just to survive. The typical Camaraderie is only a mundane

98 Nations
organization that is run by Light-touched people, with Aspirations like “train newly Blossomed Hopeful”,
“cleanse Tainted areas” or “protect Beacons”, and a Standing of 2 or 3.
Principalities, being organized around shared or similar Vocations, are more likely to have a Nation at
their core, and some Princesses use the terms Principality and Nation interchangeably. Nonetheless, the
ideas are distinct. A network of Nobles might well all be convinced of the importance and urgency of a cer-
tain goal, yet not wish to create a cult to serve it - especially when that goal is, in itself, entirely mundane.
Quasi-religious devotion can put outsiders off, and some projects need public goodwill. And even when the
Nobles of a Principality do found a Nation, the mystical sect often doesn’t include everyone in the organi-
zation that birthed it.

Nations 99
100
 Chapter 3: The Power of Love
I never renounce my feelings. True Love can not be taken away by anyone.
—Sailor Moon

The Charms are the greater magics of the Hopeful. They are divided into 10 families; each Calling has an
affinity to 3 of them, learning the Charms within them more easily.
Each Charm has an Action attribute, giving the type of action using it is.

Instant Activating the Charm is an instant action, taking a turn. The dice pool to roll for the action is noted.
Reactive Similar to Instant, except that (like a dodge in combat) you can declare the activation before your
turn in the initiative order, in response to another person’s action.
Full turn Activating the Charm is an instant action, but it also requires forgoing Defense in the turn you
activate it.
Reflexive Activating the Charm is a reflexive action; it doesn’t interfere with your normal action. A dice
pool to roll is noted.
Extended Activating the Charm is an extended action. A dice pool to roll, the time required for each roll,
and the threshold number of successes to finish activation are noted.
… and resisted The Charm has a target, and you must subtract one of his traits from the dice pool.
… and contested The Charm has a target, who reflexively rolls an opposed dice pool; you must roll more successes
than he does for the Charm to take effect. If you and the target roll the same number of successes,
both reroll the same pools until one gets more.
Permanent The Charm enhances another ability. No action is required to activate it - if the proper conditions
obtain, it just works.

The rules for extended actions are slightly different for Charms. A Noble does not take a Condition to con-
tinue if she fails a roll; instead she takes a cumulative -2 penalty to her dice pool each time she forges on. She
does take a Condition on a dramatic failure; her magic’s failure generally causes a loss of confidence, so any of
the Conditions that come from a compromise are appropriate. On an exceptional success the Noble may reduce
the time interval or the threshold as with mundane extended actions, or she may take the Inspired Condition
[CofD 289] related to Charms of the same family (or some other Condition with the Storyteller’s approval.)
Other than the permanent Charms, each Charm has a cost, usually in Wisps. Powerful Charms call for
Willpower points; many Charms favored by the Queen of Storms inflict damage on their user, which resists mag-
ical healing; and using some Charms favored by the Queen of Tears triggers Sensitivity. A Princess who cannot
spend enough Wisps to activate a Charm in a single turn may still use it; it just takes her several turns to do
so. She must use her action over consecutive turns to charge up the magic, spending what she can; the Charm
activates in the turn when she spends the last Wisp needed.
Most activated Charms have a duration, and end when the stated time runs out. An activated Charm without
a stated duration changes its target permanently in a flash of magic; as a Charm it ends immediately. Charms
with an “indefinite” duration leave a continuing trace of magic on their target (often a Condition or Tilt) which
other supernatural powers can detect or influence. A Charm with a duration of “concentration” needs its user’s
active attention, and ends if the user spends her turn’s action on anything but maintaining the Charm.
If a Charm is used on a person, a Princess can use it on herself unless the text of the Charm specifically
states she cannot.
Each Charm has a rating in dots, which sets the price and difficulty of learning its basic effect. Most Charms
also define upgrades, which modify and enhance their effects; each upgrade to a Charm adds 1 dot to its effective
rating. A few Charms have another Charm as a prerequisite; to learn these Charms, a Princess must have learned
the prerequisite Charm. Upgrades can also have prerequisites, generally of other upgrades to the same Charm.

101
Finally, a Princess’ Inner Light limits the dots she can put in a Charm; a Princess cannot learn a Charm with a
basic rating higher than Inner Light + 2, or upgrade a Charm with an effective rating equal to that.
Many upgrades change the cost or duration of their Charm, or add a modifier to the activation roll. There-
fore, you are not required to apply any upgrade when using a Charm - the basic effect is always available, at
the original cost.
A number of permanent Charms have upgrades that allow a Noble to spend Wisps for an additional effect.
Unless such an upgrade’s description says otherwise, such effects are activated reflexively without a roll, sepa-
rately from the basic Charm’s effect. A Noble doesn’t have to pay for those effects until she actually uses them.

Freaking the Mundanes?

The Integrity system [CofD 73-75] states that witnessing the supernatural is a breaking point for mun-
dane humans; does that mean Hopeful magic can break a mundane witness? Unfortunately, yes, it does. The
Light is fundamentally benign, but it’s still a supernatural power, and no one in the World of Darkness feels
safe in the presence of genuine magic, whatever its provenance. Some Nobles theorize that the Kingdom’s
fall wounded the spirit of humanity itself, to make them fear the mysterious; others note that so much magic
in the modern world is wielded by evil monsters that fearing the supernatural is only sensible. Either way, it
will take many generations for the Nobility to dispel the fear and distrust of ordinary people for themselves.
However, seeing a Princess in her glory isn’t quite the sanity-breaking experience that witnessing oth-
er supernaturals can become. Meeting a transformed Princess is never a breaking point. Seeing a Princess
change to or from her mundane form is a breaking point, but at a -1 penalty at most. If a Princess uses
a Charm to perform an obviously supernatural feat, any mundane witnesses will reach a breaking point,
though again at a -1 penalty at most. Targets of a Charm may experience a breaking point with a greater
penalty, if the Storyteller thinks the situation merits it. No character reaches a breaking point from witness-
ing magic from the Light more often than once a scene, and any character who is familiar with the Nobility
and understands their mission is immune to breaking points from seeing their powers.
Finally, dramatic failures on these breaking points generally don’t leave the kind of traumas represented
by the Broken, Fugue or Madness Conditions. A more usual result is a persistent Obsession with finding the
Noble whose magic inflicted the breaking point. Another possibility, seen in hardened criminals, is being
frightened into repentance. If the question should come up in play, we encourage the Storyteller to be
inventive.

Charms and Invocations

Normally, when she activates a Charm, the Princess spends 1 Wisp on top of the Charm’s usual cost to apply
one of the Invocations she knows - this adds her dots in the Invocation to the dice pool for activating the Charm.
(This is a modifier to the dice pool; in an extended action, applying an Invocation does not raise the maximum
number of rolls.) Charms that don’t require a roll to activate gain power from Invocations in other ways; for
example, several permanent Charms allow a Princess to apply an Invocation to some mundane Skill rolls. It is
never possible to apply two Invocations to a single dice pool, or to stack Invocations in any other way.
An Invocation can be applied for free (without paying the extra Wisp) under certain conditions, generally
when her actions are consonant with the principles of the Queen favoring that Invocation, or the target of her
actions has a symbolic link with the Invocation. (For a permanent Charm, the target is whoever or whatever the
Princess uses the enhanced ability on.) There is also, for each Invocation, a prohibition that a Princess should
not break; if she does, she loses the right to apply that Invocation for a period of time, at least until the current
scene ends.
A fair number of Charms require dots in an Invocation to purchase; these are called invoked Charms, and
are not compatible with any Invocation but their prerequisite. When using such a Charm, a Princess can apply
the prerequisite Invocation to gain its bonus (if conditions permit, and she hasn’t broken the ban) or she can
make the activation roll without any bonus, but she may not apply any other Invocation’s bonus. If a Charm does
not require an Invocation to purchase it, any Invocation can be applied to it; these are called general Charms.

102 Charms and Invocations

There are a few general Charms with upgrades that require Invocation dots – applying such an upgrade converts
the Charm to an invoked one – and some invoked Charms with upgrades that require more Invocation dots than
the basic Charm does. Upgrades that require different Invocations are not compatible; you may not apply both
of them to the same activation of a Charm.

Opposed Charms: Clash of Wills

Occasionally, Nobles working at cross purposes will use Charms at the same time that can’t both succeed.
For instance, two of the Hopeful may use the same Shape Charm on the same object to sculpt it in different ways;
one Princess may use an Appear Charm to disguise herself while another uses a Learn Charm to see through
disguises; or one Noble tries to calm a crowd when another is magically inciting it to riot. More frequently, a
Princess will find herself using Charms against the powers of supernatural creatures in such a way that either
the Charm or the creature’s power must prevail. When this happens the two characters have a Clash of Wills.
The Storyteller resolves both powers according to their descriptions, including any costs and side effects
to their users. If both succeed, the two characters make a contested roll; whoever gets more successes has their
power go off as intended, while the other works only so far as the winner’s power permits. Should the two char-
acters tie the contest, they just repeat the roll until one of them gets more than the other. A Princess’ dice pool
in a Clash of Wills equals her Inner Light plus an Invocation - for an invoked Charm, the prerequisite Invocation;
for a general Charm, her Queen’s Invocation, or her highest Invocation if she’s courtless. Her Belief modifies the
pool, giving the same modifier as for a compromise. The rules for other supernatural beings define the pools
they use for a Clash of Wills.
Characters may spend Willpower to bolster the contested roll, but only if they are physically present and
aware that their powers are clashing. Certain powers, such as those with exceptionally long durations, are more
enduring in a clash. Day-long effects add one die to the clash roll, week-long effects add two, month-long three,
and effects that would last a year or longer add four.

Charm Types and Modifiers

Many Charms follow rules which aren’t specific to them, but shared with other Charms; these rules are
collected here for reference.

Sympathy
Some Charms can be used on distant targets, or on multiple targets, by taking penalties to their activation
roll. If a Charm’s dice pool is modified by Sympathy, the strength of the connection between the Princess and
her target affects the power of the Charm. Consult this table for the penalty to the activation roll.

Penalty Connection Requires

0 Sensory You can see the target directly.
-2 Intimate The target is a longtime friend, a member of your family, one you love deeply, or a prized
possession.
-4 Known You know the target well; or the target is something you own, or something of great
importance to you.
-6 Acquainted You know the target slightly; or the target is something you have used, or something you
have some feelings for.
-8 Encountered You have met the target briefly; or the target is something you have touched.
-10 Described You have a verbal description of the target, but nothing more.
X Unknown You know nothing of the target. No Charm can affect targets without a sympathetic con-
nection.

Opposed Charms: Clash of Wills 103

Commonalty
If a Charm’s dice pool is modified by Commonalty, it can affect all the members of an organization who are
currently present at once. If such a Charm is resisted, the member of the organization with the best resistance
trait resists for all members; for a contested Charm, each member rolls to contest individually. The difficulty of
extending the Charm over an organization depends on the commitment the members have towards each other,
or towards the common goal for which the organization exists. Consult this table for the appropriate penalty.

Penalty Commitment Requires

0 Individual One person, the default.
-1 Dedicated Everyone to be affected is mutually Intimate, or the organization’s goal takes up the
majority of its members’ time and thought. An established nakama, a family.
-3 Concerned Everyone to be affected is mutually Known or better, or all the members make signifi-
cant sacrifices for the organization’s goal. A new nakama, the long term employees of
a small business.
-5 Interested Everyone to be affected is mutually Acquainted or better, or the members share an
interest in the organization’s goal. A social club, employees of a large corporation.
X Casual Some of those to be affected have only Encountered each other; the targets are merely
a lot of people gathered in one place, with no common interest. No Charm can affect
everyone in such groups.

Longevity
Span of time Penalty Some Learn Charms scry across time, revealing events in the past
or (for Specchio) the future. These Charms penalize their activation rolls
Within a day 0 based on the span of time between the Noble and the event she wants to
Within a week -1 see. Consult this table for the appropriate penalty.
Within a month -2
Within a year -3 Sanctuary
Within five years -4
Several Charms create long-lasting effects over an area, enchanting it
Within ten years -5
into a Sanctuary. All of these Charms require extended actions to activate,
Add an additional -1 for every addi- and the threshold of successes required for the actions depends on the
tional ten years. size of the Sanctuary. Add the successes listed below to the threshold for
these Charms.
Rating Size of Sanctuary Affected Successes
X Just enough room for one person to stand or lie down (Sanctuary Charms can’t affect an n/a
area this small)
• A small apartment or a cabin in the woods; 1-2 rooms 2
•• A large apartment or small remote house; 3-4 rooms 4
••• A converted church, warehouse or large house; 5-8 rooms 6
•••• A mansion or apartment building; 9-15 rooms 8
••••• A vast palatial estate, a city block, a skyscraper or a small village 10

Also, the Charms that affect a Sanctuary become easier to activate when the area in question is one the
Princess values, and conversely are difficult to use in areas she dislikes or fears. Activation rolls for these Charms
should take modifiers similar to the following.

104 Charm Types and Modifiers

Modifier Connection to the Area
+5 Exceptionally strong memories of love and safety, such as a childhood home
+3 Strong memories of love and safety, such as a long time friend’s home
+1 The Princess, or the Nation she belongs to, owns the property
+1-3 The area is a Safe Place for the Princess (bonus = half the Merit dots, rounding up)
-1 The Princess has never been in the area before
-2 The Princess is trespassing in the area
-3 Strong memories of fear or horror

Consecration
Some Charms may be cast on an area with the Consecrated Condition. The Light’s influence over such an
area sustains these Charms beyond their normal time; once cast, a Charm lasts with its full effect until the Con-
dition fades, or the Noble intentionally dismisses it (this takes an instant action.) When a Consecration Charm
affects a Sanctuary it must be used on exactly the area covered by a Consecrated Condition to be sustained by it.

Avatar (Queen)
Certain powerful invoked Charms require a Noble to summon the essence of a Queen into herself, and let
that Queen guide her magic to the exclusion of all others. If a Princess activates a Charm tagged as Avatar, she
cannot use any Invocation except the Charm’s prerequisite until the Charm’s duration expires.
The Queens accept as their avatars only those who uphold their principles and ideals. The Minor Invoker
Merit may not be used to learn an Avatar Charm. A Bequest based on an Avatar Charm will not work unless its
user has at least 3 dots in the Charm’s prerequisite Invocation.

Favor (Skill)
The permanent Charms tagged as Favor (Skill) begin with a simple effect: they allow a Noble to apply In-
vocations to mundane actions based on the named Skill while transformed. While these Charms can have a wide
variety of upgrades, all of them provide one standard upgrade.
Specialized: When the Noble concentrates her training in a narrow field, the Light ensures she can’t fail.
Whenever any Specialty she has in the favored Skill applies to the Noble’s action, she may reroll her dice pool
after seeing the result. She must accept the result of the second roll.

Regalia
Permanent Charms tagged as Regalia give a Noble the ability to conjure up an item while transformed, or
alter her clothing while transformed to meet a need. Such items and altered clothing are called her Regalia, the
emblems, symbols and paraphernalia of her office, her duty, her Calling and her Nobility. A Regalia Charm puts
basic tools at the Noble’s disposal for a specific task, ensuring that when she has to carry out that task, she never
suffers penalties for lacking equipment. It also (unless the Charm says otherwise) allows the Noble to apply an
Invocation to her dice pools when she uses the Regalia piece. The combination of these two effects is called the
Regalia bonus.
Like Favor Charms, Regalia Charms can have many upgrades, but all of them provide one standard upgrade:
Quality: (Stackable 3 times) The Regalia is very well-made and suited to its purpose. It offers an equipment
bonus to dice pools related to its proper use. Each time the Noble takes this upgrade the bonus increases by +1.
The total bonus from all Quality upgrades is the Quality bonus.
Any piece of a Noble’s Regalia can appear on her person, ready for use, whenever she transforms, if she
wishes it to. She can switch any number of Regalia pieces into or out of solid existence with a transformation
action; the dice pool for this action is the same as the one for full transformation. However, if she returns to

Charm Types and Modifiers 105

mundane form she must dismiss all her Regalia as well. (Marking Regalia as Practical lifts this restriction; a
Noble may summon or dismiss a Practical Regalia piece in either form.) Naturally, pieces of Regalia help a Noble
with her goals only when they are in existence - any bonuses they confer are lost if she sends them away.
Each piece of Regalia has a Durability equal to 1 + half the Princess’ Inner Light (rounding up) and a Struc-
ture equal to its Durability + the Princess’ Belief, regardless of its actual Size or composition. Also, because Re-
galia is part of a Princess’ transformed self, any supernatural power that targets a piece of Regalia triggers a
Clash of Wills using the effective rating of the Charm that added that piece. If a Regalia piece is ever destroyed,
the Princess may recreate it by the same method used to recreate a destroyed phylactery.
A Princess always knows where her Regalia are and what their state is, even if she forgot in the heat of battle
that a piece was destroyed or lost. Like her Phylactery, each piece of her Regalia has an unbreakable Intimate
sympathetic connection to her transformed identity. If she has lost a piece, she may recall it to herself with
a transformation action. When she does so she may replace all lost Regalia at once, although there is nothing
compelling her to do so, rather than leave some lying around.
If the Storyteller agrees, a Princess’ player may declare that one piece of her Regalia is the anchor for two or
more of her permanent Charms - for instance, a magical staff that shoots fire can be the Regalia for both Kensai
and Levinbolt. Naturally, losing such Regalia pieces removes the benefits of all the Charms tied to them.

Appear
The Appear family of Charms change a Princess’ appearance, and produce other illusions. Seekers and
Troubadours have affinity for them.

Light the Way (Appear •)

Action: Permanent
A portion of the Noble’s Regalia can, at any time, emit a soft light that banishes the thickest natural darkness.
The light source can take several forms - a ring or bracelet, a jewel on her brow, an actual small flashlight, and a
saintly halo have all been seen; whatever its form, it illuminates the Noble’s path and leaves her hands free. She
can bring the light up or douse it reflexively, and set it to shine at any intensity short of full sunlight.
The Noble can also focus the light to a bright, narrow beam into someone’s eyes to inflict temporary blind-
ness. This is a normal attack using Dexterity + Athletics, and the target’s Defense applies. On a normal success
the target is Blinded [CofD 281] in one eye; on an exceptional success he is Blinded in both eyes. Either way,
the Tilt lasts for one turn.

Upgrade: Dazzling (Fuoco •)

The Noble can reflexively make her light burn at a constant eye-watering intensity, blinding anyone nearby
who looks at her, by spending a Wisp. Anyone who can see her must succeed on a Stamina + Composure roll,
penalized by the Noble’s Fuoco, or be Blinded in one eye until he looks away from her, or she dims her light
again, whichever comes first.

Twenty Faces (Appear •)

Regalia
Action: Permanent
Sometimes, the full glory of the light must be veiled, so that a Princess may walk unnoticed. The Noble can
reshape her iconic clothing into an outfit that helps her fit in; with a transformation action, she is dressed in
appropriate “civilian” clothes for the area. The reshaped outfit acts as a basic disguise [CofD 277] that protects
the Noble from being noted as unusual. However, using obvious magic (such as Charms with visible effects, or
summoning other pieces of Regalia) resets the outfit to the Noble’s usual appearance. The outfit does not gain
the durability of Regalia pieces, and resets if it leaves the Noble’s possession.

106 Appear
 The Noble may take a mundane instant Subterfuge action to shape her clothes into a specific disguise, to
help her emulate a one-dot Social Merit (as a mundane disguise can do.) If she does so, the Regalia and Quality
bonuses both apply to any rolls she makes to keep up the impersonation.

Upgrade: Beautiful
The Noble can choose to stand out from the crowd rather than blending in. She may reshape her clothes
into high fashion [CofD 277] suitable for her current venue, or one she’s about to attend; the Regalia and Quality
bonuses also apply to any roll helped by fashionable clothes.
If she stays within the general theme of her iconic outfit (colors, decoration, motifs etc.) and is recognizable
as herself, the Noble may use Charms and other Regalia without resetting her clothes, but doesn’t get the benefit
of being in disguise.

Upgrade: Durable
The Noble’s clothing does not reset if she uses Charms or summons other Regalia. Instead, it flickers, re-
vealing her true appearance for a moment; observers will notice this if they succeed on a reflexive Wits + Com-
posure roll, penalized by her Quality bonus (if any.) The Charm won’t help the Noble explain how the person
she appears to be has magical powers, or where she got the object in her hands.

Upgrade: Masked
The Noble can change her features dramatically. By spending 1 Wisp, she may alter all aspects of her ap-
pearance - ethnicity, height, build, even sex - within the limits of her Size trait. (A Princess with the Giant Merit
will always be a very tall man or woman, no matter how this Charm is used; a child Princess cannot look like
a full-grown adult, and an adult cannot pass herself off as a child.) She may also, if she wishes, cloak her status
as a Noble from magical discovery.
All mundane attempts to identify the Noble fail automatically, and supernatural powers that pierce disguis-
es or reveal supernatural beings’ natures (if the Noble concealed hers) start a Clash of Wills. Applying Masked
does not give her extra protection from being mundanely detected as an outsider or impersonator, but the Re-
galia and Quality bonuses still apply.

Upgrade: Scaling
Requires Masked
When she creates a magical disguise, the Noble can shift her apparent Size to any value between 4 and
6, allowing a child to appear as an adult, or an adult as a child. Her actual Size doesn't change, so the illusion
doesn’t conform to her body. People unconsciously avoid touching parts of the Noble where appearance and
reality don't match, but objects don’t; objects passing through the illusion or hitting concealed body parts cause
the disguise to reset (or flicker, if the Durable upgrade was used.)

Unseen Traveller (Appear •)

Favor (Stealth)
Action: Permanent
A Princess usually wants to be seen, to be noticed, to be the one that holds the lantern of Light that is the
beacon to guide others. But sometimes, being seen is exactly what you don’t need, as the Darkness flees from
the Light it becomes harder to determine its plan and intent.

Upgrade: Elusive (Aria ••)

The Princess is especially difficult to follow, or shake off. When she shadows someone, or is being shad-
owed, while on foot [CofD 72] her opponent in the contest takes a penalty equal to her Aria, and she may spend
a Wisp to achieve an exceptional success on 3 successes.

Appear 107
Upgrade: Quiet (Lacrima ••)
The Princess’ movements are almost silent. When she attempts a surprise attack, her target’s roll to avoid
surprise [CofD 88] takes a penalty equal to her Lacrima, and all attempts to locate her by listening take the same
penalty. Moreover, she may spend a Wisp to give herself the Silenced Tilt for a number of turns equal to her
Lacrima.

Zephyr’s Track (Appear •, Aria •)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Dexterity + Stealth
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 scene
The Noble floats through the world like a breeze, leaving no trace of her passing except by her own will.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble becomes clumsy, prone to slip and make noise when she wants to hide.
She takes a -2 penalty on all Stealth dice pools until the scene ends.
Failure: The Noble leaves traces of herself behind her as usual.
Success: Until the Charm ends, gentle puffs of air clean away any traces the Noble leaves in the wake of
her movements. Footprints and fingerprints are brushed away; hairs and skin cells float behind her without
settling; drops of sweat or blood evaporate. Any attempt to follow her trail or deduce her actions from physical
evidence fails.
Exceptional Success: The Noble can choose to leave false evidence behind her that suggests a person
quite unlike herself passed where she has gone.

Upgrade: Multiple
Modified by Commonalty
The breezes can clear away traces of many people at once. The Noble uses the Charm on the members of an
organization she can see, using the Commonalty modifier. If she succeeds, all traces of their passing are erased.

Upgrade: Scryproof (Aria ••)

Cost: +1 Wisp
Even magic is blown awry when used to perceive the Noble. Any attempt to discover what she does during
the Charm’s duration with a supernatural power provokes a Clash of Wills. This applies to scrying from afar,
prophetic visions, and divinations of the past.

Sweet Fragrance (Appear •, Legno •)

Action: Instant and contested
Dice pool: Composure + Socialize vs. Composure + Supernatural Tolerance
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 scene
The Noble releases a subtle scent into the air around her, that relaxes those who breathe it and inclines them
to be friendly. She affects a circular area with a radius up to (Inner Light + Legno) yards, centered on herself.
Dramatic Failure: The scent the Noble releases is mildly offensive. She takes a -1 penalty on all Social
rolls for the rest of the scene, or until she cleans herself with soap.
Failure: The Noble releases no scent.

108 Appear
 Success: Anyone within (Inner Light + Legno) yards of the Noble who gets fewer successes on their dice
pool than her activation successes gains the Trusting Tilt.
Exceptional Success: The Noble gains a +2 bonus on Social rolls against anyone with the Trusting Tilt.

Upgrade: Lasting
Cost: +1 Wisp
The Noble releases the scent continuously for the duration; anyone who comes within her Inner Light in
yards until the Charm ends must roll Composure + Supernatural Tolerance, gaining the Trusting Tilt if they get
fewer than the activation successes.

Upgrade: Subtle (Legno ••)

The Noble permeates an object with her fragrance by touching it; the next person who touches or smells
it afterward must contest the Charm. The scent fades after someone has breathed it, or when the Charm ends,
whichever comes first. If the Noble applied Lasting, the scented object affects everyone who touches or smells
it until the Charm ends.

Mantle of Authority (Appear •, Terra •)

Action: Instant and resisted
Dice pool: Presence + Politics - target’s Composure
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 scene or 1 day
The Noble claims her authority from the Light to keep her person inviolate and her movements unrestrict-
ed. She must show her phylactery to her target to establish her credentials. The Charm fails if the Noble or her
target is engaged in combat.
Dramatic Failure: The target sees the Noble as a fraud or a lunatic, and will react accordingly.
Failure: The target sees nothing significant about the Noble’s phylactery.
Success: For the rest of the scene, the target assumes the Noble has diplomatic privileges. He will not try
to search her or detain her, no matter what she’s been doing, though if she lacks permission to be where she
is, he may escort her out. The target also will not initiate combat with the Noble unless ordered to do so by
his superiors, though he will respond if she attacks.
Exceptional Success: The Charm’s effect persists for a full day before it ends.

Upgrade: Collective
Modified by Commonalty
Cost: +1 Wisp
The Noble may use the Charm on members of an organization that can see or hear her, using the Common-
alty modifier. The member with the highest Composure resists for the group.

Face of Lover’s Alarm (Appear •, Specchio •)

Action: Reflexive
Dice pool: Wits + Empathy
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 attack

Appear 109
 One would not threaten a loved one, would they? And as the Queen of Mirrors teaches, the True Heir will
be beloved by all. This Charm is activated in response to an attack; the Noble must be able to apply her Defense
against that attack.
Dramatic Failure: The attacker sees through the imposture and is outraged. His attack gets a +2 bonus.
Failure: The imposture has no effect on the attacker.
Success: The Noble’s appearance blurs to resemble one beloved by the attacker. The Noble’s Defense
against the attack increases by her Specchio, as the attacker reflexively pulls his blow.
Exceptional Success: The Noble unconsciously impersonates the beloved’s mannerisms for the rest of
the scene; she reminds the attacker so strongly of his beloved that he finds it hard to injure her. He takes one
level of the Lover’s Alarm Tilt: any attack he makes on the Noble has a -1 penalty to its dice pool. Levels of
the Tilt can accumulate up to the Noble’s Specchio.
The Charm relies on the empathy and the goodness of the target. Against a target with no Integrity or
equivalent trait, such as a Darkspawn or an animal, the Charm fails to activate.

Upgrade: Universal
Cost: +1 Wisp
Duration: 1 turn
The Noble appears to everyone in the form of their first love. She may activate the Charm with this upgrade
once per turn to protect herself from all her foes. For that turn, any attack on the Noble is penalized by her
Specchio, even if her Defense doesn’t apply against it. If she achieves an exceptional success, anyone who attacks
her gains a level of the Lover’s Alarm Tilt. The Noble cannot use the Charm on a single attack before it expires.

Upgrade: Inviolate (Specchio •••)

Cost: +1 Willpower
The shock of his beloved appearing in the middle of a fight is so great that the attacker’s blow hits the wrong
person. The Noble may choose any other person within range of the attack to become its new target in her place,
except the attacker himself. If no such person exists the upgrade has no effect.
If the Noble applied Universal, she must spend 1 Willpower to redirect each attack.

Phantom (Appear ••)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Wits + Expression - image’s Size
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 scene
The Noble forms a Wisp into an illusory object. The illusion affects only sight, and material objects pass
through it without stopping. The Size of the image can’t exceed the Noble’s, but within that limit she can show
any image she is capable of imagining.
Dramatic Failure: The Charm fails with a burst of light and a loud crack, alerting anyone nearby who
could see or hear to the Noble’s presence.
Failure: No image appears.
Success: The Noble creates the image she desires, somewhere within her sensory range. The image re-
mains until the Charm ends. By concentrating on it, the Noble may move and alter the image with mundane
actions, using Wits + Expression as the dice pool. The Storyteller may require a different Skill for some actions
(e.g. Subterfuge when an image is meant to deceive.)
Exceptional Success: The Noble manipulates her illusion deftly. Her mundane actions to control it gain
a +2 bonus.

110 Appear
Upgrade: Dancing
The Noble may create an image that moves without her conscious attention. When her concentration lapses,
the image continues to act on the instructions she last gave it.

Upgrade: Glowing
Requires Light the Way
The Noble can make her illusions give off light, just as her Regalia does with Light the Way. As long as she
is concentrating on an image, she may vary the light coming from it reflexively, independently of her personal
light. If she has upgraded Light the Way, she may apply all that Charm’s upgrades to the image’s light as if it
were her own.

Upgrade: Consecrated
Duration: Consecration
The Noble may sustain an illusion with the blessing of a Consecrated area. Doing so limits the illusion’s
movements to the area covered by the Condition.

Upgrade: Singing
The Noble may create an illusory sound, or add sound to an illusory image. A sound without an image seems
to come from a point the Princess can see, which she can move while concentrating.

Upgrade: Solid
The image becomes substantial. As long as it lasts it has a degree of solidity, as well as a firmness and texture
appropriate to what it depicts. However, just because it projects an image of solidity does not mean it is solid;
the image shatters if force is applied to it (by kicking an illusionary wall, for example) or with it (an illusionary
wrench won't tighten or loosen a bolt).

Upgrade: Thinking (Acqua ••)

Requires Dancing
When the Noble releases her concentration, in addition to providing the illusion with further instructions
she may grant it a measure of adaptability. For each dot of Acqua she may instruct the image to react to one
condition, altering its behavior in response. For conditions that require senses to recognize, the illusion has a
Perception dice pool equal to the Noble’s.

Upgrade: Multiplied (Aria ••)

Requires Dancing
The Noble may create multiple distinct images with a single Charm activation. She can make one additional
image for each dot of her Aria. The Noble can try to control more than one image at once, but takes a -2 penalty
to her dice pool for each image beyond the first. If she applies Singing, each image may have its own sound and
images can be replaced with sounds.

Upgrade: Scented (Legno •)

The Noble may create an illusory scent, or add scent to an illusory image or sound. If the image is Solid,
she can give it a taste as well. A scent without an image seems to come from a point the Princess can see, which
she can move while concentrating.

Appear 111
Upgrade: Painted (Terra •)
The Noble may create an illusory surface which covers and disguises an existing object. Applying this up-
grade adds 1 to the image’s maximum Size; however, the image’s shape must be fairly close to that of the object
it disguises. The Noble may disguise part of an object if she wishes, or the whole exceeds her Size limit. The
image is bound to the object and moves with it, though the Noble can still change it while concentrating on it.

Unlimited Object Works (Appear ••)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Wits + Larceny
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 scene or 1 day
The Noble creates magical duplicates of an object on her person. The Charm may be used on any object the
Noble is carrying and can conceal from mundane observers in her Regalia. (Often this limits targets to Size 2 or
less, but anything in the Noble’s Miss Poppins’ Bottomless Bag is expressly a valid target - even if the bag isn’t
open.) The object must also be cheaply priced; its Availability rating may not exceed one third of the Noble’s
Inner Light, rounding up. Also, the Charm can’t copy a copy made by a previous use of it.
Dramatic Failure: The magic damages the targeted object; it loses a point of Structure, bypassing its
Durability.
Failure: The Noble fails to create a duplicate.
Success: A copy of the target object materializes in the Noble’s hand. The copy works just like the original
(guns fire, phones make calls) with respect to its mundane properties. However, it lacks any supernatural
properties of the original, other than being a supernatural creature’s bane. The copy dissolves at the end of
the scene.
Exceptional Success: The copy does not vanish for one full day.

Upgrade: Reflected (Specchio ••)

The Noble may use the Charm on an object’s reflection, to take it out of the mirror. The reflection is like a
copy made by the basic Charm, except that it’s a mirror image of the original; text is reversed and the grip may
be uncomfortable. Neither the original item nor its reflection appear in mirrors while the Charm lasts.
When applying Reflected, the Noble is not limited by either the Size or the Availability rating of the du-
plicated object; she can copy any object of Size up to the Size of the mirror showing its image. However, the
mirror’s quality modifies her dice pool: Surface of water, reflection is weak and inconstant (-2), Tin foil (-1),
Modern mirror (0), Reflection is especially clear, mirror is highly valued (Resources 3+) or of great sentimental
value to someone (+2)

Wallflower (Appear ••)

Action: Instant and contested
Dice pool: Manipulation + Stealth vs. Wits + Composure
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 scene
The Noble fades into the background and falls beneath everyone’s notice.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble makes herself memorable without realizing it - all Perception rolls to no-
tice her take a +2 bonus for the rest of the scene.
Failure: The Noble is no more forgettable than usual.
Success: Until the Charm ends, other people don’t pay attention to the Noble. No matter how odd her ap-
pearance or behavior might be, nobody notices her or remembers her as more than a generally person-shaped

112 Appear
 blur. Anyone the Noble speaks to, touches or otherwise interacts with is immune to the Charm as long as they
keep her in view; and if the Noble activates a Charm, or does something that draws attention (like shouting,
or doing gymnastics) everyone around her may become immune, if they beat her successes in the contested
roll. However, their immunity lapses if they look away from the Noble.
Exceptional Success: The Noble becomes almost impossible to perceive, whatever she does.

Upgrade: Multiple
Modified by Commonalty
The Noble can conceal other people in numbers. She uses the Charm on the members of an organization she
can see, using the Commonalty modifier. If she succeeds, all the members are difficult to notice or remember,
except to each other and herself.

Upgrade: Traceless
The concealment extends to recording devices - video cameras show only a human-sized distortion in the
air where the Noble is, and microphones record meaningless noises (like the adults’ voices in "Peanuts") instead
of her voice, unless she deliberately speaks into them.

Upgrade: Veiled
Using another Charm does not automatically attract attention to the Noble, though again the direct effects
of the Charm are not concealed.

Speaking Eyes (Appear ••, Acqua •)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Wits + Persuasion
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 scene
The movements of the Noble’s body are saturated by meaning. She uses the Charm on a single character
who can see her.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble destroys her natural ability to communicate. All her Expression rolls take
a -2 penalty for the rest of the scene.
Failure: The Noble’s gestures convey no special meaning.
Success: The Noble can convey the most complicated thoughts to her target with a turn of the head, a
twist of the hand, or a facial expression, as quickly as with normal speech; the target will understand her
intent even if he shares no languages with her, as long as they can see her. Nobody else looking at her will
understand her meaning; indeed, unless onlookers examine her carefully (succeeding on an Intelligence +
Investigation roll) they won’t realize that she is “saying” anything at all. The Charm does not help the Noble
understand the target.
Exceptional Success: The Noble may combine her gestures with her speech. Her Expression rolls to
communicate with the target gain a +2 bonus until the Charm ends.

Upgrade: Collective (Acqua ••)

Modified by Commonalty
The Princess can convey her thoughts to members of an organization that can see her, using the Common-
alty modifier. Those not in the organization will not understand her gestures.

Appear 113
Masquerade (Appear ••, Aria •)
Action: Instant and contested
Dice pool: Manipulation + Empathy vs. target’s Composure + Supernatural Tolerance
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 scene or 1 day
Instead of changing herself, the Noble changes how another perceives her.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble becomes totally transparent to her intended target; for the rest of the
scene, in contested Subterfuge rolls with him she always gets a dramatic failure.
Failure: The Noble’s disguise must stand the target’s inspection unaided.
Success: The target cannot see through any disguise that the Noble assumes or role that she enacts; in
all contests of Subterfuge for this purpose between them during the current scene, the target automatically
gets a dramatic failure. The Noble cannot use Masquerade to impersonate a specific person the target knows
or has met - she is limited to a generic role. Masquerade ends if the Noble uses any other Charm.
Exceptional Success: The target is blinded to flaws in the Noble’s disguise for a full day.

Upgrade: Familiar
Cost: +1 Wisp
The Noble can try to impersonate someone her target knows. The target does not automatically fail this
contest, but the Noble takes no penalty from the target’s familiarity with the person she imitates, and she adds
her successes on the activation roll as a bonus to her side of the contest.

Upgrade: Social (Aria ••)

Modified by Commonalty
Cost: +1 Wisp
The Noble may use Masquerade on members of an organization, applying the Commonalty modifier. Each
member contests the roll independently.

Upgrade: Veiled
The Noble may use other Charms without ending Masquerade, and the target will not notice their manifes-
tations - he perceives the direct effects of the Charms, but will not trace them back to her.

Flash of Brilliance (Appear ••, Specchio •)

Action: Reflexive
Dice pool: Presence + Subterfuge
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 action
To an Heir, mundane history and trivia often seem so… trivial. Shouldn’t an Heir’s magic be proof enough of
their genius? This Charm enhances any action with the goal of convincing others that the Noble is well-informed
about some topic.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble’s action is an automatic dramatic failure. Whatever she says, the audience
perceives only foolish ignorance of the topic.
Failure: The action is neither helped nor hindered.

114 Appear
 Success: The Noble passes herself off as an expert. If her roll for the action fails, treat it as having one
success; if it succeeds, treat it as an exceptional success. Listeners will remember hearing only the things
the Noble said that were appropriate to the topic, but will believe the full speech conveyed an accuracy and
understanding appropriate to the result of the roll. The Charm affects only what the audience hears; dictation,
recordings, and so on capture only the actual speech, although listeners will not realize it until the Noble is
done speaking.
Exceptional Success: The Noble’s apparent mastery of the topic prevents anyone from challenging her
claims. If her action succeeds, listeners must spend 1 Willpower to dispute anything she says on the topic for
the rest of the scene.

Goccia Astrale (Appear •••)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Intelligence + Crafts
Cost: 2+ Wisps
Duration: variable
"I can’t be in two places at once!" is an all-too-common complaint from just about anyone; the Hopeful es-
pecially find it necessary to be two people at once, when mundane obligations interfere with fighting a super-
natural incursion. With this Charm a Princess can partly resolve such dilemmas, by making a facsimile of her
mundane self that moves and speaks, and can pass as herself if not examined too closely.
The Noble applies the Charm to a mass of material that she can shape barehanded, or else a quantity of fluid,
of roughly Size 2. (Applying some Invocations allows unusual choices of material - see the table for examples.)
Infusing this material with Wisps, she transforms it into an Astral Droplet: an exact physical copy of herself just
before her last transformation, wearing identical clothing. The Droplet has the same mundane Attributes and
Skills as its creator, and access to all her memories as of the time of its creation. However, it lacks energy and
imagination; it does not get 10-again on any dice pool, or any other quality that allows rerolling dice, cannot
spend Willpower, and has neither Virtue nor Vice. The Droplet is also fragile - a single point of damage of any
type is enough to dissolve it into the stuff it was made of and glimmers of light. Finally, the Droplet has none of
the Noble’s Light-derived powers, even Practical Magic.

Invocation Suitable Droplet material

Acqua Water, ice, or snow
Aria Fog, smoke, strong wind
Fuoco Fire, ashes
Legno Grass, leaves, twigs
Terra Dirt, gravel, clay
Lacrima Shadows (the Princess’ own, say)
Tempesta Acid, the Princess’ blood
Specchio The Princess’ reflection (the Droplet is reversed left-to-right)

The Droplet’s basic duration is 30 minutes for each activation success. The Noble may choose to extend the
duration by spending more Wisps than the minimum of 2 - each extra Wisp doubles the time before the Droplet
disintegrates, cumulatively. She cannot, however, spend more Wisps for this purpose than half her Inner Light,
rounded up. She may choose the total number of Wisps spent after the activation roll, though she must spend
at least 2. She may end the Charm prematurely by touching the Droplet and concentrating for a turn. A Noble
cannot create a second Droplet before the first Droplet dissolves - the Charm just fails if she tries.
By default the Droplet is an automaton which follows any instruction given to it which does not pose a
threat of physical harm, and otherwise stays wherever it is put; it takes no action on its own. If the Noble applies
an Invocation to the Charm, the Droplet formed has some initiative and the rudiments of a personality; in the
absence of clear instructions it follows the tenets of the applied Invocation, to the extent allowed by the knowl-
edge and abilities the Noble possesses.

Appear 115
Upgrade: Integrated
It’s often useful to know what your double has been doing during your absence. If the Noble dissolves her
Droplet prematurely by touching it and concentrating, she can recall to memory a description of the actions
the Droplet took and the events it saw and heard. A roll to recall any detail of the account is at -2 in addition
to any other penalties.

Upgrade: Lifelike (Specchio •••)

The Lightbringers are able to put reflections of their minds and wills into the Droplets they make … though
"shards" or "fragments" may be a better choice of words. When the Noble applies Lifelike, the Droplet gains a
nearly-human initiative and will; it has the Belief dots, Virtue and Vice of its creator, gets 10-again on its dice
pools, can benefit from other qualities that permit rerolls, and may spend and regain Willpower (though it begins
with none.) The first time the Noble creates this Droplet, its personality exactly matches her own (including any
derangements) and aside from the physical reflection they can’t be told apart.
Drawback: By creating a Lifelike Droplet a Noble actually divides her mind in two. The Droplet’s person-
ality does not vanish when its body dissolves; it continues within the mind of its creator, in a state rather like
sleep, until she makes another Lifelike Droplet. At that moment it wakes and inhabits the new-made body. As
a creation of Specchio the Droplet believes in its excellence and right to rule, but it can only exist as a mortal
shadow of its creator. This soon becomes irksome, if not intolerable.
Each time the Noble applies Lifelike, she must make a breaking point roll (with Specchio’s drawback in
force, if she used the Invocation) with a penalty of -2 if she currently has a Condition from an earlier compromise,
and -0 otherwise. Instead of the normal results, if she fails, the Droplet’s desire for independence comes to
the fore, and it will do what it can to avoid dissolving and reintegrating with its creator. It can lengthen the
Charm’s duration by spending its own Willpower; it may spend 1 point each day for this, which adds 24 hours
of continued embodiment. (The Droplet cannot do this if the Resolve + Composure check succeeds.) Just what
the Droplet does is up to the Storyteller, but it should not try anything that involves a breaking point.
If the Noble applies Integrated and Lifelike, all her memories since the Droplet’s first creation become avail-
able to it on the same terms as its are available to her after she dissolves it. Other than that, neither personality
can remember what the other has done.

Goosedown Lullaby (Appear •••)

Action: Instant and contested
Dice pool: Presence + Expression vs. Composure + Supernatural Tolerance
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 scene
The Noble sings softly and soothingly, lulling those who hear her into drowsiness and sleep.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble sings only herself to sleep. She takes the Lullaby Tilt.
Failure: The song is pleasant but lulls nobody.
Success: Anyone who is within the Noble’s Inner Light in yards while she sings, and can hear her song,
must reflexively contest the Charm; those who lose the contest take the Lullaby Tilt. The Noble may contin-
ue singing (using her action) in the turns after activating the Charm to lull new arrivals, but each character
affected contests the Charm only once. Once she stops singing, no one else will be affected.
Exceptional Success: Anyone who becomes Insensate thanks to the Charm cannot be awakened for the
Noble’s Presence in hours.

Upgrade: Parakeet’s Echo

Cost: +1 Wisp
The song continues to resound after the Noble stops singing it. For the rest of the scene, whatever she does,
anyone who approaches her reflexively contests the Charm, and takes the Lullaby Tilt if they lose the contest.

116 Appear
Upgrade: Feather-brained
The Noble sings an earworm of a song, that those who hear it can’t stop thinking about. If she applies this
upgrade, those who lose the contested roll take the Earworm Tilt, instead of Lullaby.

Upgrade: Quoth the Raven (Lacrima •••)

The Noble’s song saps the wills of those who listen. Characters who took the Lullaby or Earworm Tilts from
the Charm replace it with Beaten Down [CofD 87] instead of Insensate.

Upgrade: Tarring Tune (Tempesta •••)

The Noble makes a noise that drills into a hearer’s skull. For each turn she spends concentrating, everyone
within the Charm’s area of effect save herself takes one level of the Phantom Damage Tilt, and characters who
lose the contested roll are Deafened [CofD 281] in both ears for Tempesta turns. If she applies Parakeet’s Echo,
the Noble can create the painful noise as an instant action for the rest of the scene.

Hallowed Hearth (Appear •••)

Action: Extended, 1 minute of quiet contemplation and recollection/roll, threshold = Sanctuary
Dice pool: Composure + Empathy
Cost: 2 Wisps, 1 Willpower
Duration: 1 day
A Noble’s home is their castle, even if it isn’t formally a palace. Drawing upon the sanctity of her own mem-
ories, she wraps the senses of intruders in confusion, serving to protect and serve this place.
When the Noble reaches the threshold, any action to enter the target Sanctuary by force, or to observe
events in it from outside, requires an exceptional success. At a story level, intruders get the feeling that this is a
boring, mundane place. People who try to break in or spy in from the outside will likely get bored quickly, and
give up because there is nothing of value here, because they can’t find what they’re looking for or even (especially
if they suffer a dramatic failure) become convinced that they must have got the wrong address and occupants.

Upgrade: Misfortunate
To those who wish ill, a place of good memories can only drive them further into self-inflicted misery. All
characters who enter the Sanctuary without permission from the Noble gain the Nervous Condition, resolving
when they leave the Sanctuary.

Upgrade: Consecrated
Duration: Consecration
When the Noble stands in Consecrated ground, she may intertwine the Charm with that Condition.

Road Crew (Appear •••)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Dexterity + Expression - desired equipment bonus
Cost: 3 Wisps
Duration: 1 session
Sometimes a Princess needs help to impress a crowd. The Noble creates a small crew of assistants to help
her pull off a truly amazing performance. When activating the Charm the Noble chooses a mundane task related

Appear 117
to performing or creating art that her crew can help her with, and sets the bonus she wants the crew to give her.
She can have only one crew active at a time.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble creates several humanoid figures but has no control over them. They im-
mediately run riot, and while not malicious they can be very very annoying and are certainly inappropriate
to the Noble’s wishes. Think clowns not shock artists. They have a dice pool for making mischief equal to the
Noble’s on the chosen task.
Failure: The crew doesn’t appear.
Success: The Noble creates several assistants. The crew acts as equipment for the chosen task, giving
the specified equipment bonus to the Noble, or to anyone else she tells them to help. However, they carry the
Volatile Condition [CofD 102] - at least one will dissolve if their principal fails an action they helped with.
Exceptional Success: The crew doesn’t flake out when their principal blunders. They don’t carry the
Volatile Condition.
Assistants are solid but only when it relates to their assigned task; an actor would be able to interact with
props, and wear costumes, but would not be able to fetch a cup of coffee. A cunning Princess might still be able
to use them for other roles, she might ask her troupe to dance around waving their arms in front of her enemies
face while she hides, or attack foes who don’t realize the backup dancers cannot hurt them. (Assume a 1 die
pool on any social actions, mental and physical tasks fail automatically). If an assistant takes a single point of
damage, even bashing, he vanishes into a puff of smoke or glitter.

Words on Water Writ (Appear •••, Acqua ••)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Resolve + Expression
Cost: 2 Wisps
Duration: 1 day or 1 week
By meditating over an object she touches, the Noble inscribes a portion of her memories into it. She may
choose to record either one scene or one hour, and must succeed on an Intelligence + Composure roll to recall
the scene correctly.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble immediately forgets the memories she tried to record, taking the Amnesia
Condition. [CofD 288]
Failure: No memories are inscribed.
Success: For a full day, anyone who touches the target object remembers what the Noble experienced
during the time she recorded from her point of view. The memory is perfect while the person keeps contact,
but will fade normally when he releases it. Traces of the memory remain even after the Charm ends, but
require the Psychometry Merit [CofD 58-59] or similar supernatural powers to recover. A second use of the
Charm on the same object overwrites the previous memory or its traces.
Alternately, the Noble may set the memory to be remembered only by a specific person. If she does so,
anyone other than the person she designates, or herself, who touches the object notices nothing. Supernatural
powers face a Clash of Wills to read her experiences or detect their existence.
Exceptional Success: The recorded memory remains clear for a full week.

Upgrade: Distant
Modified by Sympathy
The Noble may send her memories to objects she cherishes from afar, applying the Sympathy modifier.

Upgrade: Enduring (Acqua •••)

Cost: +1 Willpower
Duration: indefinite

118 Appear
 By spending a point of Willpower, the Noble makes her recorded memory last until the object is destroyed.

A Host of Furious Fancies (Appear •••, Aria ••)

Action: Instant and resisted
Dice pool: Wits + Subterfuge - target’s Composure
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 turn
The Princess conjures a host of illusionary attackers on any target she can see clearly. Their attacks can do
no damage, but the target may waste their attention defending against non-existent foes.
Dramatic Failure: The swirling of the host leaves the Princess dizzy and confused. She immediately
takes the Stunned Tilt [CofD 286].
Failure: No attackers appear.
Success: The target is thoroughly distracted by the host’s attacks. He halves his Defense for the rest of
the turn.
Exceptional Success: The target’s attention is drawn wholly to the illusionary attackers. He takes the
Stunned Tilt, losing an action to flailing about at random.

Only a Flesh Wound (Appear •••, Fuoco ••)

Action: Instant and resisted
Dice pool: Presence + Medicine - marked Health boxes
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 or 2 scenes
The Noble sends her fire into her target’s blood, giving strength to overcome his wounds.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble inflicts a burning sensation. Her target takes levels of the Phantom Damage
Tilt equal to her Fuoco.
Failure: The target is not affected.
Success: The target ceases to perceive any pain from wounds; he gains the Numbed Tilt.
Exceptional Success: The target’s Numbed Tilt lasts until the end of the next scene.

Upgrade: Invincible (Fuoco •••)

Cost: +1 Willpower
The Charm conceals not only the pain of the target’s wounds, but any visible sign that he has been wounded.
Until the Numbed Tilt fades, he appears to be totally uninjured to mundane examination, and magical diagnosis
triggers a Clash of Wills. Further, if all his Health boxes fill with lethal damage, the target does not start bleeding
out until the Tilt ends; the illusion serves to bind his wounds. However, the target will not notice any injury he
suffers short of aggravated damage.

Know My Pain (Appear •••, Tempesta ••)

Action: Full turn and resisted
Dice pool: Resolve + Intimidation - target’s Composure
Cost: 2 Wisps
Duration: 1 scene

Appear 119
 There are those who would tell you that pain is bad, and to be avoided at all costs. They are weak. Pain is a
tool, just like any other. It is not only useful, but even necessary, to use it against those who would try to stop you.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble gives pain only to herself. For the rest of the scene she suffers a -1 penalty
to all her actions.
Failure: The target ignores the Noble’s pain.
Success: The target takes levels of the Phantom Damage Tilt, equal to the number of boxes with damage
of any type on the Noble’s Health track or his unmarked Health boxes, whichever is less.
Exceptional Success: Phantom damage from the Charm seems lethal; the target is incapacitated auto-
matically if the last box of his Health track is filled with phantom damage.

Upgrade: Intimate
A part of the injury the Noble suffers from her target returns to him. Whenever a target of the Charm dam-
ages the Princess further, she may spend a Wisp reflexively to inflict 1 damage on that target, of the same type
as what he inflicted. Unlike the initial damage, this is fully real, and remains after the Charm ends.

Upgrade: Shared (Tempesta •••)

Modified by Commonalty
Cost: +1 Wisp
The Noble may use Know My Pain on members of an organization, applying the Commonalty modifier;
every member takes phantom damage. The member with the highest Composure resists for the whole group.

Upgrade: Veiled
Any evidence of damage the Noble has taken is concealed. She appears to be totally uninjured to mundane
examination, and magical diagnosis triggers a Clash of Wills. This does not affect her actual state of health - she
still suffers wound penalties if she takes enough damage. Moreover, if she loses a body part, the Charm doesn’t
appear to restore it; it only makes the loss seem like an old, fully healed wound.

Strike False (Appear ••••)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Wits + Intimidation
Cost: 2 Wisps
Duration: 1 scene
The Noble goes through the motions of attacks, creating the appearance of danger without inflicting actual
harm.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble’s attacks are real, but she is convinced they are not, and does not realize
otherwise until the Charm ends.
Failure: The Noble’s attacks remain unchanged.
Success: For the rest of the scene, whenever the Noble deals damage with her Regalia or a mundane
weapon, she instead inflicts the Phantom Damage Tilt, adding levels equal to the damage she would otherwise
have done. Also, she can use any Charm she knows that inflicts a Condition or does damage without paying its
cost; a Condition then manifests as a Tilt, expiring when the scene ends, and damage becomes the Phantom
Damage Tilt.
Exceptional Success: The Noble may choose whether to inflict normal or phantom damage for each
attack.
The Noble may end the Charm early as a reflexive action, which removes all the Tilts it created.

120 Appear
Imaginary Friend (Appear ••••, Aria •••)
Action: Instant and contested
Dice pool: Manipulation + Subterfuge vs. Wits + Supernatural Tolerance
Cost: 2 Wisps
Duration: 1 scene
The Noble creates the illusion of a man or woman, especially crafted for a single person.
Dramatic Failure: The target becomes deeply suspicious of the Noble; for the rest of the scene all her
Social rolls aimed at him take a -2 penalty.
Failure: The Noble fails to create the illusion.
Success: The Noble chooses a role for the illusion; the target perceives a person who behaves appropri-
ately for that role in the present situation, according to the target’s beliefs. However, if she doesn’t beat the
target’s successes, he realizes that this person is an illusion within moments. If she does get more successes,
the target will treat the imaginary person as fully real, and respond to it as to a person of the role the Noble
chose. No one else - including the Noble - will see or hear the illusion; she has no control over its behavior.
Exceptional Success: If the Noble remains within earshot of the target, she learns what he believes the
illusion said and did from his reactions, without possibility of error.

Reverse Ideology (Appear ••••, Specchio •••)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Manipulation + Larceny
Cost: 2 Wisps, 1 Willpower
Duration: 1 scene
A mirror turns left to right, up to down, depending on how you hold it; a Noble of Mirrors can do the same,
disorienting everyone nearby while keeping a clear head for herself.
Dramatic Failure: Woo, trippy - the Noble sees the world spinning and flipping around her at flickering
speed. She takes the Insensate Tilt.
Failure: People near the Noble may feel dizzy for a moment.
Success: Everyone in the scene perceives the world as flipping into and out of its mirror image. The
Noble imposes the Reflected Tilt on the area; all characters involved in the current scene, except the Noble
herself, are affected by it.
Exceptional Success: The Noble may protect a number of characters up to her Inner Light from the
Reflected Tilt.

Closed Space (Appear •••••)

Action: Instant and contested
Dice pool: Composure + Stealth vs. Wits + Supernatural Tolerance
Cost: 2 Wisps, 1 Willpower
Duration: 1 scene
Many foes of the Hopeful care nothing for collateral damage and will use powers that wound or kill by-
standers to bring a Noble down. Thus it’s often necessary to separate a fight from those not involved in it - in-
deed, to remove it from mundane reality. This Charm may be used only in combat.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble becomes unable to perceive anyone else involved in the fight. However,
she is still apparent to them. She takes the Blinded Tilt [CofD 281] in both eyes for the rest of the scene; though
she isn’t actually blind, for the purpose of fighting she might as well be.

Appear 121
 Failure: Characters involved in the fight feel a moment’s dizziness.
Success: Every character who has declared an intent in the fight and loses the contested roll vanishes
into a parallel world that contains no people or animals but themselves, but does have accurate copies of all
structures, objects not in someone's personal possession, and vehicles not being driven. Their own posses-
sions and vehicles they’re driving go with them. Characters return to the mundane world when the fight ends,
or when they withdraw from it, or fill their Health track with lethal damage; objects and vehicles return when
the character who brought them does. Everything that returns appears in a safe location, as close as possible
to where they were. Objects from the parallel world can’t be taken to the mundane world - they vanish if
anyone tries.
The Charm’s parallel world comes into existence when the Charm is activated and vanishes when it ends;
it’s simply a copy of the mundane world near the Noble. (Some Nobles who were fighting at high speeds claim
that the parallel world starts to look different from reality if you go far enough, but as they were occupied
at the time their accounts aren’t reliable.) However, it does interpenetrate the mundane world. The affected
characters register as supernatural (of their own type, or transformed Nobles if mundane) to beings that can
detect such who are in the mundane place that corresponds to their own location. Furthermore, a being who
can scrutinize magic (as with the Charm Reflected Light) will, if he uses that ability on an affected character
and wins a Clash of Wills, pop into the parallel world as if he’d been included in the Charm. Other than this, no
character in the parallel world can influence anything in the mundane world, and from the mundane world,
only supernatural powers specifically aimed into the parallel world can affect anything in it.
Exceptional Success: The Noble can choose a number of characters in the fight other than herself, up
to her Inner Light, who will not vanish into the parallel world. She can use this to divide her foes, or to send
an ally on a side mission while keeping an opponent busy.

Garden of Bright Images (Appear •••••)

Requires Phantom
Action: Extended, 1 minute/roll, threshold = Sanctuary + duration in hours
Dice pool: Intelligence + Expression
Cost: (Sanctuary rating) Wisps
Duration: 1 or more hours
The Noble decorates her surroundings with a beautiful glamour. She chooses an area to affect and a time
for the glamour to last when she starts working on the Charm.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble deceives only herself; she sees the area transformed according to her in-
tentions, but everyone else sees it as it really is.
Failure: The Noble loses control of her magic; she must accept a Condition to continue making the illu-
sion.
Success: When the Noble reaches the threshold, the appearance of every nonliving thing in the targeted
area is transformed to match a theme the Noble chooses. (For instance, “formal ballroom”, “open bazaar”,
“African jungle” and “undersea grotto” are all valid themes.) Permanent fixtures are always changed; she can
choose whether to change people’s possessions, but cannot affect some possessions and not others. As long
as the Charm lasts, the changed objects look, sound, feel and even smell like what they appear to be; observers
may make Perception rolls to spot something wrong with the illusion, but they take a penalty equal to the
Noble’s successes.
Exceptional Success: The Noble may reduce the threshold or interval, or make the illusion impenetrable
to all mundane senses.

Upgrade: Palatine
Duration: Consecration
The Noble may tie her illusion to a Consecrated area. When she does so, treat the duration as 0 when cal-
culating the threshold.

122 Appear
Bless
The Bless Charms enhance people, pushing their abilities to a peak and bringing their actions to perfection.
Champions and Graces have affinity for them.
Several Bless Charms add dots to Attributes. Unless otherwise noted, dots from these Charms don’t con-
tribute to Charm activation rolls, or any roll to activate a supernatural power.

Beginner’s Luck (Bless •)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Intelligence + Dexterity
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 roll
If a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing badly. When the Princess assists in an instant teamwork action,
she may activate this Charm instead of rolling the relevant dice pool. Each success on the activation roll becomes
a bonus die for the primary actor. The Princess can also use Beginner’s Luck for 1 roll in an extended teamwork
action. Any bonuses or penalties on the relevant dice pool also apply to the activation roll, and a dramatic failure
penalizes the primary actor’s roll as usual.

Upgrade: Enduring
Cost: +1 Wisp
When assisting in an extended teamwork action, all the Princess’ rolls are Intelligence + Dexterity instead
of the relevant dice pool.

Upgrade: Guided
Do not apply penalties on the dice pool to the activation roll.

Upgrade: Twinned
Cost: +1 Wisp
When the Princess activates the Charm, she also rolls the relevant dice pool, and adds successes from both
that roll and the Charm. The pools are separate; any bonuses and penalties apply to both.

Small Providence (Bless •)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Manipulation + Streetwise
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 day
The Noble (or one she helps) finds, and obtains, that one thing she was looking for, at a surprisingly low
price. No single person may be the target of Small Providence more often than once a session.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble’s finances are thrown into disorder. For the next week, the Availability of
any equipment or services she wants counts as one dot higher.
Failure: The target gains nothing from the Charm.
Success: The target of the Charm gains one instance of the Bargain Condition. The Condition ends with-
out resolving when the Charm expires.

Bless 123
 Exceptional Success: The target of the Charm gains two instances of the Bargain Condition. Both will
end when the Charm expires.

We Rely on You (Bless •)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Presence + Empathy
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: indefinite
A few words of encouragement can inspire anyone to scale the heights. No single person may be the target
of We Rely on You more often than once a scene.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble loses her confidence. She gains the Shaken Condition [CofD 290].
Failure: The target is unmoved by the Noble’s exhortation.
Success: The Noble gives the target a mission and the confidence to accomplish it. He gains the Blessed
Condition, with 1 banked die for each activation success.
Exceptional Success: The target becomes very capable when carrying out his appointed task.

Upgrade: [Queen]’s Commission (Invocation •)

This is actually a set of upgrades, one for each Queen. If the mission the Noble gives her target is in accord
with the Invocation tied to the upgrade, the Blessed Condition has two banked dice, not one, for each activation
success. Any mission for which the Invocation would apply at no cost qualifies, and others may with Storyteller
approval - except for Mirrors’ Commission. For that upgrade, the assigned mission must glorify the Noble, not
her target.

Sea-Foam’s Touch (Bless •, Acqua •)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Wits + Academics
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: indefinite
Truth is an ocean, from which the Noble draws a few drops.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble’s memory for facts becomes confused. She takes the Stumbling Condition,
applied to a Mental Skill and lasting for the rest of the scene.
Failure: The Noble draws up nothing but irrelevant trivia.
Success: The target immediately gains the Insightful Condition on a topic of the Noble’s choice.
Exceptional Success: The target learns a broad survey of knowledge. His Insightful Condition applies
to two topics of the Noble’s choice. The Condition still applies to just one roll, but the roll can be relevant to
either topic.

Stop, Children, What’s That Sound (Bless •, Aria •)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Wits + Composure
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 scene
There’s something happening here; what it is ain’t exactly clear …

By speaking a single word, the Noble sends another person into a state of extraordinary alertness.

124 Bless
 Dramatic Failure: The Noble’s voice becomes impossibly loud, to her ears alone. She takes the Deafened
Tilt [CofD 281] in one ear for the rest of the scene.
Failure: The target pays no attention to the Noble.
Success: The target becomes alert and watchful. He takes the Alert Tilt: all his Perception rolls, including
rolls to avoid surprise, take a +2 bonus. The Tilt wears off when the Charm ends.
Exceptional Success: The target gains a +3 bonus from the Alert Tilt.

Upgrade: Everybody Look

Modified by Commonalty
Cost: +1 Wisp
The Noble may use the Charm on all members of an organization that can see or hear her, using the Com-
monalty modifier. The member with the highest Resolve resists for the group. If the activation succeeds all the
affected characters take the Alert Tilt.

Steady Resolve (Bless •, Legno •)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Resolve + Persuasion
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 scene
With a reassuring word, the Noble hardens another’s resolve in the face of magical manipulations. The
Charm may not be used on anyone currently affected by it.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble loses her confidence. She gains the Shaken Condition [CofD 290].
Failure: The target is unmoved by the Noble’s exhortation.
Success: The target takes the Indomitable Tilt: whenever the target contests a supernatural power that
affects his thoughts or emotions with Resolve, he adds 2 dice to his roll. When the target resists such super-
natural power with Resolve, the user of that power subtracts 2 dice from his roll. The Tilt wears off when
the Charm ends.
Exceptional Success: The bonus and penalty from the Tilt each rise to 3 dice.

Upgrade: Calm
The Noble’s reassurance also helps her ally remain calm. The target applies the Tilt’s bonus when contesting
with Composure, and the Tilt’s penalty when resisting with Composure, against supernatural powers that affect
thoughts or emotions.

Bejewelled Visage (Bless •, Terra •)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Manipulation + Empathy
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 scene
An odor of trust enfolds the one the Noble blesses, smoothing his path in society.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble becomes convinced that everyone she meets disapproves of her. She gains
the Nervous Condition, lasting until she fails in or abandons a social maneuver.
Failure: The target gains no help from the Charm.
Success: If the target begins a social maneuver before the Charm expires, the impression [CofD 81] for
that maneuver moves one step upward.

Bless 125
 Exceptional Success: The target is unusually adept in the first steps of the social dance. In a social ma-
neuver influenced by the Charm, his first roll to open a Door has a +2 bonus.

Touch of Grief (Bless •, Lacrima •)

Action: Reactive and resisted
Dice pool: Wits + Intimidation - target’s Resolve
Cost: 1 Wisp, Sensitivity check
Duration: 1 action
The Noble’s gaze brushes another with cold despair. The Charm is activated at the moment its target takes
an action.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble is struck by remorse, and gains the Guilty Condition [CofD 289].
Failure: The target is not affected.
Success: The target’s action is cursed. The Noble either inflicts a -2 penalty to his dice pool, or strips the
10-again quality from it.
Exceptional Success: The Noble strips 10-again from the target’s action and inflicts a -2 penalty.

Count No Cost (Bless •, Tempesta •)

Action: Instant and resisted
Dice pool: Presence + Persuasion - target’s Composure
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 scene
The Noble gives her target the gift of total focus on a goal.
Dramatic Failure: The target strains his muscles and nerves without accomplishing anything. He takes
1 point of bashing damage.
Failure: The target is neither helped nor harmed by the Charm.
Success: The target gains the Obsession Condition [CofD 290] with respect to a goal of his choice. The
Condition is resolved only when the Charm ends.
Exceptional Success: The target may keep the Condition as long as he wishes, but cannot shed the ob-
session before the Charm expires.

I’m the Best! (Bless •, Specchio •)

Action: Reflexive and resisted
Dice pool: Presence + Wits - target’s Composure
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 action
Others might say that they are the masters of their fields. But, simply, the Enlightened of the Queen of
Mirrors know this to be false. They can’t be better. This Charm can be used to enhance any contested action
against an opponent who has a higher dice pool than they do.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble’s roll in the contest is an automatic dramatic failure.
Failure: The Noble has to win the contest normally.
Success: Each success removes one dice from the target’s pool, and adds one dice to the Noble’s pool.
The number of dice transferred is capped by the Specchio rating of the Noble; such glorious victory comes
from one’s own strength, after all. This may not reduce the target’s pool to less than zero.

126 Bless
 Exceptional Success: The Noble makes her victory look easy. She gains an exceptional success in the
contest with 3 successes instead of 5.

Upgrade: Truly
Stackable 3 times
On actions where this Charm is used, once the dice transfer has been applied, the Noble may then add +1
to their own pool, as if it were coming from a specialty in “Defeating (opponent’s name)”.

Upgrade: Triumphantly (Specchio ••••)

The limitation that the target must have a higher initial dice pool than the Noble is now waived. In addition,
if the foe is reduced to a dice pool of zero, the Noble may reflexively spend a Willpower point to force him into
a dramatic failure.

Better Together (Bless ••)

Action: Instant and contested
Dice pool: Presence + Socialize vs. target’s Composure + Supernatural Tolerance
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 scene or 1 day
The Noble turns common knowledge and training into a bond among the people near her. The Noble may
use this Charm on a person she can touch, when the target is in the company of at least four other people, and
he and the others all have at least 2 dots in the same Skill. The target may choose not to oppose the Charm. The
Noble may not use the Charm on anyone already under its effects.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble becomes flustered and distracted when the target can see her. She takes
the Nervous Condition, which resolves when she has left the target’s presence for at least one scene.
Failure: No bond forms between the target and the other people present.
Success: For the rest of the scene, the target has the benefits of the Hobbyist Clique Merit [CofD 51],
related to the Skill he shares with the others who are present. The benefit is limited to one Skill at a time; if
more than one clique can be formed around the target for different Skills, the Princess chooses a Skill as she
activates the Charm. The target needs the help of at least four clique members to get the benefit; the Charm
does not end if the clique disperses, but it has no effect unless five members including the target are working
together.
Exceptional Success: The Charm grants its benefits to the target until the next sunrise.

Intuitive Flash (Bless ••)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Intelligence + Academics
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 scene
The Noble grants knowledge and ability to someone within sight. For each success, the target gains one
temporary specialty in a Skill of the Noble’s choice. If the Charm is used on anyone currently benefitting by it,
the activation with the most successes takes precedence.

Upgrade: Expert
The Noble may grant a deep understanding of a subject. She may use an activation success to give her target,
temporarily, the Area of Expertise Merit [CofD 44] for a specialty - which can be one he knew already, or one
granted by the Charm.

Bless 127
Upgrade: Serendipitous
The Noble may give her target the ability to apply his new knowledge in unusual ways. She may use an
activation success to give her target, temporarily, the Interdisciplinary Specialty Merit [CofD 45], if he has the
prerequisites. The required specialty can be one the target had already, or one granted by the Charm.

Touch of Fortune (Bless ••)

Action: Reactive
Dice pool: Wits + Occult
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 scene
The Noble grants a blessing of good fortune to a person she can see.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble loses her confidence. She gains the Shaken Condition [CofD 290].
Failure: The target gains no help from the Charm.
Success: The target gains the Fortunate Tilt, blessing a number of rolls up to the activation successes. A
Noble may cast Touch of Fortune at the same moment another person acts to bless that action.
Exceptional Success: The target gains the Fortunate Tilt for many rolls.

Upgrade: Well-timed
The target’s good fortune comes when most needed. Before the target makes a roll, he declares whether
the Tilt will affect it. The number of rolls affected does not change.

Upgrade: Strong
Cost: +1 Wisp
The Noble grants a stronger blessing: the target gains the Greatly Fortunate Tilt.

Upgrade: Perfected
Requires Strong
Cost: +3 Wisps
The blessed actions become deceptively easy; the target gains the Perfected Tilt. Strong and Perfected can-
not both be applied to the same activation.

You’re So Vain (Bless ••, Specchio ••)

Action: Reflexive and resisted
Dice pool: Presence + Intimidation - target’s Composure
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: indefinite
The True Heir easily rebukes the vanity of anyone who dares challenge her. The Noble may activate this
Charm immediately after defeating another person in a Social contest, or outdoing them in a task done before
an audience.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble is too obviously arrogant. She takes a -2 penalty on Social rolls for the rest
of the scene.
Failure: The target is unperturbed by his defeat.

128 Bless
 Success: Being shown up and humiliated by the Noble destroys the target’s nerve; his fear of his own
inadequacy makes him fail again. He takes the Shaken Condition [CofD 290] which he may resolve when in
the Noble’s presence, or when he enters a contest similar to the one he just lost.
Exceptional Success: The target is thrown off-balance. He may not resolve Shaken during the current
scene, and until that scene ends he takes a -2 penalty on all Social rolls with people who witnessed his defeat.

Light’s Aegis (Bless •••)

Action: Instant and resisted
Dice pool: Strength + Medicine - target’s Stamina
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 scene
The Noble extends a portion of her mantle over another person that she can touch, granting him the power
to ward off injuries. The Charm may not be used on anyone currently affected by it.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble mishandles her power and injures herself. She takes 1 resistant lethal
damage.
Failure: The target is unprotected by the Charm.
Success: The target has limited access to the Noble’s Holy Shield. He takes the Aegis Tilt: each activation
success allows him to downgrade the damage from one source just before he suffers from it as a reflexive
action. The Tilt stacks with the innate Holy Shield if used on a Noble; both may be used against an attack.
Exceptional Success: The target gains a strong protection from injury.

Upgrade: Saving
Cost: +2 Wisps
The Noble’s protection lets her target survive against impossible odds. If the target takes enough lethal or
aggravated damage to fill his Health track while under the Aegis Tilt, he does not bleed out or die; instead, after
a minute, the damage in his last Health box downgrades to bashing damage, and he wakes. Recovering from
injuries in this fashion ends the Aegis.

Mastermind (Bless •••, Acqua ••)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Wits + Composure - plan’s equipment bonus
Cost: 2 Wisps
Duration: until plan resolves
With her impressive analytic abilities, the Noble prepares a near-infallible plan for herself and her friends.
Using this Charm requires at least an hour of studying the problem which the plan is meant to solve, and the
Noble must take part in the planned endeavor.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble’s plan is disastrous. At a critical moment, one of the people following it
suffers an automatic dramatic failure, ruining the plan and putting the group in peril.
Failure: The Noble prepares a plan that confers no magical benefit, and also carries the Fragile or Volatile
Condition. [CofD 102]
Success: The Noble creates a plan, as if she had succeeded in the Build Equipment action. [CofD 101-102]
In addition to the normal benefits of a plan, the characters following it may treat a failed roll made with its
help as if they had rolled one success. This can be done once during the plan for each dot of the Noble’s Acqua.
Exceptional Success: The plan is almost foolproof. Add 1 to the number of failed rolls that can be con-
verted into successes.

Bless 129
Fists of Jade (Bless •••, Terra ••)
Action: Instant
Dice pool: Presence + Occult
Cost: 2 Wisps
Duration: 1 scene
The Noble wraps a friend's hands in a holy aura that cuts the flesh of servants of Darkness.
Dramatic Failure: The target acquires the inflexibility of jade. All his Dexterity-based dice pools take a
-1 penalty until the scene ends.
Failure: For a moment, the target feels spiritually cleansed.
Success: The target acquires the mystical purity of jade. His flesh has the same effects on creatures of
Darkness that jade does until the Charm ends.
Exceptional Success: The Charm guides the target's hands. He also gains a +1 bonus when attacking a
creature of Darkness.

Upgrade: Armed
The target's holy aura spreads to his weapons. A weapon in his hands acts on Dark creatures as if made of
jade. The aura comes from the target, not the weapon, so it fades from a weapon when he releases it; however,
it lasts long enough for a thrown object or a bullet to hit its target.

Upgrade: Multiple
Modified by Commonalty
Cost: +1 Willpower
The Noble may give a jade aura to all the members of an organization in her presence, using the Commonalty
modifier.

Charms of Enhancement (Bless •••, Invocation •••)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: varies by Charm
Cost: 2 Wisps
Duration: 1 scene
With the aid of one of the Radiant Queens, the Noble raises a person to heights of ability normally beyond
them. Each Queen teaches a different version of this Charm, with her favored Invocation as a prerequisite; these
versions must be learned as separate Charms. Each Charm of Enhancement affects its target in a parallel way:
Dramatic Failure: The Noble blights the trait she meant to boost. The target takes the Blighted Condi-
tion, taking 1 dot from the Attribute the Noble chose.
Failure: The target is not enhanced.
Success: The target gains the Enhanced Condition: the Noble adds the activation successes, up to her
dots in the prerequisite Invocation, to one of the target’s Attributes. Any traits derived from that Attribute
are recalculated. Each Charm can enhance the Noble’s choice among three of the Attributes.
Exceptional Success: In addition to the normal effect, the target adds a +1 bonus to dice pools based
on the enhanced Attribute.
No Charm of Enhancement can be used on a target currently affected by that Charm. Each Charm uses a
different dice pool, and is limited to a different set of Attributes.

130 Bless
• Drawn by the Moon (Acqua): Roll Intelligence + Science; the Enhanced Condition raises one Mental
Attribute.
• Wind-Borne Grace (Aria): Roll Presence + Expression; the Enhanced Condition raises one Finesse At-
tribute.
• Stoke the Furnace (Fuoco): Roll Strength + Persuasion; the Enhanced Condition raises one Power At-
tribute.
• Forest Sanctuary (Legno): Roll Stamina + Survival; the Enhanced Condition raises one Resistance At-
tribute.
• Crown Jewels (Terra): Roll Manipulation + Persuasion; the Enhanced Condition raises one Social At-
tribute.

Upgrade: Grand
The Noble may add dots to all three of the Attributes that the Charm can enhance in a single activation.
She distributes her successes across the Attributes; she still cannot add more than her dots in the prerequisite
Invocation to any one Attribute.

Tendril of Nothing (Bless •••, Lacrima •••)

Action: Instant and resisted
Dice pool: Presence + Intimidation - target’s Composure
Cost: 2 Wisps, 1 Willpower, Sensitivity check at +2
Duration: 1 scene
The void can seep into every mind. Give in, it says. Do not resist. Give up, and let your sorrows drown you.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble lets the void only into her own mind. She takes the Broken Condition [CofD
288]; if not resolved before then, the Condition expires at the next full moon.
Failure: The target is not affected by the Charm.
Success: The stillness of the void settles into the heart and mind of a foe. The target takes the Blighted
Condition: he loses 1 dot from one of his Resistance Attributes for each success. The Charm cannot reduce
any Attribute to less than 1, but it may reduce two or all three of Stamina, Resolve and Composure with 1 use.
If the last box on the target’s Health track fills with aggravated damage, the Charm ends just before he dies.
When the Charm does end, the target’s Attributes return to their normal values. The Charm may not be used
on anyone currently affected by it.
Exceptional Success: The void terrifies the foe, showing him the foolishness of standing up to the Noble.
In addition to the other effects, he takes the Beaten Down Tilt [CofD 87].

Avenger’s Might (Bless •••, Tempesta •••)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Resolve + Brawl
Cost: 2 Wisps, 1 resistant lethal damage
Duration: 1 scene
The Noble binds fury into someone’s flesh.
Dramatic Failure: The target’s nerve fails when he faces battle. If violence starts during the scene, he
takes the Beaten Down Tilt [CofD 87].
Failure: The target fights normally.
Success: Until the Charm ends, whenever the target takes a violent action, he reaches an exceptional
success on three successes instead of five. Inflicting an injury obviously counts, but violence also includes
destroying items, and most uses of the Intimidation Skill.

Bless 131
 Exceptional Success: In addition to the other effects, the target gains a +1 bonus on all his violent acts.

Upgrade: Cooperative
Modified by Commonalty
The Noble may bind rage into all the members of an organization she can see, applying the Commonalty
modifier.

Blessings Be Upon This House (Bless ••••)

Action: Extended, 30 minutes/roll, threshold = Sanctuary + 2 * Beauty
Dice pool: Presence + Crafts
Cost: 3 Wisps, 1 Willpower
Duration: Inner Light days or Consecration
The Noble appeals to the Light to bless the place she stands in and the people who enter it, and dedicates
time and sweat to make it both beautiful and inspiring. The Charm is invoked on an area where the Noble is
working, which can be Consecrated. If it succeeds, the area becomes a Blessed place for the duration of the
Charm. The Charm cannot be used on any part of an area already under its effects. It also cannot be used on any
area with active Taint, and will end instantly if anywhere under its effects becomes Tainted.
The Noble must set both the boundaries of the area (and hence its Sanctuary rating), the level of Beauty she
desires and the Aspirations she wants it to grant before she starts working on the Charm. Without upgrades,
the Noble may give the Blessed place only her own Vocations as Aspirations, or the Blessing of Calm. Each of
the Radiant Queens has her own preferred variation of the Charm, learned as an upgrade tied to the Queen’s
Invocation.

Upgrade: Study (Acqua •••)

The Noble prepares the area for use as a place of learning or study. She catalogs shelves of books, sets up
laboratory equipment, or connects computers into a network. By applying Acqua to the Charm, she may give
the area Aspirations based on the Queen of Diamonds’ philosophy. She may also protect people from mental
deterioration by creating the Blessing of Integrity.

Upgrade: Carnival (Aria •••)

The Noble makes the area welcoming for the clever, deft and cunning. She puts up tents for a carnival,
or sews costumes and decorations for a haunted house. By applying Aria to the Charm, she may give the area
Aspirations based on the Queen of Spades’ philosophy. She may also protect people from the assaults of real
magic by creating the Blessing of Resistance.

Upgrade: Arena (Fuoco •••)

The Noble prepares the area for competitions between the worthy and displays of excellence. By applying
Fuoco to the Charm, she may give the area Aspirations based on the Queen of Swords’ philosophy. She may also
grant people greater determination by creating the Blessing of Willpower.

Upgrade: Grove (Legno •••)

The Noble cultivates the area into a tranquil garden. She takes the appropriate supplies (ie, plants, seeds,
soil, water, etc.) and makes a grove that instills peace, confidence, and competence. (Most Nobles who take
this upgrade follow the lead of Bonnie Getsuei and make serene Japanese-style gardens, with cherry blossoms
constantly floating through the air, but that isn’t required.) By applying Legno to the Charm, she may give the
area Aspirations based on the Queen of Clubs’ philosophy. She may also speed recovery from all wounds by
creating the Blessing of Health.

132 Bless
Upgrade: Ballroom (Terra •••)
The Noble prepares the area for a formal social occasion. She prepares the courses for a banquet, or sets
up decorations and musical instruments for a dance. By applying Terra to the Charm, she may give the area
Aspirations based on the Queen of Hearts’ philosophy. She may also discourage people from breaking the peace
of the occasion by creating the Blessing of Defense.

Peaceable Kingdom (Bless •••••, Legno ••••)

Avatar (Clubs)
Action: Instant
Dice pool: Intelligence + Animal Ken
Cost: 3 Wisps, 1 Willpower
Duration: 1 scene
The Queen of Clubs’ avatar is guardian and teacher of the beasts. The Noble undergoes a second transfor-
mation on activating the Charm, assuming traits that suggest a large and powerful animal - typically a lion,
though bear-like and eagle-like miens are known, and there are rumors of one Hopeful who evokes a dragon.
The change always suggests a king or queen of beasts, and the peril and majesty of the natural world; any mortal
seeing the Noble is somewhat shaken, and she gains +1 on all Intimidation rolls against them until the Charm
ends.
However, the main effect of the Charm is on beasts who see it. Any natural animal that can perceive the
Noble when she activates the Charm has its Intelligence raised by 1 dot, becoming sapient. Further, the animals
affected gain instant fluency in her native language, and the Charm grants them the ability to speak it compre-
hensibly if they have any ability to vocalize at all. The Noble may use Social Skills on the animals as she would
with mortals, and gains a bonus on such rolls equal to her activation successes. When the Charm ends, the ani-
mals return to their former non-sapient state. If the Noble uses the Charm twice on the same animal, it remem-
bers everything that happened during the first use.

Sheltered by Her Hand (Bless •••••, Lacrima ••••)

Avatar (Tears)
Action: Instant
Dice pool: Resolve + Empathy, modified by Commonalty
Cost: 1 Wisp, 1 Willpower, Sensitivity check at +3
Duration: 1 scene
To preserve her city and her subjects is the first principle of the Queen of Tears, and those who incarnate
her are able to guard their allies from all harm. A Noble uses this Charm to protect members of an organization
she belongs to or has influence over - the subjects of Social Merits such as Status and Allies are eligible, and in
a pinch the Connected Condition [CofD 288] will do.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble fails utterly to protect her allies, and is crushed. She suffers the effects of
the Broken Condition [CofD 288] for the rest of the scene.
Failure: The Noble cannot protect her allies. The Charm fails.
Success: The Noble undergoes a second transformation that drains all the color from her body and Re-
galia. All members of the target group who can see this transformation feel a breath of cold pass over them,
penetrating through all clothing for a moment. Until the Charm ends, the transformation expands and sub-
stantially modifies the Noble’s Holy Shield. The Shield activates automatically whenever anyone affected by
the Charm suffers an injury, spending as many Wisps as necessary to prevent as much damage as possible;
while the Charm is active the Shield is not limited by the Noble’s maximum Wisps per turn. She must pay the
cost of the Shield in full when it activates.
However, the Noble may draw Wisps for her Shield out of her surroundings, draining hope from the land
to preserve her people. At the end of each turn in which the Noble took Wisps from the area, the Storyteller

Bless 133
 rolls dice equal to the number of Wisps she took. The drain generates Taint in the area of Severity equal to
the successes on this roll, and Size large enough to include all the people it protected.
While the transformation lasts the Noble is in enough danger to use Inner Strength, and trade her
Willpower for Wisps. The Charm ends if the Noble runs out of Wisps and neither draws Wisps from her sur-
roundings nor uses Inner Strength.
Exceptional Success: The Noble touches the determination that has sustained the Queen of Tears in her
mission. She gains +2 on Inner Strength rolls until the Charm ends.
Drawback: The Queen of Tears perpetually mourns for the lost Kingdom, and the sacrifices that must be
made to sustain its remnant; her avatar bears the burden of her grief, and may be crushed by it. At the end of
each turn in which the Noble’s Holy Shield activated, the Princess must roll Resolve + Composure to resist the
Queen’s grief.
Dramatic Failure: The Queen’s grief overbears the Noble; the Charm ends immediately, and the Noble
collapses. She takes the Immobilized Tilt [CofD 284] until the scene ends.
Failure: The Noble’s will falters. Future rolls to resist the Queen’s grief take a -1 cumulative penalty.
Success: The Noble withstands the Queen’s grief. Future rolls to resist it don’t change.
Exceptional Success: The Noble recovers lost ground; reduce the penalty on future rolls to resist by 1,
to a minimum of -0.

Connect
Connect Charms trace and use the connections between people, or make and break such connections. Only
Graces have affinity for them.

All Together Now (Connect •)

Action: Reflexive
Dice pool: Unrolled
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 session
In the face of a crisis a Noble takes charge, with a few quick commands and a hastily tied knot in the web
of interpersonal connections. If the Noble uses the Jury Rigging action [CofD 102-103] to unite bystanders into
a temporary organization, she can activate this Charm to resolve the action as if she had built the organization
normally.

Fair Welcome (Connect •)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Manipulation + Socialize
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 day or 1 week
The Noble can strike up a conversation with nearly anyone she meets, and learn many things from an hour
of polite talk.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble becomes convinced that everyone she meets disapproves of her. She gains
the Nervous Condition, lasting until she fails in or abandons a social maneuver.
Failure: The Noble gains no new acquaintances from the Charm.
Success: The Noble adds 1 dot to her Contacts, naming a group with members she can currently see for
the new dot. She can gather information from that group for 1 day, following the normal rules for information
from Contacts.
Exceptional Success: The Noble can gather information from the group for 1 week.

134 Connect
Upgrade: Friendly
Modified by Commonalty
Cost: +1 Wisp
Duration: until resolved
The Noble may befriend a specific organization, applying the Commonalty modifier, when she knowingly
meets one of its members. Succeeding with the Charm gives her the Connected Condition [CofD 288] with the
targeted organization, instead of a Contacts dot.

Illuminatus (Connect •)
Favor (Politics)
Action: Permanent
When the Noble transforms, the secrets of the wealthy and powerful in her community cannot be hidden
from her.

Upgrade: Inspirational (Fuoco ••)

The Noble can fire up an organization, pushing it to work at its best. She may spend 1 Wisp after one scene or
hour spent encouraging its members to give a task their all; the organization as a whole then gains the Inspired
[CofD 289] Condition, which will enhance the roll for one task in a project when resolved.

Upgrade: Influential (Terra ••)

Organizations shift their policies when the Noble drops a word in the right ear. When beginning a social
maneuver with an organization, she may spend 1 Wisp to open one Door without a roll.

Laying Down The Line (Connect •)

Action: Extended, 1 minute/roll, threshold = Sanctuary
Dice pool: Resolve + Larceny
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 scene, 1 day or Consecration
A Noble is a creature of divisions; between Light and Dark, Transformed and mundane, Hope and despair.
Drawing a line on the ground, she separates one area from another, and so becomes aware of anything that
breaks that line. The Charm is used on an area with a boundary - natural (c.f. a stream), legal (c.f. a property
line), spiritual (c.f. Consecrated ground) or just marked out for the purpose (c.f. a chalk line, string run along
posts). The boundary must, however, be physically marked in some way, and the Noble must walk its whole
length while activating the Charm.
On a boundary marked out so the Charm can be used on it, it lasts one scene. If used on an existing boundary,
the duration is increased to one day. If used on the edge of Consecrated ground the Charm is tied to the Condition.
Also, if the physical mark showing the boundary is destroyed at any point along the boundary the Charm ends.
When the Noble reaches the threshold, until the Charm ends she knows reflexively whenever an unautho-
rized person is trespassing in the protected area, no matter where she might be at the time. She will also know
when the Charm ends, and why. Who is authorized to enter the area depends on the local laws; the Noble will
not notice the entry of the area’s owner, or of police with a search warrant.

Upgrade: Illuminated
Cost: +1 Wisp
Reaching out, the Noble sketches the bounded area in her mind, painting the delineation in liquid light. She
does not require a physical mark for the boundary, and destroying a boundary mark (if present) does not end

Connect 135
the Charm. However, the boundary is, to transformed Princesses, creatures of the Darkness, and any being that
can see magic, a glowing line, thus telling them that there is something supernatural going on.

Upgrade: Unnatural
The Noble calls on a higher law when she walks the bounds. She may redefine who is authorized to set foot
within the protected area, excluding any character who fulfills one of these conditions: a supernatural being (as
in, not a mundane human); a Light-touched character; or a creature of the Darkness. The Noble may choose only
one of these - she cannot set a boundary to warn her when Light-touched and Dark creatures cross it.
An area protected by an Unnatural boundary will not alert the Noble to intrusions that violate local laws.
However, an area can be protected by multiple instances of this Charm, as long as each instance detects a dif-
ferent group. Using the Charm on an area already enclosed, wholly or partly, takes a -1 penalty for each instance
already in effect.

Upgrade: Sheltered (Lacrima •)

Requires Unnatural
The subjects of the Queen of Tears often want to be warned of the approach of her ancient enemy. The
Noble can set the area to warn her when a follower of Storms is in it: Nobles, Sworn, Stormwracked and Goalenu.

Upgrade: Righteous (Tempesta •)

Requires Unnatural
The soldiers of the Seraphic General often want to be warned of the approach of her ancient enemy. The
Noble can set the area to warn her when a follower of Tears is in it: Nobles, Sworn, and citizens of Alhambra.

Life of the Party (Connect •)

Favor (Socialize)
Action: Permanent
When the Noble transforms, innate courtesy and friendliness support her in every social situation.

Upgrade: Carousing (Aria ••)

The Noble is welcomed in any bar or drinking party while transformed. Actions to detect her as an intruder
take her Aria as a penalty; this stacks with the Barfly Merit [CofD 50]. Also, the Noble can get drunk, or high
on drugs, and never show it - she keeps her poise and self-control. She may apply Aria to her roll to resist a
drug’s effects [CofD 96]. (The Charm does not help the Princess resist a toxin that does damage.) During a social
maneuver, if the Noble and her target are at a social function where people are expected to drink (or take other
recreational drugs) she can spend 1 Wisp to improve her impression by one step.

Upgrade: Gossiping (Terra ••)

When asking for information from her connections, the Noble nearly always finds what she seeks. She may
apply Terra whenever she gathers information from her Contacts [CofD 50], no matter what Skill her dice pool
uses. If she spends 1 Wisp after seeing the result, she may reroll her dice pool, though she must accept the
second result. (Using this ability on a Contact who knows only the Princess’ mundane identity is best done over
the telephone …)

The Naked City (Connect •)

Favor (Streetwise)
Action: Permanent

136 Connect
 When the Noble transforms, she easily evades the nets and snares laid by the authorities, and those who
live outside the law know her for a friend.

Upgrade: Bargaining (Aria ••)

If the Noble needs something that can’t be bought openly, a touch of magic leads her to the right dealer.
When she wants to procure illegal equipment or services [CofD 277-279] she may spend 1 Wisp to reduce the
time needed to find what she wants; one week is cut to one day, one day to one hour.

Upgrade: Listening (Terra ••)

There are eight million stories in the naked city, and the Noble can hear them all. When she uses Streetwise
to find information, she may spend 1 Wisp to reroll her dice pool after seeing the results, though she must keep
the second roll. During an investigation, if the Noble uses Streetwise to uncover a Clue [CofD 79] she may spend
1 Wisp to add an extra element to the Clue.

Open Heart (Connect •)

Favor (Empathy)
Action: Permanent
When the Noble transforms, she radiates kindliness and trustworthiness; those she meets take her as a
natural confidant.

Upgrade: Distant (Acqua ••)

The Noble’s knowledge of people allows her to predict their actions while they are absent. She may use
Empathy to extrapolate what someone known to her is doing or has done while out of her sight, as an instant
action. She takes a Sympathy penalty on this roll, and may apply Acqua to it. The Storyteller gives the Noble’s
player one clue to her target’s behavior for each success.

Upgrade: Startling (Aria ••)

The Noble easily sees when people are on the edge of violence. She may use Empathy to read the emotions
of all the people around her as an instant action, and may apply Aria to the roll; if she succeeds, and anyone
present starts a fight, she adds her successes to her Initiative. The Noble can’t do this after a fight starts - she
needs a few moments of calm to look for signs.

Upgrade: Deep (Terra ••)

The Noble can read people’s desires, hopes and fears as easily as most people can read faces. When she
uses Empathy to understand a person, she may apply Terra and spend a Wisp to turn her successes on the roll
into bonus dice for all Persuasion attempts on that person for the rest of the scene.

Mercury’s Blessing (Connect •, Acqua •)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Intelligence + Expression
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 scene
With a touch of the hand and a look in the eye, the Noble may converse with anyone in the world. She
touches her target to activate the Charm.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble’s speech and writing become incoherent. She takes the Stumbling Condi-
tion, applied to a Social Skill other than Animal Ken or Empathy, and lasting for the rest of the scene.

Connect 137
 Failure: The Noble learns no new language from the Charm.
Success: The Noble acquires a basic understanding of the target’s native language until the Charm ends,
as if she had a dot in the Multilingual Merit for it [CofD 46].
Exceptional Success: The Princess speaks her new language felicitously, charming her audience. She
gains a +1 bonus to Expression dice pools when speaking the target’s native language.
Mercury’s Blessing may be used more than once in a scene, but only to acquire more languages; the Charm
does not improve fluency with languages a Princess already knows.

Upgrade: Fluent
On a successful activation, the Noble becomes fully fluent in the target’s language, as if she had the Lan-
guage Merit [CofD 45] for it. She may use the Charm to increase her fluency in languages she knows from the
Multilingual Merit.

Upgrade: Lasting
Cost: +1 Wisp
Duration: 1 day
The Noble’s magical fluency persists for a full day from the moment she gained it.

Upgrade: Literate (Acqua ••)

The Noble can converse with the absent, if they have left a record of their thoughts. She may apply the
Charm to a written text in a language she doesn’t know; if successful, she understands the language that text is
written in until the Charm ends. Audio recordings are also valid targets for the Charm. The Noble must read a
text or listen to a recording to use the Charm on it.

Upgrade: Overflowing (Acqua ••)

If a person speaks more than one language, the Noble can learn them all. For each success rolled, up to her
Acqua, the Noble gains a basic understanding of one language her target knows and she does not. If she doesn’t
speak the target’s native language, she must learn that one. If the target has both the Language and Multilingual
Merits, she learns the languages from Language before those from Multilingual. If she applies Fluent, she become
as fluent in all the languages she learns as the target is.

Upgrade: Teaching (Acqua •••)

The Noble can use the Charm in reverse, granting her target the ability to speak a language she knows.

Minding Madoka (Connect •, Lacrima •)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Wits + Empathy, modified by Sympathy
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 day or 1 week
Like the Queen of Tears, a Raven never lets those she protects stray from the front of her mind.
Dramatic Failure: When separated from the target and unable to return to him without creating prob-
lems for herself, the Noble will become convinced that he is in deadly danger, and no one but her can save him.
Failure: The Noble fails to monitor her target.
Success: For the next full day, if the target experiences intense pain, fear or suffering, the Noble is im-
mediately aware of the fact, wherever she and he happen to be. She may accept a Sensitivity check to learn
the details of the target’s injury.

138 Connect
 Exceptional Success: The Charm lasts for a full week.
If the Noble has used the Charm on more than one person, she automatically knows which of her targets
is suffering when she perceives their pain.

Cherish (Connect ••)

Action: Instant and resisted
Dice pool: Wits + Occult - target’s Composure
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: indefinite
A person she’s met, a place she’s been - these fix themselves in a Princess’s heart, to be recalled later. The
Noble uses this Charm on a target within sight, to grant herself temporary sympathy to it.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble cannot use any Charm through a sympathetic connection to the target until
she sees it again.
Failure: The Charm has no effect.
Success: The Noble gains the Cherishing Condition in its standard form with respect to the target, im-
proving her sympathetic connection by one step for each activation success (to a minimum of Sensory.)
Exceptional Success: The connection lasts for several Charms, though it frays each time the Noble uses
it. The Noble gains the strong form of the Cherishing Condition.

Upgrade: Mama Bear

The Noble pulls the one she cherishes into a tight embrace, protecting him from others who might magically
molest him. As long as the Cherishing Condition is not resolved, any sympathetic connection to the target other
than the Noble’s is weakened by one step. The Charm can make a weak connection unusable.

Notary Private (Connect ••)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Manipulation + Persuasion
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: indefinite
When a vow is sworn or an agreement is reached, the Noble seals the promises with the Light’s stamp,
giving their fulfillment or breach force beyond their mundane consequences. The Charm may be used whenever
someone makes a promise in the Noble’s presence. A statement of intent, and assenting to a request or order,
count as a promise for the Charm, and a written promise can be sealed as easily as a spoken one. However, the
Noble must see or hear the target as he makes the promise, and understand its terms; and she must tell the
target that she stands witness to the promise. Furthermore, if the target doesn’t really mean what he says, the
Charm fails, and the Noble knows why it failed.
Dramatic Failure: The Light refuses to seal the promise and admonishes the Noble. She takes the Shaken
Condition [CofD 290] related to her target.
Failure: The promise can’t be sealed.
Success: The character making the promise takes the Sealed Vow Condition, applied to what he promised
to do.
Exceptional Success: While the Condition lasts, the target gains a +1 bonus to all actions that directly
fulfill the promise.

Upgrade: Opprobrium (Terra ••)

Cost: +1 Wisp

Connect 139
 The Noble can ensure that those who swear falsely become social outcasts, untrusted because untrustwor-
thy. If the target breaks his promise or can’t fulfill it, he takes the Notoriety Condition [CofD 290] instead of
Guilty, related to his broken promise.

Upgrade: Pound of Flesh (Tempesta ••)

Cost: +1 Willpower
The Queen of Storms is merciless to those who violate an oath she witnessed. If the target breaks his
promise or can’t fulfill it, a coal of green fire burns his false tongue and throat; instead of taking the Guilty Con-
dition he takes 1 lethal damage, and has the Mute Condition [CofD 290] until the damage heals.

Upgrade: To the Spirit (Specchio ••)

The True Heir, of course, knows when people are living up to their promises better than they do themselves.
The Noble can reflexively decide that a promise she sealed has been broken. If she can see and speak to her
target, she can replace Sealed Vow with the Guilty Condition. (This doesn’t resolve Sealed Vow.) The Noble may
only do this to promises she sealed herself.

The Right Word (Connect ••)

Action: Instant and contested
Dice pool: Manipulation + Persuasion vs. Composure + Supernatural Tolerance
Cost: 1 Wisp
The Noble can read the hearts of those she meets, discovering what they most desire and what she can do
to help them reach it. At the start of a social maneuver with a person, the Noble may activate this Charm.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble is led to believe the target has an Aspiration which is, in fact, repugnant
to him. If she offers to help him achieve the spurious goal, add one Door to her social maneuver and lower
the impression by one step.
Failure: The Noble learns nothing of her target’s desires. The social maneuver proceeds normally.
Success: The Noble learns one of the target’s current Aspirations in the course of her first attempt to
open a Door. She may appeal to that Aspiration after the first attempt resolves, whether it succeeds or fails.
If the target has a Vocation, or any other trait similar to Aspirations, the Noble can discover it instead of an
Aspiration.
Exceptional Success: The Noble learns two of the target’s Aspirations (or Vocations, or similar traits)
as she tries to open her first Door.

Upgrade: Convincing
Cost: +1 Wisp
The Noble knows just how to appeal to her target’s wishes. When she appeals to an Aspiration revealed by
the Charm during the social maneuver she used it, she opens two Doors instead of one.

Upgrade: Collective
Modified by Commonalty
The Noble can discover Aspirations of an organization when she begins a social maneuver on it. Her roll to
activate takes the Commonalty penalty for the organization.

Upgrade: Charismatic (Fuoco ••)

Requires Convincing
Cost: +1 Willpower

140 Connect
 A Hero’s charisma sweeps those she meets into her wake. After she appeals to an Aspiration revealed by
the Charm during the social maneuver she used it, the Noble may reduce the penalty for forcing the remaining
Doors by her Fuoco, to a minimum of -0.

Upgrade: Amicable (Terra ••)

Cost: +1 Wisp
By offering aid, the Noble establishes herself as trustworthy. After she appeals to an Aspiration revealed
by the Charm during the social maneuver she used it, the Noble improves her impression by one step as well
as opening a Door.

You’re Only in Trouble if you Get Caught (Connect ••, Aria

•••)
Action: Instant
Dice pool: Intelligence + Composure
Cost: 1 Willpower
Sometimes, one must learn to lose, to give up, and, to put it bluntly, to run away. By using magic taught by
the Queen of Thieves a Knave may escape from her past, and those who would use it to track her down with
magic. Each activation success reduces the Noble’s sympathetic connection to a chosen subject by one degree.
If she gets enough successes to reduce a connection to Unknown, she breaks it altogether.
In addition, the Charm counteracts any hostile attempt to alter the Noble’s emotional state (such as certain
fear-causing Caligines, the Vampire Disciples of Majesty and Nightmare, and certain applications of the Mind
Arcanum, to name but a few). If more successes are rolled on the activation of the Charm than the hostile power,
it is rendered ineffectual.

Upgrade: Partners in Crime (Aria ••••)

Cost: + 1 Wisp
The Noble may use the Charm on a person she can speak to. The target must give their consent for such a
thing to occur, although it need not be knowing; they can express a desire to no longer be scared by a childhood
memory, if only in passing.

Upgrade: Band of Thieves (Aria •••••)

Requires Partners in Crime
Modified by Commonalty
Cost: + 2 Wisps
The Noble may use the Charm on members of an organization who can hear her, applying the Commonalty
modifier. Only those members who consent to the change are affected.

Love Conquers All (Connect ••, Fuoco ••)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Presence + Empathy, modified by Sympathy
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 scene

Connect 141
 When two people who love each other are together, there is very little that can stand in their way. But lovers
can’t be together all the time, and of course many will face hardships without their beloved to help them. To a
Princess, this distance doesn’t matter. She knows she’s never alone and has her beloved to help her.
Before rolling to activate the Charm, the Noble chooses a dice pool: either an Attribute and Skill, or a pair
of Attributes. The Charm may not be used when the Noble is under its effects.
Dramatic Failure: Thinking of the beloved distracts the Noble and hinders her in her tasks. She takes a
-2 penalty whenever she uses the dice pool she meant to enhance for the rest of the scene.
Failure: The beloved is spiritually present, but can’t help.
Success: The beloved sends aid to the Noble through their sympathetic link. The Noble gains the Blessed
Condition, with 2 banked dice for each activation success. These dice may be added to actions using the chosen
dice pool. The Condition ends, taking any unused dice with it, at the end of the scene.
Exceptional Success: The Noble chooses a second dice pool; dice from the Blessed Condition may be
added to actions that use either pool.

Upgrade: Mutual (Fuoco •••)

The Noble’s beloved can get whatever help he needs, all he needs to do is ask. Both the Noble and her
beloved may use the dice from the Blessed Condition.

Beast Speaker (Connect ••, Legno •)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Intelligence + Animal Ken
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 scene
The Noble can speak to any animal, and understand its replies.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble cannot understand the targeted animal; all Animal Ken rolls involving it
are reduced to a chance die for the rest of the scene.
Failure: The animal does not understand the Noble, and behaves as it normally would.
Success: The animal, and any other animal of the same species, understands what the Noble says to it,
and will answer questions to the best of its ability, until the Charm ends.
Exceptional Success: The animal is well-disposed towards the Noble - it will volunteer information and
is easily persuaded to help her out. Her rolls to influence the animal gain a +2 bonus until the Charm ends.

Charm Offensive (Connect ••, Terra ••)

Action: Reflexive
Dice pool: Unrolled
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: indefinite
While the adherents of the Queen of Hearts know that a peaceful resolution is best, they aren’t blind to the
fact that many conflicts are smoothed over more easily when they display a subtle yet crystal clear intent to see
matters through no matter what. By supplying both an incentive for civil discourse and a deterrent to violence
at the same time, the chance of a peaceful solution is increased. Those who stubbornly insist on bringing things
to blows should beware, because while a Princess using this Charm is not looking to start trouble, she is fully
prepared to end it.
The Noble may use this Charm at the moment she offers a sincere and fair deal to another person. When she
does so she imposes the Easy Way Condition on her target. To be sincere, the Noble must intend to go through
with her end of the deal, if the target agrees to it. The Storyteller determines whether an offer is fair - the Charm
fails, and the Noble knows why, if used on an unfair offer.

142 Connect
Ivory Gate (Connect •••)
Action: Instant
Dice pool: Manipulation + Socialize
Cost: 2 Wisps
Duration: 1 night’s sleep
The Noble binds her mind to another; when they next fall asleep they will share their dreams. The Charm
grants both the gift of lucid dreaming for the night and clear memories the morning after. To open an Ivory Gate
a Princess needs permission from the target, and the pair must sleep close enough to touch.
Once open, an Ivory Gate allows the dreamers to share a journey through Crawlspace. The dreamer with
the better impression level leads the journey, and the Doors are set from her traits. Either dreamer may open
Doors by herself, or the dreamers may use teamwork actions to do so. If the dreamers don’t make it through
Crawlspace before one wakes up, either may resume the journey the next night, but travel separately unless
the Princess uses Ivory Gate again.
Another, fairly obscure, use of an Ivory Gate is to invoke it on oneself. This might seem a waste of good
Wisps, but it’s useful when the Charm is made into a Bequest, for then it lets a Beacon or Sworn travel in the
Dreamlands whenever they wish to. Also, while a Princess is within her own Crawlspace and under the effects
of a self-applied invocation of Ivory Gate, she will be able to navigate from her Crawlspace into a regular dream
(and yes, she can bring others too but they don’t benefit from lucidity or clear memories unless Ivory Gate is
invoked upon them). An expensive but effective cure for insomnia.

Upgrade: Distant
Modified by Sympathy
The Noble opens an Ivory Gate from afar, applying the Sympathy modifier. The next time both she and the
target are asleep at the same time, both will dream of being together in the target’s current location, looking for
a Crawlspace entrance. The Noble must have prior permission from the target to use the Charm.

Upgrade: Horn Gate (Specchio ••)

The Noble calls the soul of an unsuspecting dreamer, and creates a gate into his dream without his consent.
To apply Horn Gate the Noble must be in the Dreamlands. The Charm creates a Crawlspace passage for the target
to her current location, with Doors set from the target’s traits. Both the Noble and the target may open Doors as
usual, though they can’t use teamwork; both start with an excellent impression. Once the Crawlspace is open,
the Noble and any Dreamlander who happens along (such as Amanojaku looking for a host) can walk freely into
the target’s dreaming mind, and the target can go - or be taken - to the Dreamlands. Note that unless the Noble
applies Distant her physical body still needs to be next to her target.

Whispers from Afar (Connect •••)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Wits + Socialize, modified by Sympathy
Cost: 2 Wisps
Duration: 1 scene
What need is there of speech between you and those you love? The Noble uses this Charm to communicate
with another person; if he is not present, the Sympathy modifier applies. If the target has Wisps, he can share
the activation cost; both the Noble and the target spend 1 Wisp, and the target does so reflexively.
Dramatic Failure: For the duration, the Noble imagines the voice of her target is speaking to her; what
it says is what she generally expects him to say, but it chooses the most distracting moments to speak. She
takes a -2 penalty on all Wits-based rolls.
Failure: The Charm has no effect.

Connect 143
 Success: The Noble can speak directly to the mind of her target, without using her voice, and the target
can reply the same way. The Charm conveys only sounds that the Noble and the target could actually speak;
so, for example, if one thinks in a language the other doesn’t know, he hears the words but cannot understand
them. On the other hand, anything said is heard as clearly as if the two of them stood together in a quiet room.
The first time someone is the target of this Charm, he must roll Resolve + Composure to learn how to speak
through the link (and, possibly, to persuade himself that he isn’t imagining the voice in his head.)
Exceptional Success: In addition, by concentrating the Noble and the target can share a memory. The
one who has the memory makes a memory roll [CofD 30] to recall it; whatever she recalls passes over the
link, and the other makes a memory roll to retain the information. This takes an instant action from both
characters.

Upgrade: Party
Cost: 1 Wisp/person
The Noble creates a channel of voiceless speech among several people. She can speak to any or all of the
targets’ minds, and they can speak to her and each other in the same way. A target who has Wisps can pay her
part of the cost.

Upgrade: Borrowing (Aria ••)

The Charm’s link between minds carries sensations. Anyone in the link can make a Perception roll at a -2
penalty to borrow the senses of another person in the link for a brief moment, seeing what the other sees and
hearing what she hears in that moment.

Up in Smoke (Connect •••, Aria •••)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Dexterity + Larceny, modified by Sympathy
Cost: 1 Wisp
The Noble summons and banishes objects in puffs of colored smoke. She can move an object of Size up
to her successes between her current location and a place she knows of; the Sympathy modifier applies to the
other place, not to the object, so she can’t summon an object that’s been moved since she last saw it. Also, to
send an object somewhere the Noble has to be carrying it, and when she takes an object it ends up in her hands;
the Charm can’t be used on anything the Noble can’t lift.

Upgrade: Shuffled
Cost: +1 Wisp
The Noble can take an object from one distant place and send it to another with one activation. Apply the
worse of the Sympathy modifiers for the two locations.

Upgrade: Treasured (Aria ••••)

The Noble can summon an object to herself, no matter where it has been moved; apply the Sympathy mod-
ifier for the object itself. She still cannot send objects to another place without a connection to the place.

Hymn to Orpheus (Connect •••, Legno ••)

Action: Instant and resisted
Dice pool: Presence + Expression - targets’ Composure
Cost: 2 Wisps
Duration: concentration

144 Connect
 In the myths, the songs of Orpheus were so beautiful that all the natural world came to hear them. The Noble
can, in a small way, emulate him. When she has a natural animal within sight, she sings or plays music pleasing
to it, and all the animals of the same species who hear the song gather together to listen. The Charm ensures that
the music can be heard anywhere within 100 times her successes in yards; natural acoustics may carry the song
further, at the Storyteller’s discretion. (Note that while only animals of the same kind as the target are certain to
come, anyone and anything with ears can follow the music if they like.) Once they arrive, the summoned animals
will stand or lie near the Noble, quietly listening, as long as she performs; when she stops, the Charm ends and
the beasts revert to their normal behavior in the following turn.

Upgrade: Calling (Legno •••)

Modified by Sympathy
The Noble may perform for an animal that is not within sight, provided she knows it well. Apply the Sym-
pathy modifier to the chosen target; animals of that species will come to hear her.

Ferryman’s Shroud (Connect •••, Lacrima •)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Composure + Athletics
Cost: 2 Wisps, Sensitivity check
The Queen of Tears has granted the Noble the freedom of her city. To use this Charm, the Noble must be in
complete darkness; light bright enough to see by, from any source, makes the Charm fail.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble touches the Dark World through her magic instead of Alhambra. The Sen-
sitivity check for the Charm adds 2 dice, and the Noble cannot use the Charm again for one full day.
Failure: The Noble stays where she is.
Success: The darkness the Noble stands in thickens to an utter negation of light for an instant; then
the ground vanishes and she falls, splashing into the black salt lake of Alhambra. The Charm is generally
considerate enough to drop her near a shore, where she can reach dry land in a single turn. It doesn’t, however,
have to leave her in a specific place within the city; she may have to walk an hour or two to reach the district
she wanted.
Exceptional Success: The Noble appears in Alhambra, at the nearest shore to the place she wants to be.
The Charm will not take anyone back from Alhambra - the Queen of Tears does not wish anyone to leave
her who has not proven their fidelity to the true Kingdom.
As an incidental benefit, those who learn this Charm can light lamps in Alhambra as its citizens do.

Upgrade: Driven
Cost: +1 Wisp/every 5 points of Size above 5
The Noble can drive a vehicle into Alhambra, carrying along all its contents. She takes a penalty on the
activation roll of -2 for 5 points of the vehicle’s Size exceeding 5; that is, a Size 10 vehicle takes a -2 penalty, a
Size 15 vehicle takes -4, and so on. As with the basic effect, the vehicle must be in darkness to travel, and will
arrive over water; most Hopeful using this Charm travel in boats.

Upgrade: Returning (Lacrima •••)

Modified by Sympathy
The Noble may use the Charm to travel from Alhambra to a place she knows well; apply the Sympathy
modifier for the destination. As with the basic Charm, the upgrade only works in complete darkness (and in
Alhambra that carries risk; see the rules in that section.) On the other hand, activating the Charm to leave Al-
hambra never triggers a Sensitivity check.

Connect 145
The Nick of Time (Connect ••••)
Action: Full turn
Dice pool: Intelligence + Persuasion
Cost: 3 Wisps, 1 Willpower
When all seems lost, the Noble reaches across time to send out a call for aid, and bends fate to guide her
allies swiftly to her side.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble feels a sudden crushing sense of abandonment. She must make a compro-
mise roll, at a -3 penalty.
Failure: The Noble cannot reach any of her friends.
Success: The Noble may use any of her Social Merits that represent her relationships with other people
to call for help with her current troubles, even if it’s physically impossible for her to reach them - distance, lack
of a phone, and imprisonment are no obstacle to her need. Messages from her travel back in time, if necessary,
to find her friends and allies, and fate ensures that anyone she calls will reach her with aid before the current
scene ends. These magically supported calls count as normal uses of the Merits for the current session; if the
Noble has used up her favors from an Allies Merit, for example, the Charm won’t give her more.
Furthermore, the Noble can reach out to NPCs she has encountered before during the campaign who
were well-disposed to her and, if the Storyteller agrees, declare that they have been guided by fate to a place
where they can and will help her out during the current scene. That warrior lodge of Darkspawn hunters
the Noble met in the uncharted heart of the Amazon rainforest? Turns out they knew an international secret
society of monster hunters who can arrange transportation and they’ll show up in the heart of London ready
to fight. The chef she saved from bankruptcy? Well an army marches on its stomach. The Charm cannot do
the impossible, but it is very powerful magic and can accomplish the improbable.
The extent of the help that previously encountered NPCs are ready to provide is limited; they count as
a single temporary Allies Merit with a rating equal to the Noble’s activation successes. The Merit vanishes at
the end of the session, whether used or not.
Exceptional Success: The Noble’s friends can give her aid in unexpected forms. She may also change
one of the Social Merits the Charm applies to into a different Social Merit; for instance, a Contact can act as a
Mentor, an Ally can confer Status, a Staff member can work as a Retainer. The new Merit has the same dots
as the one it replaces, but it must also represent a relationship - the Noble is calling on the same people as
before, just in ways she normally couldn’t. The Merit returns to normal when the scene ends.

Mirror Walk (Connect ••••, Specchio ••)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Dexterity + Athletics, modified by Sympathy
Cost: 3 Wisps
A simple trick but a very useful one. The Noble targets two mirrors before stepping into one and out the
other. Both mirrors must be large enough for her to fit through. Sympathy is measured to the mirror she will
step out of.
The Charm cannot cross between realms. This may not be used to gain either egress or entrance to Alham-
bra, nor may it be used to exit or leave the hisil of the shapeshifters, the twisted thorn-world of the fae-folk, or
any other such hidden place. However, should a Princess find herself in any of these alternate worlds, it may
be used for transit within them.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble enters the mirror, but gets lost. She rolls Wits + Composure each turn after
using the Charm; when she succeeds, she emerges from the mirror she left.
Failure: Nothing happens.
Success: The Noble transports herself to the target mirror.
Exceptional Success: When the Noble emerges, she may immediately move up to her Speed, even if she
had to move to reach the mirror she left.

146 Connect
Upgrade: Leading
Cost: +1 Wisp per additional person
The Noble can now lead others through mirrors. Each extra person or 5 Size points of equipment costs an
additional Wisp.

Upgrade: Searching (Specchio •••)

Cost: +1 Willpower
The Noble can use a sympathetic connection to a person, place or object to find a mirror near them, then
step out of that mirror, applying the Sympathy modifier for the connection. She arrives at the nearest mirror
to the target that’s large enough to pass through, if there is one within (Inner Light x50) yards; if there isn’t the
Charm fails.

Upgrade: Umbral (Specchio ••••)

Everything within a Tainted area gains a double in the Dark World, if it’s left in place long enough; in one
sense, the Dark World is itself a mirror. A mistress of the magic of reflections can find mirrors inside that world-
spanning mirror. If a mirror has been left within a Tainted area for at least a day, and is large enough to be a
valid target for the Charm, the Noble may use it to pass to the equivalent point in the Tainted area’s image in
the Dark World, or vice versa. The first activation of the Charm for this purpose on any given mirror takes a
Sympathy penalty of Described, as the Noble has never seen the actual mirror she’s going to. The Charm will
not take a Princess to or from any part of the Dark World but the image of the area the target mirror is in.

Charms of Entwined Destiny (Connect ••••, Invocation •••)

Action: Extended, 30 minutes/roll, threshold = Noble’s Willpower
Dice pool: Manipulation + Occult, modified by Sympathy
Cost: 2 Wisps, 1 Willpower
Duration: 1 month
In a lengthy ceremony, invoking all she knows of him, the Princess weaves the thread of her fate into an-
other’s, becoming an exemplar in his life of one of the Radiant Queens. Each Queen teaches a different version of
this Charm, with her favored Invocation as a prerequisite; these versions must be learned as separate Charms.
When she reaches the threshold, the Noble gains a form of the Entwined Destiny Merit with the target until
the Charm ends, with all the benefits and drawbacks of that Merit. The five versions of the Charm each confer
a different form of Entwined Destiny:
• Better Living Through Education (Acqua): Mentor. The Noble gains Willpower when she has taught
the target something important, and reaches a breaking point if she passes up an opportunity to educate.
• Manic Pixie Dust (Aria): Gadfly. The Noble gains Willpower when she exposes the target to unusual
situations (for him) or alters the pattern of his life in a benign fashion, and reaches a breaking point if she
ignores a chance to do so. Doing the target permanent harm does not fall under the Destiny.
• Red String of Fate (Fuoco): Lover. The Noble gains Willpower when she has furthered the target’s love
for her, and reaches a breaking point if she misses a chance to do so. The love in question need not be erotic
or marital, but it must involve mutual affection and trust.
• Under Ursa’s Star (Legno): Guardian. The Noble gains Willpower when she rescues the target from
harm, and reaches a breaking point if he is harmed when she is present.
• Great Expectations (Terra): Sponsor. The Noble gains Willpower when her target’s social standing
improves, and reaches a breaking point if she lets a chance to help him rise go by.
Conditions gained from failed rolls should complicate the Noble’s relations with the target. If the Noble fails
to activate the Charm, she cannot use it on the target again for 1 week.

Connect 147
Upgrade: Proxy (Invocation ••••)
The Noble can weave the thread of another person’s life. The threshold for doing so is the Willpower of
the person being given an Entwined Destiny, and the Sympathy modifier is either the Noble’s connection to
that person, or to the Destiny’s subject, whichever is worse. If the person being given a Destiny is not willing to
accept the role the Charm gives him, the Charm fails.

Upgrade: Taut
Cost: +1 Wisp
The thread that ties the Noble to her target pulls them together. The Noble and her target are linked by an
Intimate sympathetic connection, regardless of the connection they had before. Their original level of Sympathy
returns when the Charm ends.

The Old Allegiance (Connect ••••, Lacrima •••)

Action: Extended, 30 minutes/roll, threshold = target’s Willpower
Dice pool: Presence + Intimidation, modified by Sympathy
Cost: 2 Wisps, 1 Willpower
Duration: 1 month
It is right and proper, the Last Empress teaches, for the Nobility to reward those who serve the Light, and
punish those who refuse to serve. In a lengthy ceremony, invoking all she knows of him, the Noble weaves the
thread of another person’s fate, calling him to assist her in her labors.
When the Noble reaches the threshold, the target’s fate makes him a loyal servant of her Nation, if she has
one, until the Charm ends. In a fashion similar to the Entwined Destiny Merit, the target gains Willpower when
his actions serve the Nation’s interests, and reaches a breaking point when he flouts them to serve another goal.
When the Noble does not have a Nation, the target’s destiny instead pushes him to serve Alhambra and the
Queen of Tears; he gains Willpower when his actions further Alhambra’s survival and reaches a breaking point
when he could have helped the Last Empress but declines to do so.
Unlike the Radiant Queens’ Charms of Entwined Destiny, it is perfectly possible to use The Old Allegiance
on an unwilling target. It is however a compromise to do so, with a -3 penalty to the roll. Further breaking point
rolls may be called for if the Noble takes advantage of people she has woven a destiny for. As a general rule, it
doesn’t count as consent if they’re only saying it as a result of an artificial destiny.

Upgrade: Collective (Lacrima ••••)

Modified by Commonalty
Cost: +1 Willpower
The Noble may bind many members of an organization to her goals at once. When she reaches the threshold,
all the members of the target organization who see her are affected. The Charm is modified by Commonalty of
the target organization, instead of by Sympathy; the threshold is the highest Willpower of those present who
can be affected.

Ultimate Fidelity (Connect ••••, Tempesta •••)

Action: Extended, 1 minute/roll, threshold = 11 - Belief
Dice pool: Resolve + Occult
Cost: 1 Willpower dot
Duration: indefinite
The original Sworn Guard and the One-Who-Became-Storms swore this oath when they stood before the
gates of the last city of the Kingdom, alone against the hordes of the Darkness. And they retain it. The Alhambrans

148 Connect
know nothing of it; why would those treacherous curs know anything about loyalty or devotion? This was an
oath of the Army of the Kingdom, not the soft weaklings who betrayed it from within. Outside observers suspect
that the Goalenu Ban may have evolved from this Charm, baked into their very essence by their death in its
service.
When using the Charm, the Noble chooses one of her Aspirations to elevate into her Cause. The Aspiration
must not be a trivial or simple goal; for example, “Kill the six-fingered man who killed my father” is a valid target,
while “Buy some milk from the shops” is almost certainly not. The Noble repeats her Aspiration over and over
again, drumming the words until they become all-consuming. The Charm is complete when the scars blossom
across her chest, spelling out the Cause for all who would see. The Noble gains an Entwined Destiny Merit aimed
at advancing the Cause; finding a list of men with six fingers, finding which one he is, finding where he lives,
watching his routines, breaking into his house, and attacking him would all be actions which would benefit from
this. In addition, the Noble cannot be dissuaded; she doubles her appropriate Resistance Attribute against any
attempts, whether mundane or supernatural, to prevent her from fulfilling the Cause. This covers things like
torture, which would double Stamina, just as much as Composure might be used against magical mind-control
or mundane persuasions.
However, the Cause consumes those who have willingly sworn it. When faced with a choice between ad-
vancing or fulfilling the Cause, or taking another action, the Noble rolls Resolve + Composure. If she fails, she
may perform the other action; otherwise she must continue with the Cause, and ignore the other situation, even
if it would seem to be more important to an objective observer. This obsession replaces the normal drawback
of the Merit; the Noble doesn’t suffer a penalty to her actions if she does manage to set the Cause aside.
Once the Cause has been accomplished, the Noble regains the Willpower dot lost when swearing to it. If it
becomes impossible to attain the Cause for any reason (say, the six-fingered man dies before they can get their
revenge), not only does she not regain the Willpower dot, she must roll Resolve + Composure, with each success
inflicting one point of resistant aggravated damage, as her soul tears itself apart in coruscating flames that erupt
from her mouth and burn at the tongue that swore an oath it could not uphold.

Upgrade: Proxy (Tempesta ••••)

Cost: 2 Wisps from the Noble, 1 Willpower dot from the target
The Noble may use the Charm to seal another person to a Cause. The target is affected as if he had cast
it himself.

Standing on a Pedestal (Connect ••••, Specchio •••)

Action: Extended, 30 minutes/roll, threshold = target’s Willpower
Dice pool: Presence + Persuasion, modified by Sympathy
Cost: 2 Wisps, 1 Willpower
Duration: 1 month
In a lengthy ceremony, invoking all she knows of him, the Noble weaves the thread of another person’s fate
into hers, giving him opportunities to prove himself worthy of her.
When she reaches the threshold, the target gains the Entwined Destiny Merit with her until the Charm
ends, with all the benefits and drawbacks of that Merit. The target’s Entwined Destiny makes him a seeker for
the Noble’s approval; she can choose what kind of favor he is destined to seek. He may be a romantic suitor,
and fulfill the destiny when he earns a sign of her affections. He may seek her social favor, and fulfill the destiny
when she compliments him on his apparel, or invites him to a party. He may even seek her intellectual favor,
and fulfill the destiny when she publicly approves of an idea he had. The general rule is that the target gains
Willpower when the Noble chooses to bestow a sign of her approval upon him, and reaches a breaking point
when he refuses an opportunity to seek the Noble’s favor. He does not suffer when he makes a genuine attempt,
regardless of how the Noble reacts.
Unlike the Radiant Queens’ Charms of Entwined Destiny, it is perfectly possible to use Standing on a
Pedestal on an unwilling target. It is however a compromise to do so, with a -3 penalty to the roll. (It is not a
compromise to use the Charm on targets who already desire the Noble’s favor.) Further breaking point rolls

Connect 149
may be called for if the Noble takes advantage of people she has woven a destiny for. As a general rule, it doesn’t
count as consent if they’re only saying it as a result of an artificial destiny.

Upgrade: Collective (Specchio ••••)

Cost: +1 Willpower
The Noble may bind many favor-seekers to herself at once, if they are all present; the Charm is modified by
Commonalty of the target group, instead of by Sympathy.

Upgrade: Taut
Modified by Commonalty
Cost: +1 Wisp
The thread that ties the Noble to her target pulls them together. The Noble and her target are linked by an
Intimate sympathetic connection, regardless of the connection they had before. Their original level of Sympathy
returns when the Charm ends.
If the Noble applies Collective and Taut, she becomes a member of the target group for the purposes of
Commonalty Charms, instead of improving her Sympathy with any of them.

All the World’s a Stage (Connect •••••, Aria ••••)

Avatar (Spades)
Action: Instant
Dice pool: Manipulation + Expression
Cost: 3 Wisps, 1 Willpower
Duration: 1 scene
The Queen of Spades’ avatar is a subtle spirit, influencing the actors on the stage without being an actor
herself; the stage manager isn’t part of the play, after all, even if she makes it all happen. If all the world’s a stage,
then no one should notice the theatre’s manager, right?
Dramatic Failure: The Noble thinks the Charm worked. Initially she takes the Insensate Tilt [CofD 285]
and spends her time giggling to herself; if brought out of that, she replaces it with the Drugged Tilt [CofD 281]
as if under a generic narcotic. Both Tilts expire when the scene ends, returning her to sobriety.
Failure: A gust from nowhere swirls around the Noble, leaving her disheveled.
In a scintillating gust, the Noble’s body dissolves, flaking away into the air with a soft chuckle. Blue and
white streamers track the motion of her wind-body, weaving in and out in the breeze with a soft radiance
which glows brighter the faster she moves. If she is still, she’s almost invisible, only noticeable by the chill
feel of the air and the breeze that stirs the area. While in this state, the following abilities and changes to the
Noble’s status apply:
• She is in the state of Twilight, and may not be harmed by anything which cannot reach into this realm.
• Likewise, she cannot interact with the mortal world, except by using a Charm or a power that normally
allows touching things in Twilight.
• While stationary, she is almost completely invisible (-5 to Perception rolls to notice her). When she
moves, others may make an unmodified Perception roll to notice her, and if she runs, they add her Inner
Light to that roll; but she cannot be identified.
Success: However, these benefits are secondary to the main purpose of the Charm. Until the Charm ends,
the Noble has a pool of floating bonuses available to her, which can store one bonus for each dot of her Aria.
This pool begins empty, and as an instant action, the Noble may roll a dice pool of any Finesse Attribute +
Aria and keep the result as a bonus. She can apply stored bonuses reflexively to any action undertaken by
someone she can see, either adding or subtracting dice as she pleases; once applied, a bonus is used up.

150 Connect
 The Noble resolidifies when the Charm expires, and any unspent bonuses are lost.
Exceptional Success: The Noble may store two extra bonuses in her pool.

Fight
The Fight Charms enhance a Princess’ ability to fight. Only Champions have affinity for them.

Fighting Styles
Just because a Princess is firing rainbows from a cheerleading baton doesn’t mean she can’t benefit
from a few days training down at the firing range. Nobles can use the Fighting Merits, including the Fight-
ing Styles, with their Regalia weapons, and mix the maneuvers of Empty Hands with Merits that expand
unarmed fighting. Weapons must be compatible with a Fighting Style - for example, Light Weapons [CofD
63] requires a weapon with Damage 2 or less, so a Kensai weapon upgraded to Damage 3 can’t be used
with that Style.

Empty Hands (Fight •)

Regalia
Action: Permanent
Many of the Hopeful have weapons in their Regalia, but some prefer to fight barehanded. A pair of fighting
gloves, hand wrappings, or bracers becomes part of the Noble’s Regalia. The Regalia bonus may add extra suc-
cesses equal to her dots in the applied Invocation to an unarmed attack [CofD 89-90], or the same number of
extra dice, but not both on the same attack.

Upgrade: Binding
The Regalia piece takes the form of spools of ribbon, reels of fishing line or stretching cords. When the
Noble uses Restrain during a grapple, she may tie up her opponent with Regalia cords, which have the normal
Durability of her Regalia, and leave the grapple.

Upgrade: Crushing
The Noble’s fists swing like hammers, and her grip crushes like a vise. She may choose to do either lethal
or bashing damage with her unarmed strikes and Damage moves in grapples.

Upgrade: Locking (Acqua ••)

The Noble knows how to put opponents out of action quickly. When she applies Acqua to a grappling roll
and wins the contest, she may use Hold and Restrain as a single maneuver.

Upgrade: Disarming (Aria ••)

While grappling, the Noble can maneuver objects on her person or her opponent’s with startling speed.
When she applies Aria and wins the contest, she may use Control Weapon and either Damage or Disarm as a
single maneuver.

Upgrade: Blistering (Fuoco ••)

During a grapple, the Noble’s skin and clothes grow hot to the touch. In each turn that she applies Fuoco,
her opponent automatically takes 1 bashing damage, in addition to any results of maneuvers that turn.

Fight 151
Upgrade: Entrancing (Legno ••)
The Noble’s opponents, if once they touch her, find it strangely hard to do anything that would really injure
her. During a grapple, in any turn the Noble applies Legno, her opponent cannot use the Damage maneuver.

Upgrade: Unbroken (Terra ••)

The Noble stands unmoved, and her hold is almost impossible to escape. During a grapple, in any turn that
she applies Terra, her opponent cannot use the Break Free maneuver.

Upgrade: Draining (Lacrima ••)

The Noble’s mien unsettles anyone who comes too close. During a grapple, in any turn that she applies
Lacrima, her opponent must roll Resolve + Composure. If he fails that roll, he must spend 1 Willpower to use
any maneuver except Break Free. The Noble triggers her Sensitivity the first time this happens during a scene.

Upgrade: Shattering (Tempesta ••)

The Noble can casually break bones and dislocate joints. She may forgo the Regalia bonus when applying
Tempesta to an unarmed attack; instead, if the attack damages her opponent, she inflicts either the Arm Wrack
[CofD 280] or Leg Wrack [CofD 285] Tilt on him.

Upgrade: Flirting (Specchio ••)

Touching the Noble’s body inspires sudden, and quite distracting, desire. During a grapple, in any turn the
Noble applies Specchio, her opponent must roll the worse of his Resolve + Composure and Strength + Brawl
dice pools.

Kensai (Fight •)
Regalia
Action: Permanent
A melee weapon becomes part of the Noble’s Regalia, manifesting her courage and faith. Attacks with the
weapon use the normal dice pool for melee combat. For anyone but the Noble, the weapon’s Initiative penalty
is -1 and its minimum Strength is 1. For the Noble herself, both are 0 - as an extension of her will, the weapon
obeys her desires as well as her own hands.
By default the weapon’s Damage is 1, but the Noble may apply an Invocation to her attack to increase its
Damage by her dots in that Invocation for one turn. (She may apply the normal Regalia bonus to an attack instead
of increasing its Damage.) In addition, each time she attacks with it, she may choose to inflict either bashing
or lethal damage. Infusing her weapon with magic takes a few moments; applying an Invocation to an attack
imposes an extra -1 penalty to Initiative.

Upgrade: Forceful
Stackable 3 times
The Noble’s weapon strikes with great force. Each time the Noble takes this upgrade, she may add 1 to
her weapon’s base Damage. Doing so increases its minimum Strength by 1 and Initiative penalty by -1 for all
wielders except the Noble. She may add or remove levels of Damage with a transformation action.

Upgrade: Guarding
The Noble’s weapon pushes attackers away or deflects their blows. Using it adds +1 to Defense.

152 Fight
Upgrade: Inexorable
The Noble’s weapon may move slowly, but it can’t be stopped or avoided. The Noble may transform her
weapon, taking a -2 Initiative penalty. In return, those she attacks with it use only their Attributes as Defense
from it; they don’t add any Skill. She may switch between this form and the basic form with a transformation
action.

Upgrade: Precise (Acqua ••)

The Noble places her strokes with marvelous accuracy. If she applies Acqua, she may ignore up to her Acqua
in penalties from aiming at a specified target [CofD 92] on top of the Invocation bonus.

Upgrade: Sharp (Aria ••)

Like the wind, the Noble’s weapon slips through gaps in her target’s protections. If she applies Aria to an
attack, the weapon gains Armor Piercing at a rating equal to her Aria.

Upgrade: Burning (Fuoco ••)

The Princess’ weapon grows hot in battle, scalding those it hits. If she applies Fuoco to an attack, it gains
the 9-again quality, and acts as fire against beings vulnerable to it.

Upgrade: Clinging (Legno ••)

The Noble’s weapon becomes a vine, whip or chain, and wraps around her opponent’s flesh, as tree roots
burrow into the earth. She can use the weapon in a grapple, and may apply Legno to her grappling maneuvers as
long as she controls the weapon. The weapon’s Damage is added as bonus dice to her grappling rolls [CofD 89]

Upgrade: Stunning (Terra ••)

Strikes with the Noble’s weapon have the force of avalanches. If the Noble applies Terra to an attack, and
the target takes damage from it, he also takes the Knocked Down [CofD 285] Tilt.

Upgrade: Draining (Lacrima ••)

The Noble’s weapon draws shadows to itself, unsettling anyone with the bad luck to touch it. If she applies
Lacrima to an attack, and the target takes damage from the attack, he must roll Resolve + Composure, and loses
1 point of Willpower if he fails. The Noble triggers her Sensitivity the first time this happens during a scene.

Upgrade: Berserk (Tempesta ••)

The Noble’s weapon’s blows come so furiously that they catch their targets by surprise. If she makes an all-
out attack with the weapon and applies Tempesta to the attack, she doesn’t get the normal +2 bonus; instead
the target loses his Defense against the attack.

Upgrade: Cinematic (Specchio ••)

The Noble’s fighting style lets her beat a foe without a scratch or bruise marring her features. If she applies
Specchio to an attack, she also adds her dots to her Defense against any attack her target makes on her that turn.
Her Defense against other attackers is not affected.

Levinbolt (Fight •)
Regalia
Action: Permanent

Fight 153
 A ranged weapon becomes part of the Noble’s Regalia, delivering the force of her will from afar. It can
appear as nearly anything; wizards’ staffs, futuristic pistols, and daggers that fly back to the hand are all known
examples. The Noble chooses either Athletics or Firearms as the Skill for using her weapon when she learns the
Charm. The Skill chosen for the weapon determines its range. An Athletics Levinbolt is an aerodynamic missile
of Size 1 and must be thrown at its target [CofD 90]. A Firearms Levinbolt has a flat range of 30/60/120 yards. A
Levinbolt weapon generates ammunition as the Noble fires it, and never needs reloading. The Noble may spend
1 Wisp when attacking with her weapon to fire a short burst instead of one shot.
For anyone but the Noble, the weapon’s Initiative penalty is -1 and its minimum Strength is 1. For the Noble
herself, both are 0 - as an extension of her will, the weapon obeys her desires as well as her own hands. By default
the weapon’s Damage is 1, but the Noble may apply an Invocation to her attack to increase its Damage by her
dots in that Invocation for one turn. (She may apply the normal Regalia bonus to an attack instead of increasing
its Damage.) In addition, each time she attacks with it, she may choose to inflict either bashing or lethal damage.
Infusing her weapon with magic takes a few moments; applying an Invocation to an attack imposes an extra
-1 penalty to Initiative.

Upgrade: Forceful
Stackable 3 times
The Noble’s weapon strikes with great force. Each time the Noble takes this upgrade, she may add 1 to
her weapon’s base Damage. Doing so increases its minimum Strength by 1 and Initiative penalty by -1 for all
wielders except the Noble. She may add or remove levels of Damage with a transformation action.

Upgrade: Multiple
Stackable 2 times
The Noble’s weapon allows automatic fire. With one purchase, spending 1 Wisp allows the Noble to fire
three short bursts or one medium burst. A second purchase lets her fire short bursts at no cost, and spending
a Wisp lets her fire two medium bursts or one long burst. As with mundane firearms, one turn of covering fire
is equivalent to one medium burst.

Upgrade: Long
Stackable 3 times
The weapon’s range doubles each time the Noble takes this upgrade.

Upgrade: Freezing (Acqua ••)

The weapon’s shot is a sliver of cold, draining the heat from its target. If the Noble applies Acqua to an
attack, and her target takes damage from it, he also suffers from the effects of a cold extreme environment [CofD
97] at level 1 for turns equal to her Acqua. The shot stacks with cold from other sources, but not with itself - a
second shot to the same target just replaces the first.

Upgrade: Gusting (Aria ••)

The weapon’s shot arrives with a gust of wind that hurls the target off his feet. If the Noble applies Aria to
an attack, and her target takes damage from it, he also suffers the Knocked Down Tilt [CofD 285]; if he hasn’t
acted this turn he may roll to remain standing as the rules for ending the Tilt allow.

Upgrade: Burning (Fuoco ••)

If the Noble applies Fuoco to an attack, and her target takes damage from it, she may spend 1 Wisp reflex-
ively to set the target on fire. This inflicts the Burning Tilt at Intensity 1. The fire is mundane, being only super-
natural in its origin.

154 Fight
Upgrade: Soothing (Legno ••)
If the Noble applies Legno to an attack, and a target takes damage from it, a dose of an opiate enters his
bloodstream, and he must roll his Stamina + Resolve - the Princess’ Legno. If he fails, he gains the Drugged Tilt
[CofD 281].

Upgrade: Piercing (Terra ••)

The weapon’s shot is adamant, and breaks lesser material in its path. If the Noble applies Terra to an attack,
it becomes Armor Piercing [CofD 94-95] at a level equal to her Terra.

Upgrade: Draining (Lacrima ••)

The weapon’s shot assaults the will of the target if it strikes home. If the Noble applies Lacrima to an attack,
and the target takes damage, he must roll Resolve + Composure, and loses 1 point of Willpower if he fails. The
Noble triggers her Sensitivity the first time this happens during a scene.

Upgrade: Irradiating (Tempesta ••)

When applying Tempesta to an attack, the Noble may increase the Damage of the weapon’s shot by inflicting
resistant damage on herself. 1 level of bashing damage adds +1 to Damage, and 1 level of lethal damage adds
+3. The Noble chooses whether to take bashing or lethal damage for each attack.

Upgrade: Trickshot (Specchio ••)

The Noble’s weapon fires a bolt of pure light in an impossible shot. She might aim over her shoulder with a
mirror, ricochet the bolt several times to her target or shoot a target 100 yards away from the hip. If she applies
Specchio, she ignores up to her Specchio in penalties for long range, specified targets, concealment and similar
modifiers.

Palladion (Fight •)
Regalia
Action: Permanent
The Noble adds a shield to her Regalia, standing steadfast in battle. The shield is Size 2 and, like a mundane
shield, protects the Noble from close and ranged attack. In any turn she doesn't use it as a weapon, the Noble
adds the shield’s Size to her Defense and applies its Size as a concealment penalty against ranged attacks. When
used as a weapon, the shield does Damage 1 and, for anyone but the Noble, requires a Strength of 2 and applies
-2 to Initiative. The Noble ignores both; for her the shield is an extension of her arm. In addition, each time she
attacks with it, she may choose to inflict either bashing or lethal damage. The Noble may not use the shield as a
weapon if she has used it for Defense or concealment during the current turn.
In addition, the Noble can apply an Invocation to her shield, making it easy to maneuver. If she attacks
with the shield, applying an Invocation adds its dots to her dice pool. If she defends with it, she adds her dots
to either her passive Defense or her Dodge dice pool for one turn. A bonus from the Quality upgrade is applied
the same way.

Upgrade: Durable
The Noble’s shield withstands even the most forceful blows. Its Durability equals 1 + her Inner Light.

Upgrade: Enlarged
The Noble can enlarge her shield with a transformation action. If she does so, the shield becomes Size 3
and does Damage 2 when used to attack. The required Strength rises by 1 and the Initiative penalty increases
by -1 for all wielders except the Princess.

Fight 155
Upgrade: Towering
Requires Enlarged
The Noble can make her shield large enough to conceal her completely. When she does so, she can move
at half Speed to use her shield as opaque cover against ranged attacks [CofD 92]. When not so used the shield
is still effectively Size 3.

Upgrade: Soaring
The Noble can fling her shield, spinning it toward an enemy. The throw follows the normal rules for throw-
ing objects [CofD 90] except that the Noble can throw the shield regardless of her Strength and may apply an
Invocation to her dice pool. The shield is aerodynamic when the Noble throws it, though not for anyone else.
Throwing the shield counts as using it as a weapon.

Upgrade: Slick (Acqua •)

The shield is coated with ice or a film of oil, making it nearly frictionless, and the Noble can use it to pull
her enemies out of position. When she applies Acqua to improve her Dodge pool, any close attacker who hits
her (gets at least one success before dodging is considered) has his blow slide off the shield, exposing him to
counterattack; if the Noble uses her next action to attack him, she reduces his Defense by her Acqua.

Upgrade: Thunderous (Aria •)

The shield reverberates when struck, with a crash of thunder. When the Noble applies Aria to improve her
Dodge pool, any close attacker who hits her must succeed on a Stamina + Athletics roll, penalized by her Aria,
or take the Deafened Tilt [CofD 281] in both ears from the noise blasting through his skull. If she applies Aria to
an attack with the shield and does damage, her target must make the same roll to avoid deafness.

Upgrade: Tangling (Legno •)

The shield becomes a burr that can trap whatever strikes it. When the Noble applies Legno to improve
her Dodge pool, any weapon that hits her gets tangled in the shield and wrenched out of the attacker’s hand.
Unarmed attackers have their striking limb trapped, giving them either the Arm Wrack [CofD 280] or Leg Wrack
[CofD 285] Tilt until they spend an action extracting the limb.

Upgrade: Acrid (Tempesta •)

The shield corrodes anything that strikes it. When the Noble applies Tempesta to increase her Defense
or Dodge, any melee weapon used against her that does no damage loses one point of Structure, bypassing its
Durability. Unarmed attackers take one lethal damage as the corrosive eats into their striking limb. Applying
Tempesta to an attack with the shield adds 1 to its Damage.

Damage is Damage
Regalia weapons, and the weaponless combat of Empty Hands, are the Noble’s willingness to hurt
another, or to defend another, made manifest. They are, thus, as magical as she is, and count as supernatural
damage - powers that downgrade or ignore mundane weapons don’t apply to them. The form the weapons
take isn’t otherwise significant; a Princess may have a sword of the purest silver in her Regalia, but it will
not be of any extra help when fighting a werewolf (except possibly for the ability to bluff that you have
real silver); contrariwise it will not be stopped by that anti-silver forcefield the werewolf bought off a mad
scientist.
Invoked upgrades can change this rule - after applying the Fuoco upgrade Burning a Noble’s Kensai
weapon both cuts and burns. It acts as a bane to a vampire, but a defense against fire will block it, as will
a ward against blades.

156 Fight
Take the Blow (Fight •)
Action: Reactive
Dice pool: Unrolled
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 attack
The Noble places her body in the path of a lethal blow, protecting the person it would have injured. She may
activate the Charm just before a close combat attack when both the attacker and his target are within her Speed
in yards of her (not, however, if she’s the target.) When she does so the attack falls on her, not the attacker’s
intended target. The substitution happens before the attack pool is rolled, and the Noble can choose to defend
passively, applying her Defense, or actively, rolling her Dodge dice pool.

Upgrade: Your Guardian Angel (Fuoco •)

Duration: Fuoco turns
By interposing herself, the Noble takes the attacked person into her protection; anyone who wants to harm
him must go through her. If she applies Fuoco, for turns equal to her Fuoco, beginning in the next turn, any
character who attacks the person she protected loses his Defense against an attack from her until his next ac-
tion. The Noble can protect only one person at a time; if she uses the Charm to defend someone else, the first
activation expires.

Upgrade: Oakenshield (Legno •)

The Turtle redirects any force to strike her hard shell, keeping it away from the weak. If she applies Legno,
she may activate the Charm in response to a ranged attack. The attacker’s range penalty to hit her has to be the
same or less than the one to hit his intended target, but she can be in a completely different direction - a bullet
can redirect in mid-flight towards her waiting shield.
When diverting an attack that uses autofire, the Noble can protect only one target, and chooses which
before the attack resolves. An attack that affects an area is resolved as if aimed at the Noble’s position. The Charm
can’t redirect close combat attacks from afar; the Noble must still be within her Speed in yards to intercept them.

Upgrade: Shield Wall (Terra •)

The Noble stands firm as a rock and holds the line together. If she applies Terra, she may activate the Charm
as a reflexive action.

Lightning Charge (Fight •, Aria •)

Action: Reflexive
Dice pool: Unrolled
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 turn
The Noble runs as swiftly as lightning to meet an enemy. When she makes a charge [CofD 92] the Noble
may activate the Charm to keep her Defense.

Willow’s Wisdom (Fight •, Legno •)

Action: Reflexive
Dice pool: Unrolled
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 attack

Fight 157
 The Noble turns her foes’ momentum against them. When she Dodges [CofD 88-89], if the Noble reduces a
close combat attacker’s successes to 0, she may activate the Charm to inflict the Knocked Down Tilt [CofD 285]
on that attacker.

Courteous Parry (Fight •, Terra •)

Action: Permanent
A smile and pleasant voice disarms a Princess’s attackers, or a calculated remark at the right moment
throws them off-balance. When the Noble transforms, she may choose for her Dodge to subtract successes equal
to her Manipulation from the attack instead of rolling her Dodge dice pool, if the attacker has a roughly human
mindset. Unfortunately, social acumen doesn’t do anything to inhuman foes; against an animal, a spirit and sim-
ilar beings the Noble’s Dodge dice pool is twice her Athletics, not adding an Attribute. She may switch back to
normal Dodging with a transformation action.

Upgrade: Instinctive
Using social talent to evade injury becomes almost a reflex. When the Noble transforms, she may choose
to set her Defense to Manipulation + Athletics against attackers with a basically human mind. The drawback,
as before, is that against inhuman attackers her Defense is Athletics alone. She may return to normal Defense
with a transformation action.

Danmaku Dance (Fight ••)

Action: Reflexive
Dice pool: Unrolled
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 scene
The Noble can bend her perception of time to anticipate attacks aimed at herself, even from afar. From the
moment she activates the Charm until the scene ends, the Noble applies her Defense against Firearms attacks,
unless she is currently prone, in cover, or in concealment. Moreover, she can’t be surprised [CofD 88] - she
automatically wins the contested roll. Danmaku Dance may be activated when someone shoots at or ambushes
the Noble.

Upgrade: Dodging (Aria ••)

If the Noble concentrates, she can elude even continuous streams of bullets. While the Charm is active, she
may use Dodging to reduce damage from covering fire [CofD 90] as if it were an attack.

You Might Hurt Yourself (Fight ••)

Action: Reactive and contested
Dice pool: Dexterity + Larceny vs. Defense
Cost: 1 Wisp
People ought to know better than to swing heavy or sharp objects around. When a foe close enough to
attack has a tool or weapon in hand, and is about to use it (on herself or anyone else) the Noble activates this
Charm. She must have both hands free.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble leaves herself wide open to her target. If he attacks her in the next turn,
she cannot apply Defense.
Failure: The Noble misses her catch.
Success: The Noble takes hold of the target’s instrument and pulls it away, just before he does whatever
he meant to do. The object moves to her possession.

158 Fight
 Exceptional Success: The Noble’s theft is so well timed that the target actually tries to carry out his
intention without the necessary tool. He gets the Stunned Tilt [CofD 286].

Upgrade: Replacing (Aria •••)

The Noble places new equipment into her target’s hand as deftly as she removes the old. If the new equip-
ment is similar (such as replacing a gun with another gun loaded with blanks) the target will attempt their
original action using the new equipment. Otherwise the target notices the switch in time to change his action,
unless the Noble rolls an exceptional success.

Safety in Stillness (Fight ••, Legno •)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Composure + Brawl
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 scene
The Noble stands unperturbed by the assaults of many foes. After activating the Charm, her Defense is not
reduced until she has taken (1 + her successes) attacks in a turn.

Spite Strike (Fight ••, Tempesta •)

Action: Reflexive
Dice pool: Dexterity + Intimidation
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 attack
None may strike a Fury without reprisal. When the Noble is attacked, she may forgo her Defense and acti-
vate Spite Strike. If she takes damage from the attack, the attacker takes damage of the same type equal to her
activation successes, or what he inflicts on her, whichever is greater. The Noble must actually take damage - if
she mitigates any of it by spending Wisps, or if the attacker fails to inflict any damage, the Charm fails.

Seraphic Fury (Fight ••, Tempesta ••)

Action: Reflexive
Dice pool: Unrolled
Cost: 1 resistant lethal damage
Duration: 1 attack
The Noble channels fire and fury through her veins into the flesh of an enemy of the Light. Her weapon seeks
the heart and severs arteries. She may activate the Charm when she attacks a creature of the Darkness, before
making the roll. If the attack hits the creature, it does aggravated damage. The Charm stacks with permanent
Charms, but not other activated Charms.

Upgrade: Discretionary (Tempesta ••••)

The Noble judges for herself who the Light’s enemies are. She may use the Charm when attacking anyone
- her enemy need not be a creature of the Darkness.

Befriending (Fight ••, Specchio ••)

Action: Permanent
The Queen of Mirrors wants everyone to get along, in service to the True Queen. Isn’t that nice? Sadly,
violence is sometimes necessary, but violence should always serve a higher cause, and bind people together. If

Fight 159
the Noble inflicts the Beaten Down Tilt [CofD 280] on an opponent or forces him to unconsciousness, then in
the next social maneuver she attempts with that opponent her impression level improves by one step.

Upgrade: Slap Slap Kiss (Specchio •••)

Prove yourself superior, the Heirs say, and those you defeat must admire you. The Noble may spend 1
Wisp when she bests a foe to give him the Swooning Condition [CofD 291] aimed at herself. This overrides and
deepens the Charm’s normal effect.

One Woman Warband (Fight ••, Specchio •••)

Action: Reactive
Dice pool: Unrolled
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 turn
What’s more impressive than flamboyantly taking down an opponent without a scratch? Flamboyantly
taking down ten opponents. When this Charm is activated the Noble’s Defense is reduced to twice her Specchio
(if her Defense is already less than this, it’s unchanged.) However, when facing multiple attackers, every attack
after the first increases her Defense by 1 rather than decreasing it. She may improve Defense with Willpower
as normal.

Upgrade: Countered
At the end of the turn the Noble may make one counter attack with a dicepool equal to the number of people
who attacked her this turn.

Certain Shot (Fight •••)

Requires Levinbolt
Action: Reflexive
Dice pool: Unrolled
Cost: 1 Willpower
Duration: 1 attack
The Noble enchants her Levinbolt to make its shot curve in flight and hit her target, even if her aim was
off. She may activate the Charm when she attacks with her Levinbolt weapon. If she does, a normal failure on
the attack roll does damage to the target equal to the weapon’s Damage rating. The target must be within her
weapon’s long range for the shot to damage it.
If the target can apply Defense against firearms, he can dodge the enchanted shot, and an attack that gained
no successes can be dodged automatically - but the target must spend his action dodging to avoid the shot
entirely.

Load Cartridge (Fight •••)

Requires Empty Hands, Kensai, Levinbolt or Palladion
Action: Instant
Dice pool: Unrolled
Cost: 2 Wisps
Duration: until transformation
Sometimes the Darkness isn’t the only enemy a Princess faces. Happily most supernatural threats are vul-
nerable to certain objects; and when a Princess must oppose such a threat, she can transfer those objects’ special
properties to her own weapon. The Noble holds a small amount of her opponent’s bane in her dominant hand

160 Fight
- enough to fill her palm - and activates the Charm; doing so materializes her Regalia weapon from one of the
prerequisite Charms, and combines the bane with that weapon. Until the Noble next transforms it, or returns to
mundane form, the weapon and attacks made with it affect supernatural beings just as the bane does. The bane
itself transmutes to inert dust with no useful properties.
Each use of this Charm combines a bane with one piece of Regalia. Regalia pieces already under its effects
cannot be combined with another bane.

Refutation in Arms (Fight •••, Acqua ••)

Requires Empty Hands, Kensai or Palladion
Action: Instant and resisted
Dice pool: Wits + (Brawl or Weaponry) - target’s Defense
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 scene
The attacks of a fighter fall into patterns, and the Noble can read those patterns. When she wields her
Regalia weapon and faces another in close combat, she may activate this Charm.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble misreads her foe. For the rest of the scene, she takes a -1 penalty to all
attacks against him, and she cannot use Refutation in Arms again.
Failure: The Noble learns nothing from her foe’s movements.
Success: The Noble understands her foe’s style of combat. She gains the Studied Fighting Tilt against him.
Exceptional Success: The Noble understands her foe completely. Her bonus from the Studied Fighting
Tilt begins at +2.
The Noble can gain a bonus from this Charm against only one target at a time; if she uses it again before
the scene ends, the first use of the Charm ends immediately.

Flash Step (Fight •••, Aria •••)

Action: Reactive
Dice pool: Wits + Athletics
Cost: 1 Wisp
The Noble dodges her foe’s attack so swiftly that, by the time it lands, she’s somewhere else. She may acti-
vate Flash Step whenever she can Dodge an attack.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble trips over her own feet. She loses Defense against the attack she was avoid-
ing.
Failure: The Noble stays put, and defends against the incoming attack normally.
Success: The Noble moves up to her Speed times (1 + activation successes) in yards; if this takes her out
of the attacker’s reach, the attack misses. On her next action, anyone she attacks is surprised and must equal
or exceed her activation successes on a Wits + Composure roll to apply Defense against her.
Exceptional Success: The Noble moves in the blink of an eye. On her next action, Defense does not apply
against her attack.

Tangling Vine (Fight •••, Legno ••)

Requires Empty Hands
Action: Instant and resisted
Dice pool: Strength + Brawl - target’s Defense
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: concentration

Fight 161
 A net of brambles grows in the Noble’s hands, and she throws it at a target [CofD 90]; the net is not aero-
dynamic. If she succeeds, she entangles the target in the net, and the brambles grapple him [CofD 89-90]. The
Noble may spend her action in the next and subsequent rounds maintaining the grapple, and may use any move
except Take Cover. If the target Breaks Free, or the Noble takes any action other than maintaining the grapple,
the Charm ends. If she uses Restrain, the brambles remain after the Charm ends; the target must break them to
end the Immobilized Tilt, and they have Durability equal to her Legno.

Upgrade: Thorny
If the Noble applies this upgrade, the net grows sharp thorns; the Damage move in the grapple inflicts lethal
damage.

Upgrade: Wide
Stackable 3 times
Cost: +0-2 Wisps
The net is broad enough to ensnare more than one person. Use the autofire rules [CofD 90]. The first pur-
chase gives the net the bonus of a short burst. The second purchase adds 1 Wisp to the cost, and allows the
equivalent of a medium burst. The third purchase adds 2 Wisps to the cost, and allows the equivalent of a long
burst. The Noble must use the same move on everyone caught in the net; if a move doesn’t apply to a target,
it’s wasted.

Salted Wounds (Fight •••, Lacrima •••)

Requires Kensai
Action: Instant and resisted
Dice pool: Strength + Medicine - target’s Stamina
Cost: 2 Wisps, Sensitivity check
Duration: until damage heals
When the Raven has wounded an enemy with her Kensai weapon, she increases the pain from all his in-
juries. The target must have damage inflicted by the Noble’s attack with her Kensai weapon. Salted Wounds does
not work on anyone already under its effect.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble relieves the target’s pain; he immediately heals one point of bashing dam-
age.
Failure: The target feels a moment’s sharp pain from the wound the Noble gave him.
Success: The target has been wounded in a fashion that’s exquisitely painful. He acquires the Salted
Wound Tilt, linked to the leftmost Health box filled by damage from the Noble’s Kensai weapon.
Exceptional Success: Pain from the wound stops the target dead. He also takes the Stunned Tilt [CofD
286].

Seven at a Blow (Fight ••••)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Unrolled
Cost: 3 Wisps, 1 Willpower
Duration: 1 combat
Once the Noble has fixed her purpose, lesser opponents cannot impede her. The Noble may activate this
Charm at the start of a combat, provided that all those opposing her are mundane humans, natural animals or
Darkspawn, and her intent is not to kill anyone. When she does so, the fight must be resolved with the Down and
Dirty Combat rules [CofD 87], no matter how many foes there are, or how well they are equipped. The Charm
fails, and combat is resolved normally, if any opponent is a supernatural being other than Darkspawn.

162 Fight
Nova Strike (Fight ••••, Fuoco ••••)
Requires Levinbolt
Action: Reflexive
Dice pool: Strength + Science - blast radius in yards
Cost: 2 Wisps
Duration: 1 attack
The Noble conjures a ball that explodes in a gout of consuming fire. She may activate the Charm when she
attacks with her Levinbolt weapon, and sets the explosion’s size at that point, taking a penalty to her dice pool
equal to its radius in yards.
Dramatic Failure: The ball explodes in the Noble’s hands. The Charm has its normal effect, centered
on her.
Failure: The Noble fires Levinbolt normally.
Success: The Noble loads her Levinbolt with an incendiary bomb. When she throws or fires the bomb,
her attack doesn’t resolve normally; the Noble rolls just to see if the bomb goes where she wants it to. Instead,
an explosion goes off centered where the bomb lands; its Blast Area is what she chose for it, and its Damage
and Force are both equal to her Fuoco. The incendiary effect starts fires of Intensity 2.
Exceptional Success: The incendiary is hot enough to melt metal. It starts fires of Intensity 3.

Retorsion (Fight ••••, Legno •••)

Action: Reflexive
Dice pool: Composure + Athletics
Cost: 1 Willpower, lose Defense
The Noble turns the violence of her opponents back upon them. This Charm is activated in response to an
attack on the Noble; she may use it only once each turn, and must sacrifice her Defense for that turn.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble is helpless for a moment; she takes the Stunned Tilt [CofD 286].
Failure: The attack resolves normally.
Success: The Noble redirects the attack’s force for her own benefit. If the attack succeeded, none of its
normal effects happen. Instead, she may choose to inflict its damage on the aggressor, or to inflict a disabling
injury (represented as an appropriate Tilt) or to gain a +2 bonus on her next action. An attack that does no
damage (e.g. a simple touch [CofD 90]) allows only the last option.
Exceptional Success: The Noble’s counterattack takes the fight out of her foe. He takes the Beaten Down
Tilt [CofD 280] in addition to the other effects.

Strength of Ten (Fight •••••, Terra •••)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Presence + Expression
Cost: 2 Wisps, 1 Willpower
Duration: 1 turn
Blows delivered by the Noble’s friends become steps in a great dance, and her strike against a foe is its
culmination. The Charm may be activated only during combat. For each activation success, add the successes
rolled for a mundane action by one character on the Noble’s side of the fight as a bonus to her dice pool in the
next turn, provided that her action that turn is a mundane attack. If the Noble does anything other than attack a
foe as her next action, she gains no benefit from the Charm. She must choose whether an eligible action is part
of the attack before the player for that character rolls. If a character rolls a dramatic failure on an action that’s
part of the attack, the Noble takes a -4 penalty to her dice pool.

Fight 163
The Finest Hour, the Last Hour (Fight •••••, Tempesta
••••)
Avatar (Storms)
Action: Instant
Dice pool: Resolve + Composure
Cost: 3 Wisps, 1 Willpower, 1 resistant aggravated damage
Duration: 1 scene
The Noble draws upon the dedication and resolve the Seraphic General displayed during the fall, and recre-
ates her own lesser version of that courage.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble is overcome with a feeling of utter futility and defeatism. She takes the
Beaten Down Tilt [CofD 280] and is considered to have broken Tempesta’s ban.
Failure: The Noble cannot focus.
Success: The Noble enters a combat trance, a tranquil fury or even a screaming hysteria. In this state she
is one of the most powerful and terrible combatants known to the Radiant. She gains the following benefits:
• Any damage caused by the Noble is aggravated, even if she doesn’t want it to be.
• She gains temporary Health boxes equal to her Resolve + Inner Light.
• Every time the Noble kills someone she believes is a follower of the Dark, she regains all her Willpower.
Followers of the dark include: Darkened, Darkspawn and all related creatures, Princesses and Sworn of
Tears, Alhambran citizens, and anyone the Noble has a good reason to believe to be any of the above.
Exceptional Success: The Noble develops such a strong aura of violence and power that mortals (includ-
ing Darkened and Darkspawn, but not stronger creatures of the Darkness) whose Willpower is lower than
her Inner Light must succeed on a Resolve + Composure roll or flee in terror, gaining the Terrified Condition.
Drawback: Once this Charm is active the Noble loses all her mental faculties unrelated to combat - she
simply cannot conceive of not fighting. Until the Charm ends she cannot stop fighting as long as one foe remains
standing.

Govern
The Govern Charms control supernatural powers and those who possess them. Graces and Seekers have
affinity for them.

Consecrate (Govern •)
Action: Extended, 10 minutes/roll, threshold = Sanctuary
Dice pool: Presence + Occult
Cost: 3 Wisps
Duration: special
The Noble blesses the ground she stands on, and dedicates it temporarily to her Queen and the Light. The
Noble needs to cleanse and purify every part of the area she wishes to dedicate; this can be as simple as giving
it a thorough spring cleaning, or it can be an elaborate rite for casting out evil spirits, depending on the Noble’s
cultural background. However, if she applies an Invocation, the method of purification invokes the relevant
Queen and must use symbols appropriate for her.
The Charm also requires a representation of the Noble’s Phylactery to be somewhere in the area. This can
be as slight as a sketch of it done in felt tip on paper and taped to the underside of a table, or as intricate as a
carefully woven tapestry with its image part of the decorations. There can be multiple such representations.
However, if all such representations are destroyed or removed from the area, the Charm automatically ends.

164 Govern
 When the Noble reaches the threshold, the target Sanctuary gains the Consecrated Condition for 1 day. The
Noble may continue working to extend the Charm’s duration:
• Threshold = 1 day
• 2 * threshold = 1 week
• 3 * threshold = 1 month
• 4 * threshold = 2 months
• 5 * threshold = 3 months
• Each additional multiple extends the duration by another month.
If an area is already Consecrated, the new Charm will not take effect until the Noble reaches enough suc-
cesses to exceed the remaining duration of the previous Consecration. (For instance, if an area will be Conse-
crated for five days, the Noble must reach enough successes for a week’s duration, after which the area will be
Consecrated for a week.) If any part of an area is Tainted, the Charm automatically fails, and if any part becomes
Tainted while the Consecration remains, the Charm immediately ends.

Upgrade: Purifying
The Noble may Consecrate a Tainted area. The Taint will always overcome this Charm given enough time,
but it can allow the Noble some vital breathing space. Add the Taint’s Severity to the threshold; when the Noble
reaches it the area’s Dark Door closes, and can’t be opened until the Condition expires.
Even though the Taint is suppressed, later uses of Consecrate still must overcome it to extend the Conse-
crated Condition. Also, the Taint shortens Consecrate’s duration: each multiple of the threshold adds just one
day to the Charm’s duration. When Consecrate expires the effects of the Taint return; the Noble may invoke
Consecrate again to extend the Condition, but this only delays the inevitable.

Upgrade: Sanctuary
Several Charms have special benefits when cast upon Consecrated ground. When Consecrate is invoked
with Sanctuary, all Charms that interact with the Consecrated Condition are immune to being dispelled while
that Condition remains.
It is important to note that Consecrate itself can be dispelled, or removed by other methods, and this up-
grade offers no protection against that.

Dreaming Vision (Govern •)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Unrolled
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 scene
The Noble can perceive natives of the Dreamlands who have escaped to the waking world. If she spends a
Wisp, for the rest of the scene she sees any Dreamlanders present in Twilight Form, and can make Perception
rolls to notice Manifestation Conditions related to a Dreamlander in her vicinity. Physical objects still block her
sight, so a Dreamlander can hide behind - or inside - such objects to evade her.
Entities from the Astral Realms who somehow get to Earth are also disclosed by the Charm.

Upgrade: Touching
Cost: +1 Wisp
By spending an additional Wisp, the Noble shifts her flesh partly into Twilight, allowing her to touch or
attack Dreamlanders, and they her, until the Charm ends. All of her regalia (including weapons and armor) are
carried into this state with her, and Dreamlanders are valid targets of her Charms.

Govern 165
Upgrade: Spiritual (Legno •)
Cost: apply Legno
One of the Wilds may attune herself to the presence of spirits. If she applies Legno instead of spending a
Wisp, the Noble sees spirits in Twilight Form, and can make Perception rolls to notice Manifestation Conditions
related to a spirit, or the presence of a locus [CofD 126]. She cannot see Dreamlanders and spirits at the same
time. Applying Touching makes the Noble tangible to spirits, not Dreamlanders.

Upgrade: Ghostly (Lacrima •)

Cost: apply Lacrima
A follower of Tears can part the veil and see into the great beyond. If she applies Lacrima instead of spending
a Wisp, the Noble sees ghosts in Twilight Form and objects made of ghostly ephemera, and can make Perception
rolls to notice Manifestation Conditions related to a ghost, a ghost’s Anchor [CofD 133] or an Avernian Gate
[CofD 136]. She cannot see Dreamlanders and ghosts at the same time. Applying Touching makes the Noble
tangible to ghosts, not Dreamlanders.

What About Angels?

Readers may wonder why there isn’t an upgrade to perceive the third type of ephemeral beings de-
scribed in the Chronicles of Darkness. We left it out, along with any other explicit reference to the God-
Machine, because in our opinion it’s not possible to add the God-Machine to a game of Princess: the Hope-
ful without turning it into the centerpiece of the story. A campaign in which a nakama discovers the God-
Machine and tries to do something about it could be an excellent thing, but we would need much more
than a few Charms to do justice to it.

Forgotten Lore (Govern •)

Favor (Occult)
Action: Permanent
When the Noble transforms, she throws light on strange and horrifying mysteries.

Upgrade: Spiritual (Legno ••)

The Noble has unusual insight into the behavior of the spirits. During any research action involving a spirit,
including summoning or exorcising it [CofD 139], the Noble may spend 1 Wisp to reduce the successes she needs
by her Legno.

Upgrade: Underworld (Lacrima ••)

The Noble has a great understanding of the needs of ghosts. During any research action involving a ghost,
including summoning or exorcising it, the Noble may spend 1 Wisp to reduce the successes she needs by her
Lacrima.

Living Image (Govern •)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Inner Light + Intelligence
Cost: 1 Wisp

166 Govern
 Certain artists among the Hopeful have found a method to infuse the Light into their art, and make it bring
forth magic. This Charm allows a Princess to embed another Charm into a work of art she has made with her own
hands, so that it takes effect not when she casts it, but when another person studies or appreciates the art. The
crafting of the artwork is integral to the use of Living Image - the art means, is about, the Charm embedded in it,
and a wholly or partly finished work on another subject cannot carry the intended Charm. Making a valid target
for Living Image is a mundane extended action, with a threshold of 3x the rating of the Charm to be placed in it.
To be embedded in a work of art, a Charm must be targeted at a single person who is physically with its
user. The Sympathy and Commonalty modifiers make a Charm incompatible with Living Image, and animals,
objects or areas cannot understand art in a way that Living Image will recognize. In addition, the Charm must
be cast directly; a Noble may not use one enchanted artwork to prepare another.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble’s magic goes out of control and ruins the artwork. She must recreate it
from the beginning, using new materials.
Failure: The Noble fails to prepare the artwork. Further attempts to use the Charm on it take a cumu-
lative -1 penalty.
Success: The artwork becomes a valid target for the Charm it’s based on. When that Charm is used on it,
the artwork gains the Waiting Charm Condition, which will resolve when a person next experiences the art
in the proper way - a painting must be looked at, recorded music must be listened to, etc. When the Condition
resolves the suspended Charm immediately takes effect on the person experiencing the art. Damage to the
artwork ends the Condition.
Exceptional Success: The artwork is a perfect expression of the Charm to be held inside it. Anyone using
that Charm on it has 9-again on the activation roll.
As part of learning this Charm, the Noble also learns how to recognize another Hopeful’s enchanted art-
works, and discover what they do without discharging them. Analyzing an artwork prepared for Living Image
(which includes Bequests) is a mundane extended action with a dice pool of Inner Light + Intelligence, an in-
terval of 5 minutes/roll, and a threshold equal to the rating of the Charm the artwork expresses. Reaching the
threshold answers one of these questions:
• Which Charm the artwork is based on
• Which Living Image upgrades were applied during its making
• If it’s Duty-bound, what task creates the Waiting Charm Condition

Upgrade: Copied
Cost: +1 Wisp
The magic in the Noble’s art may flow through copies of that art. When the original artwork has the Waiting
Charm Condition, it resolves when a person next experiences any duplicate of the original, as well as the original
itself, and the delayed Charm takes effect on that person. Normally copies must be exact - any imperfection or
degradation in the copy breaks its connection to the original; however, the Noble may take a penalty of -2 when
activating Living Image to let it work through imperfect but recognizable copies (photos or digital images of a
visual work, re-recordings of an audio work, etc.)
Applying Copied makes Living Image compatible with Charms modified by Sympathy. For those Charms
the Condition resolves when the intended target experiences the art, in either a copy or the original. No other
audience can trigger the embedded Charm.

Upgrade: Performative
The Noble dispenses with solid materials - she can weave magic into pure meaning, while delaying its effect.
In the course of a performance or conversation, the Noble must tell her intended target both what will happen
when the suspended Charm takes effect, and what action or situation will release it. She can be as cryptic ("When
all eyes turn toward you, you’ll find the strength to carry on") or as direct ("Hey, jackass! Try stealing someone’s
purse again, and you’re going to get set on fire!") as she wishes. She activates Living Image as she speaks, and
the Charm she wants to delay immediately afterward.

Govern 167
 If both Charms succeed, the target gains the Waiting Charm Condition. It will resolve at the first opportu-
nity that fits what the Noble tells the target - a vague and cryptic description may release the Charm at a quite
unexpected and inconvenient moment. Dramatic failure distorts the Noble’s magic, giving her a Hypersensitive
Condition that expires when the scene ends.
Performative is not compatible with Copied, but applying it does make Living Image compatible with
Charms modified by Commonalty. For those Charms, the Condition resolves when any member of the target
organization fulfills the stated conditions, and the Charm affects all members who witnessed the performance.
Also, Performative doesn’t require a target to understand what the Noble says, so it can be used with Charms
that apply to animals, objects or areas - though she still has to speak to them.

Upgrade: Instructive
Cost: +2 Wisps
The Noble’s art becomes not an expression of her magic, but a guide for others to enact it themselves. When
she gives the artwork the Waiting Charm Condition, the Noble pays for the Charm but does not roll to activate
it. Instead, when a Light-touched character experiences the art, he becomes aware that magic lies within it,
ready to release. If he chooses, he can resolve the Waiting Charm Condition to make the activation roll, using his
own traits rather than the Noble’s. Characters who aren’t Light-touched can’t resolve the Condition. The Noble
specifies which upgrades, if any, are applied to the Charm when she embeds it; the activator chooses its target
and controls its effects.
Instructive is not compatible with Copied or Performative. Because the activator can direct the embedded
Charm, applying Instructive makes Living Image compatible with any Charm, including those that need no roll
to activate. A permanent Charm, if embedded, confers its benefit on the activator for one scene.

Upgrade: Bequeathed
Requires Instructive
Cost: +1 Willpower dot
The Noble turns her art into a free-standing object of power. The object she crafts becomes a Bequest;
anyone with the ability to pay the Charm’s cost can do so to give it the Waiting Charm Condition, or to activate
the Charm directly, if they are touching it. A Bequest does not have to be studied or appreciated to work its
magic, and need not be art (as normally understood) at all; it’s simply used, like any mundane tool.

Upgrade: Duty-bound
Requires Bequeathed
By fulfilling a special duty, the Bequest’s owner can catch raw power from the Light to empower it. When
the Noble creates a Bequest, she can specify a task to be completed. A character with the Bequest on his person
who performs that task can impose the Waiting Charm Condition on the Bequest without paying any Wisps. All
other costs for activating the Bequest’s Charm must still be paid.
The difficulty of the specified task depends on the Charm’s effective rating. Bequests based on 1-dot Charms
can be primed by an action taking as little as a turn. Bequests based on 3-dot Charms usually require a scene or
two to prime. Bequests based on 5-dot Charms require at least a session to prepare.

Upgrade: Empowered (Specchio •••)

Requires Bequeathed
When creating a Bequest a Chosen can embed a gem created by Enduring Beauty as a source of power.
If she does so the Bequest has an equipment bonus to its activation roll equal to the Availability rating of the
gem she used. Analyzing the Bequest will reveal the details of its Empowerment but anyone with experience of
Bequests will have little trouble figuring it out.

168 Govern
 By pressing an Empowered Bequest to the forehead of the gem’s original owner, the owner’s beauty may
be restored; doing this destroys the Bequest beyond repair.
The question that haunts many Nobles is whether using such tools is an endorsement of their creation.
Knowingly using an Empowered Bequest, unless a Princess has reason to believe the gem at its heart was created
consensually, is a compromise with a -1 penalty to the roll.

Reflected Light (Govern •)

Action: Permanent
While the Noble is transformed, her senses are opened to the influence of magical powers. Whenever a
supernatural power, whatever its source may be, is initiated by or actively affects a being within 10x Inner Light
yards of the Noble (or on her directly) she becomes aware that something magical is taking place, though she
can’t tell what it was. Any supernatural concealment of the effect, its origin or its target defeats the Noble’s
reflexive perception automatically.
In addition, each time she notices a magical effect, the Noble may make a reflexive mundane Wits + Occult
roll, and if successful perceives the basic facts about it: what it is affecting, the type of the being who used it,
and (if it’s initiated within her range) where that being is. Identifying a power from the Light or Darkness is
instinctive for all the Hopeful; other types of supernatural, however, must be learned from experience. (For
example, the Noble can tell that all vampiric Disciplines have the same origin, but she won’t know that they’re
vampire powers unless she sees a known vampire using one.)
Finally, if she suspects its presence, the Noble can deliberately look for traces of hidden magic near her.
This is an instant mundane unrolled action, and reveals the targets of any active supernatural effects within her
range. Unlike her passive sense, this active scrutiny provokes a Clash of Wills with supernatural concealments.
Any effects she notices, the Noble can reflexively examine as above.

Upgrade: Light-Attuned
The Noble can distinguish powers that come from the Light. Whe she rolls for information on an active
Charm, she learns the Charm’s function and what Invocation (if any) was applied in the casting. She will recog-
nize by name any Charm and upgrades she knows herself or has seen in use before.

Upgrade: Sensitive
The Noble’s senses are sharp enough to see the Light’s or Darkness’s influence, even when quiescent. When
a Light-touched entity or Dark creature enters her range, the Noble notices their presence, unless they are under
supernatural concealment. Success on the reflexive roll tells the Noble where the being she detected is, and
whether the Light’s or Darkness’s touch is weak or strong. Beacons, Sworn and Nobles in mundane form are
weakly Light-touched, while transformed Nobles and Shikigami are strongly touched; the Darkened Condition
touches its carriers weakly, Mnemosyne appear to be weakly touched, and Darkspawn and Cataphractoi are
strongly touched.
Deliberately looking for magic also reveals any Light-touched or Dark beings within the Noble’s range, and
allows reflexive scrutiny of them.

Upgrade: Dark-attuned (Tempesta •)

The Queen of Storms teaches the Nobility to recognize the works of her enemies. When she rolls for infor-
mation on an Umbra or Caligo, the Noble learns exactly which power the Dark creature used.

Charge (Govern ••)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Stamina + Empathy
Cost: none

Govern 169
 By touching someone (or something) with a pool of Wisps, the Noble transfers some of her own Wisps
to the other pool. She gives 1 Wisp for each success, up to her normal Wisps/turn limit. She cannot give more
Wisps than the target can hold.

Upgrade: Accepted
The Noble may take Wisps from others, if they are willing to give them. If the target consents, the Noble
takes 1 Wisp for each success, up to her normal Wisps/turn limit.

Upgrade: Distant
The Noble can send Wisps to any person she can see; she need not touch them. With Accepted, she can take
Wisps from those she can see as well.

Upgrade: Anonymous
Requires Distant
Modified by Sympathy
Cost: +1 Wisp
The Noble may use the Charm on people who are not present, applying the Sympathy modifier.

Upgrade: Resonant (Legno ••)

The Noble can convert between Wisps and spirit Essence at a 2:1 ratio, in either direction, allowing her to
share her reserves with spirits. Nobles cannot store Essence - she must give converted Wisps to a spirit, and
transform taken Essence into Wisps.

Upgrade: Stolen (Lacrima ••)

Requires Accepted
Cost: + Sensitivity check
The Noble can take Wisps from the unconsenting. Subtract the target’s Resolve from the activation roll.
Moreover, unless she applies Distant or Anonymous, the Noble must already have a hand on her target; if she
needs an instant action to touch him, the Charm does not work.
The Noble can also extract a few Wisps from other Light-touched who don’t have any - other Nobles and
Sworn whose pools are empty, but also the Beacons - taxing their connection with the Light. This forces her
target to make a Sensitivity check, adding 1 die for each previous use of the Charm on him during the session. If
the target is Haunted, or has any other Condition gained from Sensitivity, the Noble cannot extract Wisps from
his bond to the Light, though she can take Wisps from his pool.
Beacons who’ve been taxed for Wisps in this way have been known to lose the template, especially if it’s
done often. How much hope a Beacon can stand having stolen from him before he breaks, we leave to the Sto-
ryteller’s discretion.

Upgrade: In Memoriam (Lacrima ••)

The Noble can convert between Wisps and ghost Essence at a 2:1 ratio, in either direction, allowing her to
share her reserves with ghosts. Nobles cannot store Essence - she must give converted Wisps to a ghost, and
transform taken Essence into Wisps.

170 Govern
Grey Masque (Govern ••)
Action: Instant
Dice pool: Manipulation + Empathy
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 day or 1 week
The Darkness continually hunts for traces of the Light, and too many of those bearing such traces can’t
protect themselves. The Noble is able to hide the Light’s touch from those who can perceive it, giving them some
protection - after all, if your goal is to give your sister the magic she needs to fly away from danger, painting a
target on her back defeats the purpose. The Charm may be used on any Light-touched character.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble creates a flare of Light that alerts everyone capable of detecting the Light-
touched within her Inner Light in miles to her presence and her rough location.
Failure: The Noble can’t hide her target’s status.
Success: For one full day, the target’s Quiet Echo fades away. Passive abilities that detect the Light-
touched automatically fail to recognize the target as such, and active abilities must win a Clash of Wills to
detect him.
Exceptional Success: The target's Echo vanishes for a full week.

Upgrade: Masqued Ball

Cost: +1 Willpower
Duration: Consecration (on an area)
The Noble may conceal the traces of Light left by Charms. She may use the Charm on anyone or anything
affected by the Light’s magic - an active Charm, a Living Image or Bequest, a Waiting Charm Condition, or a
Consecrated Condition. Until Grey Masque ends passive abilities that could otherwise detect such effects fail
when used on the target, and active abilities must win a Clash of Wills.
To hide a Charm that works on an area or a Consecrated Condition, the Charm must be cast as an extended
action, with an interval of 1 turn and a threshold set from the area’s Sanctuary rating. Hiding a Consecrated area
protects the Condition and all the Charms tied to it from detection. It does not hide Charms cast on targets in
the area - only those tied to the Condition.

Upgrade: Funeral Masque (Lacrima •••)

The Noble can hide a mundane human from the Darkness. Any being with an ability to detect the Light-
touched will take no notice of the target’s presence, or recall them as more than a generic human figure of no
interest afterward, unless the target tries to draw its attention. Even if he does, the being must make a Perception
roll penalized by the Noble’s Lacrima. With this upgrade the Charm may be used on mundane characters or
Beacons, but not on other Light-touched.

Gold Abhors Ebon (Govern ••)

Action: Instant and contested
Dice pool: Presence + Intimidation vs. Resolve + Supernatural Tolerance
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 scene
Invoking the Light’s authority, the Noble drives off a being of the Darkness. This Charm is used on a creature
of the Darkness. If the Noble wins the contest, the target cannot approach her and does his best to avoid her; he
immediately takes the Fearful Condition, with her as the source.

Govern 171
Upgrade: Searing
Cost: +1 Wisp
If the Noble wins the contest, the target runs from her in a blind panic - he immediately takes the Terrified
Condition.

Upgrade: Ruling
Inhuman monsters must acknowledge the Noble’s authority. She may use the Charm on ephemeral beings,
such as ghosts and spirits; they contest it with Resistance + Rank.

Upgrade: Majestic
Requires Ruling
Cost: +1 Willpower
All those with power bow to the Light. The Noble may use the Charm on humans with supernatural pow-
ers that aren’t derived from the Light. This includes anyone with a major or minor template, and anyone with
powers they would lose if they gained a template, except for Beacons, Sworn and Hopeful.

Upgrade: Fearsome (Lacrima ••)

Cost: + Sensitivity check
The Queen of Tears claims the right to rule all the world, mortals, Nobles and supernaturals alike. The Noble
may use the Charm on humans without supernatural powers, and on Beacons, Sworn and other Hopeful.

Light Over All (Govern ••)

Action: Permanent
The force of the Noble’s will banishes ghosts, spirits, demons, and other possessing or haunting entities.
When she attempts an abjuration [CofD 140] her roll gains the 9-again quality, and she may apply an Invocation
to her dice pool. The Charm’s benefits apply both to abjuring ephemeral beings and to sealing Tainted places.
In addition to modifiers from Belief, Virtue and Vice, when the Noble abjures an ephemeral being, the fol-
lowing modifiers apply:
• +3: The entity was never human, and is anathema to reality (Abyssal entities)
• +2: The Noble knows the entity’s real name.
• +1: The entity was never human, but is not anathema to reality (Strix, spirits); or was human, but thinks
nothing like a human (Darkspawn and Mnemosyne)
• 0: The entity was once human, and still thinks in somewhat human ways (ghost using Possession, Vam-
pire with Dominate 5, Amonajaku)
• -2: The entity is human, and thinks like a human (Thaumaturges, Psychics, Mages, Witches)

Upgrade: Brilliant
The Noble may spend 1 Wisp to add her Inner Light to her dice pool for an abjuration.

Upgrade: Friendly (Legno •)

By applying Legno to an abjuration, the Noble may befriend an ephemeral being instead of banishing it.
Instead of suppressing Conditions relevant to the entity, a success gives the Noble the Connected Condition

172 Govern
[CofD 288] to the entity. On an exceptional success, until the Condition ends the entity treats harming the Noble
or anyone under her declared protection as a violation of its ban. Attacking or betraying the entity will resolve
the Connected Condition immediately.

Upgrade: Caustic (Tempesta •)

The Noble may take resistant damage to add bonuses to her dice pool for abjurations. 1 bashing damage
gives a +1 bonus; 1 lethal damage gives a +3 bonus.

Seed of Light (Govern ••)

Action: Extended, (20 - Willpower) minutes/roll, threshold = 3 * seeds made
Dice pool: Dexterity + Expression
Cost: 1 Willpower, 1+ Wisps (special)
The Light exists within the world, within the hearts of all men. However, with will and effort, the Hopeful
may calcify Wisps into gem-sized, imperishable Seeds, proof against the ravages of chance. Each Wisp spent on
the Charm forms a separate Seed. The Princess does not have to decide how many Seeds to calcify beforehand;
after spending the Willpower, she starts to concentrate on her pool of Wisps. Each three successes accumulated
allows the Princess to transform one Wisp into a Seed, and she may roll a number of times equal to her dice
pool, or until she runs out of Wisps. Extra successes are wasted.
The shape of a Seed is a profound expression of its creator’s soul, and is heavily influenced by the Invocation
(if any) applied in its making. (Applying Legno, for instance, often creates Seeds in the form of living, unchanging
flowers - roses, in particular.) Any character examining a Seed, if they make a Wits + Occult roll, can recognize
a Seed as coming from the same hand as one they’ve seen before.
To recover the Wisp from a Seed, a Noble must bring it into contact with her phylactery, and spend a minute
in concentration. No actions may be performed while doing this, and the Noble is at -3 to all Wits-based rolls, so
deep is their focus. The Seed glows, and becomes incohesive, melting into their soul, and adding the Wisp to their
pool. If the Noble’s Wisp pool is full, the Seed vaporizes and releases the Wisp into the air, where it dissipates.
As tiny fragments of solidified Light, Seeds are incredibly alluring to creatures of the Darkness. Any such
creature can consume Seeds to regain Willpower, gaining one point of Willpower per Seed eaten. The Darkened
can smell out Seeds kept in quantity - they gain a cumulative +1 bonus to all Perception rolls to notice a person
carrying Seeds for each Seed above the carrier’s Composure, and tend to aim first at opponents carrying the
most Seeds. Moreover, any location where large numbers of Seeds are stored will tend, by seemingly random
chance, to attract more Darkspawn to it, drawn by their hunger. For this reason, Alhambran outposts, where
they store their misbegotten gains, tend to either be very heavily protected, or to try to move them back to their
rain-soaked city as fast as possible. And for the same reason, servants of the Queen of Storms have been known
to use captured Seeds as Darkspawn bait.
A Bequest based on Seed of Light creates Seeds from Wisps in its holder’s pool.

Upgrade: Bereaved (Lacrima •••)

The production of Seeds by Alhambrans occurs on an almost industrial scale… or, at least, so they would
wish. Nevertheless, in their raids on the Rebellious Provinces, they have learned secrets of their construction.
Reduce the time per roll to (10-Willpower) minutes; if this reduces the time needed to 0, the character may
roll once per turn.
As a side effect of applying this Upgrade, the Noble may remove the unique traces of her identity from the
Seeds she makes. Instead, the Seed forms as one of the seals of the Kingdom, the crown of the Queen of Tears
prominent on it. The production of such a Seed is frequently used as a test of identity by an Alhambran outpost
sent a new Noble, and documents and packages sent between groups are sealed with wax imprinted with this
mark. This leaves unmistakable magical traces, which a character with Lacrima 1 or higher, or the ability to see
auras, can detect with a Wits + Occult roll, making forging the seal harder.

Govern 173
Upgrade: Militant (Tempesta •• or Fuoco •••)
One cannot simply wait for the Light to diffuse into one’s soul! All of existence is a war against the Darkness,
and no soldier of the Seraphic General should be caught without her arms! When creating the Seed, the Noble
may choose to make it release its energy quickly. If Tempesta was applied, the Wisp can be recovered from the
Seed as a reflexive action, at a cost of 1 resistant lethal damage, with no more than skin contact with the Seed.
There is no limit to how many Seeds can be tapped in this way per round, beyond the limits of one’s well-being.
The followers of the Queen of Swords are less rash, but no less aware of the dangers of the world. By apply-
ing Fuoco, they create Seeds that release their Wisp as an instant action, and inflict 1 resistant bashing damage
when released. A Noble can learn either the Fuoco or the Tempesta version of this upgrade, but not both.

Light’s Riposte (Govern ••, Fuoco •)

Action: Reactive and resisted
Dice pool: Wits + Occult - target’s Stamina
Cost: 1 Wisp
Those who cast hostile magics at the Noble shall suffer for their temerity. When she is the target of a su-
pernatural effect that she recognizes as such, she may activate the Charm. For each success rolled, the magic’s
user takes 1 bashing damage.

Upgrade: Lethal (Fuoco ••)

Cost: +1 Wisp
The Noble’s rebuke grows harsher; for each success rolled, the target takes 1 lethal damage.

Magical Eyes (Govern •••)

Requires Reflected Light
Action: Instant
Dice pool: Inner Light + Composure
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 scene
The Noble heightens her occult awareness and mixes it with her mundane senses, so that she may see all
forms of magical power.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble confuses her senses and falls into trance, fascinated by her new percep-
tions. She takes the Insensate Tilt [CofD 285].
Failure: The Noble’s senses are not extended.
Success: For the rest of the scene, the Noble can see, hear and smell magic. Any supernatural power that
her sense from Reflected Light detects is manifest to her eyes; if she sees such a power while it’s active, she
learns everything her sense for magic could tell her and does not need to roll. (The sense itself still works for
anything she can’t see, as long as it’s in range.) If the Noble’s senses have been extended by other magics to
let her perceive other places, Magical Eyes let her notice supernatural phenomena there as well. Moreover,
Magical Eyes provokes a Clash of Wills with any supernatural concealment applied to things the Noble can see.
In addition, the Noble’s perception recognizes quiescent magical power as well - supernatural beings and
empowered objects stand out from the background, even when they’re doing nothing unusual. When such a
being or object comes within the range of her sense from Reflected Light, the Noble becomes aware that it
has supernatural traits. If she wishes, the Noble can take an instant mundane action, rolling Wits + Occult, to
examine a person or object within her range; she identifies a being’s type and gets a rough idea of his magical
strength (measured by his Supernatural Tolerance), or identifies an empowered object’s source of power and
a rough idea of its potency. As with Reflected Light, this information is in terms of similarity to things the
Noble has seen before, and an effect which conceals a supernatural being’s nature defeats the passive sense,
but starts a Clash of Wills with active scrutiny.

174 Govern
 If the Noble’s Reflected Light is Light-attuned, she recognizes the Calling of any transformed Nobles she
chooses to examine; she also recognizes a Blessed place automatically, and learns its Size and Beauty by exam-
ining it. If her sense is Dark-attuned, she can tell if a Dark creature she recognizes is Darkspawn, a Mnemosyne,
a Cataphract or a Dethroned; she also recognizes a Tainted place automatically, and learns its Size and Sever-
ity by examining it.
The commingling of her senses blurs out the details of mundane things for the Noble; all her Perception
rolls not related to magic or magical things take a -2 penalty until the Charm ends.
Exceptional Success: The Noble keeps a clear head. Her Perception rolls take no penalty.

Ofuda (Govern •••)

Action: Extended, 5 minutes/roll, threshold = Sanctuary + strength
Dice pool: Presence + Crafts
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 scene or Consecration
The Noble imbues an area with the power to repel a type of supernatural being. She chooses the type of
being, the area affected, and the strength of the repulsion when activating the Charm. As long as the Charm lasts,
any character of that type entering the area reflexively rolls Composure + Supernatural Tolerance - the Charm’s
strength. Failing the roll gives the character the Fearful Condition, focused on the imbued area; on a dramatic
failure the character gains the Terrified Condition instead. Either Condition ends when the Charm does.
To protect Consecrated ground, the Noble must find one of the symbols for the Condition. In areas not
Consecrated she needs a protective symbol inside the area, built into its physical structure - or make one herself,
and fix it in place. The Charm is cast on that symbol, and will end prematurely if it’s removed or destroyed. If
two Ofuda protect the same area against the same type of being, only the stronger of the two takes effect.

Upgrade: Exemption
The Noble may allow a number of trusted individuals, up to her Inner Light, to bypass her protections.
Alternately, by adding Commonalty to the roll she may allow members of an organization to enter unbarred.
The Noble may change who is permitted and who is not after the Ofuda is created by casting Ofuda again while
touching the protective symbol. This will not change the strength of the defenses.

Upgrade: Dissonant (Legno ••)

The Noble can make the area inhospitable to a specific kind of spirit, by depriving it of its natural fuel.
For each 2 successes added to the threshold, the Noble may end one Resonant Condition [CofD 135] within the
warded area. The destroyed Conditions can’t reappear naturally while the Charm remains, and supernatural
powers used to create them must win a Clash of Wills. The Noble can’t strip Resonance and induce fear with a
single Ofuda, but an Ofuda against Resonance may be stacked with other types.

Upgrade: Unmoored (Lacrima ••)

The Noble can banish a ghost from the place it haunts. For each 2 successes added to the threshold, the No-
ble may end one Anchor Condition [CofD 133] within the warded area. The destroyed Conditions can’t reappear
naturally while the Charm remains, and supernatural powers used to create them must win a Clash of Wills.
The Noble can’t destroy an Anchor and induce fear with a single Ofuda, but an Ofuda against a ghost may be
stacked with other types.

Privy Counselor (Govern •••)

Action: Extended, 10 minutes/roll, threshold = 3x Dreamlander’s Inner Light or Rank
Dice pool: Inner Light + Presence
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: indefinite

Govern 175
 To escape the Dreamlands for good, one must either be reborn, or bind oneself to one of the Hopeful as
a Shikigami; but some Princesses are able to grant Dreamlanders temporary leave from their beautiful prison.
The target of the Charm must be a Dreamlander who has come to the waking world and is currently in Twilight
Form - generally the Noble has just gone to the Dreamlands to find a willing Dreamlander, and led him back
through Crawlspace to her body. When she reaches the threshold, the Dreamlander becomes Fettered to herself,
exactly as if the Dreamlander used the Fetter Manifestation [CofD 133].
The Fetter lasts until the Noble next sleeps; at that point the target returns to the Dreamlands, unless he or
the Noble spends a Wisp to extend his stay for another day. An exceptional success during the Charm’s activation
may be used to prolong the target’s stay; he need not spend Wisps to remain for the Noble’s Presence in days.
The target may use the powers given them by the Urged Condition on the Noble. Actors and stars roll Intelligence
+ Empathy to read their host’s surface thoughts, and use any appropriate Social Skill to urge the host to act. In
lieu of Influences, an actor or star may contribute to the host’s actions using the teamwork rules.

Upgrade: Animal Companion

Cost: +1 Willpower
The Noble can bind Dreamlanders into material vessels, allowing them to act independently. She must find
an animal, or sometimes a doll or plush toy, in the waking world who bears some resemblance to the Dream-
lander she wants to bind - the closer, the better - to serve as his vessel. When she reaches the threshold, the
Dreamlander is Fettered to the vessel instead of herself, and gains access to the Possess Manifestation for that
host alone. Actors and stars who have Possessed a vessel use their own Attributes and Skills, except the Physical
Attributes, for which they use the vessel’s.
It is somewhat difficult to use a vessel who is larger than a Noble can easily carry; the Noble takes a penalty
when applying the upgrade of -1 for each point of the vessel’s Size above 2. And for some reason, it’s impossible
to use a vessel who could be mistaken in any circumstances for a human being. Dolls or figurines in human
shape must be Size 2 at most to serve as a vessel; the Charm fails completely on any larger figure.
The Dreamlander must still spend a Wisp each time the Noble sleeps to sustain the Fetter to his vessel. If
the Dreamlander vows himself to at least one Noble while possessing his vessel, he merges with the vessel and
the Charm ends, leaving the merged entity a Shikigami.
Suggested modifiers: vessel resembles Dreamlander (+1 to +3), vessel significantly unlike Dreamlander
(-1 to -3), vessel is not a living being (-2)

Upgrade: Dreaming Exile (Specchio ••)

Cost: +1 Wisp and 1 Willpower
The Noble can bind a Dreamlander into the body of a human whose mind is currently elsewhere, projected
in a Dream Form. To use this Charm the Noble and the Dreamlander must be at the waking end of a fully open
Crawlspace passage. When she reaches the threshold, the Noble applies the Usurping Manifestation Condition
to the Dreamlander, turning him into an Amanojaku.
Making an Amanojaku is a compromise, normally at a -4 penalty.

Virtue’s Ban (Govern •••)

Action: Instant and contested
Dice pool: Presence + Occult vs. target’s Resolve + Supernatural Tolerance
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 scene
Invoking the authority granted to her by the Light, the Noble levies a sanction on a supernatural being.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble makes herself vulnerable. Any supernatural power targeting her gains a
+2 bonus to the activation roll, if any.

176 Govern
 Failure: The target rebuffs the Noble’s sanction.
Success: Whenever the target tries to use a supernatural power in a way that would cause a tainting, he
takes a -3 penalty to the activation roll. If a power is unrolled, the targer must succeed on a roll of Resolve
+ Supernatural Tolerance to activate it.
Exceptional Success: In addition to the dice penalty, the target requires two more successes than normal
on the activation roll to achieve an exceptional success.

Upgrade: Unconditional
Cost: +1 Wisp
The Noble sanctions all the target’s magic. Every roll the target makes to activate supernatural powers is
penalized, regardless of its results.

Upgrade: Weakening
The target’s attacks, if enhanced by supernatural powers, take the same penalty as direct uses of his powers
do. Without Unconditional an attack must cause a tainting to be penalized.

Spirit’s Friend (Govern •••, Legno ••)

Requires Forgotten Lore with Spiritual
Action: Instant and resisted
Dice pool: Manipulation + Persuasion - target’s Resistance
Cost: 2 Wisps
Duration: 1 scene or indefinite
The creatures from the spirit world are alien and dangerous, but they need not be hostile. The Charm is
used to influence a spirit.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble offends the spirit; it either attacks her or runs from her.
Failure: The spirit is not influenced.
Success: The spirit feels an attraction to the Noble. It takes the Swooning Condition [CofD 291] linked
to her, lasting until the Charm ends.
Exceptional Success: The spirit is strongly attracted; the Swooning Condition lasts indefinitely.

Upgrade: Influenced
Cost: +1 Wisp
The Noble’s person becomes attuned to the spirit’s Influence. As long as the spirit remains under the
Swooning Condition, the Noble is Resonant with it [CofD 135] and all the spirit’s powers that require the Res-
onant Condition will work on her.

Capitation (Govern •••, Lacrima ••)

Requires Charge
Action: Instant and resisted
Dice pool: Resolve + Intimidation - target’s Resolve
Cost: Sensitivity check at +2
All humanity ultimately owes allegiance to the Kingdom-which-is-Alhambra. Though they may not follow
their oaths, it is still possible to extract the taxes rightfully owed. The Noble can extract hope and joy from a

Govern 177
mundane human, converting them into Wisps for herself. After at least fifteen minutes of uninterrupted con-
versation, during which she touches her target at least once, she activates the Charm. The Charm may not be
used on anyone more than once a scene.
Dramatic Failure: The target becomes deeply disturbed by the Noble. She takes the Notoriety Condition
[CofD 290] related to him.
Failure: The Noble gains nothing from the target.
Success: The Noble taxes the target’s hope. She gains 1 Wisp and rolls the target’s Integrity, gaining 1
more Wisp for each success on that roll. The target takes the Depression Condition.
Exceptional Success: As for normal success, and the target becomes captivated by the Noble, and wants
to talk to her again. He gains the Spooked Condition [CofD 291] linked to the Noble.

Upgrade: Anonymous
Modified by Sympathy
Cost: +1 Wisp
The Noble may use the Charm on people without touching them or speaking to them, applying the Sympathy
modifier. She still needs to spend fifteen minutes thinking about a target before she can activate the Charm.

Upgrade: Enervating (Lacrima •••)

The Noble can choose to tax people’s energy. If she applies this upgrade, the target also loses a Willpower
point, and the Noble gains Wisps equal to his Resolve, plus the successes from rolling his Integrity.

Upgrade: Seeded
Requires Seed of Light with Bereaved
Cost: +1 Willpower
Applying this upgrade converts the Wisps gained from the Charm directly into Seeds, instead of adding
them to the Noble’s pool.

Resting Place (Govern •••, Lacrima •••)

Action: Full turn
Dice pool: Presence + Occult
Cost: 2 Wisps
Duration: Inner Light in days
With access to both a ghost and any object a Raven can bind a new anchor for the ghost. This is temporary
and only with great and constant effort can a Noble keep a loved one on this plane, more commonly it is used
by the Followers of Tears to position their ghostly retainers where they can be of greatest service to the Last
Empress.
It should be noted that the defenses around Alhambra prevent ghosts from crossing the boundary of the
fortress city, even if they have anchors on both sides.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble offends the ghost; it either attacks her or runs from her.
Failure: The ghost is not anchored to the object.
Success: The object gains the Anchor Condition [CofD 133] linked to the ghost for a number of days equal
to the Princess’ Inner Light.
Exceptional Success: The ghost finds manifesting near the object an easy feat. The new anchor gains
the Open Condition.

178 Govern
Purgation (Govern •••, Tempesta ••••)
Action: Extended, 5 minutes/roll, threshold = area’s Size + Severity
Dice pool: Resolve + Occult
Cost: 2 Wisps, 1 resistant lethal damage
The Noble invokes the power of the Queen of Storms to scour away the Darkness with blood. To use Pur-
gation, the Noble cuts herself and drips blood from the cut onto a Tainted area. As she continues to invoke Pur-
gation the blood writhes and boils, channelling the endless fury of the Queen of Storms. When she reaches the
threshold the blood running down her arm immediately catches alight with green fire, and she scatters it across
the Tainted place to start a blaze. If the Noble is interrupted she must begin the Charm from scratch; her spilt
blood bubbles and boils, evaporating in seconds.
The green fire that is created by this Charm is mostly mundane, but it feeds on Taint with an unnatural
hunger. So long as it is inside the Tainted area, it can consume any material infested with Taint, even those not
usually flammable - even water. It has Intensity 3 within the Tainted area but drops to Intensity 2 if it spreads
beyond its borders, where it becomes wholly mundane fire.
Activating the Charm starts an attempt to purge the Tainted area, and reduces the threshold for that attempt
by the threshold for the Charm activation. Moreover, the use of Storms’ fire ensures that, even if the Noble is
forced to retreat before the Taint is burned away, it can’t recover. The Taint will not grow stronger if the purge
attempt fails. Indeed, without fresh crimes, Taint can never reclaim anything burned by Purgation. If the fire
never spreads beyond a single room, then that room will become a gap in Taint, a safe refuge in the centre of
the Tainted place.

Monument to Me (Govern •••, Specchio •••)

Action: Extended, 10 minutes/roll, threshold = Sanctuary + 2 * Beauty
Dice pool: Presence + Persuasion
Cost: 3 Wisps
Duration: Inner Light days
We stand on the shoulders of giants, but sometimes we respect the giants more than the person who can see
furthest. With this Charm a Heir can correct that mistake and refocus a Blessed Place where it should be: on her.
When she reaches the threshold, the Noble twists one of the Blessed Place’s Aspirations to focus on herself.
For example, an Aspiration to create artwork may become an Aspiration to create artwork glorifying the Noble.
On an exceptional success, the Noble may reduce the interval or threshold, or the Aspiration stays twisted for
50% longer.

Forced Vows are No Vows (Govern ••••)

Action: Full turn
Dice pool: Resolve + Occult
Cost: 2 Wisps, 1 Willpower
Many supernatural beings have the power to give a promise the force of a natural law, calling on Fate itself to
punish an oathbreaker. And all too many of those abuse that power, gaining great advantages from the promiser
and giving mere crumbs in return. The Light has empowered the Noble to correct such injustice. This Charm is
used on a person who has sworn a supernaturally enforced oath; the target must not have broken the oath yet.
Dramatic Failure: The oath’s enforcer regards the Charm as a breach of promise. The target suffers all
the consequences of breaking the oath, and the Noble reaches a breaking point.
Failure: The oath remains in force.
Success: The Noble begins negotiating with the oath’s enforcer. The negotiation is an extended Social
action with an interval of 1 turn/roll; the Storyteller sets the threshold. If the action succeeds the Noble can
rewrite the terms of the oath, or cancel it altogether. A rewritten oath can’t set terms beyond the power of

Govern 179
 the being who sealed the oath; the new terms must be ones the target could have sworn to and be bound by
when the old oath was made.
Exceptional Success: The Noble becomes a very persuasive negotiator; she gains a +2 bonus to her rolls
in the negotiation.
Modifiers: The Noble doesn’t know the oath’s real terms (-1 to -3), the Noble has tried to alter the oath
before (-2 for each previous failed attempt)

Thurifer (Govern ••••)

Action: Extended, 5 minutes/roll, threshold = Sanctuary + size of penalty
Dice pool: Resolve + Occult
Cost: 2 Wisps, 1 Willpower
Duration: 1 day or Consecration
The Noble wards an area against supernatural powers used for evil purposes. She must set the area’s bound-
aries (and Size) and the ward’s strength when she begins building the ward. When she reaches the threshold,
the use of any supernatural ability within the target area, or on a target inside it, in a way that would cause a
tainting takes a penalty to its activation roll, of the strength she chose. The Charm may not be used on an area
already under its effects.

Upgrade: Selective
Requires Reflected Light
If the Noble has experienced the powers of a type of supernatural being, she may adjust her ward to protect
against that type alone. Such a ward applies its penalty against any power used by the supernatural type the
Noble chooses; whether it would cause a tainting is immaterial. Wards against different types of supernaturals
may be stacked with the general ward, and each other, but only the largest relevant penalty applies against any
one power’s use.

Unweaving (Govern ••••)

Action: Reactive and resisted
Dice pool: Dexterity + Occult - target Charm’s effective rating
Cost: 2 Wisps
To unravel magical defenses, to unpick a curse upon a beloved little sister, to tear apart a hostile Charm
flying at you. There are many reasons why one Noble might need to unweave the Charms of another; this Charm
allows her to do so. Unweaving may be used against another Charm when it activates, or on a Charm already
activated after several minutes of close study.
The Noble can also unweave the dreadful powers learned by Dark creatures. Unweaving may be used
against an activated Caligo, either when it activates or while it’s in effect. Permanent Caligines and Umbrae can’t
be unwoven.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble strains her own magic. She gains a Hypersensitive Condition that expires
when the scene ends.
Failure: The target Charm is unaffected.
Success: The Noble disrupts the target Charm. If it was in place its duration ends immediately; if it’s
being activated, it fails automatically.
Exceptional Success: A Charm intercepted as it activates has an automatic dramatic failure. Otherwise,
the Noble gains insight into the Hopeful who created the target Charm, gaining the Informed Condition [CofD
289] for tasks related to her.
Suggested modifiers: the target Charm is cast on a human (including Sworn and Princesses) (+2), the
target Charm is cast on something other than a living being (-2), the Princess knows a Charm from the same

180 Govern
family (+1), the Princess knows the target Charm (+3), the Princess applies an emotionally appropriate Invoca-
tion, such as Fuoco to unpick magic that turns love to loathing or Acqua to remove a curse of ignorance (+2),
the Princess applies an elementally appropriate Invocation, such as Acqua to extinguish a magical fire (+2), the
Princess applies an emotionally or elementally inappropriate Invocation (-2)

Disciplines, Contracts and Gifts, Oh My!

Can a Princess unravel a Gift, or unpick a Contract? Well no. By default a Princess can only use Unweav-
ing on magic created by Princesses, the Dark and other things found in the Princess books. Even when a Gift
is mechanically similar to a Charm they are metaphysically different enough that a Princess cannot unpick
the threads and end the magic.
This is true, unless you, the Storyteller, decide it is not. Allowing Princesses to undo the magic of others
is certainly an advantage over other creatures, but if all the players are Princesses or the other creatures
are given an equivalent ability to undo Charms this might not be a problem. You might choose to allow
Unweaving to work against all forms of magic, at say a -2 penalty for targets unrelated to Princesses (waive
the penalty if the Princess belongs to an appropriate Embassy).

Accept Fealty (Govern ••••, Invocation •••)

Action: Extended, 10 minutes/roll, threshold = target’s Willpower
Dice pool: Presence + Persuasion
Cost: 1 Wisp/roll, 1 Willpower dot
With this ceremony, the Princess swears a mortal into the service of the Queen she follows. When she
reaches the threshold, the target becomes one of the Sworn, with the traits and drawbacks of that template. The
target must understand what he is doing, and do it voluntarily; on an unknowing or unwilling target, the Charm
fails. It also fails on mortals steeped in villiany; the target must not have Vice-Ridden [CofD 46]. Each Queen has
a different version of this Charm, and a Princess can learn and use only the one for her own Queen.
A Bequest of any Queen’s version of Accept Fealty fails to work unless used by someone loyal to that Queen
who has at least 3 dots in her Invocation. Thus a Beacon cannot use any such Bequests, and Sworn or Nobles
cannot use a Bequest attuned to any Queen but their own, and not even that except after long study of their
Queen’s magic.

Publican (Govern ••••, Lacrima •••)

Requires Charge
Action: Extended, 10 minutes/roll, threshold = Sanctuary
Dice pool: Intelligence + Politics
Cost: (Rating of Sanctuary + 1) Wisps, Sensitivity check at +2
Duration: indefinite
The Princess has a commission to collect the tax of hope rightfully owed to Alhambra from a territory in
the Rebellious Provinces. The Charm affects an area, which the Princess must walk through and study carefully
to activate the Charm.
When she reaches the threshold, the area gains the Tax-Farmed Condition, making it possible for her to
extract Wisps from it. The activation dice pool is modified if the target area is Tainted or Blessed: each dot of a
Tainted area’s Severity gives a -1 penalty, each dot of a Blessed area’s Beauty gives a +1 bonus.

Upgrade: Anonymous
Modified by Sympathy
Cost: +1 Wisp

Govern 181
 After the Princess has created the Tax-Farmed Condition, she may draw Wisps from the target area without
visiting it, applying the Sympathy modifier to her dice pool. She must still be in an area to activate the Charm
on it and create the Condition there.

Upgrade: Seeded
Requires Seed of Light with Bereaved
Cost: +1 Willpower
After the Princess has created the Tax-Farmed Condition, she may convert the Wisps drawn from the target
area directly into Seeds, instead of adding them to the Princess’ pool.

Taint from Tax Farming

Farming an area for Wisps often Taints the area, and the new Tainted place’s Aspirations generally
imitate the mindset of the Noble responsible for the harvest. Hence the culture of Alhambra, particularly
its faults, is impressed into many harvested areas through Tainted Aspirations. Certain themes appear over
and over in Tainted areas created by overuse of Publican.
• Alhambra has the conservatism bred of despair: it preserves what it has obsessively, not out of love,
but because it cannot replace what it has already lost. And it rejects innovation, for any change involves
further loss, loss that no gain can outweigh. Examples: Allow grief for the past to ruin a present joy. See
the unfamiliar as a threat and attack it.
• Alhambra exploits those foreign to it ruthlessly. Compared to its own survival, the happiness of an
outsider does not matter. It often exhibits the callousness of a conquering and occupying army. Examples:
Bully a foreigner or outcast. Help a loved one, but in a way that hurts someone else more.
• Alhambra exalts discipline, tradition and obedience, and discourages initiative in its people. Just as
the City knows what is good for the world and ought to rule it, so do the heads of the Orders see farther
than their subjects and ought to be deferred to. Examples: Follow an order that causes pain, ruin or death.
Punish an inferior for bringing up problems with your plans.
Don't feel limited by this list - the Noble in question could be atypical for an Alhambran; she might,
indeed, not belong to Tears at all. Use it for guidance, and to spark ideas when Publican is used in play.

I am Become Light (Govern •••••, Fuoco ••••)

Avatar (Swords)
Action: Instant
Dice pool: Resolve + Intimidation
Cost: 3 Wisps, 1 Willpower
Duration: 1 scene
The Princess’ Regalia shifts into garments of pure Light, flowing cloth of sunlight, and garbed like this with
a pure heart, she may walk among things not of the light, and know that they are the ones at the disadvantage.
Dramatic Failure: The Princess’ phylactery shatters, and she reverts to mundane form. The normal
procedures for obtaining a new phylactery must be followed.
Failure: White light scintillates from the Princess’ clothes, but there is no further effect.
Success: The Princess goes through a second transformation, her normal Regalia replaced with ones of
even greater purity. The shift releases a burst of the Light that burns away magics alien to it; all activated
supernatural powers not of the Light currently extant within a radius of Inner Light + successes yards must
win a Clash of Wills or be dispelled. Powers that did not require activation remain intact. Further, for the
duration, the following rules apply within a radius of Inner Light + activation successes yards of her person:
• The area is illuminated by true sunlight, acting as such for all mystical purposes (e.g. a vampire will
take damage as long as he remains there.)

182 Govern
 • All activated supernatural powers not of the Light must win a Clash of Wills to affect anything in the
area. Powers that do not have an activation roll are not affected, but anyone in the area benefiting from one
or more such powers suffers a -1 penalty to all rolls.
• All creatures of the Darkness reflexively roll Resolve + Composure, penalized by the activation suc-
cesses. Characters that fail this roll gain the Terrified Condition, focused on the Princess; on an ordinary
success they gain the Fearful Condition; only an exceptional success leaves them unfazed by the Princess’
light. If a Tainted area is close by a Terrified creature of the Darkness will probably flee to the Dark World
through it.
Exceptional Success: The extra successes are their own reward.

Inspire
The Inspire Charms lift people’s hearts, spark their passions, and exhort them to action. Only Troubadours
have affinity for them.

Animal Fair (Inspire •)

Favor (Animal Ken)
Action: Permanent
The Princess becomes a friend to birds and beasts when she transforms; through a combination of smell,
sound, or visual cues, the animals take her for one of their own.

Upgrade: Sensitive
The Noble opens awareness of the Light in the beasts that love and trust her. When she has the Bonded
Condition [CofD 288] with an animal, she can train it to perceive traces of the Light or the Darkness; it has
Unseen Senses (as the Merit) for both. Doing this takes a day or so for each animal the Noble is bonded with. The
animal keeps the ability as long as the Bonded Condition lasts. Specifically, the Noble need not be transformed
for her animal to use its senses.

Upgrade: Evolved
Stackable 5 times
Requires Sensitive
The Noble can teach her beast companions to draw more deeply on the Light, giving them the ability to
transform on command. After she has trained an animal’s Unseen Senses, she may continue training it to give it
3 Experiences for each purchase of Evolving, which must be spent on transformed traits - Attribute dots, Skill
dots, or Size at 1 Experience/dot. This training takes roughly one week per Experience. Transformed dots, once
chosen and trained, can’t be changed; the animal keeps them as long as it’s still Bonded to the Noble.
The animal may transform upon gaining its first transformed dot. It uses the Noble’s dice pool for its trans-
formation action; if it’s with her she may spend a Wisp reflexively to help it transform. Transforming gives the
animal an appearance that’s in theme with the Noble’s - e.g. an ornamental collar, pristine fur, changed coloration
to match her Regalia. If the Noble has more than one bonded animal, each animal gets its own transformation,
and a separate set of transformed traits.

Upgrade: Trusted (Legno ••)

No matter how strange, exotic or frightened the animal, a Princess knows how to deal with it safely. She
can reduce penalties to an Animal Ken roll by up to her dots in Legno.

Inspire 183
Upgrade: Primal (Tempesta ••)
Animals instinctively recognize their betters, and a Princess can seize upon that instinct. When the Princess
tries to frighten an animal into obedience or flight, the animal’s dice pool to contest the Princess takes a penalty
equal to her Tempesta.

Fire on the Mountain (Inspire •)

Regalia
Action: Permanent
But sit down in that chair, right there, and let me show you how it’s done.

A musical instrument becomes part of the Noble’s Regalia, on which she plays beautiful, captivating music.
The Regalia bonus applies to performing on the instrument or composing for it. There are variations of this
Charm built on every performance art; these give Regalia appropriate to the art they’re based on (e.g. a beautiful
pair of dancing shoes, a choker for a classical singer or actor, a handheld microphone for a pop singer) and apply
the Regalia bonus when used to perform that art.
The Noble’s skill with her instrument lets her put strangers at ease with her. If she opens a social maneuver
by putting on a performance, her first impression on her subject will be good unless her past history with him
has left him hostile.

Upgrade: Inspirational
The Noble may use her art to direct her Echo toward a more specific inspiration. If she performs on her
instrument for at least one minute before trying to raise an Echo, the Noble gains two benefits: first, she spends
a Wisp, not a Willpower point, to raise the Echo; second, the Inspired Condition gained by her audience is based
on the meaning of her performance, not her Virtue or Vice. (To inspire people as she intends, the Noble needs
to succeed on a mundane Wits + Expression roll.) However, the Echo raised in this way can’t be used to resist
another Echo or aura, and only those who listen to all of the performance are inspired by it.

Upgrade: Magical
Requires Quality
The Noble weaves her magic into her chosen art. She can add her instrument’s equipment bonus to her
Charms to offset a Commonalty penalty, if she incorporates playing the instrument into the Charm activation.
The instrument’s bonus will not reduce the Commonalty penalty to less than -0; if a Charm doesn’t take the
Commonalty modifier, the instrument provides no benefit.

Upgrade: Sentimental
The Noble may use her art to tune her Echo, producing a specific mood in those who can hear it. If she
performs on her instrument for at least one minute and spends a Wisp, all characters who hear her quiet Echo
become aware of the emotional state her performance evokes. (To send the emotion she wants to convey, the
Noble needs to succeed on a mundane Wits + Expression roll.) This can be used both to influence her direct
audience, as they can benefit from her Echo on actions consonant with the emotion she expresses, and to send
signals to her distant friends.
If a character happens to be using a supernatural power that reads emotions or probes minds on the Noble
at the moment she spends the Wisp, the flood of passion from her performance overwhelms him and disturbs
his concentration. While the pulse doesn’t interfers with the power, he takes the Stunned Tilt [CofD 286] from
the psychic overload.

184 Inspire
Hear Me, O Muse (Inspire •)
Action: Instant
Dice pool: Intelligence + Expression
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 action
The Princess calls on the Light for inspiration. Each activation success grants a +1 bonus to a mundane
action that creates something new. Eligible actions include (under Crafts) making a work of art; (Expression)
writing a poem or story, or acting a part in a drama; (Subterfuge) creating a disguise; and (Socialize) organizing
a big social event. If the action in question is extended, the bonus applies to all rolls until the task is complete, or
the Princess turns her attention to something else; she loses the bonus if she stops the job partway, and doesn’t
get it back if she resumes it.

Upgrade: Cooperative
Cost: +1 Wisp
When others assist the Princess (she is primary in a teamwork action) they gain the same bonus on their
rolls as she does.

Razzle Dazzle (Inspire •)

Favor (Persuasion)
Action: Permanent
Show ’em the first rate sorceror you are

When the Noble transforms, she has a honeyed tongue; people readily listen to anything she chooses to say.

Upgrade: Skeptical (Acqua ••)

The Noble keeps her head when others try to confuse her. When a character uses social maneuvering
against her, she may apply Acqua once during the maneuver to add her dots as additional Doors. In other Social
actions, if anyone tries to use fast talking to persuade her of anything (including but not limited to the Fast-
Talking Merit [CofD 50]) she may apply Acqua as a penalty to the fast talker’s dice pool.

Upgrade: Blathering (Aria ••)

The Noble’s voice has a hypnotic undertone that leaves people nodding in agreement without really under-
standing what they agreed to. In any contested Persuasion action, the Noble’s opponent takes a penalty equal
to her Aria, and she may spend 1 Wisp to achieve an exceptional success on 3 successes instead of 5.

Upgrade: Preaching (Fuoco ••)

Crowds respond easily to the Noble’s words. When she uses social maneuvering against a group [CofD 83]
or organization, she may spend 1 Wisp to open a Door. She may open a number of Doors up to her Fuoco this
way during one maneuver.

Upgrade: Bargaining (Terra ••)

The Noble perceives the natural flow of a negotiation, and steers ably past all obstacles to a deal. During
a social maneuver where her goal is a mutually beneficial agreement with the target, she may spend 1 Wisp to
open a Door without rolling. She can open a number of Doors up to her Terra this way during one maneuver.

Inspire 185
Upgrade: Seductive (Specchio ••)
The Noble has a gift for flirtation, and for tempting people into indiscretion. During a social maneuver
where her goal is to seduce the target, she may spend 1 Wisp to open a Door without rolling. She can open a
number of Doors up to her Specchio this way during one maneuver. The Noble can also add Doors, up to her
Specchio, when she’s the target of a seduction; each Wisp she spends adds one Door to the seducer’s maneuver.

Stare Master (Inspire •)

Favor (Intimidation)
Action: Permanent
To her opponents, the Noble’s eyes feel like the stare of a thousand predators, and the aura she exudes is
like a great beast stalking her prey. No wonder they become more… cooperative.

Upgrade: Third Degree (Acqua ••)

When she questions people who keep secrets, the Noble adopts a cold, clinical manner that almost forces
tongues to loosen. When she interrogates a person [CofD 71] and applies Acqua, she may spend 1 Wisp after
seeing the result of her roll to reroll her dice pool, though she must accept the second result.

Upgrade: Staredown (Fuoco ••)

The Noble assumes such a ferocious aspect that her enemy hesitates to strike her. When she tries to inflict
the Cowed Condition on someone, her target’s dice pool in the contest takes a penalty equal to her Fuoco dots,
and she may spend 1 Wisp to reach an exceptional success on 3 successes.

Upgrade: Berserk (Tempesta ••)

The Noble works herself up into a state of pure rage that terrifies all onlookers. She may spend 1 Wisp
reflexively to add her Intimidation dots to her passive Defense for turns equal to her Tempesta. Each time the
Noble takes damage while her Defense is boosted, add one turn to the boost’s duration for each source of dam-
age. The bonus does not apply to the Noble’s Dodge pool.

Carry On, My Wayward Son (Inspire ••)

Action: Full turn
Dice pool: Presence + Expression
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: indefinite
The Noble puts on a performance that grants confidence to a single listener. She cannot use the Charm on
herself, and must interact with her target for at least a minute before the Charm activates.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble undermines her own confidence. She gains the Shaken Condition [CofD
290].
Failure: The target may be pleased, but he isn’t helped.
Success: The Noble’s influence steadies the target in his tasks. He gains the Steadfast Condition [CofD
291].
Exceptional Success: The target’s will is refreshed; when he resolves the Condition, he also regains a
point of Willpower.

186 Inspire
Upgrade: Collective
Modified by Commonalty
Cost: +1 Wisp
The Noble may use the Charm on members of an organization that can see or hear her, using the Common-
alty modifier. All members present gain the Steadfast Condition.

Fighting Evil by Moonlight (Inspire ••)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Stamina + Expression - target’s fatigue penalty
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 scene
Fighting evil by moonlight, winning love by daylight …

School, friends, royal duties, sleep: choose three. If a Noble has chosen to skip on sleep then a Troubadour
can inspire her to keep going through the night, or day as the case may be.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble feels her energy drain away. She becomes as exhausted as her target, taking
the same fatigue penalty, and must immediately roll to stay awake.
Failure: The target remains as sleepy as he was.
Success: The target does not take penalties from fatigue for the rest of the scene, no matter how long
he’s been awake. The Charm doesn’t remove the fatigue itself, but only defers it - any roll the target makes to
stay awake is delayed until after the Charm ends.
Exceptional Success: A bit of energy remains with the target after the initial jolt fails. Reduce the target’s
fatigue penalty by 1.

Upgrade: Collective
Modified by Commonalty
Cost: +1 Wisp
The Noble may use the Charm on members of an organization that can see or hear her, using the Common-
alty modifier. The Noble subtracts the worst fatigue penalty among the targets from her dice pool.

For the First Time (Inspire ••)

Action: Extended, 1 minute/roll, threshold = 3x Skills enhanced
Dice pool: Composure + Expression
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 scene
…at least I’ve got a chance.

Doing something for the first time can be scary, but with a stirring performance the Noble banishes those
fears. The Noble chooses one or more Skills which (presumably) her target doesn’t have; she must accumulate
3 successes for each Skill she selects.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble becomes convinced that she can handle any challenge the world might
throw at her. She takes the Overconfident Condition.
Failure: The Noble blunders while performing. She may either abandon the Charm, or accept a Condition
and continue.

Inspire 187
 Success: When the Noble reaches the threshold, the target may ignore unskilled penalties on actions
using the chosen Skills for the rest of the scene. Some actions (e.g. flying an airplane) impose an unskilled
penalty on anyone lacking an appropriate specialty; the Charm removes that penalty too, so if a young Noble
has a pressing need to fly an airplane this is the Charm to know.
Exceptional Success: The Noble may reduce the threshold or interval, or give her target a flash of insight
into the chosen Skills, represented by the Insightful Condition.

Upgrade: Collective
Modified by Commonalty
Cost: +1 Wisp
The Noble may use the Charm on members of an organization that can see or hear her, using the Common-
alty modifier. The same Skills are affected for all members.

You Must Remember This (Inspire ••, Acqua •)

Action: Reflexive
Dice pool: Intelligence + Composure
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 year
The fundamental things apply as time goes by.

Words the Noble speaks long remain in the memory. When she is speaking to the target, or guiding his
attempt to learn something, she may use the Charm to help him remember what she’s saying. The Noble may
use the Charm to help herself remember, but to do so she must still repeat the facts she’s memorizing aloud.
She takes a -1 penalty for each prior use of the Charm on the same person during the same session.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble’s memory of the matters she was talking about goes blank. She takes the
Stumbling Condition on a Skill relevant to her topic, lasting for the rest of the scene.
Failure: The target’s attention wanders.
Success: The target indelibly remembers what the Noble just said. Until the Charm ends he does not have
to roll to recall the Noble’s statement. He takes a +2 bonus on rolls to remember the scene when she said it.
Exceptional Success: The Noble gives her target a flash of insight into the topic she spoke about, repre-
sented by the Insightful Condition.

Upgrade: Collective
Modified by Commonalty
Cost: +1 Wisp
The Princess may use the Charm on members of an organization that can see or hear her, using the Com-
monalty modifier.

Giggle at the Ghostie (Inspire ••, Aria •)

Action: Instant and resisted
Dice pool: Wits + Empathy - target’s Composure
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 scene
Bullies, tyrants, even the horrors of the Dark - all these lose their terrors if you can just show them their
absurdity. The Noble may use this Charm on a single person within sight.

188 Inspire
 Dramatic Failure: The Noble becomes frightened of the target, taking the Cowed Condition, and cannot
use the Charm on him until she resolves it.
Failure: The target retains his ability to frighten.
Success: All attempts by the target to inspire fear or awe take a penalty equal to the activation successes.
The penalty applies both to mundane use of Intimidation, and to supernatural powers that frighten or over-
awe, if the target rolls to activate them.
Exceptional Success: The target’s attempts to frighten are greatly impeded.

Upgrade: Collective
Modified by Commonalty
Cost: +1 Wisp
The Noble may use the Charm on members of an organization whose members can see her, applying the
Commonalty modifier. The member with the highest Composure resists for the group. If the Charm succeeds,
all the members take the penalty; on a dramatic failure, the Princess is penalized when opposing any member.

Upgrade: Swift (Aria ••)

The Charm becomes Reactive; the Noble may use it when a target tries to frighten or overawe, and imposes
the penalty on that attempt if she succeeds.

Fight Song (Inspire ••, Fuoco •)

Action: Full turn
Dice pool: Presence + Expression
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 scene
The Noble puts on a performance that makes her listener indomitable in battle. She cannot use the Charm
on herself, and must interact with her target for at least a minute before the Charm activates.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble undermines her target’s confidence. He gains the Shaken Condition [CofD
290].
Failure: The target may be pleased, but he isn’t helped.
Success: Until the Charm ends, the target continues fighting as long as he stays conscious. He cannot gain
the Beaten Down Tilt [CofD 280], no matter how badly wounded he is.
Exceptional Success: The target rushes joyously into combat - add the Noble’s Fuoco dots to his Initia-
tive when a fight starts.

Upgrade: Collective
Modified by Commonalty
Cost: +1 Wisp
The Noble may use the Charm on members of an organization that can see or hear her, using the Common-
alty modifier. All members present are immune to Beaten Down.

Peace on Earth (Inspire ••, Legno •)

Action: Instant and contested
Dice pool: Resolve + Persuasion vs. Composure + Supernatural Tolerance
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 scene

Inspire 189
 Give me peace on Earth. With their focus on harmony and understanding the Wilds are never entirely com-
fortable with controlling another’s opinions. Rather than making another want peace a Noble of Clubs might use
this Charm to prevent violence, allowing her to pursue peace in more traditional ways: with hearts and voices.
This Charm cannot be used if the Noble has attacked anyone or used a combat Charm within the Scene.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble manages to cast the Charm on herself. She suffers the effect of an ordinary
success.
Failure: If the Noble does not get more successes, the target is not hampered.
Success: If the Noble wins the contested roll, the target takes the Peace-Bound Tilt: any action he at-
tempts which would injure someone else fails automatically, as he suffers from a brief lassitude that stops his
movements. The Tilt ends if the target is himself attacked, or if the Noble tries to injure anyone.
Exceptional Success: The Noble also gets a flash of insight into why her target wishes to fight. She gets
+1 on Social rolls against the target where that knowledge is relevant until the Peace-Bound Tilt wears off.

Upgrade: Collective
Modified by Commonalty
Cost: +1 Wisp
The Noble may use the Charm on members of an organization that can see or hear her, applying the Com-
monalty modifier. Each member contests the effect independently.

Some Enchanted Evening (Inspire ••, Terra •)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Composure + Socialize
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 scene
With a bit of coaching, the Noble grants her target perfect poise and instinctive courtesy.
Dramatic Failure: The target can’t help but offend everyone he meets; he has a -2 on Socialize rolls until
the scene ends.
Failure: The target must deal with the social situation with his natural training.
Success: For the rest of the scene, the target can move in any social milieu with no effort, and follow any
code of etiquette as if born to it. He gains a +2 bonus to all Socialize rolls, and if he begins a social maneuver
he raises his first impression by one step. However, if he is deliberately rude to anyone the Charm ends pre-
maturely, and his next Socialize roll is automatically a dramatic failure.
Exceptional Success: The target’s bonus to Socialize rises to +3.

Upgrade: Collective
Modified by Commonalty
Cost: +1 Wisp
The Noble may use the Charm on members of an organization that can see or hear her, applying the Com-
monalty modifier.

Queen’s Sorrow (Inspire ••, Lacrima ••)

Action: Instant and contested
Dice pool: Manipulation + Intimidation vs. target’s Composure + Supernatural Tolerance
Cost: 1 Wisp, Sensitivity check
Duration: 1 scene

190 Inspire
 The Noble speaks to another, and drains his strength of conviction.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble undermines her own conviction. She gains the Shaken Condition [CofD
290].
Failure: If the Noble does not get more successes, the target is unmoved by her words.
Success: If the Noble wins the contested roll, the target takes the Depressed Tilt.
Exceptional Success: The target is disturbed for a considerable time. At the end of the scene he gains
the Shaken Condition.

Upgrade: Lasting (Lacrima •••)

Cost: +1 Willpower
The target must endure depression for an extended period. If he loses the contested roll, he gains the De-
pression Condition instead of the Tilt.

Now I’m a Believer (Inspire ••, Specchio ••)

Action: Instant and contested
Dice pool: Manipulation + Persuasion vs. Composure + Supernatural Tolerance
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: indefinite
Love was out to get me / That’s the way it seemed…

How can you not love the Heirs, the darlings of the Light? If you don’t, the Heir will show you the error of
your ways. The Charm is used on a single person that the Noble can see.
Dramatic Failure: Thoughts of the target occupy the Noble’s mind constantly. She gains the Obsession
Condition [CofD 290], focusing on capturing the target’s affections. She cannot use Now I’m a Believer on the
target until she sheds her obsession.
Failure: If the Noble does not get more successes, the target feels no special attraction for her.
Success: If the Noble wins the contested roll, the target falls for her; he gains the Swooning Condition
[CofD 291] focused on her.
Exceptional Success: The target is deeply enthralled. He also takes the Obsession Condition, focused on
capturing the Noble’s affections.

Upgrade: Couldn’t Leave Her (Specchio •••)

Cost: +1 Willpower
If the Noble wins the contest, the target’s Swooning Condition becomes persistent. The normal resolution
for the Condition still grants Beats, but the Condition resolves only when the Noble repudiates the target, betrays
him, or attacks him (inflicting at least 1 lethal damage.)

Don’t Stop Believing (Inspire •••)

Action: Full turn
Dice pool: Presence + Persuasion - desired bonus
Cost: 1 Wisp, 1 Willpower
Duration: 1 day or indefinite
The Noble’s performance revives in her target memories of lost innocence, which protect him against the
sight of horrors. The Noble must interact with her target for at least a minute before the Charm activates.

Inspire 191
 Dramatic Failure: The Noble only reminds herself of her past failures. She reaches a breaking point,
rolling at a -2 penalty.
Failure: The Noble revives no memories in her target.
Success: The target gains the Shield of Innocence Condition, giving the desired bonus when resolved.
The Condition ends without resolving after a full day.
Exceptional Success: The Shield of Innocence Condition lasts until the target ends it.

Look Into the Future (Inspire •••)

Action: Extended, 1 minute/roll, threshold = target’s Willpower
Dice pool: Presence + Persuasion
Cost: 3 Wisps, 1 Willpower
Duration: indefinite
Tell me what you see. I really need to know now, is there a place for me?

The Noble delivers a stirring performance about the future she wants to build, and her audience’s place in
it. Through her art she inspires people to help build that future.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble shakes her confidence in her goals. She takes the Doubting Condition.
Failure: The Noble blunders while performing. She may either abandon the Charm, or accept a Condition
and continue.
Success: When the Noble reaches the threshold, the target gains a fourth Aspiration, in addition to the
three he already has. (A PC has the option of accepting or refusing the new Aspiration.) The Aspiration must
reflect the goals of the Noble, as explained during her performance, and should also reflect the target’s abili-
ties; the players of the Princess and the target should work together to choose an appropriate Aspiration.
Exceptional Success: The Noble may reduce the threshold or interval, or give the target calm and firm
purpose; he gains the Steadfast Condition [CofD 291].
The Aspiration created by this Charm lasts until it is fulfilled, or the target chooses to abandon it. Under no
circumstances can anyone gain more than one Aspiration at a time from Look Into the Future.

Upgrade: Collective
Modified by Commonalty
Cost: +1 Wisp
The Noble may use the Charm on members of an organization that can see or hear her, applying the Com-
monalty modifier. The threshold is the highest Willpower among those affected. Different members need not
gain the same Aspiration.

Such a Lonely Word (Inspire •••, Acqua ••)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Intelligence + Expression
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 scene
But I don’t want some pretty face / To tell me pretty lies / All I want is someone to believe

A student of Acqua must tell the truth, but mere honesty doesn’t convince everyone. The Noble can clothe
the truths she speaks with magic that makes her honesty clear to all.

192 Inspire
 Dramatic Failure: The Noble achieves the opposite of her intent: those who hear her assume she lies.
She takes a -2 penalty on Social rolls to communicate or persuade people for the rest of the scene, and may
not use the Charm again until then.
Failure: The Noble’s words are as convincing as usual, no more and no less.
Success: Until the Charm ends, no one who hears the Noble can question her sincerity. Any claim she
makes will be taken in exactly the sense she intends to express, if a hearer can understand it at all, and the
hearers will know beyond doubt that the Noble means every word of it. This can help the Noble open a Door
in a social maneuver, or grant up to +2 dice on Social actions with people who might otherwise doubt her.
Exceptional Success: The Noble’s honesty makes people inclined to trust her generally. In addition to
the normal effect, she has a +1 bonus on all Social dice pools until the Charm ends.
Drawback: If the Noble breaks Acqua’s ban (that is, attempts to deceive anyone) the Charm ends immedi-
ately and the person she spoke to recognizes her deceit for what it is.

On With the Motley (Inspire •••, Aria ••)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Presence + Subterfuge, modified by Commonalty
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: successes in turns
Sometimes it’s necessary to provide a spectacle to draw people’s attention away, while an accomplice does
the real work. The Noble uses this Charm on the members of an organization who can see her, applying the
Commonalty modifier for them.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble can’t get attention from her targets to save her life. For the rest of the scene,
her Social actions aimed at the targets take a penalty equal to her Aria.
Failure: The Noble fails to distract her targets.
Success: For one turn per activation success, and as long as the targets can see the Noble, their eyes
remain fixed on her and everything else slips from their notice. Outside of combat, the targets must succeed
on a Perception roll to notice the presence of any other person or object beyond the most generic description
(e.g. man, woman or child; car or truck; chair, desk or table) and anyone who actively conceals themselves
will succeed automatically.
The Charm is less effective during a fight, when people are keyed up and attentive, but even then the
targets must pass a Perception check to notice anyone who doesn’t attack them. However, the Noble herself
can’t avoid attention - any use of Stealth or attempt to conceal herself immediately ends the Charm.
Exceptional Success: The targets perceive nothing but the Noble. Their Perception rolls are penalized
by her dots in Aria.

Chariot of Fire (Inspire •••, Fuoco ••)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Presence + Persuasion
Cost: 2 Wisps
Duration: 1 scene
Bring me my bow of burning gold! Bring me my arrows of desire!

The will of a person the Noble can see becomes nearly insurmountable. When the target spends a Willpower
point to add to a dice pool, the bonus is increased by an additional +2 (to a total of +5, normally), and when the
target spends a Willpower point to increase Defense or a Resistance Attribute, increase it by an additional +1
(to a total of +3.) The target can benefit from the Charm once for each success rolled. People affected by this
power clearly appear to be surrounded by a burning aura of pure fighting spirit, and onlookers who see it can

Inspire 193
remember it clearly, but it simply doesn’t seem unusual - as if that’s what any normal person in a fit of passion
looks like.

Upgrade: Intense
The target gains a further +1 when spending Willpower, for a total of +6 dice, or +4 to Defense or a Resis-
tance Attribute.

Upgrade: Rapid
Cost: +1 Wisp
The Noble may use the Charm on a distant target, applying the Sympathy modifier.

Soothe the Savage Breast (Inspire •••, Legno ••)

Action: Instant and resisted
Dice pool: Presence + Animal Ken - target’s Resolve
Cost: 1 Wisp
With soft persuasion or a sharp command, the Noble makes a beast heed her.
Dramatic Failure: The target animal turns hostile, and will attack the Noble if it can.
Failure: The Charm has no effect.
Success: The Noble forms a deep bond with the target animal. She gains the Bonded Condition [CofD
288] with it, which will last until she or it dies.
Exceptional Success: For the rest of the scene, the Noble gains a +2 bonus on all rolls to influence or
persuade the animal, on top of her bonus from the Bonded Condition.

Upgrade: Swarming
Cost: +1 Wisp
The Noble can use the Charm on a whole swarm of creatures, if none of them exceed Size 1: insects, small
birds, or rats. This can create the Swarm Tilt. All the animals in the swarm must belong to the same species. The
Bonded Condition resolves when the majority of the affected animals have died.

Rally Round the Flag (Inspire •••, Terra ••)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Presence + Expression
Cost: 2 Wisps
Duration: 1 scene
With a great shout, the Noble brings a panicked or riotous mob to its senses, and keeps it in order with
her presence.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble panics, taking the Fearful Condition with respect to any person present
who seems threatening.
Failure: The people near her pay no attention to the Noble.
Success: Any character who can see or hear the Noble recovers from any violent emotion they were
undergoing. Temporary Conditions such as Maddened and Terrified end immediately; persistent Conditions
that generate rage or fear lapse until the scene ends. Furthermore, while the affected characters are in the
Noble’s presence, any supernatural power that creates rage or fear in its target must win a Clash of Wills

194 Inspire
 against the Charm to influence them. Finally, if a combat is in progress, any character who shares the Noble’s
intent may, once in the scene, apply the effect of the Steadfast Condition [CofD 291] while the Noble is present.
Exceptional Success: Affected characters gain a +2 bonus to resist attempts to enrage or frighten them.
The Charm does not calm a supernatural being who is inherently prone to rage or fear; it can’t, for example,
stop or suppress a vampire’s frenzy or a werewolf’s Death Rage. However, it does remove Conditions created
by supernatural powers that produce rage or fear, though depending on the power the Noble may need to win
a Clash of Wills to do so.

Upgrade: Inherent (Terra •••)

The Noble can use the Charm to bring a vampire in the midst of frenzy, a werewolf in Death Rage, or a
supernatural being in similar plights back to sanity. She must concentrate the Charm’s power on her target, who
contests with Resolve + Supernatural Tolerance. If she wins the contest, her target snaps out of his enraged or
panicked state. All penalties on attempts to influence the target in his madness apply to the Noble’s activation
roll.

Comfortably Numb (Inspire •••, Lacrima •••)

Action: Instant and contested
Dice pool: Manipulation + Empathy vs. target’s Composure + Supernatural Tolerance
Cost: 2 Wisps, Sensitivity check at +2
Duration: 1 scene
Those who follow the Last Empress sometimes have to make the hard decisions; the Queen of Tears shows
them how to remain undisturbed, impassive and numb in the face of a harsh necessity. The Noble uses this
Charm on a person who can see and hear her. The target must have Integrity, Belief or a similar trait (e.g. vam-
pires and mages are valid targets, but werewolves aren’t.)
Dramatic Failure: The Noble suddenly loses confidence in her principles; she gains the Doubting Con-
dition.
Failure: If the Noble doesn’t win the contest, the target is not protected from breaking points.
Success: If the Noble wins the contest, the psychic shocks that the target experiences, no matter what
their source, don’t reach him until the Charm expires at the scene’s end. Each time the target would reach a
breaking point in the current scene, record the size of the dice pool he would roll, but do not roll it - the target
continues unaffected. When the scene ends, the target makes a single breaking point roll, using the smallest
dice pool of those recorded during the scene, as the Charm’s protection is withdrawn and the psychic stresses
the target faced return.
The Charm does not blunt a Noble’s Sensitivity - Hauntings will ravage her as usual, if she experiences
any.
Exceptional Success: The Charm soothes the target’s mind even as it expires. The target gains a +1
bonus on the breaking point roll he makes when the scene ends.

She’s So Fine (Inspire •••, Specchio ••)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Presence + Socialize
Cost: 2 Wisps
Duration: 1 scene
Then underneath this big umbrella she walked in the waiting room / I just had to tell her
though it might have been too soon

With her dramatic entrance, all eyes turn adoringly towards the Noble.

Inspire 195
 Dramatic Failure: The Noble draws no attention, and feels compelled to try harder. She takes the Drama
Queen Condition.
Failure: The Noble’s entrance passes without remark.
Success: The Noble becomes the center of attention, and universally admired. Any onlooker who sees
her, unless he has a Composure greater than her activation successes, takes a -2 penalty on Perception rolls
to notice anyone but her; further, the Noble has a +2 bonus on all Social rolls against such people.
Exceptional Success: The Noble may choose one person in the room who has been influenced by the
Charm; that person gains the Swooning Condition [CofD 291] toward her.

Jumping Jack Flash (Inspire ••••)

Action: Extended, 1 minute/roll, threshold = bonus dice given
Dice pool: Presence + Expression, modified by Commonalty
Cost: 2 Wisps, 1 Willpower
Duration: indefinite
You were born in a crossfire hurricane. And you howled at your Ma in the drivin’ rain. But
it’s all right now.
The Noble puts on a performance that inspires people to the heights of their abilities - and beyond. The
Charm is used on the members of an organization who can see and hear the performance.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble’s performance is awful. She gains the Notoriety Condition [CofD 290] with
respect to the people she used the Charm to help.
Failure: The Noble must take a Condition or let the Charm fail.
Success: When the Noble reaches the threshold, the targeted people all gain the Blessed Condition, with
the desired number of bonus dice. The mission is related to the organization’s Aspirations.
Exceptional Success: The Noble may reduce the threshold or interval, or add bonus dice equal to her
Presence to the Conditions she gives.

No Choice, No Hope (Inspire ••••, Lacrima •••)

Requires Queen’s Sorrow
Action: Instant and resisted
Dice pool: Manipulation + Intimidation - target’s Resolve
Cost: 2 Wisps, 1 Willpower, Sensitivity check at +3
Duration: indefinite
The Noble’s voice acquires the blighting and consuming quality of the void, sapping the wills of those who
hear it and bringing them under her sway for a time.
Dramatic Failure: The target is outraged by the Noble’s attempt to destroy his confidence. She cannot
use the Charm on him for a full day.
Failure: The target is unaffected.
Success: For each activation success, the target loses a point of Willpower, feeling drowned in apathy.
If the Charm takes his last point of Willpower, the target gains one level of the Tranced Condition, linked to
seeing or hearing the Noble. The target’s first trance begins immediately.
Exceptional Success: The target gains the Tranced Condition even if the Charm does not take all his
Willpower.

Upgrade: Collective (Lacrima ••••)

Modified by Commonalty
Cost: +1 Wisp

196 Inspire
 The Noble may use the Charm on the members of an organization who can hear her, applying the Common-
alty modifier. The member with the highest Resolve resists for the group. On a dramatic failure, all the people
targeted are immune to the Charm for a full day.

Consumed With Hate (Inspire ••••, Tempesta •••)

Action: Instant and resisted
Dice pool: Manipulation + Persuasion - target’s Composure
Cost: 2 Wisps, 1 resistant lethal damage
Duration: Tempesta turns or 1 scene
With only a few words, the Noble can cause a person’s rage to boil over, driving him uncontrollably to lash
out. The Charm grants no ability to dictate the object of the target’s anger - he goes for whatever, in his mind,
is the greatest threat or obstacle to him - so it would be wise to either use the Persuasion skill to influence the
target before casting this Charm, or get the hell out of the area very soon after casting.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble goes too far in her rhetoric; the target sees her as a crazy person he needs
to get away from.
Failure: The Noble fails to incite the target’s rage.
Success: For turns equal to the Noble’s Tempesta, the target takes the Berserk Tilt: he gains +2 on all
rolls to inflict violent harm on another, and suffers a -1 penalty to all other rolls.
Exceptional Success: The target takes the Berserk Tilt for the rest of the current scene.

Upgrade: Collective (Tempesta ••••)

Modified by Commonalty
Cost: +1 Wisp
The Noble may use the Charm on the members of an organization who can hear her, applying the Common-
alty modifier. The member with the highest Composure resists for the group.

Wearing a Heavy Crown (Inspire •••••, Terra ••••)

Avatar (Hearts)
Action: Instant
Dice pool: Presence + Persuasion, modified by Commonalty
Cost: 2 Wisps, 1 Willpower
Duration: 1 scene
To be the Queen of Hearts’ avatar is to become the leader people need, the leader the people may one
day deserve. The Noble assumes that role and leads any who will follow to greatness. This Charm is used on
members of an organization who are willing to work at the Noble’s direction, or towards a goal that she has set.
She can let others come up with plans (what leader doesn’t have advisers?) but the final decision of what the
members do must rest on her shoulders alone.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble proves herself unworthy of leadership and may not apply Terra again for
(11 - Belief) days.
Failure: The Noble cannot claim a crown. The Charm fails.
Success: The Noble undergoes a second transformation; a heavy crown appears upon her brow. Her
words and appearance stiffen the resolve of her subordinates; while carrying out her plans, the targeted
people substitute the Noble’s Presence for their Resolve. Derived traits such as Willpower aren’t affected, but
dice pools based on Resolve and resistance to supernatural powers are.
Also, when the targeted people are working as a team to carry out the Noble’s plans, each secondary
actor adds dice equal to the number of actors on the team or the Noble’s activation successes (whichever is

Inspire 197
 less) to the dice they contribute to the primary actor’s roll. (For example, in a team of 3, the 2 secondary actors
can contribute up to 3 dice, for a total of 6, beyond the dice from their rolls.)
Exceptional Success: The first time the targeted people succeed in an action taken at the Noble’s com-
mand (in a team or alone) they regain a point of Willpower.
Drawback: The Noble’s Sensitivity rolls gain the 8-again quality when either the victim or the perpetrator
is a member of the target group. In addition, if following her advice causes any member to lose Integrity, the
Noble reaches a breaking point, rolling for compromise at a penalty of at least -3.

Learn
The Learn Charms confer knowledge, and reveal what has been hidden. Only Seekers have affinity for them.

Data Wizard (Learn •)

Regalia
Action: Permanent
A portable computer becomes part of the Noble’s Regalia. (When this Charm was first discovered the com-
puter usually looked like a modern laptop or notebook; in recent years Nobles get smartphones.) The Regalia
bonus applies to mundane Computer actions using the computer. It can store data in practically unlimited quan-
tities, includes a camera, microphone and speaker, has adapters to connect to any computer networks available
where the Noble lives, and reads from or writes to all common forms of removable media she can find. The Noble
still has to supply passwords to gain access to a network, or else defeat the network’s security.

Upgrade: Recording
The Noble can link her own senses with her computer. With a reflexive action, she can start or stop record-
ing everything she sees and hears, exactly as it appears to her eyes and ears. She may record her perceptions as
long as her computer is physically manifested. She can stream the record to other computers, too, but setting
up such streaming connections takes at least an instant action.

Upgrade: Assisting (Acqua ••)

The Noble’s computer monitors networks constantly, looking for scraps of data she might need. As an in-
stant action, the Noble may roll Acqua + the computer’s equipment bonus when confronted by something out-
side her normal experience. Success means her computer’s trawl for data has found a relevant article or post on
the Net, and brings it to her attention; the Storyteller must supply a useful fact or detail about the issue at hand.
If the Noble has access to the Net where she is, she may spend 1 Wisp to start her computer on a focused
search for relevant information. If a roll of Acqua + the computer’s equipment bonus succeeds, the computer
gathers enough data to give the Noble the Informed Condition [CofD 289] after several minutes of study. The
computer stores the data locally, so the Noble need not read it immediately, but she does have to take the time
to read it before she may resolve the Condition.
The computer is limited to information that is available to the general public through the Net, or is on
computers the Noble already has access to. If the only relevant information available must be paid for, or can’t
be read without supplying an ID, the computer will tell the Noble so.

Upgrade: Traceless (Aria ••)

The Noble can gain access through her computer to any computer or network she knows of, without cables
or radio signals. By spending 1 Wisp, she can hack into a computer over a sympathetic connection to it, modifying
her dice pool for the task by Sympathy. The Noble must always defeat the computer’s security to connect to
it, even if she knows the proper passwords, as she isn’t logging in normally; on the other hand, a sysadmin

198 Learn
contesting her hacking attempt cannot trace her address, unless he has an appropriate supernatural power.
(Ordinary tracing tools usually return an address that constantly changes.)

Keen Observation (Learn •)

Favor (Investigation)
Action: Permanent
When the Noble transforms, she becomes keen-eyed, missing no detail when she fixes her attention.

Upgrade: Alert
The Noble’s keen perception becomes a matter of reflex. Whenever an Invocation applies at no cost, the
Noble adds it to her Perception rolls based on sight and hearing. If more than one Invocation applies at no cost,
the Noble uses the highest of them. She may also apply an Invocation when listening for a target while blind
or in darkness.

Upgrade: Unerring (Acqua ••)

The Noble cannot be led down false trails of evidence. When she is leading an investigation, she may spend
1 Wisp to change a Tainted Clue [CofD 80] into an Incomplete Clue. She may do this a number of times equal
to her Acqua during a single investigation.

Upgrade: Intuitive (Aria ••)

The Noble can guess the solution to a mystery based on slim reeds of evidence. When she is leading an
investigation, she may spend 1 Wisp to combine three Incomplete Clues into one normal Clue. She may do this
a number of times equal to her Aria during a single investigation.

Upgrade: Close (Legno ••)

Clues and anomalies in a scene disturb the Noble’s sense of the harmony of things, drawing her attention
to them quickly. When she examines a scene [CofD 71] and applies Legno, she may spend 1 Wisp after seeing
the result of her roll to reroll her dice pool, though she must accept the second result.

Liberal Artist (Learn •)

Favor (Academics)
Action: Permanent
When the Noble transforms, she remembers her schooling and reading in her favorite fields with a crys-
talline clarity.

Upgrade: Memorious
The Noble’s memory for general facts grows nearly as sharp as her knowledge of her chosen subject. While
transformed, she may apply an Invocation when memorizing [CofD 30] or recalling her own experiences.

Upgrade: Librarian (Acqua ••)

The Noble finds what she wants in a library as easily as in her own home. She may spend 1 Wisp once during
an extended Academics action to add additional rolls, one for each dot of Acqua, above what her Attribute +
Skill allows.

Learn 199
Upgrade: Autodidact (Fuoco ••)
The Noble burns through books and records at great speed, acquiring knowledge of a field rivaling a true
scholar’s for a short time. When she is transformed and building a repository [CofD 100] the Noble may spend a
Wisp. As long as it exists, the Noble may apply Fuoco to her actions when the repository provides its equipment
bonus. For anyone else, the repository acts as normal equipment.
The Noble may keep a number of these repositories up to her Fuoco at a time; once she reaches her limit,
she must discard a repository before using Autodidact again.

Natural Philosopher (Learn •)

Favor (Science)
Action: Permanent
The Light illuminates secrets of the natural world.

Upgrade: Inspired (Acqua ••)

The Noble knows her way around a lab. She may spend 1 Wisp during an extended Science action to reduce
the number of successes she needs to reach her goal by her Acqua.

Upgrade: Kitbash (Aria ••)

The Noble applies her knowledge of science to assemble devices at high speed. When she builds physical
equipment using the Science Skill [CofD 101] and applies Aria, she never needs more time than the basic penalty
on her roll in turns.

Passion’s Light (Learn •)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Unrolled
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 scene
The Noble perceives the emotional state of the people around her as a wash of color around their bodies,
their aura. She can make Perception rolls to notice people in the throes of strong emotion, or of emotion signif-
icantly unlike what other people present are feeling (e.g. deep gloom at a party, or satisfied pleasure at a funer-
al.) She can also detect the emotions of people (or stranger beings) who are hiding or in Twilight. Supernatural
powers that conceal emotions or auras oppose the Charm - if the Noble looks for people so disguised, it triggers
a Clash of Wills.
Like the supernatural Aura Reading Merit [CofD 56] Passion’s Light need not manifest as a visual percep-
tion, though that’s the most common form; murmuring voices is nearly as frequent among the Nobility. If a No-
ble’s player likes, the Noble’s version of the Charm can appeal to any or all of her senses.

Upgrade: Revealing
The Noble can gain detailed information about a person by examining his aura closely. When she does so,
she may roll Wits + Empathy - the target’s Composure.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble takes the Misled Condition. The Storyteller gives a false or misleading
answer to one of the questions below; the Noble will believe the answer unless confronted with clear evidence
contradicting it. The Charm will not reveal the true answer to that question during the current scene.
Failure: The Noble learns nothing from her scrutiny.
Success: The Noble learns the answer to one of the following questions.

200 Learn
 • What is the character’s most prominent emotion?
• What is the character paying the closest attention to?
• Is there anything here the character feels strongly about; if so, what sort of feelings does he have?
• Has the character’s current emotional state been altered, chemically or magically?
• Is the character a supernatural being; if so, what type of being is he (among those the Noble has seen
before?) A transformed Noble’s aura, for instance, appears to shed light in her vicinity - things and people
near her reflect her current color, in addition to any aura they have themselves. Creatures of Darkness
have an aura of shadows that desaturates colors around them. Vampires have a washed-out or faded aura;
shapeshifters’ auras show intense, saturated colors; mages move in a twinkling cloud of sparks. None of
the Hopeful, as yet, have read the auras of other types of supernatural beings and recorded a description.
Exceptional Success: The Noble learns the answer to two questions.
Examining the aura of a person whose aura has been magically disguised also triggers a Clash of Wills.

Quicker Than the Eye (Learn •)

Regalia
Action: Permanent
All too often, a vital secret is locked away somewhere that a Seeker has no legal right to go, and her sole
recourse is to open the locks without a proper key. The Noble adds a set of lockpicks to her Regalia, to aid in her
quest for knowledge. The Regalia bonus applies to mundane Larceny actions to open mechanical locks. As long
as the Noble isn’t pressed for time, she can open any mechanical lock without a roll.

Upgrade: Electronic
The Noble’s lockpick set includes digital picks. She can’t open digital locks without rolling, but the Regalia
and Quality bonuses do apply when she opens such locks.

Upgrade: Calculated (Acqua •)

Swiftness is often the key to victory, but timing may well serve the same purpose. Whenever the Noble
applies Acqua to her Larceny rolls at no cost, she may elect to use Intelligence in place of the normal Attribute.

Upgrade: Concealed (Aria •)

A Noble may not want to attract undue attention when the situation calls for it. When she applies the Invo-
cation to a Larceny roll, attempts to notice her action take a penalty equal to her Aria.

Upgrade: Skeleton Key (Aria •••)

The Noble molds her lockpicks into an exact duplicate of a lock’s real key. She can spend 1 Wisp to open
or close a mechanical lock in a single turn, without rolling. If she has Electronic she can do the same to a digital
lock. The picks stay shaped to fit that particular lock and no other until the Noble spends another Wisp to turn
a different lock; they can’t be used as equipment until reset by a transformation action.

Scent Falsehood (Learn •)

Action: Instant and contested
Dice pool: Wits + Subterfuge vs. target’s Composure + Supernatural Tolerance
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 scene

Learn 201
 The Noble smells a lie as another in her hearing speaks it.
Dramatic Failure: The Charm fails, but the Noble believes it has worked, and thus will believe the target
implicitly, unless and until he says something she knows is not true.
Failure: The Noble does not win the contest; the Charm fails, but she is aware of the failure.
Success: The Noble wins the contest. Whenever the target says something he doesn’t believe, the Noble
perceives the falsehood automatically. The Charm detects only literal untruth - omissions, evasions, equiv-
ocations and honest opinions don’t register. Factual assertions made in conscious ignorance do register as
false.
Exceptional Success: The Noble’s nose catches subtle misleadings as well as direct falsehood; when the
target’s statements are true but significantly incomplete, she will know that something has been left unsaid.

Upgrade: Collective
Modified by Commonalty
Cost: +1 Wisp
The Noble may use the Charm on the members of an organization who she can see, using the Commonalty
modifier. Each member contests the Charm independently.

Upgrade: Unwitting
When the Noble detects a lie, she rolls Wits + the activation successes on the Charm as a reflexive action. If
she succeeds, she gains a hint of the truth the target is concealing; on an exceptional success, she learns exactly
what the target knows of the subject of his lie.

Upgrade: Alert (Aria •)

When the Noble detects a lie, she gains additional insight into the liar’s motive for deception. For example,
she could smell the difference between a lie told out of envious malice and one told out of fear, or tell the differ-
ence between a sleazy propagandist and a dedicated, noble spy.

Upgrade: Guilty (Terra •)

When the Noble detects a lie, the liar experiences a strong pang of guilt, and finds it far harder to deceive
again. He takes a penalty equal to the activation successes on all Subterfuge rolls for the duration. Further lies
in the scene do not increase the penalty.

Upgrade: Melancholy (Lacrima •)

When the Noble detects a lie, the liar knows his deception has failed, and any further lies are pointless. He
must roll his Composure, and loses a point of Willpower if he fails.

Upgrade: Righteous (Tempesta •)

When the Noble detects a lie, she may punish the liar with impunity. If she attacks the liar as her next action,
he may not apply Defense to resist the attack.

True Names (Learn •, Terra •)

Action: Instant and contested
Dice pool: Wits + Socialize vs. Composure + Supernatural Tolerance
Cost: 1 Wisp

202 Learn
 A Princess of Hearts understands the importance people attach to the names they wish to use. To activate
the Charm, the Noble greets the target when meeting them in person. A target who wants to hide his name
contests the Charm reflexively and unconsciously.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble cannot call the target by his right name. For the next 24 hours, she will use
a wrong name for the target when addressing him or talking about him, and no correction will stick in her
memory. In a social maneuver on the target during this time, the Noble’s impression worsens by one step.
Failure: The Noble learns nothing about the target.
Success: The Noble learns her target’s name. If the target has more than one ID, the Noble learns the
name of the ID closest to the target’s heart, the one used by their close intimates. That name, and the target’s
face, remain in the Noble’s memory indefinitely; she needs no roll to recall either in the future.
Exceptional Success: The Noble’s friendly manner puts her target at ease. If she begins a social maneu-
ver on him in the current scene, her impression improves by one step.
Using the Charm on a transformed Noble gives the name of her transformed ID, not her mundane name.
Similarly, if the target has a power similar to the Nobility’s dual identity, the Charm finds the name of the ID he’s
currently using. Once the Noble has learned someone’s name from this Charm, she cannot use it on him again.

Second Glance Wrongness (Learn ••)

Requires Scent Falsehood
Action: Reflexive and contested
Dice pool: Resolve + Composure vs. Clash of Wills pool
Cost: none
Duration: 1 turn
Sometimes magic gets you good. The Nobility are all too aware of that. Sometimes your mind can be
wrapped in irrational fear by the Darkspawn hanging from the ceiling, pale-faced, sometimes the warrior of
Storms can drive you into a frenzy, some things can pass by invisible. Nobles learn, though, to listen to the sub-
tle wrongness that they get when their senses are being messed with, and it’s possible to stoke the radiance
within, to burn away the clouds that fog the mind. Whenever the Noble’s mind is influenced or controlled by a
supernatural power, and her actions are limited by it, the Charm activates.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble is so utterly fooled by the deceit that her mind is rendered susceptible to
follow-up blows. The Charm will not activate until the next time the sun has risen.
Failure: The Noble acts within the limits of the power that influences her.
Success: A distorted perception wavers for a moment, showing what it conceals; an imposed emotion
falters, revealing the Noble’s true feelings; a compulsion falls slack, and is disclosed as instilled by another.
The effect reasserts itself before the Noble’s next action, but she may spend 1 Willpower point to bypass it
for that action - penalties don’t apply, compulsions don’t restrict her.
Exceptional Success: The power holding the Noble’s mind slips. During her next turn, she ignores its
effects on her, without spending Willpower.

Upgrade: Meditative (Legno •••)

The Noble can sink her thoughts into tranquility, allowing the foreign influence on them to wash over her
without guiding her behavior. On a successful use of the Charm, the Noble may reflexively roll Composure +
Legno to bypass the effect on her; if she succeeds on that roll, she is free to act. She may continue rolling to
stay free on subsequent turns until she fails. However, she cannot spend Willpower for any reason on any turn
where she bypasses the effect.

Upgrade: Hungry (Lacrima ••••)

The Darkness around Alhambra is hungry, eroding substance despite the best efforts of the True Kingdom
to tame it. The Hopeful of that city learn to do the same to effects that would control them. Each successful use of

Learn 203
the Charm inflicts a cumulative -1 penalty to the opposing dice pool, making it easier to bypass the effect later.
If the Noble gets an exceptional success or the opposing dice pool gets a dramatic failure, the effect is broken
for good.

Upgrade: Furious (Tempesta •••)

The Noble can break free of mental slavery through sheer force of hatred. If she spends Willpower to bypass
the effect, the Noble can keep herself free of it by going berserk - each turn she spends either engaged in violence
or running toward a target of violence extends her freedom by another turn. If she takes a non-violent action,
the bypassed effect resumes on her next action.

Questing Mind (Learn ••)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Intelligence + Investigation, modified by Sympathy
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 scene or 1 day
Like a bird to its nest, the Noble finds her way unerringly to the object of her desire. The Charm may be
used on anyone or anything the Noble has a sympathetic connection to.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble gets an entirely wrong idea of her target’s location. Until the scene ends
or she actually sees the target, she is convinced he is somewhere chosen by the Storyteller that is not where
he really is.
Failure: The Charm has no effect.
Success: For the rest of the scene, the Noble knows the direction and rough distance from herself to the
target.
Exceptional Success: The Noble retains her fix on the target’s location for 1 full day.

Upgrade: Guided
Cost: +1 Willpower
Instead of a direction and distance, the Noble learns a possible route to her target from where she is. The
route she learns is the quickest available (which likely isn’t the safest) and will update itself as the target’s
location and conditions along the way change, until the Charm ends. The Noble remembers the final route, but
it can become invalid after the Charm ends.

Upgrade: Visionary
When finding the target, the Noble also gets a moment’s glimpse of him and his surroundings.

Upgrade: Watchful
Cost: +1 Wisp
The Noble can delay the Charm’s activation until a described situation occurs, creating a Waiting Charm
Condition on herself. The Noble’s description must involve the target, and is limited to the physically measur-
able; for instance, “this person is wounded”, “that object is taken from the building it’s kept in”, or “this room
is forcibly entered” would all work.

Upgrade: Passionate
Requires Passion’s Light

204 Learn
 The Noble may use Passion’s Light on her target until the Charm ends to perceive emotional states near him
(or it) or probe his aura. If she applies Watchful, her description can include the emotions of the target or people
near him. She may not use Passion’s Light to read emotions or auras near herself and her target at the same time.

Weight of Memory (Learn ••)

Action: Full turn
Dice pool: Intelligence + Crafts, modified by Longevity
Cost: 1 Wisp
While scrutinizing an object she is touching, the Noble catches a glimpse of the emotional impressions left
behind on it by a significant event in its past. The Noble can choose how far back she wants to look, setting the
Longevity modifier before activating the Charm.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble takes the Misled Condition. The Storyteller describes an event that never
happened; the Noble implicitly believes that it did. Further uses of the Charm on the target won’t clear up the
Condition - the Princess must discover her mistake by other methods.
Failure: The Noble learns nothing from her scrutiny.
Success: The Noble has a vision of the most emotionally intense event the object was involved in within
the Longevity period. The Storyteller describes what happened, and how the object was involved. For each
activation success, the Noble may ask one question from the following list, which the Storyteller must answer
truthfully.
• What was the chief emotion inspired by the event?
• When did the event happen? (The Storyteller gives a timespan to the first unit - hours in a day, days
in a week, etc.)
• Who was involved in the event? (The Storyteller names one person, or describes him if the Noble
doesn't know his name, each time she asks this.)
• Did the event cause the growth of a Tainted or Blessed area? (The Storyteller says which, if either.)
Exceptional Success: The Noble learns a great deal about the event.
Modifiers: Object is only vaguely tied to the event (-2), event caused a breaking point or Haunting (+2),
Noble has seen other events from the object (-1 per event seen)

Upgrade: Lasting
Cost: +1 Wisp
The vision the Noble receives includes the context of the significant event. She sees a full scene of events, to
which the key event serves as a climax. The time it takes her to experience this scene is the same as the time it
originally took, and while the vision lasts she enters a meditative trance, only vaguely aware of her immediate
surroundings; she forgoes Defense until the vision ends. If something happens near her, the Noble rolls Wits +
Composure - 3 to end the vision prematurely; if she takes damage, the vision ends immediately. The Noble can’t
ask questions about the key event before she sees it.

Upgrade: Blessed
The Noble can scrutinize a Blessed area, looking for the good deeds that created it. Such events, to her
perceptions, call out across the gulfs of time; she doesn’t add the Longevity modifier. The Noble finds events
that contributed to the Blessed area in reverse chronological order. When viewing an event, she may also ask
these questions:
• What Blessing did the event create? (The Storyteller gives one Blessing each time she asks this.)
• What area did the Blessed place cover when the event happened?

Learn 205
 If the Princess begins looking for a Vocation related to the event she viewed, she adds +2 to its Beauty to
determine the time required.

Upgrade: Tainted
The Noble can scrutinize a Tainted area, looking for the sins that created it. As with Blessed, she doesn’t
add the Longevity modifier, and finds events in reverse chronological order. When viewing an event, she may
also ask these questions:
• What Curse did the event create? (The Storyteller gives one Curse each time she asks this.)
• What area did the Tainted place cover when the event happened?
The next time the Princess is Haunted inside the Tainted area, the dice pool takes a -1 penalty. This is not
cumulative.

Pierian Spring (Learn ••, Acqua •)

Action: Instant and resisted
Dice pool: Intelligence + Empathy - target’s Composure
Cost: 1 Wisp
As the Noble contemplates a person near her, she learns how much he has drunk from the wells of knowl-
edge. The Charm’s target must be a person close enough for the Noble to speak to.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble takes the Misled Condition. The Storyteller gives a false rating for one or
more of the target’s Skills, and the Noble believes the target has the stated ratings. Further uses of the Charm
on the target won’t clear up the Condition - the Noble must discover her mistake by other methods. She may
not use the Charm on this target for the rest of the scene.
Failure: The Noble learns nothing of her target. She may not use the Charm on this target for the rest
of the scene.
Success: The Noble gains flashes of insight into her target’s education and mental training. The Story-
teller must answer one question about the following subjects truthfully for each activation success:
• One of the target’s Mental Skills or specialties
• A Merit representing knowledge (e.g. Encyclopedic Knowledge) or access to knowledge (e.g. Contacts,
Library)
• The name or description of one person who taught the target something of importance to him (e.g.
the advisor for his doctoral thesis)
• The name or description of one person whom the target educated, significantly forming their mind
and character
The Noble may ask questions about more than one person in a single activation. She may use the Charm
on this target again, but later activations during the scene take a cumulative -1 penalty.
Exceptional Success: The Noble gains considerable insight into her target’s mental training.

Upgrade: Personal (Acqua ••)

The Acqua Invocation favors any exercise of the intellect. The Noble may look for insight into the target’s
character and abilities, so far as these resonate with the Acqua Invocation or the credo of the Queen of Diamonds,
or flaws which impair his reason. Add the following to the list of subjects the Noble may ask about.
• The target’s Intelligence, Wits or Resolve
• Any Mental Merit the target has
• A Condition on the target that can impair the use of Mental Skills

206 Learn
For Want of a Nail (Learn ••, Aria •)
Action: Instant and resisted
Dice pool: Wits + Empathy - target’s Resolve
Cost: 1 Wisp
As the Noble watches a person near her, the moments when his life took strange turns become apparent to
her. The Charm’s target must be a person close enough for the Noble to speak to.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble takes the Misled Condition. The Storyteller describes an event involving
the target that never happened, and the Noble believes the event took place. Further uses of the Charm on
the target won’t clear up the Condition - the Noble must discover her mistake by other methods. She may not
use the Charm on this target for the rest of the scene.
Failure: The Noble learns nothing of her target. She may not use the Charm on this target for the rest
of the scene.
Success: The Noble gains flashes of insight into the drastic changes her target has undergone. The Sto-
ryteller must answer one question about the following subjects truthfully for each activation success:
• The time and place of an event that turned the target’s life to a course he did not expect
• One detail of what happened during that event
• The name or description of one person who was involved in that event
The Noble may ask questions about more than one event or person in a single activation. She may use
the Charm on this target again, but later activations during the scene take a cumulative -1 penalty.
Exceptional Success: The Noble gains considerable insight into events that changed the target.

Upgrade: Personal (Aria ••)

The Aria Invocation favors those who can handle surprises, good or bad, with a smile. The Noble may look
for insight into the target’s character and abilities, so far as these resonate with the Aria Invocation or the credo
of the Queen of Spades, or of magics distorting his character. Add the following to the list of subjects the Noble
may ask about.
• The target’s Wits, Dexterity or Manipulation
• A Skill or specialty that helps the target live in the shadows, or by his wits: Computer, Investigation,
Larceny, Stealth, Streetwise or Subterfuge, or one appropriate specialty of any Skill
• A Merit that helps the target live by his wits, such as Danger Sense or Unseen Sense
• Whether the target is currently affected by mind-altering supernatural powers

Love’s Beacon (Learn ••, Fuoco •)

Action: Instant and resisted
Dice pool: Intelligence + Empathy - target’s Resolve
Cost: 1 Wisp
True love illuminates the beloved. The Noble examines a person near her to learn something of the people
he most cares for. The Charm’s target must be a person close enough for the Noble to speak to.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble takes the Misled Condition. The Storyteller describes a vision that gives a
quite wrong idea of the target’s affections, and the Noble believes the vision. Further uses of the Charm on
the target won’t clear up the Condition - the Noble must discover her mistake by other methods. She may not
use the Charm on this target for the rest of the scene.
Failure: The Noble learns nothing of her target. She may not use the Charm on this target for the rest
of the scene.

Learn 207
 Success: The Noble gains flashes of insight into her target’s loves. The Storyteller must answer one ques-
tion about the following subjects truthfully for each activation success:
• The name or description of one person the target loves
• The nature of the target’s love - marital, romantic, familial, comradely, etc.
• How the beloved feels about the target, to the best of his knowledge
• Where the beloved is most likely to be, again to the target’s knowledge
• One of the target’s Aspirations (or equivalent traits)
The Noble may ask questions about more than one person in a single activation. She may use the Charm
on this target again, but later activations during the scene take a cumulative -1 penalty.
Exceptional Success: The Noble gains considerable insight into her target’s loves.

Upgrade: Personal (Fuoco ••)

The Fuoco Invocation is brightest in people’s loves, but the fire prized by the Queen Errant burns in more
than the bonds of affection. The Noble may look for insight into the target’s character and abilities, so far as
these resonate with the Fuoco Invocation or the credo of the Queen of Swords. Add the following to the list of
subjects the Noble may ask about.
• The target’s Virtue
• The target’s current Willpower
• The target’s Intelligence, Strength or Presence
• A Skill or specialty that helps the target live heroically or adventurously: Athletics, Brawl, Drive, Weapon-
ry, Expression or Persuasion, or one appropriate specialty of any Skill
• A Merit that helps the target live heroically or adventurously, or persuade others to do so (e.g. Inspiring)

Scent of Irises (Learn ••, Legno •)

Action: Instant and resisted
Dice pool: Intelligence + Empathy - target’s Composure
Cost: 1 Wisp
The Noble learns how much her target is at peace with himself, and what might disturb that peace, by
examining him carefully. The Charm’s target must be a person close enough for the Noble to speak to.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble takes the Misled Condition. The Storyteller describes an act the target
really has no objection to performing; the Noble believes the target will refuse to perform that act. Alternately,
the act described can be one the target won’t do, in which case the Noble believes that he will. Further uses of
the Charm on the target won’t clear up the Condition - the Noble must discover her mistake by other methods.
She may not use the Charm on this target for the rest of the scene.
Failure: The Noble learns nothing of her target. She may not use the Charm on this target for the rest
of the scene.
Success: The Noble gains flashes of insight into her target’s moral scruples. The Storyteller must answer
one question about the following subjects truthfully for each activation success:
• The target’s Vice
• The target’s Integrity (or equivalent trait)
• One of the target’s breaking points
• The name or description of one person or thing which the target would risk bodily harm or moral
degeneration to protect
The Noble may ask questions about more than one person in a single activation. She may use the Charm
on this target again, but later activations during the scene take a cumulative -1 penalty.

208 Learn
 Exceptional Success: The Noble gains considerable insight into her target’s moral scruples.

Upgrade: Personal (Legno ••)

The Legno Invocation blesses a calm mind, an enduring body, and communion with all living things. The
Noble may look for insight into the target’s character and abilities, so far as these resonate with the Legno
Invocation or the credo of the Queen of Clubs. Add the following to the list of subjects the Noble may ask about.
• The target’s Resolve, Stamina or Composure
• A Skill or specialty that helps the target live harmoniously in any situation: Crafts, Medicine, Survival,
Animal Ken, Empathy or Socialize, or one appropriate specialty of any Skill
• A Merit representing physical health (any Physical Merit with a Stamina prerequisite) or mental stability
(e.g. Common Sense, Meditative Mind)
• The name or description of one animal the target cares for

No Man is an Island (Learn ••, Terra •)

Action: Instant and resisted
Dice pool: Manipulation + Empathy - target’s Composure
Cost: 1 Wisp
No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main …

The Noble sees what links her target to the mass of his society when she examines him closely. The Charm’s
target must be a person close enough for the Noble to speak to.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble takes the Misled Condition. The Storyteller describes a vision that asso-
ciates the target with an organization he has no connection to, and the Noble believes the vision. Further
uses of the Charm on the target won’t clear up the Condition - the Noble must discover her mistake by other
methods. She may not use the Charm on this target for the rest of the scene.
Failure: The Noble learns nothing of her target. She may not use the Charm on this target for the rest
of the scene.
Success: The Noble gains flashes of insight into her target’s social standing. The Storyteller must answer
one question about the following subjects truthfully for each activation success:
• An organization in which the target has Status, and the degree of that Status
• A Mystery Cult the target belongs to, and the degree of his Initiation
• The name or description of the target’s immediate superior in his organization
• The name or description of the target’s Retainer, or a person immediately subordinate to the target
in his organization
• One of the Skills known to the target’s Staff
The Noble may ask questions about more than one person in a single activation. She may use the Charm
on this target again, but later activations during the scene take a cumulative -1 penalty.
Exceptional Success: The Noble gains considerable insight into her target’s social standing.

Upgrade: Personal (Terra ••)

The Terra Invocation favors all aspects of human sociability. The Noble may look for insight into the target’s
character and abilities, so far as these resonate with the Terra Invocation or the credo of the Queen of Hearts.
Add the following to the list of subjects the Noble may ask about.
• The target’s Presence, Manipulation or Composure
• One of the target’s Social Skills or specialties
• Any of the target’s Social Merits

Learn 209
Quid pro Quo (Learn ••, Lacrima •)
Action: Instant and resisted
Dice pool: Wits + Pesuasion - target’s Composure
Cost: 1 Wisp
All from the Rebellious Provinces serve the Queen of Tears; ignorance as to how is for the Noble to rectify.
As the Noble scrutinizes a person near her, she learns how his cooperation may be obtained for the good of
Alhambra. The Charm’s target must be a person close enough for the Noble to speak to. When activating the
Charm the Noble must concentrate on a specific goal, and learns only information related to that goal.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble takes the Misled Condition. The Storyteller describes an action the Noble
could take which would in fact perplex or offend the target; the Noble believes he would favor her if she took
it. Further uses of the Charm on the target won’t clear up the Condition - the Noble must discover her mistake
by other methods. She may not use the Charm on this target for the rest of the scene.
Failure: The Noble learns nothing of her target. She may not use the Charm on this target for the rest
of the scene.
Success: The Noble discovers how the target can help her attain what she requires, and what could
persuade the target to do so. The Storyteller must answer one question about the following subjects truthfully
for each activation success:
• One action the target can perform which would help the Noble achieve the goal
• How many Doors the Noble would have to open in a social maneuver aimed at getting the target to
take such an action
• An offer the Noble could make during such a social maneuver which would open a Door without rolling
• One action the Noble can take to improve her impression level with the target
Exceptional Success: The Noble learns a great deal about how to make her target help her.
Modifiers: The goal of the desired action is a Vocation (+3); the goal is helping Alhambra’s interests (+2);
the goal is an Aspiration (+2); the goal is a duty of the Noble’s Calling (+1); the goal is purely personal (-1); the
Noble doesn’t really care about the goal (-3); the Noble has used the Charm on this target earlier in the scene
(-1 per prior use)

Upgrade: Acta Non Verba (Lacrima ••)

The Queen of Tears demands of her subjects all that they can perform. The Noble can probe her target’s
character and training, looking for traits Alhambra has need of and weak spots that can draw him into its service.
Instead of concentrating on a single goal, the Noble may ask questions from the following list.
• A Skill, specialty or Merit the target has that the Noble can’t reliably obtain
• A Skill, specialty or Merit the Noble has that the target can’t reliably obtain
• The target’s Vice
• One of the target’s Aspirations (or equivalent traits)
Also, on an exceptional success the Noble may forgo all questions to discover instead a way to inflict the
Leveraged Condition [CofD 289] on her target.

Tisiphone’s Call (Learn ••, Tempesta •)

Action: Instant and resisted
Dice pool: Wits + Empathy - target’s Composure
Cost: 1 Wisp
Injuries must be discovered and avenged. When examining her target closely, the Noble learns how he has
suffered, and who to pursue with Furious justice. The Charm’s target must be a person close enough for the
Noble to speak to.

210 Learn
 Dramatic Failure: The Noble takes the Misled Condition. The Storyteller describes a false vision of the
target being injured, by people who are actually innocent, and the Noble believes the vision. Further uses of
the Charm on the target won’t clear up the Condition - the Noble must discover her mistake by other methods.
She may not use the Charm on this target for the rest of the scene.
Failure: The Noble learns nothing of her target. She may not use the Charm on this target for the rest
of the scene.
Success: The Noble gains flashes of insight into her target’s enemies and tormentors. The Storyteller
must answer one question about the following subjects truthfully for each activation success:
• The name or description of someone who has harmed the target - physically, mentally or socially
• The nature of the harm done to the target
• Where the person who harmed the target is most likely to be, to the target’s best knowledge
• The name or description of a creature of Darkness the target has encountered
The Noble may ask questions about more than one person in a single activation. She may use the Charm
on this target again, but later activations during the scene take a cumulative -1 penalty.
Exceptional Success: The Noble gains considerable insight into her target’s enemies.

Upgrade: Personal (Tempesta ••)

The Tempesta Invocation encourages all attemtps to fight injustice. The Noble may look for insight into the
target’s character and abilities, so far as these resonate with the Tempesta Invocation or the credo of the Queen
of Storms. Add the following to the list of subjects the Noble may ask about.
• The target’s Strength, Dexterity or Stamina
• A Skill or specialty that makes the target a good warrior or avenger: Athletics, Brawl, Firearms, Weapon-
ry, Stealth or Intimidation, or one appropriate specialty of any Skill
• A Merit that helps the target on the field of battle (e.g. a Fighting Style)

Mirror Mirror (Learn ••, Specchio ••)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Intelligence + Investigation, modified by Sympathy
Cost: 1 Wisp or 2 Wisps
Duration: successes in turns
With this trick a Princess of Mirrors can look into one mirror and see out another. Sympathy is measured
from the mirror she’s seeing out of, not the one she looks into. The Noble is limited by the quality of the two
mirrors used, a low quality mirror that gives a bad reflection gives a low quality image.
If the Noble spends a second Wisp, her own image appears in the mirror she sees out of; this can be used
to show pictures or writing to anyone at that mirror.

Upgrade: Listening
The Noble hears sounds through the mirror she sees out of. If a mirror gives a bad picture it also gives bad
audio. If she spends a second Wisp any sound she makes is heard at the other mirror; this can be used as an
untappable telephone.

Upgrade: Distant (Specchio •••)

The Noble names a target and sees her from the viewpoint of the closest mirror or reflective surface. If
no surface is available the Charm fails automatically and the Noble knows why. With this upgrade Sympathy is
measured to the person she is targeting.

Learn 211
Introductions (Learn •••)
Action: Instant
Dice pool: Manipulation + Empathy - description penalty
Cost: 2 Wisps
Duration: indefinite
Sometimes you have to go looking for just the right person. The Noble activates this Charm to find a person
who is unknown to her, but fits the description of someone she needs to meet. The more specific her description
is, the harder the search will be - each characteristic it includes imposes a -1 penalty. She may not use the Charm
while she is affected by a previous activation.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble learns how to find someone who satisfies all her requirements; however,
if she follows the plan, her target will take offense when she finds him. Social rolls against him start with a -2
penalty, and social maneuvers begin with a hostile impression.
Failure: The Noble cannot discover any plan that will lead her to someone matching her description.
Success: The Noble sees a sequence of omens which will guide her to someone who satisfies all her
requirements. If she follows the signs (AKA the Storyteller’s instructions) she will certainly meet the person
in question at some time in the current session.
Exceptional Success: In addition, she will meet the person in favourable circumstances and create an
initial impression one step higher than she naturally would have.

Upgrade: Proxy
Cost: +1 Wisp
The Noble acts as an intermediary, using the Charm on a person she can touch, though not on anyone under
its effects. The Charm affects the target exactly as it would if he activated it himself, except that the Princess
sees the omens and must interpret them for the target.

Upgrade: Meet Cute (Specchio ••)

When the Noble follows the omens, she and the person she’s guided to both take the Swooning Condition
[CofD 291] for each other at the moment they first meet.

Moving Finger (Learn •••)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Wits + Investigation
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 scene
The Noble mentally describes an object. She becomes aware of the location of the nearest object matching
the description within 25 * the activation successes in yards; no matter how well it is concealed, she can find
it as an unrolled action. The description must be phrased in terms of the object’s composition and form, not its
significance or intended use. For example, “audiotapes”, “letters in my father’s handwriting”, and “weak places in
the wall” all work; “incriminating evidence”, “letters about my father”, and “something that will help me escape”
do not. A Noble can find only one object at a time; if she activates Moving Finger when she already has it active,
the first use ends immediately.

Upgrade: General
Cost: +1 Wisp
The Noble becomes aware of every object matching the description within range. She can find objects
matching only one description at a time.

212 Learn
Upgrade: Significant (Acqua ••)
The Noble may describe an object by its meaning. For example, she can find documents about a specific
subject in a wall of file cabinets, or search the scene of a murder for clues to the killer’s identity.
The presence of Taint, and the property of being a focus of Taint, is considered part of an object’s meaning,
so applying Significant allows the Charm to find a Tainted area’s focus.

Living Index (Learn •••, Acqua ••)

Action: Full turn
Dice pool: Resolve + Academics
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 5 minutes
A library is a treasure house of knowledge, but sometimes one needs a special key to unlock it. The Noble
uses this Charm when she has access to a library (or other collection of information.) She falls into a light trance,
in which the totality of information contained in the library appears within her mind.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble’s mind drowns in the flood of data. She takes the Stumbling Condition on
a Skill related to the facts she was looking for, which ends when she next sleeps.
Failure: The information in the library runs through the Noble’s mind without leaving a trace.
Success: The Noble sifts key facts out of the flood. Each activation success reduces the threshold for her
next extended action using the library by 1 success. If the threshold to find a piece of information becomes 0
or less, the Princess learns that information during the trance.
Exceptional Success: The Noble retains a great deal of information. Her dice pool for her next extended
action using the library gains the 9-again quality, if she didn’t have that benefit already.
As long as the trance lasts the Noble stands or sits without moving or seeing her surroundings; she takes
a -2 penalty to Perception rolls and Defense, and if she takes any action or suffers damage the Charm fails. The
Noble cannot use this Charm more than once per scene, and if she uses it twice before doing research, she loses
all benefits from the first activation.

Perfect Sight (Learn •••, Aria •)

Action: Reflexive and resisted
Dice pool: Wits + Composure - target’s Dexterity
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 action
For a moment, the Noble sees a chink in a target’s defense, and strikes swiftly.
Dramatic Failure: The target’s Defense against the Noble’s next attack is doubled. If his Defense does
not apply, the attack is reduced to a chance die.
Failure: The Charm has no effect.
Success: Reduce the target’s Defense against the Noble’s next attack by the activation successes, to a
minimum of 0.
Exceptional Success: If the attack inflicts damage, the target’s Defense against all attacks is reduced by
1, until his next action.

Upgrade: Allied
Modified by Commonalty
Cost: +1 Wisp

Learn 213
 The Noble discloses the target’s weak spot to members of an organization she belongs to who are present,
applying the Commonalty modifier. Until the target’s next action, his Defense against any member of the orga-
nization is reduced as if it came from her.

Genius Loci (Learn •••, Legno ••)

Action: Extended, 5 minutes/roll, threshold = Sanctuary
Dice pool: Composure + Occult
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 scene
Places, especially buildings, have their own sort of life; as they age and people care for them, they acquire
a distinctive spirit and a voice that speaks in creaking boards or rustling leaves. With careful attention and a
touch of magic, the Noble can rouse a place’s spirit and listen to its voice. When activating the Charm, the Noble
meditates inside the place she wants to listen and speak to.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble rouses the place’s spirit, but offends it. Until she leaves it, a curse of ill
luck dogs her; all her actions suffer a -1 penalty. If she returns at any time during the next day, she suffers
the same penalty until she leaves again.
Failure: The Noble cannot hear the place’s spirit yet.
Success: The Noble makes progress in waking the place’s spirit. When she reaches the threshold, the
spirit is fully roused and communicates with her in a fashion only she understands (patterns of creaks, flick-
ering in the lights, etc.) For the rest of the scene the Noble may use her Social skills to converse with the lo-
cation as with a person.
A place’s spirit should have a somewhat definite personality, getting stranger as its relative power (age,
fondness, etc.) grows; a recent home may offer full collaboration if one deals with the woodworm infestation,
while an ancient library may refuse to answer simply because no member of the nakama has a membership
card. (The Storyteller should however try to avoid making impossible demands.)
Exceptional Success: The place’s spirit finds the Noble agreeable. Her Social interactions with it gain
the 9-again quality, if she didn’t have that quality already.
Note that some other supernaturals have powers that rouse a place’s spirit, or compel it to service, while
there are places - loci or verges - where the spirits are already wide awake. Using this Charm in such places
is perilous; awakened free spirits, hearing the Noble’s call, may stalk her with predatory intent, while bound
spirits will warn their masters of her presence.

Upgrade: Tsukumogami (Legno •••)

The Noble can also rouse the spirits of movable objects. The threshold for an object equals its Size. A dra-
matic failure penalizes her actions if she has the object on her person or within her sight.

Unearth the Foundations (Learn •••, Terra ••)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Composure + Empathy, modified by organization’s Commonalty
Cost: 2 Wisps
The Noble’s social senses are so delicate that she can see how an organization is put together just by watch-
ing its members at work. When observing an organization’s members who are engaged in one of its projects, or
when talking to members about their organization, the Noble may activate the Charm.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble takes the Misled Condition. The Storyteller describes a trait (among those
the Charm can detect) the organization does not really possess; the Noble will believe the organization has
that trait. Further uses of the Charm on the organization won’t reveal anything that refutes this false belief -

214 Learn
 the Noble must discover her mistake by other methods. She may not use the Charm on the organization for
the rest of the scene.
Failure: The Noble learns nothing of the organization. She may not use the Charm on it for the rest of
the scene.
Success: The Noble gains flashes of insight into the organization’s structure and capabilities. The Story-
teller must answer one question about the following subjects truthfully for each activation success:
• One of the organization’s Attributes
• The organization’s Standing
• One of the organization’s Merits
• A person with acknowledged authority or significant influence over the organization as a whole, e.g.
4+ dots in Allies, Mystery Cult Initiation or Status in that organization
The Noble may use the Charm on the organization again, but later activations during the same day take
a cumulative -1 penalty. The Charm reveals the traits most relevant to the members the Noble is observing
or speaking to first, so the Storyteller may refuse to give answers that aren’t related to them before the facts
about them are all disclosed.
Exceptional Success: The Noble learns enough about the organization to plan a perfect approach. In her
next social maneuver against it, she improves her impression level by one step.

Upgrade: Private (Terra •••)

The Noble can discover the organization’s current plans, its general mindset and its current troubles and
weaknesses. Add the following to the list of subjects the Noble may ask about.
• One of the organization’s Aspirations
• The organization’s Vice or Virtue
• The organization’s Morale and the current level of damage to it
• One of the Conditions currently on the organization

Reflected Portents (Learn •••, Specchio •••)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Composure + Investigation, modified by Longevity
Cost: 1 Wisp, 1 Willpower
Duration: 1 turn
How does the Queen of Mirrors know who is the true heir? Simple, she can see the future. Or maybe not,
since none of her many True Heirs fulfilled their supposed destiny. Regardless of the truth surrounding the
Lightbringer’s mysterious Queen, it is a fact that the Invocation of Specchio unlocks powers of precognition
beyond the dreams common to all Enlightened.
To perceive the mysteries of time and space the Noble decides which question she wishes to ask. She also
needs a mirror positioned so it reflects the subject of her question and invokes the charm. The Longevity mod-
ifier is measured to the future event the Noble asks about; because of this the Storyteller should always roll for
Reflected Portents. A smart player can learn much from just the modifier.
Dramatic Failure: Guided by Fate, or perhaps an unwelcome hint from her own subconscious the Noble
sees a horrifying vision, such as the brutal murder of a close friend. Like all prophecies it’s not guaranteed to
come true, but she still needs to make a Sensitivity roll.
Failure: The future remains unclear, either nothing happens or the Noble gets a completely accurate
vision of a clear blue sky sometime in the future. Or the depths of space, or tv static.
Success: After a few moments the mirror fades to reveal a vision of the future. The player asks one
question per activation success which the vision will answer. There is no sound but the vision is as good as

Learn 215
 the mirror’s quality. Anyone looking at the mirror (which doesn’t have to be the Noble, if she’s holding a hand
mirror facing someone else) can see the vision.
Visions revealed in Reflected Portents are entirely true and accurate, but may nevertheless change for
the future remains in flux. Strange beings move outside of Fate, time travellers occasionally change history,
even the Noble’s vision of the future may introduce new variables into the timeline; perhaps allowing her to
escape a horrible fate.
Exceptional Success: Extra Successes are their own reward.
The Noble can only invoke this Charm on the same event once per day. Additionally she cannot learn any-
thing from the past or the present, defined as the current scene. If the Noble asks about a past or present event
roll as normal. On a success reveal that it has already happened but give no further details. If the question has
multiple answers, such as asking “Who will I marry?” for someone likely to marry many times, choose the soon-
est event, favoring big and noticeable events over others in the same time period, defined by the dicepool mod-
ifier.

Upgrade: Listening
The Noble adds audio to her mirror. A low quality mirror that gives a bad reflection also gives bad sound.

Upgrade: Distant (Specchio ••••)

Modified by Sympathy
The Noble can prophesy about a distant target, applying the Sympathy modifier. That modifier stacks with
the Longevity modifier.

Upgrade: Pastward (Specchio •••••)

The Noble can see events that have already happened in her mirror. The time elapsed since the event shown
in the mirror determines the penalty. On a dramatic failure, the vision in the mirror is entirely wrong and the
Noble will believe it was correct, taking the Misled Condition, until shown clear evidence to the contrary; her
Sensitivity is not triggered.
All questions the player asks must be answerable by a vision of one past event. The question “Who mur-
dered Miss Daisy?” will show the murderer in the act; “Where is the murderer now?” won’t be answered, be-
cause what the murderer is doing now is a different event.

Journey in Reverie (Learn ••••)

Action: Full turn
Dice pool: Composure + Empathy
Cost: 2 Wisps
Duration: indefinite
The Noble dreams of reality, casting her mind forth to walk, invisible and untouchable, in the waking world.
To use this Charm the Noble must be next to one of her Crawlspace entrances, and spend enough time to find
and open its first Door.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble sleeps without dreaming, and can’t be wakened by any normal means;
magic to wake her up faces a Clash of Wills. The sleep lasts long enough to refresh her Willpower.
Failure: The Noble can’t find sleep. To use the Charm she must start all over again.
Success: The Noble falls into reverie similar to Dreamlands travel, but rather than pass the threshold of
her Crawlspace, she may turn back and travel the material world as a psychic projection, leaving her body
asleep behind her. In this state the Noble acts as an ephemeral entity in Twilight Form, with the traits of her
Dream Form, and in phase with other psychic projections, Astral beings and Dreamlanders. Thus supernatural
powers that influence minds or Dreamlanders in Twilight work on her, but nothing material can touch or

216 Learn
 perceive her without such a power. The Noble may end the Charm at any time, which returns her to her body
and wakes her; until it ends she knows nothing of her body’s condition.
The Noble’s own powers are sharply limited in her Dream Form - unless her target is another ephemeral
entity in phase with her, she may use only those Charms that influence minds, or Charms she can cast through
a sympathetic connection (her connection to anything she sees is Sensory) and she may not use Charms that
require her target to perceive her. While she doesn’t suffer Essence bleed, the Charm expires, waking her, if
she can’t stay transformed. Should her Dream Form be destroyed, the Noble wakes with the Soul Shocked
Condition.
Exceptional Success: The Noble finds it easy to sustain her Dream Form outside of her body. She adds
+2 to her rolls to stay transformed until the Charm ends.

Upgrade: Phantasmal
Until the Charm ends, the Noble may spend a Wisp to make her Dream Form visible and audible to material
beings for one scene. When she does so, she may use Charms that require others to see or hear her.

Dire Warning (Learn ••••, Fuoco •••)

Action: Reactive
Dice pool: Wits + Composure
Cost: 2 Wisps, 1 Willpower
The Noble sees a vision of immediate catastrophe, with barely enough time to stop it. The last actions taken
by other characters in the current scene, up to the activation successes or the Noble’s last action (whichever
is less) did not really happen; they occurred only in a prophetic vision. A shouted warning allows a character
whose action was “undone” to choose a different action when their turn comes. If an action is not affected by
the Noble’s foreknowledge, because all the relevant circumstances are unchanged, its result is the same as the
“vision” of it; do not reroll the dice. If the Noble’s last action was undone, the Charm’s use replaces that action
in the real order of events; if not, the Charm’s use is her action in the current turn.

Zone of Truth (Learn ••••, Terra •••)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Presence + Investigation
Cost: 2 Wisps, 1 Willpower
Duration: 1 scene
The Noble enchants her immediate area, making deception impossible. This Charm affects an area with a
radius of Inner Light x 10 feet.
Dramatic Failure: The Charm affects only the Noble herself; until the scene ends, she answers questions
as if she’d gained an exceptional success.
Failure: Everyone in the affected area can say what they wish, regardless of its truth.
Success: Anyone in the affected area with a Composure less than or equal to the number of successes
rolled - including the Noble - find themselves incapable of knowingly saying a falsehood (lying) or making
statements without knowledge of or regard for the truth (bullshitting) for the rest of the scene. Affected in-
dividuals are unaware magic has been used on them, unless they have some ability that allows them to detect
it; someone trying to tell a lie or bullshit finds themselves blurting out the truth or “I don’t know” instead,
though after a few times they’ll probably realize something’s wrong with them and clam up.
Exceptional Success: All affected individuals must roll Resolve + Composure when asked a question,
and will answer it truthfully if they fail - they can’t remain silent.
The Charm will not prevent someone from making statements they erroneously believe to be true, or state-
ments that are technically true but misleading.

Learn 217
Books in Running Brooks (Learn •••••, Acqua ••••)
Avatar (Diamonds)
Action: Instant
Dice pool: Intelligence + Academics
Cost: 3 Wisps, 1 Willpower
Duration: 1 scene
… finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in every-
thing.

The Queen of Diamonds is a scholar without peer, and her avatar has all knowledge at her fingertips.
Dramatic Failure: A big chunk of the Noble’s memory temporarily vanishes. She takes the Amnesia
Condition [CofD 288] for a full day, covering a period chosen by the Storyteller.
Failure: The Noble remains a simple, uninformed mortal.
Success: The Noble’s memory instantly fills with information on the things, people and places she en-
counters, arranged in the fashion she finds easiest to understand. Until the Charm ends, the Noble may carry
out research without access to a library, and requiring only 1 turn per roll.
Moreover, for each activation success there is one topic that the library in the Noble’s mind definitely
covers; she can give herself, or someone who listens to her, the Informed Condition [CofD 289] on any of those
topics as often as she likes while the Charm lasts. The only limitation on the choice of topics is that they must
be knowledge that is available to all of humanity; the Noble is of course free to discover new knowledge but
her starting point, her library, is common knowledge. In practice this covers just about any topic the Noble
is likely to be interested in, except for inner details of the supernatural and uncharted jungles or deep ocean
trenches.
Exceptional Success: The extra successes are their own reward.
When the Noble activates the Charm, her eyes appear to become depthless azure pools (without affecting
her vision in any way) and the immediate area is dimly illuminated, as if by moonlight reflected on water.

Perfect
The Perfect Charms grant new personal abilities. Champions and Menders have affinity for them.

Barrier Jacket (Perfect •)

Regalia
Action: Permanent
A Princess is always properly dressed. Of course, the proper dress for battle is usually armor. The Noble
may alter her iconic clothing into protective Regalia that grants her 1/1 Armor, covering her whole body. She
may return to her unprotected but transformed state with a transformation action. The armor from Barrier
Jacket does not stack with mundane armor, but it can stack with Charms or other powers that grant Armor in
a less tangible form.
The Regalia bonus increases the Noble’s general (but not ballistic) Armor rating by her dots in the applied
Invocation for one turn. Each Quality upgrade improves the Armor by +1/+1 before applying an Invocation.
Infusing her armor with magic takes a few moments; applying an Invocation to Barrier Jacket imposes an extra
-1 penalty to Initiative.

Upgrade: Fluid (Acqua •)

The Noble’s armor blunts the force of bullets. When she applies Acqua to her Barrier Jacket, she adds her
dots to both her general and ballistic Armor.

218 Perfect
Upgrade: Sonic (Aria •)
Instead of wrapping herself in armor, the Noble can sharpen her reflexes and enhance her ability to evade
attacks. When she applies Aria to her Barrier Jacket, she may increase her passive Defense or her Dodge dice
pool by her Aria, instead of increasing her Armor rating.

Upgrade: Fireproof (Fuoco •)

The Noble’s armor can resist fires. During a turn in which she applies Fuoco to her Barrier Jacket, damage
from fire does not bypass it, and fire damage exceeding its Armor rating is downgraded to bashing.

Upgrade: Healing (Legno •)

The Noble’s armor soothes bruises and knits wounds together. When she applies Legno to her Barrier
Jacket, she may split her dots between improving her Armor and healing herself. Each dot used to heal removes
1 point of bashing damage.

Upgrade: Saving (Terra •)

The Noble’s armor protects her in the last extremity. When her last Health box is filled with bashing damage,
applying Terra to her Barrier Jacket keeps her conscious. Moreover, if her Health track fills with lethal damage,
she may apply Terra to avoid the point of damage each minute even if she is unconscious.

Upgrade: Fearsome (Lacrima •)

The Noble’s armor gives her an ominous presence, promising doom to her foes. Once per turn, she may
apply Lacrima reflexively to block an opponent’s close attack on her. The opponent must roll his Resolve +
Supernatural Tolerance - the Noble’s Lacrima; if he fails, he cannot attack the Noble that turn, but doesn’t lose
his action. The Noble triggers her Sensitivity the first time her armor prevents an attack during a scene.

Celestial Dance (Perfect •)

Favor (Athletics)
Action: Permanent
When the Noble transforms, she moves with the grace and speed of an Olympian gymnast. (Detailed rules
for tasks covered by Athletics may be found in Athletic Feats.)
Although Athletics is used to calculate it, Defense is not an action, and Celestial Dance does not improve it.
However, the Noble may apply an Invocation to her Dodge pool after doubling her Defense.

Upgrade: Swift
Stackable 3 times
The Noble moves a little faster than a normal human can, and avoids the strokes of her enemies. She adds
+1 to her Defense, Speed and Initiative each time she takes this upgrade. At the start of a foot chase [CofD 84-85]
the Noble reduces the successes she needs to pursue or evade by 1 for each time she took this upgrade.

Upgrade: Floating (Acqua •)

Water and ice are the Noble’s allies; she moves in liquid or on slick surfaces unimpeded. In an area with
the Blizzard [CofD 281] or Flooded Tilts [CofD 282] the Noble reduces the Tilt’s penalty to Physical actions by
her Acqua. In an area with the Ice Tilt [CofD 284], the Princess suffers none of its effects - she can move at full
speed, and takes no penalty to Physical actions. Moreover, she may spend 1 Wisp to add her Acqua to her Speed
and Initiative for a scene, as long as she is swimming or stays within a Blizzard, Flooded or Ice Tilt.

Perfect 219
Upgrade: Weightless (Aria •)
The very air bears the Noble up whenever she leaves the ground. When she jumps and applies Aria to the
roll, she multiplies the distance she travels by (1 + Aria) instead of adding Aria to her dice pool. When she falls
[CofD 97] she may spend 1 Wisp reflexively to slow her fall; she takes no damage unless she reaches terminal
velocity, and a fall at terminal velocity inflicts bashing, not lethal damage.

Upgrade: Heaving (Fuoco •)

The Noble can lift and throw objects of great weight. She may apply Fuoco when lifting or pushing an object
to increase her effective Strength by her dots, and adds her Fuoco in yards to the short range of her thrown
objects [CofD 90]; her medium and long range increase in proportion. Moreover, she can spend 1 Wisp to throw
an object she has lifted, even if its Size exceeds her Strength.

Upgrade: Gripping (Legno •)

In high places, the Noble cannot put a hand or foot in the wrong place. When climbing, she reduces penalties
from a sheer or slick surface by her Legno dots. If she falls while climbing or within reach of a surface, she may
roll Dexterity + Athletics to grip the surface and stop her fall altogether; a fall from a climb, if stopped, is only
10 feet. Moreover, if she spends 1 Wisp, her hands and feet hold fast to any surface; she can move along walls
and ceilings as easily as on floors.

Speed Racer (Perfect •)

Favor (Drive)
Action: Permanent
When the Noble is at the wheel, a car responds to her directions almost as if it were alive.

Upgrade: Undented
The Noble fends off blows to her vehicle as if it was her own body. She may reflexively spend 1 Wisp to
reduce damage to a vehicle she is driving; after subtracting Durability, the vehicle takes only 1 point of damage
if it takes any. If a source of aggravated damage hits the vehicle, she may spend 1 Wisp to subtract its Durability
from the damage done, or 2 Wisps to reduce the damage to 1 point.

Upgrade: Tracking (Aria ••)

The Noble can easily keep track of other cars when she’s behind the wheel. When she is shadowing some-
one, or being shadowed, while driving [CofD 72] her opponent in the contest takes a penalty on his roll equal to
her Aria, and she may spend a Wisp to achieve an exceptional success on 3 successes.

Upgrade: Supercharged (Fuoco ••)

The Noble coaxes her vehicle’s engine to perform beyond its normal ability. She may spend 1 Wisp to apply
a number of modifications to the vehicle she is driving [CofD 99] up to her Fuoco, chosen from +1 dice modifier,
+5 Speed, removing the Slow Acceleration tag, and adding the High Acceleration tag. The modifications last until
the Noble stops driving the vehicle. The vehicle’s total modifications (installed or Charm-added) are limited to
twice the Noble’s Crafts dots.

Upgrade: Undaunted (Fuoco ••)

Requires Undented and Barrier Jacket

220 Perfect
 The Noble sheathes the vehicle she drives in her own armor. If she activates Barrier Jacket while driving a
vehicle, it also adds the Jacket’s general Armor rating to the vehicle’s Durability, and the Durability of any part of
the vehicle. Applying Fuoco to her Barrier Jacket (but not other Invocations) adds the Noble’s Fuoco dots to its
Durability for one turn. If her Jacket is Fireproof, the vehicle’s fuel will not burn anywhere except in the engine;
applying Fuoco keeps the vehicle from combusting, no matter how intense the fire.
The Jacket vanishes (removing both her personal armor and the vehicle’s Durability boost) if the Noble
stops driving the vehicle, or when the scene ends.

Woodland’s Bounty (Perfect •)

Favor (Survival)
Action: Permanent
When the Noble transforms, she walks through a wilderness as if it were her own home.

Upgrade: Arctic (Acqua •)

The Noble may dance in a snowstorm as if it were a cool spring day. She reduces the effective level of an
extreme cold environment [CofD 97] by 1 for each dot in Acqua while she is transformed, and the Extreme Cold
Tilt [CofD 282] does not affect her.

Upgrade: Tropical (Fuoco •)

For the Noble, the heat of noonday in a desert is no more than a mild caress. She reduces the effective level
of an extreme heat environment by 1 for each dot in Fuoco while she is transformed, and the Extreme Heat Tilt
[CofD 282] does not affect her.

Upgrade: Fasting (Legno •)

The Light sustains the Noble in barren wilderness and keeps her body pure. She may apply Legno to her
rolls to resist the effects of fatigue, drugs, poisons and diseases. Moreover, if she spends 1 Wisp, she does not
require food or water as long as she stays transformed; she does not take damage from deprivation or progress
towards taking such damage, and she can heal any deprivation damage she’s already taken.

Upgrade: Tracking (Legno ••)

The Noble’s nose grows sensitive, nearly as much as a dog’s. She may apply her Legno to Perception rolls
based on smell and taste, and to rolls to smell out a target while blind. Also, she is able to track things by scent
- she can follow trails over hard ground, that most people can’t even see, and she can take scents from people’s
clothing, giving her a equipment bonus to track them. Scent tracking is a contested action using Wits + Survival
vs. Wits + Composure; it can also be resolved as a chase [CofD 84-86].

Penetrating Eye (Perfect •)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Wits + Crafts - Durability
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 scene
The Noble looks through solid objects, seeing what lies beyond them. When activating the Charm, she
chooses a Durability level.
Dramatic Failure: The Charm works too well; the Noble looks through everything, and sees nothing
properly. She takes the Blinded Tilt [CofD 281] as if blinded in one eye.

Perfect 221
 Failure: The Noble sees normally.
Success: Objects with a Durability less than or equal to the level the Noble chose become transparent to
her eyes whenever she wishes to see what lies behind them. (This reduces the benefit of opaque cover [CofD
92] to the same as transparent cover.) If the Noble wants to look through two or more objects at once (say, a
wardrobe and the wall behind it) the sum of all the objects’ Durabilities can’t exceed the level she chose; her
vision stops at the first object that would take the combined Durabilities over the limit.
Exceptional Success: Add 1 to the level of Durability the Noble can see through.
Note that thin sheets of material, such as paper, most fabric or metallic foil, have Durability 0.

Read the Wind (Perfect •, Aria •)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Wits + Composure
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 scene
The air touches all things. Flowing and all-encompassing, it feels the shapes of objects by where it is not.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble becomes sure that something is watching her. She gains the Nervous Con-
dition.
Failure: The Noble is limited to her normal senses.
Success: The Noble enjoys a reflexive knowledge of her surroundings, up to a range of 5x her successes
in yards. This applies to 360 degrees around her. This ability is not sight, but an additional sense. The addi-
tional sense has a resolution of about 1/2" (2 centimeters) and the Noble knows the shapes, sizes, textures
and positions of all objects in the area within that level of detail. It does not provide color; a book appears
identical whether filled with profane words or chick-lit, although in the former case, a Wits + Crafts roll may
be permitted to identify the characteristic texture of human skin binding the book.
The sense only works if air-currents can flow between the Noble and an object; she can’t use it to perceive
what is in an air-tight box, although the fact that the draft coming from the floorboards is actually the result of
an underground dungeon may be useful. The sense provides no advantage when the Noble is not immersed
in a gas (most commonly air); being under water is probably the most common case of this. Her rolls to avoid
being surprised by people in range of the additional sense ignore penalties from lack of vision - darkness, fog,
or just having her back turned.
Exceptional Success: The Noble’s new sense makes her eye especially acute. She gets a +2 bonus on all
Perception rolls until the Charm ends.

Beauty is Talented (Perfect •, Specchio •)

Requires Striking Looks •
Action: Instant
Dice pool: Presence + Composure
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: successes in turns
Don’t you know that beautiful people are just better than you? Pretty people are stronger, faster, smarter,
more talented than regular people.
Dramatic Failure: If she isn’t more talented, the Noble must not be beautiful … for the rest of the scene,
she gets no benefit from her Striking Looks, even on dice pools the Merit normally helps.
Failure: The Noble’s Striking Looks affect just the dice pools they normally do.
Success: For one turn per success the Noble can add her Striking Looks bonus to any roll. In situations
where Striking Looks usually applies this Charm does not stack the bonus with itself.

222 Perfect
 Exceptional Success: While the Charm lasts the Noble gains an additional +1 bonus to dice pools her
Striking Looks normally apply to.

Hang By a Thread (Perfect ••)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Strength + Athletics
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 scene
The Noble creates long vines, ribbons or woven lines that tie themselves to any surface she hurls them to.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble entangles herself in the cords she creates. She takes either the Arm Wrack
[CofD 280] or Leg Wrack [CofD 285] Tilt (in the one-limb form) until the scene ends.
Failure: No cords appear.
Success: Until the Charm ends, the Noble can extend some part of her Regalia into cords of considerable
length. She can throw a cord at a target, using the rules for a thrown weapon [CofD 90] but with a short range
of (Strength + Dexterity + Athletics) * 2 yards; if she hits, the cord attaches itself to the target with roots, hooks,
knots or glue. The cords can stretch out to the Noble’s long range when thrown, plus a yard or so of slack,
and are always attached to the Noble. If anyone tries to cut a cord, its Durability and Structure is that of her
Regalia; it will disintegrate if successfully cut. Cords detach and retract into the Noble when the Charm ends.
Once a cord is attached, the Noble can detach it as a reflexive action, or change its length by up to twice
her Speed instead of moving. If the cord is tied to a fixed structure or an object too heavy for her to move,
reeling in the cord pulls the Noble toward it, and she can swing from the cord while carrying anything she
can lift without effort. If the cord is attached to a object she can move, reeling it in pulls the attached object
toward the Noble. If the cord is attached to a character, reeling it in brings the Noble and her target together;
if both try to stand still each reflexively rolls Strength + Athletics, and the contest’s loser moves toward the
winner (reroll ties.)
Exceptional Success: The Noble’s cords grow longer and lighter. Her short range when throwing them
is (Strength + Dexterity + Athletics) * 3 yards.

Upgrade: Tightrope
Cost: +1 Wisp
The Noble can detach a thrown cord from herself, leaving it attached at the far end, as a reflexive action. As
an instant action, she may fasten the near end to anything she can touch, as securely as it’s tied at the far end.
All her detached cords disintegrate when the Charm ends. If the Noble originally activated the Charm without
this upgrade, she can pay just the upgrade’s cost to activate it as well.

Valiant Mind (Perfect ••)

Action: Permanent
The Noble is the captain of her soul; she does not allow anyone to violate it. She may use a transformation
action to raise or lower a shield against attempts to intrude into her mind. While the shield is up, any supernat-
ural powers that read, alter, or communicate with the Noble’s mind provoke a Clash of Wills. If she realizes her
mind is being attacked, the Noble may apply an Invocation to her dice pool in the Clash.

Upgrade: Entrancing (Legno ••)

The Noble’s thoughts fascinate those who probe into them, leaving them blind and deaf to the outside world.
The Noble may choose to lose the Clash of Wills to draw the intruder into a net of entrancing images, giving him
the Insensate Tilt [CofD 285]; while the intruding power takes effect, its user does nothing but contemplate the
Noble’s inner harmony until the Tilt lapses.

Perfect 223
Upgrade: Terrifying (Tempesta •••)
The Noble’s rage consumes those foolish enough to transgress into her thoughts. She may set her shield to
fill her with fury when a supernatural power tests it, and inspire deadly fear in the intruder. If the Noble wins
the Clash of Wills, she may reflexively accept the Maddened Condition, focused on the character who used the
power, to inflict the Fearful Condition on him, focused on herself. Both Conditions fade when the scene ends,
without resolving.

Wreathed in Flame (Perfect ••, Fuoco •)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Presence + Athletics
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: successes in turns
Passion for her beloved ignites in a fiery nimbus, burning anyone who interferes with the Noble.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble sets herself on fire; the Charm’s nimbus burns her once as it would burn
what she touched has she succeeded.
Failure: The Noble sheds a few sparks that go out without igniting anything.
Success: The Noble chooses someone she holds in affection. For one turn per success, her flesh and
anything she wears or carries is a source of flame, of a color and Intensity set by the affection’s nature and
strength (see the Heartfire Condition for details.) Anyone and anything that touches the Noble is burnt as by
a torch-sized fire of the given Intensity [CofD 98] as is anyone or anything she touches that was not on her
person when she used the Charm. The Noble may try to touch an opponent in combat to burn them, instead
of attacking them, but an attack does not burn her target even if she damages him.
Exceptional Success: The nimbus burns as hotly as a bonfire.

Upgrade: Banked
The Noble can temporarily suppress the flames, allowing her to handle things without burning them.

Upgrade: Granted
The Noble can turn someone else’s passion into an aura of flame. She must know of someone the target
holds in affection; when she touches him, he gains a fiery nimbus exactly as if he had activated the Charm himself.

Upgrade: Wild
Cost: +1 Wisp
The fires leap with the Noble’s strikes; each time she successfully damages an opponent in close combat,
he is burnt as if she had only touched him.

Composed Come What May (Perfect ••, Terra ••)

Action: Permanent
Elegance is not a pretty gown and tasteful jewellery; it’s a state of mind and the Noble knows how to be
elegant when up to her elbows in mud. Any sensory effect that would grant her a negative situational modifier
to social rolls is reduced by her Composure. A Noble who is covered in blood (-5) and has Composure 2 will
only take a -3 penalty.
This Charm does not prevent a Noble from looking bad, it merely allows her to overcome its effects with
grace and poise. Additionally because elegance is a state of mind a Noble must be in the right state of mind to

224 Perfect
use this power. If she cannot justify her appearance then she cannot benefit from this Charm. Being covered in
mud because you were searching for a missing child and didn’t have time to change is fine; turning up in dirty
clothes because you’d rather sleep in than wash isn’t.

Empty Heart (Perfect ••, Lacrima •)

Action: Full turn
Dice pool: Stamina + Persuasion
Cost: 1 Wisp, Sensitivity check at +2
Duration: 1 scene or 1 night
The Noble becomes a being of Darkness, a manifestation of the Void. Her skin becomes sallow, her hair
either whitens or darkens, depending on how light it was to begin with, and her pupils expand to fill the entire
eye, making her look unhealthy but undeniably human.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble only attracts the Darkness. She reaches a breaking point, at a -2 penalty.
Failure: The Noble’s appearance shifts as above for a few seconds, without further effect.
Success: The Noble takes the Darkened Condition, with all its benefits and drawbacks, except that she
keeps her normal Sensitivity and suffers Hauntings when it is triggered. The Condition ends without resolving
at the end of the scene.
Exceptional Success: The Darkened Condition ends at the next sunrise.

Upgrade: Umbral (Lacrima ••-••••)

Stackable 7 - Belief times
If the Noble has dots in Shadows when she uses the Charm, she may assume Umbrae up to her current dots.
Each time she takes this upgrade, the Noble learns a new Umbra; she may choose freely among the Umbrae she
knows when using the Charm. The first and second purchases require Lacrima 2, the third and fourth require
Lacrima 3, and any further purchases require Lacrima 4.

Best Defense (Perfect ••, Tempesta •)

Action: Permanent
The best defense is a good offense. When the Noble transforms, she may add power to her muscles, striking
harder and moving more swiftly; she applies Tempesta during her transformation to add her dots in it to her
Strength, and recalculates all derived traits.
Best Defense is not compatible with Barrier Jacket, or any other supernatural effect that gives Armor; it
is also not compatible with any other supernatural effect that increases Strength. The Noble may dismiss or
restore her augmented Strength during a transformation action, as she does with Regalia; she need not apply
Tempesta to dismiss her Strength, but must do so to restore it.

Persistently Peachy Pretty Perfect (Perfect ••, Specchio •)

Action: Permanent
The Noble is so stunning the universe itself cannot bear to mar her exquisite form. Any sensory effect that
would grant her a negative situational modifier to social rolls, if her Specchio is equal to or greater than the
modifier, is automatically nullified. For example a Princess with Specchio 2 is sprayed with mud by a passing
car. Since this only gives a -2 penalty it is magically prevented, not a drop of mud sticks to the Princess. This
effect protects the Noble from humiliation on all five senses, she won’t smell of mud, nor will her skin feel muddy
to the touch.

Perfect 225
 Only the effects on appearance are protected. A Noble with Specchio 5 might be able to walk through miles
of raw sewage and still look and smell fresh as a daisy afterwards but she is not protected from catching horrible
diseases.

Outrace the Sun (Perfect •••)

Requires Celestial Dance with Swift
Action: Instant
Dice pool: Dexterity + Athletics
Cost: 2 Wisps
Duration: 1 scene
The Noble can reach the speeds of a car on the open road.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble trips over her own feet and falls. If in battle, she takes the Stunned Tilt
[CofD 286].
Failure: The Noble moves normally.
Success: Until the Charm ends, the Noble follows the rules for vehicles when moving [CofD 98-99]. Her
safe Speed is (Strength + Dexterity + Athletics) x10. She rolls Dexterity + Athletics to keep control of her
movements whenever a driver would roll Dexterity + Drive to control a vehicle; her Dice Modifier, when that
applies, is -1. If the Noble collides with another object she can be the light object in the crash. If the Charm
ends, and the Noble is moving faster than her normal running Speed, she takes bashing damage equal to one-
tenth her current Speed and is Knocked Down [CofD 284] by the sudden stop.
Exceptional Success: The Princess gets up to speed as quickly as a sports car. She gains the High Accel-
eration tag until the Charm ends.

Upgrade: Royal Chariot

The Noble can grab other people and drag them along behind her; the wind of her passage lifts them up,
rather like kites on a string. The Noble may take along a number of people up to her Strength dots. The people
dragged along form a human chain with the Princess in the lead, and as long as each person in the chain keeps
his grip, the whole chain is safe. However, each time the Noble has to roll to control her movements, each person
behind her must also roll Dexterity + Athletics. Anyone who fails this roll, and anyone behind them in the chain,
loses their grip and is thrown free, with the results of a sudden stop. If the Noble crashes everyone she carries
is thrown free.

Naiad’s Paths (Perfect •••, Acqua ••)

Requires Celestial Dance with Floating
Action: Instant
Dice pool: Resolve + Athletics
Cost: 2 Wisps
Duration: 1 scene
In all its forms, water will support the Noble wherever she might wish to go.
Dramatic Failure: The Charm stops working when the Noble is standing on a particularly deep pool,
dropping her into the water (or somewhere as inconvenient as that, at the Storyteller’s discretion.) The Noble
cannot use the Charm again for the rest of the scene.
Failure: The Noble gains no ability to walk on liquids or atop snow.
Success: As long as the Charm lasts, the Noble walks on the surface of any liquid, or along the top of a
snowbank, as if it were solid ground, without sinking in. Running water can throw the Noble off balance or
carry her with it; the Storyteller may call for Athletics actions to stay upright in white water, for example, if
the Noble tries to walk on it. The Noble may end the Charm prematurely if she wants to get under water. If
she uses the Charm while submerged, the Noble will rise to the surface at her maximum running Speed.

226 Perfect
 Exceptional Success: The Noble can turn the Charm on and off during the scene without ending it, walk-
ing on water or swimming in it as she pleases.

Wings of Air (Perfect •••, Aria ••)

Requires Celestial Dance with Weightless
Action: Instant
Dice pool: Wits + Athletics
Cost: 2 Wisps
Duration: 1 scene
The Noble is wrapped in the air’s gusty embrace, and takes to the skies as a leaf on the breeze.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble becomes horribly dizzy and confused. She gains the Lost Condition [CofD
289] and cannot use the Charm until it’s resolved.
Failure: The Noble remains earthbound.
Success: The Noble begins to fly, simple as that. Her Speed in the air equals 5 + Strength + Dexterity +
Aria. The Charm keeps her afloat until she touches a surface that can bear her weight, then ends leaving her
properly balanced. If the Noble is airborne at the end of the scene, she drifts downward until she touches a
surface, and takes no damage from the fall.
Exceptional Success: The Noble can rest on solid surfaces without ending the Charm; no matter where
she goes, she can fly until the end of the scene.

Upgrade: Fairy Dust

Cost: +1 Wisp
The Noble wraps the air’s embrace around her friends to bring them with her. She may take along a number
of people up to her Strength dots. The people dragged along form a human chain with the Noble in the lead, and
as long as each person in the chain keeps his grip, the whole chain is safe. However, anyone who lets go starts
to fall, along with anyone behind them, and is not protected by the Charm.
If the Noble hasn’t reached her passenger limit, she can try to catch someone in mid-fall. She must be within
her flying Speed in yards and succeed on a Dexterity + Athletics roll, with a penalty of -1 for each turn the other
person has been falling, to bring them into the Charm’s protection.

Upgrade: Sonic Rainbow

While flying the Noble may spend a Wisp to increase her speed enormously, at the cost of precision. If she
does so, she uses the rules for Outrace the Sun while she flies. Returning to her regular flying speed costs nothing
but the time it takes to decelerate.

Feel the Burn (Perfect •••, Fuoco ••)

Requires Celestial Dance with Heaving
Action: Instant
Dice pool: Strength + Stamina
Cost: 2 Wisps
Duration: 1 scene
The Noble shatters even the sturdiest objects with her forceful blows.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble’s muscles cramp, burning with pain. She takes the Arm Wrack Tilt in her
dominant hand, lasting for the rest of the scene, and can’t use the Charm until it wears off.
Failure: The Noble’s strength is unaffected.

Perfect 227
 Success: The Noble’s muscles burn with energy. Until the Charm ends, whenever she damages an object,
she ignores points of its Durability up to her Fuoco.
Exceptional Success: In addition to the normal effect, all the Noble’s rolls to break, lift or throw objects
gain the 9-again quality.

Adaptation (Perfect •••, Legno ••)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Stamina + Survival
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: until detransformation
To live is to change; to be perfect, one must change often. Wherever the Noble may go, she changes as she
must to be in harmony with her surroundings.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble strains her body or gives herself an allergy; she takes the Sick Tilt [CofD
286] and may not use this Charm for the rest of the scene.
Failure: The Noble does not adapt.
Success: For each success, the Noble gains one of the following benefits until she returns to mundane
form.
• She subtracts one from the effective level of an extreme environment (this may be taken up to 4 times.)
• When resisting disease, drugs, poison or fatigue, she adds +2 to her roll (this may be taken twice.)
• She doubles the time that she can hold her breath (this may be taken up to 3 times.)
• She swims in water at her full Speed on land.
• Her skin and clothes take the color of her surroundings; Perception rolls to notice her take a -2 penalty.
• In a social setting, she behaves properly by instinct; she gains a +1 bonus to Socialize dice pools (this
may be taken up to 3 times.)
• She can walk untouched on streets stalked by human predators; mundane characters must spend a
Willpower point to initiate violence on her.
Exceptional Success: Extra successes are their own reward.

Royal Stature (Perfect ••••)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Unrolled
Cost: (change in Size + 1) Wisps
Duration: 1 scene
The Noble can assume titanic sizes, or shrink herself until she is no bigger than a mouse. When she activates
the Charm, the Noble may alter her Size to any value, from a minimum of 1 to a maximum of 3 dots more than
her natural Size. When the Charm ends the Noble returns to her natural Size; she may end the Charm at any
time with a transformation action, or by reactivating it. The cost of activating the Charm is always measured
from the Noble’s current Size.
Changing one’s Size modifies several other traits; see Size Changes for details.

Skinchange (Perfect ••••, Legno •••)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Dexterity + Animal Ken - difference in Sizes
Cost: 2 Wisps
Duration: until detransformation

228 Perfect
 A mysterious wolven tongue invites. Wouldn’t these ears suit you? Would not this proud long snout assist
you in the hunt?
Dramatic Failure: The Noble’s body contorts painfully. She takes bashing damage equal to her Legno
and cannot use the Charm until that damage is healed.
Failure: The Noble remains in her own shape.
Success: The Noble assumes the shape of a beast. Her mundane Physical Attributes become equal to
those of a normal animal of that species, while her Mental and Social Attributes, and her Skills, remain un-
changed. The Noble’s transformed dots still apply, and she gains the animal’s natural abilities and attacks, and
the ability to communicate with other animals of the species. She may also activate Charms in animal form.
The Noble cannot, however, speak any human language except the Royal Tongue unless the animal is able
to mimic human speech (like a parrot); she takes penalties on any task that calls for hands, unless the animal
has them (like a monkey) or capable manipulators (an octopus’ tentacles); and her Regalia are transformed
away and unavailable. Finally, any object she picked up after transforming out of mundane form does not
change with her.
Exceptional Success: The Noble retains the ability to speak a human language while in beast form.
The Noble may change into the form of any animal she can touch. She may also commit an animal’s form to
memory by carefully studying it for at least a minute, and change to that form later; she can memorize a number
of forms up to her Legno, and forget a form to learn a new one.
She subtracts the difference between her normal Size and the animal’s Size from the activation roll when
using the Charm. She may remain in beast form as long as she can remain transformed normally, and may end
the Charm at any time with a standard transformation action or by returning to mundane form.

Upgrade: Legendary (Legno ••••)

The Noble doesn’t need to touch an animal or study it herself to assume its shape; she can extrapolate
a form from others’ descriptions of the beast. To accomplish this feat the Noble must succeed on a mundane
Intelligence + Animal Ken roll, and take a -2 penalty to the Charm activation. If she commits an extrapolated
form to memory she may resume it without penalty.
The Noble can also assume the shapes of animals which are extinct, or which never existed outside of myths
and legends. The dice pool for such beasts is Intelligence + Science. However, she cannot become an animal
with supernatural powers (other than her own) - she can’t turn into a fire-breathing dragon without a separate
Charm that creates a blast of fire.

Caryatid’s Kiss (Perfect •••••, Terra ••••)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Stamina + Survival
Cost: 2 Wisps, 1 Willpower
Duration: 1 scene
With a shout, the Noble’s flesh and clothes become beautifully-sculpted, flawless marble, and she continues
the fight as an animated statue.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble changes into an immovable stone statue. She takes the Immobilized Tilt
[CofD 284]; breaking free requires cracking the stone, which has a Durability equal to her Terra. Fortunately
the stone also provides cover, and if any damage from an attack reaches the Noble through the stone, the
stone cracks and releases her.
Failure: The Noble keeps her normal flesh.
Success: Despite being stone, the Noble still speaks, thinks, and acts normally, but does not need to
breathe or eat; her Speed is halved, and her weight is multiplied by five. She gains dots of general Armor equal
to the activation successes, which stack with any Armor from other sources, magical or mundane. Any damage

Perfect 229
 dealt to the Noble by a mundane weapon is downgraded to bashing damage, and she takes no damage at all
from being engulfed in fire or exposed to radiation.
Exceptional Success: The Noble’s stone body moves as gracefully as if it were flesh. Her Speed is not
reduced.

Shadowmask (Perfect •••••, Lacrima •••)

Requires Empty Heart
Action: Instant
Dice pool: Resolve + Stealth
Cost: 2 Wisps, Sensitivity check at +4
Duration: 1 scene or 1 night
Wrapping herself in the darkness in which the only true remnants of the Kingdom reside, the Noble be-
comes a true, immaterial figure of shadow. Glowing eyes may glare from the head of the figure, or it may be a
featureless mask. Occasionally, long-lost stars twinkle within the cut-out from the universe, before being swiftly
extinguished. Certainly, there is no way that she could be mistaken for human.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble only attracts the Darkness. She reaches a breaking point, at a -4 penalty.
Failure: The Noble is not changed.
Success: The Noble becomes a living figure of shadow for the rest of the scene.
Exceptional Success: The Noble may become a figure of shadow until the next sunrise, changing be-
tween that form and any others she possesses as if it were her transformed state.
As a figure of shadow, the Noble is immaterial; only beings who can touch things in Twilight can get any
grip on her, and she passes through material objects like a ghost. She may do damage to people or objects by
moving part of herself through them; resolve this as a close combat attack, rolling Strength + Lacrima. The
target’s Defense reduces this pool, and Armor (or Durability) cancels successes, as with a normal attack. If she
hits, she deals bashing damage … and the target loses 1 Willpower point. The Noble cannot touch or move any
material things without magic, or interact with them in any way other than damaging them. She can still speak,
however; when interacting with mundane characters, she applies her Lacrima as a bonus to Intimidation rolls,
and as a penalty to all other Social dice pools.
A light source is painful to approach or pass through; the Noble must roll Resolve + Composure to do so.
Moreover, any source of damage based on light or heat (e.g. fire, industrial lasers, and some magical attacks)
damages her as if she were material. If she ever takes more than 3 damage at once from one source, the cloak
of shadows shreds and she must immediately return to a solid form; she also loses 1 Willpower point from the
psychic shock. This ends the Charm unless she got an exceptional success, and even then the Noble may not
assume the shadow form for 1 scene or during the daytime.
Until the Charm ends, the Noble gains the Darkened Condition, whether or not she is currently in shadow
form. She does not, however, gain Umbrae as she would if she used Empty Heart, and she may not use Empty
Heart before Shadowmask ends.

One Perfect Woman (Perfect •••••, Specchio ••••)

Avatar (Mirrors)
Action: Instant and contested
Dice pool: Presence + Persuasion vs. Composure + Supernatural Tolerance, modified by Commonalty
Cost: 3 Wisps, 1 Willpower
Duration: 1 scene
The true heir to the Kingdom, according to the Queen of Mirrors, is a living personification of the Light itself
- her word becomes truth, her actions mighty, her presence a bastion of hope across the land. Mirrors’ avatar,
who may be that heir someday, can assume the heir’s attributes for a time, when her followers need her. The
Noble uses this Charm on members of an organization over which she has some influence or authority, none of
whom are Hopeful; the member with the best Composure rolls to resist.

230 Perfect
 Dramatic Failure: The Noble offends her targets. She gains the Notoriety Condition [CofD 290] applying
to Social dealings with them.
Failure: If the Noble does not win the contest, she gets no more charisma than she had already.
Success: If the Noble gets more successes - even just one - she gains a personal presence and magnetism
that sways all who see or hear her; she has the benefits of Striking Looks •• and Royal Tongue until the Charm
ends. (If she has Striking Looks or Royal Tongue already, these effects don’t stack with them.) This magnetism
is even stronger on the people she targeted; they perceive the Noble as a paragon, the epitome of beauty
and charm. When dealing with them, the Noble gains a +5 bonus on any roll to which Striking Looks applies,
instead of the Merit’s bonus.
In fact, the attraction is so strong that the targets will, if the Noble desires, surrender their drive and
determination to her. The Noble may spend the targets’ Willpower points as if they were her own, or convert
their Willpower into Wisps at a 1:1 ratio. She may take Willpower from any one person up to her margin
of success on the activation roll. Points taken in this way must be spent immediately; the Noble cannot use
them to refill her personal Willpower or pool of Wisps. Targets reduced to 0 Willpower are crushed by a pro-
found awareness of their inferiority and obligation to the Noble - nothing they might do could equal what this
paragon accomplishes in a moment. (Whether they’ll feel the same once they’ve recovered some Willpower is
up to the Storyteller.) Taking Willpower from anyone without permission is a compromise with a -3 penalty.
Exceptional Success: The charisma granted by the Charm persists even after it ends. At the end of the
scene the Noble gains the Connected Condition [CofD 288] to the organization she enchanted.

Restore
The Restore Charms repair damaged objects, heal the injured and tend the sick. Only Menders have affinity
for them.

Friendly Gremlin (Restore •)

Action: Full turn
Dice pool: Dexterity + Crafts
Cost: 1 Wisp/success
Duration: variable
Soon after airplanes were invented, flyers began to speak of gremlins, small spirits who liked to sabotage
planes. While no one has ever seen a real gremlin, as far as the Hopeful know, a Princess-mechanic named this
Charm after them, as it preserves the delicate mechanisms of aircraft (and other machinery) in perfect working
order, keeping the local gremlins friendly. The Noble uses this Charm on any machine with multiple moving
parts. Friendly Gremlin cannot be used on a machine currently under its effects.
Dramatic Failure: The machine develops a fault, and loses 1 point of Structure. The Noble can’t use the
Charm on it until it’s repaired.
Failure: The machine is not affected.
Success: The machine gains the Fortunate Tilt, blessing a number of rolls made to operate it up to the
activation successes or Wisps spent (whichever is less.) Neither the Noble nor the operator chooses which
rolls gain the benefit - the “gremlin” blesses the next set of rolls made, no matter when or by whom, to operate
the machine.
Exceptional Success: The target gains the Fortunate Tilt for many rolls.

Upgrade: Helpful
Cost: 2 Wisps/success
The gremlin’s help is more effective. The machine gains the Greatly Fortunate Tilt for one roll per activation
success or 2 Wisps spent (whichever is less.)

Restore 231
Upgrade: Perfected
Requires Helpful
Cost: 3 Wisps/success
The gremlin makes it nearly impossible to fail when using the machine. It gains the Perfected Tilt for one
roll per activation success or 3 Wisps spent (whichever is less.)

Ministering Angel (Restore •)

Regalia
Action: Permanent
The Noble adds a first-aid kit to her Regalia. The Regalia bonus applies to medical care in the field. It also
allows the Noble to stabilize a character whose last Health box has lethal damage with an instant unrolled action.

Upgrade: Surgical
The Noble can give medical treatment equal to a hospital’s, wherever her patient may be, pulling any tools
she needs out of her kit. She may downgrade damage to a patient in the field as if she were in a hospital [CofD
96] with the same dice pool, interval and threshold, and applies both Regalia and Quality bonuses.

Upgrade: Calming (Acqua •)

The Noble remains calm and rational in a crisis, and her calm mind and clear instructions help bring back
others from panic. When she applies Acqua to a Medicine roll she may ignore up to her Acqua in situational
penalties for stress, panic, loud noises, disgust and other similar distractions. If she is the primary actor in a
teamwork Medicine roll, she may spend a Wisp to apply her Calming presence to every secondary actor.

Upgrade: Humorous (Aria •)

For the Noble, laughter is truly the best medicine. If she makes a patient under her care laugh, she may
spend a Wisp to give the rote quality to his next Stamina + Resolve roll to resist damage from disease or poison.

Upgrade: Numbing (Legno •)

The Noble carries a supply of anesthetic in her medical kit. When used on a patient the anesthetic gives
a +1 bonus, stacking with the Quality bonus. The Noble can also use the drug on an unwilling target, though
this requires a Dexterity + Weaponry attack roll. Normal success gives him the Drugged Tilt [CofD 281], and
exceptional success gives the Insensate Tilt [CofD 285]; the Regalia bonus applies to the roll, but the Quality
bonus does not.

Call Back Yesterday (Restore •, Terra •)

Action: Extended, 5 minutes/roll, threshold = 1 per 20 years of object’s age
Dice pool: Intelligence + Crafts
Cost: 1 Wisp per 5 Size points of the target
To the Flowers, nothing that is past is gone forever, and anything can be restored if only a fragment remains.
By painstaking inspection of an object that has suffered the ravages of time - wear, rust, corrosion or neglect -
and some judicious scrubbing, the Noble can remove every trace of time’s passage from it, bringing it back to
the condition it was in when newly made. The threshold for the Charm is set by the object’s age; an item made
less than 20 years ago needs 1 success, one made up to 40 years ago needs 2, one made up to 60 years ago
needs 3, and so forth. The Charm does not fix damage to the object, as represented by lost Structure points; if a

232 Restore
Princess uses it on a damaged object, the damage is transformed into hidden structural flaws, and the penalty
for damage that exceeds the item’s Durability remains.
Suggested modifiers: appropriate tools (+equipment bonus), major parts missing (-1 to -3)

Upgrade: Selective (Terra ••)

The Noble can restore an object to the state it was in at any time during its existence. The threshold is now
set from the number of years the Noble actually takes away (or adds) but is calculated at the same rate of 1
per 20 years.

Warmed by Hate Alone (Restore •, Tempesta ••)

Action: Reflexive
Dice pool: Unrolled
Cost: 1 Wisp, 1 Willpower
Duration: 12 hours
The Noble can call upon her hatred of the Darkness to keep herself warmed against the most bitter and
tainted chills. While the Charm lasts, the Noble may ignore a part of the curses on Tainted areas; with respect to
her, the effective Severity of any Taint is reduced by the lower of her Resolve and Tempesta. A Fury’s Practical
Magic enhances the Charm’s effect - applying Storms’ Practical Magic reduces a Taint’s Severity by the Noble’s
current wound penalty, on top of the Charm’s basic effects.
At a Resolve + Tempesta of 6 or more the Noble can comfortably survive the environment of the Dark World,
though she gains no protection from the many more active dangers in that physical hell. She is not affected by
the Extreme Taint Tilt until the Charm ends.

Balm (Restore ••)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Dexterity + Medicine
Cost: 1 Wisp
The Noble lays hands on a person’s flesh, and minor injuries fade away. For each activation success, the
target heals 1 bashing damage.

Upgrade: Crippling
The Noble can force broken bones to knit. With a normal success, she may remove from her target one per-
sonal Tilt that disables a single organ, such as Arm Wrack, Blinded, Deafened or Leg Wrack. With an exceptional
success she may remove two such Tilts from her target.

Upgrade: Great
More serious wounds close and knit under the Noble’s ministrations. For each activation success, the target
heals 1 lethal damage.

Upgrade: Miraculous
Requires Great
Cost: +1 Wisp
The Noble’s hands bring relief from the most horrible forms of injury. The target heals 1 aggravated dam-
age. If the Noble gets an exceptional success, the target heals 1 aggravated damage and downgrades 1 other
aggravated damage to lethal damage.

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Upgrade: Showered
Modified by Sympathy
The Noble may use the Charm on a distant target, applying the Sympathy modifier.

Sure Hands (Restore ••)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Dexterity + Crafts
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 action
Broken things return to their proper form under the Noble’s hands. Each activation success grants a +1
bonus on a mundane action to heal or repair something damaged. Eligible actions include (under Crafts) repair-
ing an item, (Medicine) healing wounds, or (Computer) recovering data from a crashed computer. If the action
in question is extended, the bonus applies to all rolls until the Noble completes the task or abandons it; the
bonus is lost if she leaves the repairs unfinished.

Upgrade: Leading
Cost: +1 Wisp
When others assist the Noble (she is primary in a teamwork action) they gain the same bonus on their rolls
as the Noble does herself.

Upgrade: Swift (Aria •)

The light-fingered Knaves repair things with deftness and speed. When the Noble uses the Charm for an
extended action, she divides the time interval needed for a roll by 2 for each dot of Aria, cumulative (1/2 time
for Aria 1, 1/4 for Aria 2, 1/8 for Aria 3, and so on) to a minimum of 1 minute per roll.

Bath of Souls (Restore ••, Acqua •)

Action: Instant and resisted
Dice pool: Presence + Empathy - target’s Composure
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 scene or 1 day
The Noble brings someone lost in madness back to rationality for a time. Bath of Souls suppresses any
Condition that reflects a disordered mind, from the mild (e.g. Spooked) to the extreme (e.g. Broken.)
Dramatic Failure: The Noble’s intervention makes matters worse. The target takes the Shaken Condi-
tion [CofD 290] and the Princess cannot use Bath of Souls on him until it’s resolved.
Failure: The target’s mind remains in disorder.
Success: TThe Condition is suppressed. A temporary Condition ends without resolving. A persistent Con-
dition doesn’t end, but all its continuing effects cease to apply until the scene ends. Meeting a criterion that
resolves or otherwise ends the Condition will do so with the normal effects.
Exceptional Success: The Condition is suppressed for a full day.

Upgrade: Deep
The Noble’s intervention brings her target to a high lucidity. If she succeeds, the target gains the Shield of
Innocence Condition, with a +1 bonus to breaking point rolls. The Condition ends without resolving when the
Charm expires.

234 Restore
Mesmerize (Restore ••, Aria •)
Action: Instant and contested
Dice pool: Manipulation + Empathy vs. target’s Resolve + Supernatural Tolerance
Cost: 1 Wisp
By speaking a few words, the Noble helps a person remember something they have forgotten.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble buries the memory; the target’s attempts to remember it are automatic
dramatic failures for the rest of the session. The Noble cannot use Mesmerize on him for a full day.
Failure: The target fails to remember.
Success: The target remembers the fact or event the Noble wanted.
Exceptional Success: For the rest of the session, all the target’s attempts to recall a memory take a +2
bonus.

Upgrade: Deep
The Noble can fix something on the surface of a person’s mind … or bury it deep, where it can’t be recalled.
On a normal or exceptional success, she can choose to affect the target as a dramatic failure normally does.

Flame in the Heart (Restore ••, Fuoco •)

Action: Full turn
Dice pool: Manipulation + Persuasion
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: indefinite
By touching a person, the Noble ignites a flame from the warmth of their affections for another. Taking fire
in this way does not affect the target’s emotions, just as lighting one candle from another doesn’t put the first
candle out. The Noble must know the subject of the target’s affections when she activates Flame in the Heart;
she can’t simply take “the person he feels most strongly for”, without knowing just who that is.
Dramatic Failure: The target becomes sure that he has somehow offended the one he feels for. He takes
the Guilty Condition [CofD 289] and the Noble cannot use Flame in the Heart on him until it’s resolved.
Failure: The flame the Noble takes goes out a few moments later.
Success: The target gains the Heartfire Condition, connected to the subject of his affections.
Exceptional Success: Add 1 to the Intensity of the fire that sustains the Heartfire Condition.
A Noble may maintain a number of Heartfire Conditions at once equal to her Inner Light.

Upgrade: Fueled (Fuoco ••)

The Noble may add fuel to a kept flame, increasing it to torch-sized (base damage of 1). She can then use
the flame once as the Condition describes without snuffing it; the use reduces the flame to candle-sized again.

Jury Rigger (Restore ••, Fuoco •)

Action: Extended, 3 turns/roll, threshold = target’s Size
Dice pool: Wits + Crafts
Cost: 1 Wisp per 5 Size points of the target
Duration: 1 scene or 1 hour using the device
With a few tools and enough duct tape a Noble of Swords can get anything running, at least for a time.
To repair a device she requires basic tools and vaguely appropriate replacements for any missing pieces: for a

Restore 235
car, for instance, she could use cheap alcohol for missing petrol, several packs of AA batteries to replace a car
battery, a circular piece of wood for a missing wheel and lots and lots of duct tape for structural damage. When
the Noble reaches the threshold, the device gains the Jury-Rigged Condition.
If the activation fails, the Noble’s crude repairs collapse into a pile of junk, damaging the machine further.
Remove a quarter of the device’s Structure.
Suggested Modifiers: Simple machine (+2), appropriate tools (+equipment bonus), proper replacement
parts (+2), very inappropriate parts (-2), complicated problem (-2), exceptionally complicated machine (such
as trying to patch up a circuit board) (-4)

Purify (Restore ••, Legno •)

Action: Extended, 1 turn/roll, threshold = Toxicity + 1)
Dice pool: Resolve + Medicine
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: indefinite
The Noble destroys a poisonous substance within her patient’s body with nothing more than a caress. When
the Noble reaches the threshold, the continuing effects of the foreign substance end immediately. For a drug (in
a dose too weak to cause damage) the threshold is equal to the penalty to resist the drug’s effects, plus 1; for a
poison, it’s the poison’s Toxicity + 1. If the Noble reaches the needed threshold before, or in the same turn as,
a poison would inflict damage, that damage is prevented.

Upgrade: the Plagued

Cost: +1 Wisp
By spending Wisps in quantity, the Noble can cure mundane diseases. The threshold for this application
equals the threshold the infected target must reach to throw off the disease himself, plus 1; if the target has
accumulated any successes on his rolls to beat the disease, subtract those successes from the Noble’s threshold.
The target is cured when the Noble reaches the threshold.

Upgrade: the Corrupted (Legno •••)

Requires the Plagued
Cost: +1 Wisp, 1 Willpower
Even supernatural illnesses (such as mental damage from the destruction of one’s daimon, infestation with
Abyssal bloodworms or spiders, a plague conjured by a vengeful wizard, or psychological addiction by a vam-
pire’s Vinculum) yield to the Noble’s ministrations. The Toxicity of these diseases generally equals the potency
of the effect that inflicts them - the ST sets a threshold for maladies that aren’t rated for potency. Purify cannot
remove a supernatural template.

Memento Mori (Restore ••, Lacrima •)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Dexterity + Occult
Cost: 1 Wisp
The Noble can call ghosts and give them aid and succor. If she touches a ghost’s anchor, she helps it to
manifest; her activation successes become bonus dice on the ghost’s Manifestation dice pool. She can also heal
minor wounds to a Materialized ghost’s Corpus; for each activation success, the ghost heals 1 bashing damage.

Upgrade: Loving
The Noble can heal more serious damage to a ghost; for each success, the ghost heals 1 lethal damage.

236 Restore
Upgrade: Grieving (Lacrima ••)
Requires Loving
Cost: +1 Wisp
The Noble heals the most grievous damage to ghosts; the ghost heals 1 aggravated damage.

Upgrade: Sharp
The Noble can fuel the ghost’s Numina; the ghost regains 1 point of Essence.

Upgrade: Distant
Modified by Sympathy
The Noble may use the Charm without touching the ghost or its anchor; she applies the Sympathy modifier
to an anchor to help the ghost manifest, and to the ghost to heal it. Moreover, the ghost need not be Materialized
before the Noble can heal it.

Their Blood Cries Out (Restore ••, Tempesta •••)

Action: Extended and resisted, 1 turn/roll, threshold = target’s Willpower + successes from time elapsed
Dice pool: Manipulation + Empathy - target’s Composure
Cost: 1 Wisp, Reckless Condition
Duration: 1 scene
The Queen of Storms knows that mortals forget their sufferings in time, and teaches her dedicated followers
a way to repair this flaw. The Noble may use this Charm on a person who has recently been injured, physically,
mentally or socially. On reaching the threshold, the target’s emotional state returns to where it was when he
discovered the injury, and his memories of events since then seem vague and unimportant. The threshold for
activation depends on how long ago the injury was; matching the target’s Willpower reaches an injury in the
past week, and each success above that doubles the interval.
Until the Charm ends, the target takes the False Memory Condition at a level of the Noble’s Tempesta, which
gives him a -2 penalty to resist any suggestion that he revenge himself upon those who injured him. He cannot
recall anything his enemy did in apology, or any penalty he paid - if restitution was made to the target’s satis-
faction, the Condition suppresses his memory of it. The modifiers apply to whoever the target believes injured
him, even if he is mistaken.
Bringing back someone’s outrage at an injury inspires the Noble to outrage herself, and makes her careless.
On reaching the threshold, the Noble takes the Reckless Condition.

Upgrade: Collective
Modified by Commonalty
Cost: +1 Wisp
The Noble may use the Charm on members of an organization who can hear her, applying the Commonalty
modifier. The injury done must have been to the organization, or to people as representative of it, as far as the
targets believe; that is, the targets must believe that people were injured because they belonged to the organi-
zation, and not for any other reason. As with the basic Charm, this belief need not be accurate. The member with
the highest Composure resists for the group.

Stitch (Restore •••)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Strength + Crafts
Cost: 1 Wisp

Restore 237
 The Noble swiftly repairs damage done to a single object she can hold or touch.
Dramatic Failure: The item is damaged further by the Noble’s bungled magic. It loses 1 point of Struc-
ture, and the Noble cannot use Stitch on it until it’s repaired.
Failure: The item is not repaired.
Success: For each success rolled, the item regains one point of Structure, up to its normal maximum.
Exceptional Success: The repairs leave the item in top condition. On top of the repaired damage, it gains
the Fortunate Tilt for one roll when used for its intended purpose.

Stain Removal (Restore •••, Acqua ••)

Requires Bath of Souls
Action: Instant
Dice pool: Resolve + Occult
Cost: 2 Wisps
The Noble may cleanse the first stage of corruption by Tainted areas.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble exposes herself to corruption. She immediately makes a Sensitivity check.
Failure: The target remains Tainted.
Success: If the Noble gains activation successes equal to the Severity of the Tainted area that inflicted
it, the target sheds the Tainted Condition.
Exceptional Success: The target can ward off psychic stress by remembering the Charm’s cleansing. He
gains the Gale-touched Condition.

Choke It Down (Restore •••, Tempesta ••)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Unrolled
Cost: 2 Wisps, 1 resistant lethal damage
Followers of the Queen of Storms don’t have time to atone for their actions or aid those in need; there’s far
too much killing to do. The Shadows of all the pain they see, a great deal of it caused by themselves, haunt their
dreams and waking lives, but this only serves to make them angrier. They swallow the pain, armor themselves
in total denial, and allow their guilt to eat at them - literally - rather than confront it.
The Charm is cast when the Noble goes to sleep; it may only be cast once per night, and only works if the
rest is sufficient to regain a Willpower point. Her dreams are haunted by the echoes of the suffering she has
seen, and in these dreams she lashes out, destroying those in pain for daring to hold her back on her righteous
mission. Upon waking, as well as regaining a point of Willpower, she loses one dot of Shadows.

Freed By Burning Hate (Restore •••, Tempesta •••)

Requires Their Blood Cries Out
Action: Reactive and contested
Dice pool: Presence + Empathy vs. Clash of Wills pool
Cost: 0 or 1 Wisps, 1 Willpower
Duration: special
Those who follow in the path of the Queen of Storms know that the world will always seek to hold her in
chains, to imprison her so that the misdeeds of the world will be permitted to hold her and others captive. But
the Queen of Storms shows her how to break those chains, and how to break them in others. With a snarl, the
bonds of the mind are broken.
The Noble may use this Charm on anyone currently affected by a supernatural power that alters their emo-
tional state. If she is affected by an applicable supernatural power she may use this Charm on herself. The Charm

238 Restore
costs 0 Wisps (just the Willpower point) when the Noble uses it on herself, and 1 Wisp plus a Willpower point
if used on another person.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble succumbs to the power she opposed. She cannot use Freed by Burning
Hate against the power or the creature who used it for the rest of the scene.
Failure: If the Noble does not win the contest, she fails to defeat the power.
Success: If the Noble gets more successes, the power’s effect is overridden by a feeling of intense, nause-
ated rage, and the target suddenly becomes aware that someone has tried to violate his mind. Any Condition
created by the power is replaced with the Loathing Condition for the power’s user.
Exceptional Success: The target’s hate overwhelms him. He immediately attacks the creature who vio-
lated his mind, and takes the Insane Tilt [CofD 285] while doing so.
The Charm lasts as long as the effect it destroys would have, for it is built on the fragments of that effect. If
the power’s user cancels or removes the effect himself, the target’s rage immediately dissipates.
If the Noble uses the Charm on a target whose emotions are not being influenced, she pays the cost but
nothing happens. If she uses it on a target subject to more than one eligible effect, the Charm breaks the least
potent, and among effects of equal strength it breaks the one with the shortest remaining duration.

Somebody Else’s Problem (Restore •••, Specchio ••)

Action: Reflexive
Dice pool: Intelligence + Composure - Shadows
Cost: 1 Wisp
No matter how many of her Heirs fail spectacularly the Queen of Mirrors never shows pause in her tireless
endeavors. Some speculate that she wants her chosen to fail, those who know of this Charm often give a different
reason. They say that unable to bear the weight of so many failures she has chosen to forget about them and
so she crafted a Charm to do just that. Only those Nobles with memories of the Palace of Looking Glass itself
remember that the Queen of Mirrors was once the Hierophant-Queen. With her Mirrors and spyglasses she
could see across time and space and often saw secrets best forgotten; hinting that there was once a more noble
purpose to this Charm.
Somebody Else’s Problem erases the user’s memories. It’s as simple as that. This Charm can take the weight
of Sympathy off a Noble’s shoulder, for what she does not know cannot hurt her. The most common use of this
Charm is to instantly end a Haunting by forgetting all about the action that caused it.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble completely messes up her own mind. Choose one wide ranging topic like
“Academics”, “my family” or “Connect Charms”. The Princess gains the Amnesia Condition [CofD 288] on
everything about that topic. The Condition wears off at the end of the scene.
Failure: Nothing happens.
Success: The Noble erases everything she remembers of the last few minutes, up to at most 3 minutes
for each success. The memories are not just suppressed, they are gone as though they had never existed. The
Noble knows only that she has erased her own memory. No magic or psychological technique will let the
Noble regain her memories; however, she is not prevented from forming new memories about the topic.
The effects of all Sensitivity rolls during the forgotten time are nullified, including Hauntings and Shad-
ows. Somebody Else’s Problem cannot give free dots of Belief, but erasing all memory of a Belief Compromise
will allow a Noble to buy back lost Belief with exp. This is purely an OOC rule, but the Storyteller is free to
explain it as valuable life experiences being erased if she wishes.
Exceptional Success: No further benefit.

Upgrade: Retroactive
The Noble may erase her memories up to one day after they have formed. The maximum time erased by
a single use remains the same, but she can now use multiple invocations to erase longer periods. Some Nobles
use the extra time to write notes to themselves, but knowing what happened is no substitute for experiencing it.

Restore 239
Regenerate (Restore ••••)
Action: Extended, 10 minutes/roll
Dice pool: Intelligence + Medicine
Cost: 2 Wisps, 1 Willpower

Threshold Injury
3 Tilts: scarring, missing tooth, lost finger joint
6 Restoring lost function: 1 lost Attribute dot, paralyzed limbs
9 Full replacement of small organs: eye, muscle, skin, etc.
12 Full replacement of large organs: arm, leg, stomach, etc.

The Noble may restore the permanently injured to their original full health. Regenerate can cure any Tilts
and Conditions caused by physical disability, and restore Attribute dots lost from physical damage. The thresh-
old depends on the extent of the damage (the Storyteller should use the table provided as a guide.) Any oppo-
sition from the target makes Regenerate fail; active cooperation isn’t needed, so Nobles can use Regenerate on
unconscious targets, but a conscious refusal frustrates the Charm.
The Noble may use Regenerate to remove a Goalenu graft and restore the organ it replaced. In this case
the target’s Revelation subtracts from the activation roll. Rolling a dramatic failure causes the target’s Goalenu
parts to regard the Noble as a servant of Darkness, and she can never use Regenerate on that target again.

Reclaim (Restore ••••, Acqua •••)

Requires Bath of Souls
Action: Extended and resisted, 10 minutes/roll
Dice pool: Presence + Medicine - target’s Resolve
Cost: 2 Wisps, 1 Willpower
The Noble restores a shattered mind to sanity. Reclaim removes a persistent Condition that affects a per-
son’s mental state. Mild Conditions, such as Obsession, are easy to banish, requiring around 5 successes. Condi-
tions like Broken, Fugue and Madness that resolve when a character’s Integrity changes are harder, calling for at
least 10 successes. Reclaim requires a conscious target, but not a cooperative one; if the target does cooperate,
the Princess does not subtract their Resolve from the roll.

Upgrade: Grand
The Noble may use Reclaim to cleanse the Darkened of their tainted powers. For this use, the activation
roll takes a -1 penalty for each of the target’s current Umbrae. The Noble takes this penalty even if the target is
cooperating (and if he doesn’t, she must subtract his Resolve as well.) Getting 10 successes removes one Umbra
from the target. Failing a roll and continuing triggers the Noble’s Sensitivity, and adds the number of the target’s
Umbrae to her pool. A Darkened target with no Umbrae can be returned to full humanity with 10 successes.

Disenchant (Restore ••••, Aria ••)

Requires Mesmerize
Action: Instant and contested
Dice pool: Manipulation + Occult vs. Clash of Wills pool
Cost: 2 Wisps
Duration: 1 scene or 1 day
The Noble sets her will and knowledge against a supernatural power that is distorting a person under her
hands.

240 Restore
 Dramatic Failure: The Noble’s own magic becomes unreliable in the presence of dark powers. She takes
the temporary Hypersensitive Condition.
Failure: If the Noble does not win the contest, the target remains bound by the supernatural power.
Success: If the Noble gets more successes, the supernatural power cannot affect the target in any way
for the rest of the scene. The power is not removed, only suppressed.
Exceptional Success: The supernatural power is suppressed for a full day.

Resuscitate (Restore •••••)

Action: Extended, 1 minute/roll, threshold = target’s Health
Dice pool: Presence + Medicine
Cost: 3 Wisps, 1 permanent Willpower dot
The Noble is able to stave off another’s death and return him to life - though the experience is not a pleas-
ant one, nor does it come free. The target must have died within the current scene, or the Charm fails. The
sheer mental and emotional exertion required, and the traumatic process of dying result in the loss of a dot
of Willpower for both the Noble and her target, and the ebbing of his life force causes his highest Attribute (if
there is a tie, she chooses) to be reduced by one dot. He returns to life with a number of Health boxes equal
to the activation successes filled with lethal damage and the rest filled with aggravated, and a -3 penalty to all
actions due to the Reaper’s grasp upon him. Each week of rest and recuperation without any strenuous activity
reduces this penalty by one.
If the Noble gets an exceptional success, the target doesn’t lose a dot from his highest Attribute.

The Earth Shall Bloom (Restore •••••, Legno ••••)

Action: Extended, 15 minutes/roll, threshold = Sanctuary
Dice pool: Stamina + Survival
Cost: (Sanctuary rating) Wisps, 1 Willpower
The Noble draws out every substance within a plot of land that is inimical to life, and restores it to its
original state of fertility. When she reaches the threshold, any pollutants or toxins present in the targeted area
- ranging from oil slicks through chemical wastes to radioactives - which are not in living beings separate from
the earth and water, and are gathered to a point near the Noble (who should have a container ready to receive
them.) Water in the area becomes safe to drink; the soil is ready to be seeded; plants and animals that were
coated in noxious stuff are cleaned.
The Charm extracts substances only from soil and water, not from solid rock, so it can’t be used as a sub-
stitute for mining. On the other hand, it removes all toxic substances, which includes pesticides, so using it on
a farmer’s fields might lead to insects eating the crops. Finally, the Charm can’t make the land better than its
natural state; poor soil remains poor even when toxic wastes have been leached out of it. (Compared to the
dangers of toxic wastes, though, merely infertile soil is much to be preferred.)

Long May She Reign (Restore •••••, Lacrima •••••)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Composure + Occult
Cost: 5 Wisps, 1 Willpower dot (if successful)
This rare and powerful Charm is the source of the ghost Princesses who dwell within Alhambra and serve
its Queen. Because of the enormous political power and prestige it brings the Protectorate of Amethyst guard
all knowledge of it jealously.
The target Noble must be at death’s door, but must not actually be dead. For instance, a Noble with a Health
track filled with lethal and aggravated damage is a valid target for the Charm.

Restore 241
 Dramatic Failure: Instead of creating a ghost, the Noble accidentally kills the target.
Failure: The Noble may try again at a -1 penalty, if the target still lives.
Success: The target dies, and rises again as a ghost Princess. Long may she reign over us.
Exceptional Success: The target loses a dot of Shadows just before she dies and rises.
The Noble using the Charm always spends the Wisps to activate it; she sacrifices a Willpower dot only if
the Charm succeeds.

Shape
The Shape Charms shape materials as you will, or make things out of nothing. Menders and Troubadours
have affinity for them.

Always Prepared (Shape •)

Regalia
Action: Permanent
The Noble adds a multi-tool to her Regalia. The Regalia bonus applies to any Crafts action that does not
require heavy equipment to attempt, including the making, repairing and upgrading of physical tools with the
Build Equipment action. [CofD 100-102] In a pinch, the multi-tool can be used as an improvised weapon, doing
lethal damage; the Regalia bonus applies to this use, but the Quality bonus does not.

Upgrade: Toolsmith
When extensive work requiring heavy machinery is called for, the Noble can whistle up just the right gadget
out of thin air. She spends 1 Wisp to create a tool no larger than Size 5, or 2 Wisps for a tool up to Size 10, which
will allow her to carry out a Crafts action for which proper equipment is not available. The Regalia and Quality
bonuses apply to the action the tool is made for. When the action resolves, the tool disintegrates into a cloud
of sparks.

Upgrade: Sparking (Fuoco •)

The Noble’s multi-tool includes a lighter that never runs out of fuel. She can start a fire with a candle’s
Intensity just by touching the fuel with her tool. If she needs more intense heat she can spend Wisps; each Wisp
increases the resulting fire’s Intensity by 1 step, up to the level of a chemical fire.

Bubble Shield (Shape •)

Action: Reactive
Dice pool: Stamina + Crafts - shield’s radius in yards
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 turn
The Noble manifests a protective shield around a circular area. She may create the shield around any area
within sight, taking a penalty on the activation roll equal to the area’s radius in yards, and may do so in response
to any action taken by another character within her line of sight.
The Noble may forgo her Defense for a turn to create Bubble Shields as reflexive actions during that turn;
if she does not do so, using the Charm takes her action for the turn.
Dramatic Failure: The shield fails to appear, and the Noble leaves herself open to attack. She has -2 to
her Defense this turn; if she sacrificed Defense, she loses her action this turn.
Failure: The shield does not appear.

242 Shape
 Success: The shield appears, taking the form of a spherical section with the area’s radius. It will not cut
through any solid object; if it encounters one it will stop at the object’s surface. If there are no obstacles the
shield simply forms a perfect sphere. The shield is not subject to the force of gravity - as long as it exists, it
stays exactly where the Noble created it.
The shield blocks both movement and attacks through itself, in either direction, until the Charm ends.
Unlike normal objects the shield has no Durability, but it has a Structure of 3x the activation successes; attacks
made on targets on its other side are absorbed by the shield until the last Structure point is gone. (Should
this happen the shield breaks, ending the Charm.) Damage in excess of the shield’s Structure passes through
to the intended target normally.
Exceptional Success: The shield will take a great deal of punishment before breaking.
If a Noble uses Bubble Shield to protect the same area as her next action, the new shield replaces the old
with no gap of time.

Upgrade: Adamant
The shield behaves like a normal material, with Durability and Structure both equal to the activation suc-
cesses. It provides transparent cover [CofD 92] against all attacks that must pass through it, in either direction,
but does not absorb such attacks. Removing the shield’s last point of Structure breaks it and ends the Charm,
as before.

Upgrade: Lasting
Duration: Inner Light turns
The shield endures for several actions before it must be renewed.

Upgrade: Partial
The shield can be shaped to cover parts of the circle, without surrounding the whole area; it can also be
shaped as a flat plane.

Upgrade: Rainbow (Acqua •)

The shield manifests as an iridescent film, which bends light and hides the things inside it. It acts as con-
cealment, imposing a penalty equal to half the Noble’s Aqua (rounding upwards). If Adamant is also applied, the
shield instead provides opaque cover against attacks that pass through it.

Upgrade: Mobile (Aria •)

The Noble can create shields around a person or object. When she does so the shield remains centered on
her target as long as it exists, no matter how the target moves.

Upgrade: Unbroken (Terra •)

If the shield meets a solid surface it will extend along that surface as a coating instead of stopping at it,
taking the shape with the least area. For instance, if made in a room, the shield will coat the floor and enclose
any furniture or people standing on it.

Upgrade: Beauteous (Specchio •)

Like a brilliant pearl, the shield gleams richly in the light of the Noble’s soul. Against such beauty, who dares
raise a hand? All sapient or sentient beings must pass a Resolve + Composure roll, with a penalty equal to the
lower of the Noble’s Inner Light or Specchio Invocation, to break the shield or attack anyone through it.

Shape 243
Wellspring (Shape •, Acqua •)
Action: Instant
Dice pool: Dexterity + Science
Cost: 1 Wisp
The Noble draws fresh water out of the earth. If she is not touching solid ground, the Charm fails.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble becomes desperately thirsty. She takes 1 bashing damage from dehydra-
tion, which does not heal until she finds something to drink.
Failure: The ground stays dry.
Success: For each activation success, 1 pint of pure fresh water wells up from the ground.
Exceptional Success: The Noble creates a lot of water.

Upgrade: Purified
Other liquids turn into fresh water as the Noble stirs them. Each success turns 1 gallon of liquid into drink-
able water. The Noble need not be touching the ground to change an existing liquid.

Upgrade: Flavored
The Noble may create any liquid that is safe for humans to drink. Each success draws up 1/2 pint of the drink
she desires. If she applies Purified, each success transmutes 1/2 gallon of a liquid into something drinkable.

Upgrade: Oily (Acqua ••)

Requires Flavored
Cost: +1 Wisp
The Noble may now create any organic compound that is liquid at current temperatures, at the same rates
as Flavored. For this purpose, a chemical is “organic” if it’s either produced by a living organism, or contains
carbon and no atoms of a metallic element. The Noble takes a penalty on her dice pool equal to the Availability
rating of the liquid she wants to create.

Bubble Wrap (Shape •, Aria •)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Wits + Survival
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: Inner Light minutes
A Princess needs to breathe, but fresh air may not be always available. When this happens, she may just
make her own.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble doesn’t manage to weave an adequate protection. She takes the Drowning
Tilt, and can’t attempt to cast this Charm again until it’s resolved.
Failure: The Noble fails to create a bubble sturdy enough for her purposes.
Success: The Noble weaves a sturdy, clear bubble around her head with her magic. The construct mag-
ically filters the surrounding atmosphere so that inside its protection the Noble can always enjoy a breath of
clean, fresh air. At the moment the Charm would end, the Noble may reflexively spend a Wisp to lengthen its
duration by Inner Light minutes without rolling to reactivate it.
Exceptional Success: The bubble is woven so well it lasts an extra minute initially, and each time a Wisp
is spent.

244 Shape
Upgrade: Puff Up
Cost: +1 Wisp
The Noble is so proud of her powers she can make the bubble swell! By paying an additional Wisp when
activating the Charm she can extend the area it covers to a radius up to Aria yards, centered on herself. The
Bubble does not prevent the movement of anything but harmful gases, and anything else can harmlessly enter
and leave its confines.

Joy Buzzer (Shape •, Aria ••)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Stamina + Science
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 scene
Breaking through haughty pride is often a daunting task, but fortunately many tools exist to help. Some of
them happen to be more… physical than others.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble manages to shock herself. She takes bashing damage equal to her Aria and
cannot use the Charm again for the rest of the scene.
Failure: The Noble doesn’t build up a charge.
Success: The Noble gives her body a charge of static electricity, and can control when and where it dis-
charges. She has a pool of charges equal to her successes, and may release a number of them up to her Sta-
mina into anything she touches. Normally this is an instant unrolled action, but it can be combined with a
touch action if used on a moving target. The charges are basically harmless but quite distracting to a living
being; a targeted person or animal takes a -1 penalty on their next action for each charge they receive, unless
they happen to be electrically grounded. Someone who is insulated will be shocked the next time they ground
themselves, and take the penalty then.
Alternatively, if an object would actually benefit from receiving a jolt, the Noble can use her charges to
add a bonus to actions involving that object. Used this way, each charge spent gives a +1 bonus to a single
action.
Exceptional Success: The Noble can produce powerful jolts. She may release up to her Stamina + Aria
charges in a single touch.
The Noble can carry up to her Stamina times her Aria charges of electricity at a time, usually from multiple
activations of the Charm. Any successes in excess of this limit discharge into the Noble herself, penalizing her
next action.

Upgrade: Jolting
The Noble can concentrate her charges into a current strong enough to hurt. When she touches a target,
she rolls one die for each charge she releases; the target takes 1 bashing damage for each success on this roll.

Upgrade: Quick
The Noble can deliver a shock with only a passing thought. She may release charges as a reflexive action,
though she cannot do so more than once in a turn.

Fire’s Warm Kiss (Shape •, Fuoco •)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Stamina + Survival
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 scene

Shape 245
 Fires under the Noble’s hands burn without consuming their fuel.
Dramatic Failure: The targeted fire flares up and spreads swiftly. Either its Size or its Intensity increases
by 1 step.
Failure: The fire continues to burn normally.
Success: Until the Charm ends, reduce the target fire’s Intensity by 1. Things ignited by the fire, but sep-
arated from it, burn normally. The Noble may use Fire’s Warm Kiss repeatedly on one fire, until its Intensity
drops to 0. If a fire’s Intensity is 0, it cannot ignite anything and feels merely warm to the touch, though it still
sheds light. It can even be scooped off its fuel source, held in cupped hands, and poured into a container, like
a liquid with the consistency of thick syrup. Fire so treated ignites its container once the Charm wears off, or
goes out after 1 turn if the container is not flammable.
Exceptional Success: The fire’s Intensity drops to 0, turning it into the warm, glowing liquid form.

Nature’s Harvest (Shape •, Legno •)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Dexterity + Survival
Cost: 1 Wisp
The Noble coaxes a plant to produce its harvest ahead of time. If she isn’t touching a plant reasonably near
maturity or at least large enough to produce its crop, or if anyone has used the Charm on the plant within the
past season, the Charm fails. (The plant must also have adequate soil and not be severely deprived of water or
sunlight, but it need not be in season.)
Dramatic Failure: The targeted plant wilts. Short-lived plants die; trees lose their leaves and may get
dead branches.
Failure: The plant yields no harvest.
Success: When used to obtain edible fruits, nuts or berries from appropriate trees and bushes, each
activation success subtracts two successes from the threshold of the Noble’s next attempt to forage for food.
However, successes exceeding the plant’s Size have no effect. Alternatively, it’s quite possible to use the Charm
more frivolously (e.g. to produce lots of flowers) or productively (to get lots of acorns from an oak tree or
other appropriate seeds, for example), at the Storyteller’s discretion.
Exceptional Success: The Noble’s next attempt to forage for food gains the 9-again quality.
The crops are guaranteed to stay fresh for at least one day per dot of Legno unless some supernatural effect
gets in the way. Nature’s Harvest does not harm the plant.

Upgrade: Ascending
Cost: +1 Wisp
The plant grows under the Noble’s touch, even if it began as a mere seed; it achieves up to the activation
successes or its natural maximum in Size, whichever is lower, over the same number of minutes, and produces
the expected harvest in the process. (The plant’s growth will generally be limited by available soil for its root
system.) Once the Charm is complete, the newly-grown plant remains a normal plant of its species, although it’s
advisable to water it well if one wants to keep it around.

Upgrade: Miraculous (Legno ••)

Requires Ascending
The plant no longer requires adequate soil, sunlight, or anything else as long as there’s enough room for its
base to be planted in the earth. However, the Charm’s magic will only sustain the plant for Legno minutes after
its growth is complete - if it doesn’t have enough water and room to grow, it obviously won’t last long.

246 Shape
Upgrade: Transfigured (Legno •••)
Requires Ascending
Cost: +2 Wisps
At the Noble’s discretion, the plant produces any crop she needs regardless of its actual species. She can
grow oranges from an apple tree, apples from a pine tree, or roses from a barrel cactus if she chooses. A single
activation produces a harvest of just one species of plant.

Painting Roses (Shape •, Terra •)

Action: Extended, 1 turn/roll
Dice pool: Wits + Crafts
Cost: 1 Wisp
With a touch the Noble makes something explode in a riot of color. She can affect a Size up to her dots in
Terra and may do anything from simple blocks of color to a masterpiece, if she has the skills. The threshold for
the Charm depends on the complexity of the picture she creates - even one success is enough for a splash of
paint, while a clear image needs as many successes as painting one mundanely would. The effects of this charm
last as long as average quality paint.
This Charm is best used for leaving marks and clues in the field or making art. Some Nobles of Spades,
politely described as urban artists, dip into Terra with this Charm to avoid the suspicions of carrying spray paint
around.

Corrosive Grasp (Shape •, Tempesta •)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Dexterity + Brawl
Cost: 1 Wisp, 1 resistant bashing damage
Duration: 1 scene
The index finger of a single hand (the Noble’s choice) secretes a powerful, sharp-smelling acid until the
Charm ends.
Dramatic Failure: The acid only burns the Noble’s hand. She has the Arm Wrack Tilt [CofD 280] until
the damage she took to activate the Charm heals.
Failure: Although the Noble’s hand may smell vaguely vinegary for a while, the acid isn’t concentrated
enough or has too high a pH to have an effect.
Success: The acid can be used to get an equipment bonus of the activation successes for any action where
it is appropriate. For example, in an interrogation, the ability to scar with acid can be used to get a bonus to
Intimidate, while when opening a lock, the ability to dissolve the hinges gives a bonus to Larceny.
Exceptional Success: No additional bonus, beyond the extra successes.

Miss Poppins’ Bottomless Bag (Shape ••)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Unrolled
Cost: 1 wisp
Duration: 1 scene
Upon purchasing this Charm, the Noble adds a securely fastened bag or pouch of some kind to her Regalia.
Activating the Charm unlocks the bag for a scene, during which it can be used freely. The Noble may store any
number of items in the bag indefinitely, as long as each item is small enough to fit through the opening, and is

Shape 247
light enough for her to lift without help. The Size of an object being stored or removed cannot exceed half the
Noble’s Inner Light (rounded up), unless she applies an Invocation when she unlocks the bag. If she applies an
Invocation, she can store objects of Size up to her dots in the Invocation; the objects are the Charm’s targets, so
to apply an Invocation at no cost, all the objects stored or removed must be costless targets for that Invocation.
Putting an object in the bag is an instant unrolled action. Taking an object out is also an instant action, and
succeeds automatically as long as the number of items in the bag is less than Inner Light + Larceny. If the number
equals or exceeds this limit, the Noble must roll Wits + Larceny to find the right item in among the clutter; she
takes a penalty on this roll of -1 for each item in the bag over Inner Light + Larceny.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble finds nothing in the bag, and is so occupied with searching that she loses
her Defense for 1 turn.
Failure: The Noble pulls out the wrong item.
Success: The Noble takes out the item she wanted.
Exceptional Success: The Noble finds the item immediately; she removes it as a reflexive action.
Items that are put into the bag are safe from harm and protected from loss, as they are bound to the Noble
rather than the bag itself. However, they aren’t held in stasis; food will spoil if kept long enough. Moreover, while
the bag is closed air can’t get into it, so anything living will suffocate if trapped inside when the bag locks. Should
the Noble herself die all items in the bag are lost. With the appropriate supernatural power it is possible to steal
from a Noble’s bag, but doing so subtracts (Resolve + Inner Light) from the activation roll.

Upgrade: Enlarged
Stackable 4 times
Add Inner Light again to the maximum number of items that can be put into the bag safely.

Upgrade: Deepened
Stackable 2 times
Add 1 to the maximum Size of the items that can be put into the bag.

Upgrade: Stretched
Cost: +1 Willpower
The Noble can stuff a very large object into her bag. Double the maximum Size of items the bag can normally
hold; the Noble can put one object up to that Size into the bag at a time. As long as that object is in the bag, the
Noble can’t put anything more into it, or take anything else out - the large object must come out first. If the bag
locks before she takes the large object out, the Noble must apply Stretched again to remove it.

Upgrade: Lightened
Cost: +1 Wisp
The Noble can lift extremely heavy objects, for just long enough to drop them into her bag or pull them out.
Add the Noble’s Inner Light to her Strength when checking whether an object being stored or retrieved is too
heavy for her to move.

Upgrade: Ordered (Acqua ••)

The Noble arranges the contents of her bag in careful order. She may choose a number of objects in the
bag up to her Acqua; when she applies Acqua to take those objects from the bag, she finds and withdraws them

248 Shape
without a roll, no matter how many other things are stored inside. She may rearrange the objects within the
bag, putting a different set on top, as an instant unrolled action.

Upgrade: Conjured (Aria ••)

The Noble can pull things kept in the bag out of thin air. When she applies Aria to take something from the
bag, it appears in her hand as a reflexive action, ready to be used in the same turn. The object so taken returns
to the bag again just before the start of the next turn. (This allows weapons that give a bonus to Defense to do
so even after they’ve been used to attack.)

Upgrade: Sustaining (Legno ••)

Cost: +1 Wisp
The Noble may safely put living beings into her bag. When she applies Legno to unlock it, she may spend a
Wisp to place a living creature she puts in it into stasis, unconscious and not needing food, water or air until she
takes it out again. Its wounds won’t heal in stasis, but toxins, drugs and sickness won’t damage it, and bleeding
out ceases. All these effects resume when the animal is removed.

Tool Whispering (Shape ••)

Action: Instant and resisted
Dice pool: Wits + appropriate Skill - object’s Size/2
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: concentration
The tools of a Noble’s craft are so eager to serve her desires that she may operate them from afar. The Noble
uses this Charm on a single object that she can see; the Skill she uses to activate it is the one used normally to
operate that object (e.g. Computer for electronics, Drive for a vehicle, Firearms for guns, and so on.)
Dramatic Failure: The Noble’s occult force mishandles the targeted object and breaks it. Remove 1 point
of the object’s Structure.
Failure: The object remains inert.
Success: The object animates, responding to the Noble’s will. As long as she concentrates, she may take
mundane actions that manipulate the object’s internal mechanisms - pushing buttons, flipping switches, turn-
ing knobs, and so forth. She cannot pick the object up, or directly move it from its location; actions which
require that fail automatically. Thus, the scope of possible actions depends on the complexity of the target
object. A simple tool with no moving parts can’t do anything; a gun can be made to unlatch its clip, or to fire,
but can’t be aimed; a car can be made to start its engine and drive itself; a computer can be operated almost
normally, except for plugging in cables and peripherals.
The Noble cannot control the object if she loses sight of it, and the Charm ends when she stops controlling
the object. If someone else is using the object at the same time she controls it, that starts a Clash of Wills; a
mundane operator uses the same dice pool for the Clash as he does for operating the device.
Exceptional Success: The Noble controls her tool with great skill. Her mundane actions to control it
gain a +2 bonus.

Upgrade: Charged
Cost: +1 Wisp
The modern world runs on electricity, but when that’s lacking, the Noble can create a few sparks to get it
moving. When the targeted object is a machine powered by electricity, the Noble may turn an extra Wisp into the
power it requires, so it will run with a dead battery or while unplugged during the Charm’s duration. However,
a dramatic failure when activating the Charm overloads its circuits - remove points of Structure equal to the
Noble’s Inner Light.

Shape 249
Upgrade: Dancing
Cost: +1 Willpower
Duration: 1 scene
The targeted object, once animated, will carry out the Noble’s wishes without her conscious attention. The
Charm does not end if the Noble stops concentrating on the object; during any turn when she does not control
it, the object repeats whatever action she most recently used it for. The object can’t adapt to changed circum-
stances, and will continue mindlessly repeating itself until the Noble controls it again or the Charm ends.

Upgrade: Forceful
Cost: +1 Wisp
The Noble can now lift, push or pull the targeted object without touching it, as easily as she manipulates
it; while she does so, the object is surrounded with a visible sign of her attention, such as a glowing halo, a heat
shimmer, or a swirl of dust or leaves. The Noble can move the object remotely with the same Strength that her
muscles give her, and at a Speed up to her own running Speed. She may also throw the object with a standard
Athletics action, although doing so immediately ends the Charm.

Upgrade: Thinking (Acqua ••)

Requires Dancing
When the Noble releases her concentration, in addition to providing the object with further instructions
she may grant it a measure of adaptability. For each dot of Acqua she may instruct the object to react to one
condition, altering its behavior in response. For conditions that require senses to recognize, the object has a
Perception dice pool equal to the Charm’s activation successes.

Upgrade: Free (Aria ••)

The Noble may set her will not on a solid machine, but on the air that surrounds her. Until the Charm ends,
she can manipulate any object that she can see, as long as operating that object is covered by the Skill she used
to activate the Charm. The Princess cannot manipulate more than one object at a time; when she moves to a
second object, the first is no longer animated.

Touch of Frost (Shape ••, Acqua •)

Action: Instant and resisted
Dice pool: Dexterity + Crafts - target’s Defense
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 scene
A touch of the Noble’s hand or foot chills her target to the freezing point. The Noble may use the Charm
on a person or object.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble freezes herself, not what she touches; she suffers from the effect of an
ordinary success, at a level equal to her Acqua.
Failure: The target is chilled briefly, but suffers no impediment from it.
Success: The target’s temperature immediately drops below freezing. A person suffers from the Extreme
Cold Tilt [CofD 282] for the rest of the scene, taking a penalty equal to the activation successes (to a maximum
of -5.) A solid object is encased in a thin layer of ice, and any attempt to use it during the current scene is
penalized by the activation successes (maximum of -5, again) as the user’s hands slip off it.
Exceptional Success: A person targeted by the Charm is chilled to the point of frostbite. In addition to
the penalty, he takes a single point of lethal damage. A targeted object is damaged if the Noble’s Acqua exceeds
its Durability - warping from the sudden chill removes 1 point of Structure.

250 Shape
 The cold created by the Charm will yield to warm emotions as well as physical warmth. The Extreme Cold
Tilt on a person ends if someone who loves the target warms him with her body for 1 turn per activation success.
Heartfire flames melt an ice coating or warm a person immediately.

Upgrade: Wide (Acqua ••)

The Noble can coat the place she stands with ice. On solid ground, the Charm coats a circle with a radius of
5 yards per activation success with ice, creating the Ice Tilt [CofD 284] in that area. If the Noble is standing or
swimming in water, the Charm freezes the water without trapping her, making an ice platform thick enough to
bear her weight (though it has the Ice Tilt) with a radius of 1 yard per activation success.
Except in subfreezing temperatures any ice the Charm creates starts to melt at the end of the scene; ice
coatings vanish immediately, ice platforms can last several minutes before breaking up.

Spray of Embers (Shape ••, Fuoco ••)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Dexterity + Weaponry
Cost: 2 Wisps
Duration: concentration
A cloud of sparks and embers sprays from the Noble’s hands, enveloping and burning whatever she chooses.
Dramatic Failure: The embers spray back on the Noble; she takes her Fuoco in bashing damage.
Failure: Sparks fly, but go out without burning anything.
Success: The embers form a cloud, imposing the Swarm Tilt on a circle centered on the Noble. With one
success the cloud has a radius of one yard; each success above that doubles the radius. It moves at the Noble’s
Speed, and may go anywhere she can see, condense to inflict more damage, or spread out again. Anything
that extinguishes a fire will damage the cloud. The Noble never takes damage from the embers, even in the
midst of the cloud.
Exceptional Success: The embers retain a lot of heat - anything within the cloud (except the Noble)
takes lethal damage from it instead of bashing.

Hedge Magic (Shape ••, Legno •)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Stamina + Survival
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: successes in turns
The Noble makes a dense thicket grow, which entangles anyone who tries to cross it.
Dramatic Failure: Any plants within the Noble’s Inner Light in yards wilt. She cannot use Hedge Magic
again for the rest of the scene.
Failure: No thicket appears.
Success: The hedge-wall springs up, covering an area of the Noble’s Legno x10 square yards somewhere
within sight. It has a Durability of 2 and a Structure of 2x activation successes.
Exceptional Success: The hedge-wall is extremely thick. Its Durability rises to 3.
Anyone who damages the hedge with a close attack or tries to go through it gets tangled in the branches,
taking the Tangled Tilt. Against ranged attacks, the hedge provides opaque cover [CofD 92]. When the Charm
expires, the thicket wilts, losing all its Structure and releasing anyone tangled in it.

Upgrade: Binding
The hedge actively tries to catch those who assault it. Anyone tangled in its branches has to break them by
main strength (Strength + Athletics - Durability) to escape.

Shape 251
Darkling’s Treasure (Shape ••, Lacrima •)
Action: Instant and contested
Dice pool: Manipulation + Occult vs. Resolve + Supernatural Tolerance
Cost: 1 Wisp, Sensitivity check
Duration: 1 scene
By brushing her hand across an object, the Noble makes it deeply attractive to the servants of the Darkness.
Once they scent it, they will go to any length to possess it, and ensure no one else touches it.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble turns herself into a lure for creatures of the Darkness. All such creatures
within Inner Light x 100 yards know where she is for the rest of the scene.
Failure: When a creature of the Darkness gets as many or more successes on its roll than the Noble’s
activation successes, he is interested in the object, but not obsessed.
Success: The object calls to all creatures of Darkness within a radius of Inner Light x 100 yards. Each
such being contests the Charm independently; any who lose the contest will try to take the object for himself,
possibly fighting other beings to possess it.
Exceptional Success: The compulsion is almost irresistible.

Upgrade: Trapped (Lacrima ••)

The target object inflicts pain on any Darkened being who does manage to touch it. The compulsion on these
beings changes - instead of keeping the object, they try to destroy it. Darkened beings who have not touched the
object are still drawn to possess it. The Charm ends if the object is destroyed.

Barricade (Shape •••)

Action: Full turn and resisted
Dice pool: Stamina + Crafts - object’s Size/2
Cost: 2 Wisps
Duration: 1 scene
The Noble strengthens or weakens the material of an object. The Charm will not work on an object already
affected by it.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble produces the opposite of her intent. If she meant to strengthen the object,
it loses 2 Durability; if she meant to weaken it, it gains 2 Durability.
Failure: The object’s Durability isn’t altered.
Success: The Noble changes the object’s Durability, either adding or subtracting her activation successes.
The material returns to normal when the Charm ends.
Exceptional Success: The successes are their own reward.

Crucible (Shape •••)

Action: Extended, 1 turn/roll, threshold = object’s Structure
Dice pool: Strength + Crafts - object’s Durability
Cost: 2 Wisps
The Noble molds, bends, and twists the object under her hands as if it were soft, wet clay, converting it into
exactly the tool she requires. The Charm alters a single object of Size no larger than the Noble’s Inner Light,
or a portion of a larger object which falls within that limit, and which the Noble can touch. If she reaches the
threshold, the target object is reshaped into whatever form the Noble wishes it to have; the material composition
and the Size of the result remain the same. The resulting object may be a mechanism (including e.g. levers,

252 Shape
springs, gears) if the materials are strong enough to make one. However, tools powered by electricity can’t be
made by the Charm - parts of such tools are possible, but only if those parts are in themselves purely mechanical.
The Noble may try to make equipment of high quality, that confers an equipment bonus for a specific task.
This increases the threshold - for each +1 bonus, add successes equal to the object’s Durability to the threshold.
The Noble must choose the desired bonus before starting the activation. If she fails to activate the Charm, she
mangles the target object into uselessness.

Upgrade: Powered
Requires Science ••
Cost: +1 Wisp
The Noble understands electrical circuitry well enough to duplicate it in the tools she makes. If the target
object has the necessary mix of conductors and insulators, she can use the Charm to make a tool that runs on
electrical power.

Ice Sculptures (Shape •••, Acqua ••)

Action: Extended, 1 turn/roll, threshold = object’s Availability rating
Dice pool: Intelligence + Crafts
Cost: 1 or 2 Wisps
Duration: 1 scene
The Noble freezes water she touches, to turn it to a useful tool made of magically hardened ice. When she
has water or ice at hand, the Noble spends just 1 Wisp to make her tool; if water is lacking, though, she spends 2
Wisps to condense and freeze the water vapor in the air around her into the item she requires. The tool created
when the Noble reaches the threshold must be an object normally made from hard plastic or metal; it has a
Durability of 1 and a Size of her choosing, up to her Acqua. If she gets successes beyond the threshold she may
use them to give the tool an equipment bonus, at a rate of +1 per success (maximum of +5.)
Except in subfreezing temperatures, the tool melts at the end of the scene, becoming no more than a block
of ice. In subfreezing temperatures it can last indefinitely, but if used after the scene ends it will break on a
dramatic failure. Fire, of any Intensity, bypasses the tool’s Durability, melting it quickly.

Upgrade: Cloth-of-Snow (Acqua •••)

Duration: until sunrise
The Noble spins small water droplets into a fabric of snowflakes and ice crystals, cut and sewn into cloth-
ing (or anything else made of cloth that she requires.) Though apparently more fragile than the usual items
the Charm makes, cloth-of-snow actually lasts longer; it stays intact until the next sunrise after it was made,
no matter what the temperature may be. Except in subfreezing weather, though, cloth-of-snow will dissolve
promptly at dawn. (Nobles who don’t wish to be abruptly half-naked and soaking wet at the end of a long night
are well advised to remember this.)

Upgrade: Architecture (Acqua •••)

Cost: +(Sanctuary rating) Wisps
Duration: until sunrise
The Noble can create walls, arches, even whole buildings of hardened ice, given only time to concentrate.
For structures exceeding her Acqua in Size, she rolls once every 15 minutes (instead of once a turn) and adds
the successes required for the Sanctuary rating of the final structure to the threshold. The resulting blocks of
ice have a Durability of 3, though fire still bypasses that.
The nature of the Charm strongly encourages the resulting building to assume an ornate Art Deco style of
architecture, with icicle spires, snowflake lacework, and sixfold symmetry. The walls and floors are thick enough

Shape 253
not to melt quickly, so even in the hottest weather the structure remains intact until the next sunrise. However,
except in subfreezing temperatures the thing does begin melting at that point. After the first sunrise meltwater
makes the building slippery, imposing the Ice Tilt on and inside it. After the second sunrise the building becomes
unsound, reducing its Durability to 0, and any object resting on it removes 1 point of Structure for every 50
pounds of weight it has, each turn it remains. After the third sunrise the building collapses of its own weight,
if it hasn’t already fallen apart.

Upgrade: Unmelting (Acqua ••••)

Cost: +1 Willpower
Duration: indefinite
The Noble enchants the ice she creates to remain unmelted even under the heat of a summer sun. For prac-
tical purposes, the object made by the Charm acts as if it’s in subfreezing temperatures at all times, regardless
of the actual temperature. The Charm will end, however, if the object is placed in a fire, and of course the ice
will then melt and destroy the object.

Strength of the Tides (Shape •••, Acqua ••)

Action: Extended, 1 turn/roll, threshold = radius affected in yards
Dice pool: Resolve + Athletics
Cost: 2 Wisps
Duration: concentration
The Noble takes control of a body of water within sight, making it flow and push as she wills. The Charm
controls a circular area of water with a radius equal to the threshold in yards, to a depth of 1 yard; left in that
shape, it lifts and moves everything inside it with a Strength of 1. The Noble may gather the water into a taller
mass of smaller radius to concentrate its power; each halving of the radius quadruples the water’s depth or
height, and adds 1 to its Strength. She may also move the water in a wave or spout, carrying along whatever
floats in it; the water’s top Speed is 8 if moved this way. The Charm does not create water - if the Noble gets
more successes than she needs to control all the water available, the extra successes have no effect.

Upgrade: Violent (Acqua •••)

The water becomes violently agitated, creating smashing waves and sucking undertows that batter any-
thing caught within it. Each turn, the Noble may choose to inflict bashing damage equal to the water’s current
Strength on everything in or floating on the water.

Upgrade: Free (Acqua ••••)

Cost: +1 Willpower
Duration: 1 scene
The Noble can release the water, do other things, and take control of it again. In any turn she is not shaping
the water, it flows to its natural level, dropping anything it was lifting that doesn’t float.

Mist’s Protection (Shape •••, Aria ••)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Manipulation + Stealth
Cost: 2 Wisps
Duration: successes in turns
The Noble summons a thick fog that conceals her presence.
Dramatic Failure: The sky is clear and cloudless. The Noble cannot use Mist’s Protection again for the
rest of the scene.

254 Shape
 Failure: No fog appears.
Success: A volume of radius equal to (10x Inner Light) yards, centered on the Noble, gains the Fog Tilt. In
strong sunlight or moderate wind the cloud disperses in (activation successes) turns; in calm, cloudy weather,
it may last as long as the Storyteller wishes.
Exceptional Success: The fog expands to fill a radius of (15x Inner Light) yards.

Salamander (Shape •••, Fuoco ••)

Action: Extended, 1 turn/roll, threshold = fire’s Size
Dice pool: Resolve + Survival
Cost: 2 Wisps
Duration: concentration
The Noble takes control of a body of fire within sight, directing it as she wills. The Charm controls a fire of
a Size (considered as an object) equal to the threshold. This may be a portion of a larger fire; you don’t need to
control an entire forest fire if your goal is to hold back the closest flames. The Noble may push her controlled
fire in any direction she wishes, but it can only travel along a solid surface. She may also shape it into complex
shapes by rolling Dexterity + Crafts. However it is still fire: making a fire walk out of the hearth in the shape of
a lion is a neat party trick, but if it touches something flammable the fire will spread.
If the fire is separated from all sources of fuel when the Charm ends it is extinguished; otherwise it ignites
the surface it’s standing on when the Noble loses her concentration.

Upgrade: Free (Fuoco ••••)

Cost: +1 Willpower
Duration: 1 scene
The Noble can release the fire, do other things, and take control of it again. When she doesn’t control the
fire, it ignites the place she left it if that's possible, and may spread at the Storyteller’s discretion.

Dryad’s Favor (Shape •••, Legno ••)

Requires Nature’s Harvest
Action: Extended, 1 turn/roll, threshold = plant’s Size
Dice pool: Strength + Survival
Cost: 2 Wisps
Trees swing their branches, vines bend into trellises, to serve the Matron of Forests’ need. The Charm causes
a single plant, or a group of plants that are each no larger in Size than the Noble’s Legno and within Inner
Light yards of her, to animate and twist into a shape she wishes. The plant (or plants) move into the desired
arrangement when the Noble reaches the threshold.
The Noble can even have the plant uproot itself and move to a new spot - its Speed equals the Noble’s Legno,
and it will move for a number of turns up to the activation dice pool. The Noble may also cause a part of the
target plant no larger in Size than her Legno to detach itself from the rest of the plant after it’s been shaped
into equipment for a single task. The result must, naturally, be an object which could be made mundanely out
of the targeted plant(s).

Earthquake (Shape •••, Terra ••)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Strength + Brawl - area’s radius in yards
Cost: 2 Wisps
Duration: 1 scene

Shape 255
 The Noble claps her hands, then touches them to the ground, and the earth buckles and shakes, pitching
wildly and throwing her enemies off-balance.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble only jolts the ground under her own feet. She takes the Stunned Tilt [CofD
286].
Failure: The earth does not move.
Success: The earthquake strikes a circular area of radius equal to the penalty taken to the activation roll
in yards. Everyone in that area, except the Noble, immediately takes the Knocked Down Tilt [CofD 284] and
reflexively rolls Dexterity + Athletics; those who fail the roll take the Stunned Tilt as well. For the rest of the
scene, the area has the Broken Ground Tilt.
Exceptional Success: The ground in the target area buckles and great shards of stone poke out from
the earth, providing anyone who wants to take cover behind them substantial (-3) concealment, in addition
to the other effects.
When the Charm ends, the ground slides back into its normal configuration. If the Noble is underground,
she gets an exceptional success with 3 or more activation successes, not 5.

Upgrade: Sheltering (Terra •••)

People the Noble chooses, up to her Inner Light, do not take the Knocked Down or Stunned Tilts when the
earthquake strikes.

Diamonds are Forever (Shape •••, Terra •••)

Action: Full turn
Dice pool: Intelligence + Science - object’s Availability
Cost: 2 Wisps, 1 Willpower
A Princess of Hearts can always find a noble gift. The Noble can transmute the substance of small objects
into minerals of her choice - earth, sand, rock, even precious stones. The penalty to her dice pool equals the
Availability of the object after the Charm takes effect; it’s much harder to turn things into jade than granite. The
Charm’s target must be an inanimate object of Size 1 or less, made of a nearly homogeneous material, that the
Noble is holding in her hands.
Dramatic Failure: The object explodes into jagged shards. The Noble takes 1 lethal damage from frag-
ments in her hands.
Failure: The object is unchanged.
Success: The object is transmuted into the desired mineral.
Exceptional Success: The object is transmuted into a perfect example of the desired mineral. If the
mineral is valuable, the Availability of the object’s final form is one dot higher.

My Home is My Castle (Shape ••••)

Requires Bubble Shield
Action: Extended, 1 minute/roll, threshold = Sanctuary + shield’s Durability
Dice pool: Resolve + Crafts
Cost: 2 Wisps, 1 Willpower
Duration: 1 or more scenes
The proverb says “An Englishman’s home is his castle,” but sometimes a castle has to withstand a siege. The
Noble activates this Charm on Consecrated ground to protect it from invasion, meditating at a symbol which sus-
tains the Consecrated Condition. When she reaches the threshold, a translucent curtain rises from the boundary
of the Consecrated ground, enclosing the area in a dome of hardened light. The dome’s Structure equals the

256 Shape
threshold of the Charm, and its Durability is the threshold minus the Sanctuary successes; it provides transpar-
ent cover against all attacks that pass through it.
Once during a scene, the Noble may spend 1 Wisp as an instant action to sustain the dome for another
scene. This does not repair any Structure lost to damage, but if someone has managed to punch holes in the
dome the spent Wisp will close them. The Charm ends, and the dome vanishes, when it loses the last point of
Structure, or the Noble doesn’t spend a Wisp to sustain it.

Upgrade: Hidden (Legno •••)

Applying this upgrade moves the Charm’s protection from the boundary of the Consecrated ground to the
buildings on it. Any structure permanently attached to the area with the Consecrated Condition - no matter how
indirectly - has its Durability increased by the amount the dome would have had (the threshold - the Sanctuary
successes) and adds an equal number of Structure points. The extra Durability and Structure remain as long as
the Noble sustains the Charm and the affected objects are still attached to the Consecrated ground.

Upgrade: Garrisoned (Terra •••)

Modified by Commonalty
The Noble names an organization when she activates the Charm, and applies the Commonalty modifier for
that organization. Those members of the organization who stand in the Consecrated ground when the dome
appears can walk through the barrier easily - it parts when they touch it, and closes when they walk away.
Moreover, if any of these members has a pool of Wisps, he can spend Wisps to sustain the dome just as the Noble
can, though the Charm can’t be extended for more than one scene at a time (extra Wisps beyond the first in one
scene have no effect.) The Noble may walk through the dome if, and only if, she belongs to the organization she
named while making it.

Upgrade: Enduring (Lacrima •••)

Cost: +2 Wisps
Duration: Consecration
The Last Empress protects her people with enduring walls. By spending additional Wisps, the Noble causes
the barrier to last until the Consecrated Condition supporting it ends. She also may (and should) cut passages
through the barrier when making it, to let people enter and leave the area.

Upgrade: Expedient (Tempesta •••)

Cost: +(Sanctuary rating) resistant lethal damage
A Fury can put up an impenetrable shelter anywhere, even the enemy’s home ground. If the Noble draws
sigils of protection in her own blood around an area she wants to protect, she may activate the Charm to make
a barrier around that area without Consecrating it. The Noble must bleed enough for 1 resistant lethal damage
per dot in the area’s Sanctuary rating to draw the sigils properly.

Little Deuce Coupe (Shape ••••)

Action: Extended, 1 minute/roll, threshold = modifications + 1
Dice pool: Dexterity + Crafts
Cost: 3 Wisps
Duration: Inner Light scenes or hours
The Noble gains the freedom of the open road. As she meditates, shapes of metal, glass and rubber appear
around her and assemble themselves; when she reaches the threshold, a vehicle stands next to her, ready to
be driven.

Shape 257
 The vehicle’s quality depends on the threshold the Noble chose. With a threshold of 1 the Charm creates a
motorized scooter (dice modifier of -5, Size 7, Durability 2, safe Speed of 60). Each +1 to the threshold lets the
Noble apply 1 modification to the created vehicle from the table on [CofD 99]. The Noble can’t make a vehicle
that’s physically impossible, so she must respect the limits on each trait; but she may add as many modifications
as she likes, without regard to her Crafts dots. A Noble with Automotive Genius [CofD 47] may add modifications
equal to her Crafts dots on top of those from her chosen threshold.
When the Charm ends, the vehicle will decelerate from its current speed to a standstill at a rate of 10 Speed/
turn, then dissolve into a cloud of sparks, dropping its contents on the ground where it stopped. If the Noble is
in it at this time, she may spend a Wisp as an instant action to keep the vehicle in existence for another scene
or hour.
There is a variation of this Charm, popular among Nobles of Clubs, that summons a riding beast; it uses a
dice pool of Dexterity + Animal Ken, and Automotive Genius doesn’t help the Charm, but it’s otherwise identical.
The steed is treated as a vehicle, except that it has 2/2 Armor instead of Durability, and a Durability modifier
grants it +1/+1 Armor. A Noble may not learn both versions of the Charm - she can either make modern vehicles
or summon beasts, not both.

Upgrade: Large
Stackable 3 times
Cost: +1-3 Wisps
The Noble can make a larger vehicle by spending more of her magic. The first Large upgrade lets her spend
1 Wisp (above the base cost) to raise the base Size of the created vehicle to 11, before any modifications. The
second lets her spend 2 Wisps to raise its base Size to 15, and the third lets her spend 3 Wisps to raise its base
Size to 19.

Upgrade: Weatherproof
The vehicle protects its riders from harsh conditions. For one modification, the vehicle acts as basic sur-
vival gear [CofD 273] for the driver and all passengers. For two modifications, the vehicle gives the benefits
of advanced survival gear against one type of extreme environment. The vehicle’s protection stacks with any
personal protection a rider has.

Upgrade: Seacraft (Acqua •••)

The Noble may use the Charm to create a boat. If the boat is at least Size 10, she may spend two modifications
to convert it into a submarine.

Upgrade: Aircraft (Aria •••)

The Noble may use the Charm to create an airplane. The safe Speed of an airplane is doubled after all mod-
ifications are applied; however, an airplane must reach half its safe Speed before it can take off. Also, nearly all
jurisdictions require airplanes to stay in radio contact with air traffic controllers, to prevent in-air collisions,
so the Charm provides a radio in the airplane for this purpose. Finally, the airplane will not automatically land
itself when the Charm ends, though its engine stops working, and it won’t vanish until it reaches the ground.

Upgrade: Mecha (Fuoco •••)

The Noble may use the Charm to create a giant humanoid robot, with a cockpit for herself and passengers.
The Speed of a mecha must be divided by 10 after all modifications are applied, and uses the rules for charac-
ters’ Speed, not vehicles’; the High Acceleration modification may not be applied. However, the Noble may add
equivalents of any Regalia Charms she knows to the mecha for one modification per Charm added.
The mecha does not roll, but walks, and can jump or climb over obstacles that block a car. For the purpose of
athletic feats or combat, the mecha has the Strength of the Noble, plus a bonus from its Size equal to the Strength

258 Shape
bonus from the Size Changes table. It takes damage as an object, and provides opaque cover to its driver and
passengers.

Upgrade: Off-Road (Legno •••)

The Noble may use the Charm to create a vehicle that travels over rough ground or planted turf without
difficulty. When driven over dirt or plants, the vehicle leaves no trace of its passing; plants are not crushed, and
dirt takes no tracks. Indeed, for one modification, the vehicle will actually promote the growth of plants it passes
over, and sow grass and flowers in bare soil.

Upgrade: Diplomatic (Terra •••)

Mundane people recognize the Noble’s vehicle as owned by an authority, and are reluctant to impede it. As
long as the driver obeys traffic regulations, no one will stop or search the vehicle. This doesn’t let the vehicle
pass into secured areas that need specific authorization to enter, but it will protect the driver and passengers
from people looking for them.

Upgrade: Stealthy (Lacrima •••)

The Noble’s vehicle runs quietly and is easily overlooked. Perception rolls to notice it and attempts to follow
it by sound take a penalty equal to the Noble’s Lacrima.

Upgrade: Ramming (Tempesta •••)

The Noble’s vehicle breaks down any obstacle impudent enough to stand in its way. In any crash [CofD 99]
the Durability of the object the vehicle hits is reduced by the Noble’s Tempesta, to a minimum of 0.

Upgrade: Inviolable (Specchio •••)

The Noble may create a vehicle so beautiful that no one can think of damaging it. Anyone trying to avoid a
collision with the vehicle gains a bonus equal to the Noble’s Specchio on their dice pool, and anyone trying to
damage it takes a penalty equal to her Specchio. The vehicle’s driver is affected whenever his driving maneuver
may result in a crash.

Breath of Boreas (Shape ••••, Acqua •••)

Action: Extended, 1 minute/roll, threshold = 5
Dice pool: Intelligence + Science + weather modifier
Cost: 3 Wisps
Duration: 1 or more scenes
The North Wind blows and winter comes at the Noble’s call. When she reaches the threshold, the temper-
ature rapidly falls below freezing in a circle of 1 mile radius centered on the Noble, creating the Extreme Cold
Tilt [CofD 282] within the circle. The cold snap lasts for the rest of the current scene. The Noble is not protected
from the weather she has summoned (not, at least, by this Charm.)
Furthermore, for every 3 successes the Noble accumulates over the threshold, she can tune the weather
further to her liking, adding one of the following effects.
• Biting: The chill goes deep into people’s flesh. The Extreme Cold Tilt inflicts a -1 penalty immediately.
The Princess can apply this effect up to 5 times.
• Icy: Freezing rain falls in the area, coating all surfaces in ice. The Ice Tilt [CofD 284] applies throughout
the affected area.
• Snowing: Snow falls in great quantities, imposing the Blizzard Tilt [CofD 281] throughout the affected
area.

Shape 259
• Duration: The weather, and the tilts it creates, last for another scene.
Current weather conditions modify the activation roll: cold extreme environment (+ level), other extreme
environment (- level), already snowing (+3), thick clouds (+1), or clear sky (-1). The Charm cannot be used more
than once a day in a single area.

Upgrade: Loyal (Acqua ••••)

The Charm encloses the Noble in a bubble of warm air, protecting her from the cold she has invoked. The
Noble takes no penalties or damage from the extreme environment, and if she wishes she can suppress any or
all Tilts imposed by the Charm within a radius of Inner Light yards of herself, or reimpose them, as an instant
action. Each Tilt can be suppressed or released independently.

Call Down the Thunder (Shape ••••, Aria •••)

Action: Extended, 1 turn/roll, threshold = 5
Dice pool: Strength + Science + weather modifier
Cost: 3 Wisps
Duration: 1 or more scenes
The Noble raises her hands to the sky and summons the wrath of a storm. Once she reaches the threshold,
the sky fills with dark clouds and rain starts to fall in a radius of 1 mile, building in seconds to a downpour (the
Heavy Rain Tilt [CofD 283]) that lasts until the Charm ends. In freezing weather the clouds release snow instead
of rain, creating the Blizzard Tilt [CofD 281]. The Princess can’t change the temperature with this Charm.
Furthermore, for every 3 successes the Noble accumulates over the threshold, she can apply one of the
following effects. She may wait to choose which effects to apply until the turn she needs one.
• Heavy Winds: The storm buffets everyone caught in it, impeding their movements. Until the Charm ends,
the area has one level of the Heavy Winds Tilt [CofD 283]. The Princess can apply this effect a maximum of
3 times.
• Hailstones: As an instant action, the Noble rolls her activation dice pool; in a circle with a radius of 20x
Aria yards centered on a point within sight, hailstones strike everything exposed to the sky, doing 1 bashing
damage for each success. If the Noble is inside the circle, she takes the damage along with everything else
within it.
• Lightning: As an instant action, the Noble rolls her activation dice pool; a bolt of lightning strikes one
target within sight, doing 1 lethal damage for each success. General armor reduces this damage.
• Duration: The Charm, and the Tilts it creates, last for another scene.
Current weather conditions modify the activation roll: already raining or snowing (+3), thick clouds (+1),
clear sky (-1), or drought (-3). The Charm cannot be used more than once a day in a single area.

Upgrade: Uplifting (Aria ••••)

The storm guides itself to help the Noble who summoned it. The Tilts it creates don’t affect her, and hail-
stones don’t strike her if she calls them to the place she stands. Moreover, she can apply accumulated successes
for another effect:
Speed: The storm winds always blow at the Noble’s back, carrying her more swiftly to her destination. She
adds +1 to her Speed and Initiative until the Charm ends. She can apply this effect a maximum of 3 times.

Travel in Style (Shape ••••, Legno •••)

Action: Full turn
Dice pool: Composure + Crafts - number of people to shelter
Cost: 2-6 Wisps
Duration: until 1 hour after sunrise

260 Shape
 Nobles of Clubs often travel in the wilderness, but like their namesakes, the Turtles carry a shelter with
them. The Noble chooses how many people to provide shelter to when she activates the Charm.
Dramatic Failure: The Noble faints, and can’t be awakened for at least eight hours.
Failure: The Noble waves swatches of cloth about with no result.
Success: Lengths of brightly colored cloth whirl from the Noble’s hands, before settling on wooden scaf-
folding. Once the cloth stops moving, the Noble stands within a tent large enough to accomodate everyone
she wanted to, with the proper number of camp beds, a central fireplace for cooking, and a side chamber for
calls of nature. The tent flaps, if tied shut, can’t be opened from the outside, and despite its apparent fragility
the tent’s fabric has a Durability equal to the Noble’s Legno.
When the flaps are tied, the interior swiftly comes to the climate of a warm spring day; any environmental
Tilts due to the weather cease to apply inside the tent. Moreover, the Noble can spend extra Wisps to protect
the interior from the worst that nature can do: the third and subsequent Wisps she spends to activate the
Charm reduce the effective level of an extreme environment [CofD 97] by 1 step each within the tent.
Exceptional Success: The tent’s outer surface is camouflaged. Perception rolls to notice its presence
take a -2 penalty.
The tent will tremble when the rays of the dawning sun reach it, then fold up and vanish when the last
occupant leaves it or one hour has passed. Anyone still inside at the end of that hour is unceremoniously dumped
onto the ground where the tent rested.

Enduring Beauty (Shape ••••, Specchio ••••)

Action: Extended, 1 minute/roll, threshold = target’s Health + Supernatural Tolerance + dots in the Striking
Looks Merit
Dice pool: Dexterity + Larceny
Cost: 2 Wisps, 1 Willpower
Beauty is the only true constant in the world, the Queen of Mirrors knows. Not personal beauty, for that
can fade and die, but the beauty that comes from righteousness and enduring strength. It is the calculus of rule
that inspires her to take beauty from fools who might waste it, and use it for the betterment of the world. The
Noble learns to peel the beauty from others, and craft it into valuable gems. These gems also have metaphysi-
cal potency, and can be used to aid other Charms. This Charm must be used against a target who is asleep, or
otherwise incapacitated or restrained. Each time the Noble rolls, her target takes 1 point of bashing damage; a
sleeping target reflexively rolls Wits + Stamina - 3 and wakes if they succeed.
If the required number of successes are attained, the Noble peels the metaphysical beauty away from the
face of her target, which comes away like a thin layer of skin, then coalesces into a gem. If the target had no dots
in the Striking Looks merit, the gem is a cheap stone, dull and lacking lustre, equivalent to Availability 1. If they
had one dot, it is attractive and valuable, a moderate value sapphire, emerald or ruby (frequently matching the
color of their eyes) equivalent to Availability 2. If the Noble is lucky enough to find someone with two dots, the
gem is a diamond almost without compare, equivalent to Availability 3. An individual targeted with this Charm
loses all dots in the Striking Looks merit, if they had any, and gains the Forgettable Condition. The effects on
appearance are not obviously magical; even the most beautiful target is recognizable as themselves after this is
used, merely… lacking the gleam of beauty they once had.
The gems produced are metaphysically potent. When holding one in her hand, a Princess may, reflexively,
cause it to crumble to dust, destroying it utterly. Doing so adds extra successes equal to its Availability rating to
any one roll of hers which is in line with the Specchio Invocation. Any Princess can use the gems for this purpose.
In addition, a Princess with Seed of Light can use that Charm to turn a gem into a number of seeds equal to its
Availability rating. If the gem is returned to the person it was stolen from, it need only be pressed against their
forehead to restore their former beauty.
A Noble creating a Bequest may embed a gem into her art as a source of power for its magic. If the be-
queathed Charm requires no more Wisps than the gem’s Availability, then once a day the Bequest can be primed
for use without spending any Wisps - as if it were Duty-Bound, but no task is required. An embedded gem can
be taken out of the Bequest, but the Bequest is destroyed in the process. Analyzing the Bequest can reveal the
gem’s nature.

Shape 261
 Unless used on a consenting target, using the Charm is a compromise with a -2 penalty.

Master Mason (Shape •••••, Terra ••••)

Requires Crucible with Powered
Action: Extended, 15 minutes/roll, threshold = Sanctuary + Availability
Dice pool: Presence + Crafts
Cost: (Sanctuary rating)+2 Wisps, 1 Willpower
The ground under the Noble’s feet trembles, rumbles, and finally erupts into a great building of steel, brick,
stone and glass, with water pipes, electrical outlets and every modern convenience. The Noble must accumulate
enough successes to match both the size of the building, as measured on the Sanctuary scale, and its quality as
a residence or working space, as measured by Availability [CofD 100]. The Charm is not limited to houses, but
can build any structure of comparable size - say, a road, bridge, dam, stadium or theater.
The Noble may not use this Charm unless she is standing on solid ground, devoid of any intact man-made
structures and large enough to accommodate the final building. If she wants any plumbing and power outlets
in the building to work, she must connect them to water systems and electrical mains that run nearby. Any
furnishings in the building are integral with it, made of the same materials and immovable.

Through the Looking Glass (Shape •••••, Specchio •••••)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Dexterity + Occult
Cost: 3 Wisps, 1 Willpower
Duration: indefinite
The Noble enters the world behind a mirror.
Dramatic Failure: The mirror breaks into hundreds of glass shards. If the Noble was in the reflected
world, she returns to reality, but anything else brought in is lost.
Failure: The Noble remains where she was.
Success: The surface of the mirror vanishes, allowing the Noble to enter (or leave) the reflected world.
Exceptional Success: The Noble regains the Willpower point she spent to activate the Charm.
Inside the reflected world is an exact reflection of everything the mirror can see. This does mean that any
text is backwards and climbing into a funhouse mirror is… weird. The objects inside a mirror are entirely im-
movable and indestructible: the only way to affect them is to affect the real object they are reflections of. Real
items the Noble brings with her behave as normal. Any person or item she brings into the mirror world casts
an intangible reflection back into the real world.
Inside a mirror any area that cannot be seen by that mirror (from any angle) is nothing more than solid
glass that stretches on for infinity, or until the next place visible from that mirror. The Noble can carve out holes
in this glass; it takes her five minutes to remove one cubic yard of glass, which dissolves into vapor shortly
afterward. Doing this creates a little hidey hole invisible from the outside world, perfect for storing weapons
and valuable Bequests or bringing boyfriends you don’t want your mother to know about. The holes last until
the mirror is destroyed or moved. Once either occurs nothing, not even returning the mirror to its original spot
can recover any stored items. No one knows what happens to a person lost this way but it probably isn’t pretty.
While inside the mirror any area that usually can be seen by that mirror but cannot due to circumstance
(say someone’s thrown a blanket over the mirror in the real world) is covered by pure darkness that numbs all
five senses. This however is not any more dangerous than normal sensory deprivation and some Nobles even
make use of it for such.
Two mirrors reflecting the same area will lead to the same reflected area, though parts of it may well be
separated by walls of glass. This area is safe until the last mirror is removed. However two mirrors set up to
reflect each other can be quite dangerous. While inside the mirror world one can use the second mirror to
recursively enter a second mirror world. Some Nobles use sequences of mirrors as elaborate “passwords” but
the risk of being lost forever in an ever deeper chain of worlds means most stay far away.

262 Shape
 Exiting the mirror world normally requires using this Charm a second time. In an emergency the Noble can
simply jump through the mirror to leave the reflection, which has the usual effects on her of jumping through
glass. (Smashing the mirror before jumping would send the Noble to wherever it is things stored in hidey holes
go when the mirror is moved.)

Upgrade: Secure
By spending 1 Wisp the Noble can fix a mirror in place. It gains Durability equal to her Specchio against both
damage and being moved. This Durability does not apply if the Noble deliberately jumps through the mirror to
leave the reflection, but it does cover accidents.

Upgrade: Leading
The Noble can now lead others through mirrors. Each extra person or five Size points of equipment costs
an additional Wisp. The Noble does not have to go first, or even enter herself. It is acceptable to push someone
through with the intent of trapping them.

Images and Bequests

A Princess’s power comes from within, it comes from her hopes, her emotions and her Beliefs. This has its
advantages, and its disadvantages, just as any other source of power you could care to name. A Princess who
believes in the rule of law might be unable to use magic that works outside the system. A Princess who believes
in careful thought and planned action might be unable to call upon magical intuition. Not everybody has a power
deep within them, Beacons and Sworn do not.
The Living Image Charm circumvents a major disadvantage of Hopeful magic, that a Princess must be trans-
formed to use it. The Charm can be used either to evoke a Charm but delay its effects until the Princess needs it,
or to make a Bequest that anyone with a tie to the Light, however faint, can use to summon power. With Charm
images the Nobility can use magic in their mundane identity; with Bequests they are able to trade Charms, pass
their powers on to the next generation and equip teams of trained Sworn with potent magics.
Bequests based on permanent Charms have no cost, and apply their Charm’s effect to a Light-touched per-
son wearing or using them. Bequests based on activated Charms release the Charm’s effect when the user pays
the Charm’s cost. Bequests based on activated Charms become primed (gaining the Waiting Charm Condition)
when the user pays the Charm’s cost (which can be done reflexively, unless the Charm calls for an extended
action to use); the Condition resolves when the user makes the activation roll. A user can prime and activate a
Bequest in the same turn. If a Bequest is Duty-Bound, its user can prime it without spending Wisps by carrying
out the task its maker set for that purpose; any other resources the Bequest requires must be spent to prime it.
If a Bequest is based on an upgraded Charm, every upgrade included in the Charm applies every time the
Bequest is used, and the user must pay the upgrades’ cost in full - a Bequest, unlike a Charm, is not flexible. If
the user has an Invocation that’s compatible with the Bequest’s Charm, she may apply it when activating the
Bequest, with the same effect as it would have on the Charm. When a Bequest opposes another supernatural
power, the Clash of Wills dice pool equals the user’s Inner Light + the Bequest’s Charm rating, modified by the
user’s Belief or Integrity.
Any of the Hopeful, whether transformed or not, may recognize a Bequest as such; she rolls her Inner Light
+ the Bequest’s Charm rating the first time she touches it in a scene, recognizing it if successful. Beacons and
the Sworn may do the same, rolling 1 + the Bequest’s Charm rating.

Images and Bequests 263

264
 Chapter 4: Fighting Fear
I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man
is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.
—Nelson Mandela

The Radiant wish to create a better world, standing in their way is everyone who benefits from the world
being just as it is. The most obvious, and common, threats they face come from the Darkness: the Darkspawn,
and the tainted areas they lurk in, where human evil has worn holes into the fabric of reality itself. In the same
category are cults that feed the Darkness to gain temporal power. Most terrifying of all are the Dethroned, Nobles
who have given in to the pain and despair that surrounds them. They are tragic, and monstrous.
Sitting half way between allies and enemies are the followers of the three Twilight Queens. The Queen of
Tears rules Alhambra, the last city of the Kingdom, impossibly still standing as a bastion of light within the very
heart of Darkness. Her followers harvest the hope and joy from the world, sucking away our dreams to buy
another day of life for the Grand City - a life none of them pretend is happy or worthwhile, but one that must be
maintained because the alternative is too terrifying to contemplate.
The Queen of Storms is a being utterly consumed by her rage at the depredations of the darkness, and all
thought, mercy, and virtue is incinerated by her white-hot fury. Her Princesses and servants are living vessels
of pure Fury, so single-minded in their pursuit of punishment and revenge that they are blind to the sorrow and
ruined lives they leave in their wake. Leading the charge are the terrible Goalenu, fragments of the Queen given
form to fight the Darkness.
The Queen of Mirrors is an enigma. Those who have seen her sometimes describe a silver-haired woman,
with eyes as bright as the full moon and an infectious crescent-grin of a smile. But most often they say she looks
like the one she meets, their chiral twin… apart from her grin and her eyes, which are always silver. They say
she makes a body of mirrors from ancient manor houses, of glass from sky, of moonlight and water and silver,
and walks among mankind, looking for Princesses of unusual talent and drive and skill and will. They say she’s
looking for the True Heir to the Kingdom.
The Dreamlands lie beyond the wall of sleep. Nearly all the Princess were once trapped there, the Radiant
Queens and mystic treasures may be found there; they reflect the hopes and very soul of humanity, but are
not safe. The Wardens patrol for souls carrying the Light, hoping to return them to a blissful prison, while the
Amanojaku steal mortals’ identities to taste of life on Earth.
Finally there are those the Nobility work with or protect: the Beacons on whom the Light shines brightly,
the Sworn who vow themselves to Noble service, the Shikigami who guide the newly Blossomed, and the Blessed
Places that great deeds of virtue have sanctified.

Tainted Places
You can feel it in the air all around. This place chills you to the bone and squelches underfoot
with rotting damp and the stench of mildew. The sounds don’t carry right, the city outside felt
so distant. Even your feelings for your dead parents, your rage and hate for their murder, even
they feel distant.
Casually you slide your knife across your wrist, your blood wells up like liquid green fire.
The drops fall and the stinking rotted boards catch light as you pray to your Lady of Cleansing
Flame. When a place is this far gone there’s nothing to do but burn it, and it burns so beautifully
in emerald fire.

The ruins of the concentration camps. A house on an island where 10 people were killed one by one by a
sadistic murderer. An abandoned apartment where the worst gangs always gather. A hidden temple where a
dark wizard sacrificed people for infernal power. These are the Tainted places, where the evil that men do has
lingered. Some are well known, while others are forgotten. The one thing they all have in common is that the
Darkness was - or is - strong there, and it doesn’t want to leave.

265
 A place becomes Tainted when someone commits a grave sin there, meant to make others suffer, or else
when vicious and cruel acts become routine and customary there. The very substance of the area is bruised by
minor sins, cut or torn by major ones, and the Darkness comes quickly to infect the wound and open it farther.
Each Tainted area makes it easy to commit acts like those that first Tainted the place, and hard for anyone
to resist or do the opposite. And each time someone yields to temptation, the Taint deepens, and its malign
influence steals more faculties from the innocent. Finally, staying within a Tainted area slowly drains the hope
and life out of people even if they do nothing at all; a part of the Darkness stays in them afterward, trying to
seduce them into joining it.
The busier a place is, the more the impressions of many people mix together, and the less likely it is to
become a Tainted place. A place that is only used by a specific subset of people (a club house, a dark alley, etc...)
will be more likely to become Tainted when one of the few people who come there becomes the victim of a crime
of cruelty, or perpetrates it himself. A busy intersection is very unlikely to become Tainted, even if someone is
murdered right there and all other conditions are met.
Anyone touched by the Light feels a shadow of fear, grief, ennui or despair when they stand within a Tainted
place; the more experienced learn to recognize in that shadow a spoor of the Darkness. When a Beacon, Sworn,
Shikigami or Noble first enters a Tainted area, and at the start of each scene in a Tainted area, the Storyteller
rolls a dice pool of their base Sensitivity + the Severity of the Taint. If successful, the character realizes that the
area has been Tainted.

Creating Taint
Taint and Sensitivity
The acts that create Taint are not quite the same as those that trigger Sensitivity. Sensitivity responds to
people in pain, whatever the cause may be. Taint, however, responds to the intent to cause pain, regardless
of whether the intent was successful. For example, an accidental fire that destroys a house and kills its
residents will trigger Sensitivity (people died) but not create Taint (nobody meant to start the fire.) And
contrariwise, an arsonist whose fire gets put out before it destroys a building creates Taint (due to his intent),
but doesn’t trigger Sensitivity.

Tainted areas are represented with the following traits.

Size
The Size of a Tainted area is measured on the Sanctuary scale - the smallest Tainted sites, at Size 0, would
fit within a small walk-in closet; the largest ever found, at Size 5, covers the whole of a large estate roughly the
size of the Pentagon. It’s determined by how widespread the cruelties that led to its creation were. If someone
committed suicide in a bathtub, the bathroom, or just the bathtub, may carry Taint. If a coach of a children’s
football team went crazy, locked them into the club building and killed them one by one in horrific ways, the
entire building may become Tainted because of it. As a rule of thumb Size will conform to conceptual boundaries.
Ask yourself what would be said on the rumor mill; if the gossip is “the coach killed them in the clubhouse” the
Taint will spread to the entire clubhouse.
When crimes in line with the Tainted place’s Aspirations (see below) are committed just outside of it, it
may grow to encompass those areas as well. Often this happens by accident (a victim escapes the confines of
a Tainted place, but is caught and cut down by her assailant just outside of it), but Darkened also instinctively
know this and will try to work towards expanding them.

Severity
Rated from 1 to 5, and determined by the level of cruelty that created the Tainted place. Greater sins will
override lesser Taints, so an action with a higher Severity than that of a Tainted place, if performed there, raises
the place’s Severity to the action’s (and almost certainly will alter its Aspirations as well.)

266 Tainted Places

Class of sin Severity
Petty crime: bullying, theft, threatened violence 0
Impassioned crime: grand theft, negligence causing serious injury 1
Premeditated crime: mass property damage (e.g. arson), deliberate injury to the defenseless 2
Heinous crime: murder, torture, rape, suicide 3
Multiple instances of the same crime in a short time period (a double-murder suicide, for instance) +1
Similar crimes are committed many times over a longer period +1
Act is especially cruel or generates a large amount of despair (someone being murdered by their beloved) +1
Victim is Light-touched +1

Aspirations
A Tainted place has from one to three Aspirations, the kinds of actions it drives those within its bounds to
commit. Stronger Tainted places usually have more history and a broader repertoire - a place with Severity 3 or
4 always has at least two Aspirations, and one of Severity 5 has three - but even the weakest Tainted area can
have a full set. These Aspirations should be clearly cruel and framed in general terms, such as “commit murder”.
At most the Aspiration should name a specific type of victim such as “bully schoolboys”. Tainted Aspirations can
change over time, especially when a place’s Severity rating changes.
While they remain within a Tainted area, any mundane characters treat its Aspirations as their own - they
gain a Beat if they fulfill one, their presence may add or open Doors in social maneuvers, and so on. Creatures of
Darkness gain the same benefit, but the Light-touched are immune; other supernatural beings may be swayed,
at the Storyteller’s discretion. Since the Aspirations belong to the place, they don’t disappear when fulfilled - the
Taint always hungers for more - though each character may fulfill each Aspiration only once a session.
Further, any action taken within the bounds of a Tainted place that directly opposes the fulfilling of any of its
Aspirations takes a penalty equal to the place’s Severity rating. Conversely, any action that directly furthers one
of the place’s Aspirations takes a bonus equal to its Severity. This effect applies to all characters: mundane, Dark,
Light-touched, or other. Finally, unless it directly furthers one of the Tainted place’s Aspirations, any failed roll
where the dice pool (after all bonuses and penalties) is less than or equal to the place’s Severity automatically
becomes a dramatic failure. All rolls are affected - including rolls for breaking points.
Tainted Aspirations reflect the history of the Tainted Place, and they can change over time as the location’s
story grows with new atrocities. When a Tainted Place gains a new Aspiration (from increased Severity) the
new Aspiration will either encourage repetitions of the new crimes, or all the Aspirations will shift to create a
new set of Aspirations that reflect its entire history and the correspondence between all past crimes.

Curses
A few Tainted areas afflict their occupants in more direct ways than pushing them to depraved behavior.
A Tainted place may forgo one of its Aspirations to inflict a Curse on anyone in it who isn’t either Tainted or a
creature of Darkness. Curses function as permanent environmental Tilts, but don’t affect any character with the
Tainted Condition or a Dark creature. A list of Curses (not complete - the Storyteller may design more) follows.
Clumsiness: The Taint slows reactions and deadens nerves in the face of danger. Characters reduce their
Defense by -2.
Confusion: The Taint steals the will to act. Spending Willpower grants only +2 dice to a dice pool.
Corruption: The Taint undermines mental stability. All breaking point rolls take an additional -1 penalty.
Enthrallment: The Taint makes people vulnerable to hostile magic. When a supernatural power is resisted,
the relevant Attribute is reduced by 1.
Folly: The Taint tempts people into behaving foolishly. Characters gain the Spooked Condition on entering
the area; it ends without resolving when they leave it.
Sickness: The Taint steals vitality; blood clots slowly, wounds will not close. All injuries suffered inside it
are worsened by one point of Health.

Tainted Places 267

 Terror: The Taint unsettles and frightens people. Characters gain the Shaken Condition on entering the
area; it ends without resolving when they leave it.
Weakness: The Taint attacks health. The area is a level 1 extreme environment.

Corruption
Integrity Taint, once established in an area, infects the people in that area if given an
- Severity Time spent opportunity to do so; any act of cruelty, if done in Tainted places, opens the perpe-
trator to the Darkness, and even prolonged exposure wears people down. If a mun-
0 or less 1 turn dane character does anything that would create Taint, in even the slightest degree,
1-3 1 hour while in a Tainted place, he takes the Tainted Condition - as if a small part of the
place nestles inside of him and stays along for the ride. Also, after an interval of time
4-6 1 day
determined by his Integrity and the area’s Severity, a mundane character gains the
7-9 1 week Tainted Condition even without doing anything at all: subtract the place’s Severity
from the character’s Integrity and consult this table.
Giving in to temptation and fulfilling the sadistic Aspirations found in a Tainted place will cause a break-
ing point in any individual with a healthy moral compass. There is nothing supernatural about this, but there
is something supernatural about the consequences. A breaking point caused by fulfilling, or trying to fulfill, a
Tainted Aspiration takes a penalty equal to the Tainted place’s Severity, in addition to any other penalties the
roll would normally incur. Failing the roll gives the perpetrator the Darkened Condition, rather than one of the
Conditions that would normally be available. Even on a success, the character still takes the Tainted Condition,
if he didn't have it already. Only on an exceptional success does the character escape unscathed.
Characters with Sensitivity - Dark creatures and the Light-touched - can’t gain the Tainted Condition;
the Light protects those it touches, and Dark creatures have been corrupted already. (The Storyteller decides
whether other supernaturals can become Tainted.) However, the Taint still has some influence, even on them.
After the necessary period of time spent in the Tainted area, a Light-touched character must check her Sensi-
tivity, rolling her unmodified dice pool. A Haunting that causes Enraged or Maddened instills an obsession with
cleansing the area of Taint, and penalizes all actions not directed to that end.
Frequently, followers of the Darkness will attempt to lure (or bring) others into a Tainted place, and then
carefully manipulate them into doing the unthinkable and becoming Darkened themselves. This is generally
handled through social maneuvering, with a goal of getting the target to fulfil the Tainted Aspiration. Remember
that one Door will be automatically opened, because the stated goal would complete one of the character’s
Aspirations.

Inviting Corruption
There are always people willing to sell their souls for power, and being corrupted by Tainted areas is a path
to power … but a slow one. Those who are ready to sink into depravity at once can find, in moldering books
or Internet sites on black magic, a host of rituals meant to summon the powers of darkness into the ritualist’s
body or soul - and if performed in a Tainted area, some of them will work. While the effective rituals vary widely
(their discoverers come from every country and culture that ever existed) they have two points in common: they
all include profound blasphemies against what the discoverers held sacred, and at their climax they require a
human sacrifice.
A typical ritual for inviting the Darkness into oneself takes about an hour to complete, and must be done
within a Tainted place. Only a mundane human can perform it, and he must murder in cold blood another mun-
dane human, or a being touched by the Light, during the ritual’s course. Many rituals mention that sacrificing
the innocent, virtuous or holy is pleasing to the dark gods, which will lead them to favor the supplicant; though
none refer to the Light’s servants by name, it’s unquestioned that the Darkness responds well to their deaths.
Performing such a ritual is, naturally, a breaking point with a -5 penalty, like any other premeditated mur-
der. In addition, it counts as fulfilling a Tainted Aspiration if done in a Tainted area, regardless of its actual
Aspirations - failing the breaking point makes the ritualist Darkened. A weak Taint may shift its Aspirations in
response to the ritual, too.

268 Tainted Places

Removing Taint
New Tainted places can be made, but luckily for humanity and the forces of the Light, there are ways to
unmake them as well. There are three known methods to unmake a Tainted place:
• Purifying it through long-term effort from the outside, healing the Taint by feeding it positive feelings
opposed to its dark origins;
• Purging it by destroying the entire site it is linked to, at the risk of making matters worse if the attempt
fails;
• Cleansing it by finding its Dark Door and stepping into its inner workings in the Dark World, and undoing
it from within.

Purifying
A Tainted place may be purified if events that directly oppose the themes and intents of its Aspirations and
origins take place within the Tainted place. Taint that formed from an drug abusing parent tormenting their
family might fade if the house becomes the site of a Narcotics Anonymous group, or becomes the home of a
loving and stable family. Sealing the area (see below) is advised for using this method against all but the weakest
Taint. Not only does it prevent the Severity from affecting the dice pool, but it ensures that monsters will not
wander in from the Dark World.
If the Taint is central to the story, resolving it might require a session’s worth of work for each dot of Sever-
ity, or more at the Storyteller’s discretion. Harkening back to the example given concerning a Tainted Place
resulting from an alcoholic parent’s abuses, purifying it might look something like this: One session to discov-
er the origins of the Taint in order to know how to purify it, cleaning out the monsters, and consecrating the
ground. Another session to get funding from city hall, secure the deed from a stubborn homeowner, and get the
word out on the street. Then there might be a finale where the player characters run their first meeting, look
for someone to be responsible for future meetings, and deal with a bunch of drug dealers who have started to
ply their trade nearby, to ensure their new meeting place doesn’t become a hub of broken dreams and relapsing
addicts instead.
Once the venture is running smoothly, the characters might have to drop by frequently for a while to keep
the seals up, until the Tainted Place is finally purified once the Storyteller feels sufficient time and effort has been
expended to balance out the ills committed within it. Consider keeping this new asset to the community a part of
the story after the purification is complete. After all, the characters and their players are likely to have become
quite invested in it, and it would be a shame just to toss all of that built-up characterization out the window!

Purging
The second option for cleaning up a Tainted place is to destroy it. At a minimum this requires stripping it
down to the walls and power-hosing out every last trace of the past, but the most common tool for purges is fire.
The risk of purging a Tainted place, aside from police investigations and monster hunters investigating an
“inexplicable” case of arson, is that anything less than total destruction can strengthen the Taint. Each Taint-
ed place is the product of its history and a failed attempt by monster hunters or Princesses becomes another
chapter in the tale. If any Taint survives it will spread back to reclaim the damaged area, and it will come back
stronger. A failed attempt to purge a Tainted place increases its Severity by one, to a maximum of five. If the
Severity was already at five, the Tainted place will grow in size instead. The Court of Storms have access to the
Purgation Charm which avoids this risk. Purgation is a potent charm, and Furies who do not have access to it
avoid the risks of purging a Tainted Place simply by being dedicated enough to finish the job even if they have
to fight firefighters or sacrifice their own lives.
Purging Taint is resolved as an extended action with a threshold equal to five times the Taint’s Size. If the
Tainted place is Size 0, only a single success is needed. The interval depends on the method used. It takes 20
minutes per roll if the characters use hammers and other wrecking tools, 10 per roll for arson, and 5 per roll
for construction machines or explosives. Characters may mix methods; if they can only afford a little bit of ex-
plosives, they can soften the building up with their supernatural strength first.

Tainted Places 269

 The characters can continue to roll until they have finished the Taint. It might take a while but so long as
you’re willing to keep smashing walls a building will come down eventually. However the longer the characters
take the higher the risk that Darkspawn or the police will turn up. If the characters are forced to leave the job
half done their progress is erased and the Taint profits.
Dramatic Failure: The characters are forced to abandon the purge unfinished, and the Taint grows
stronger.
Failure: Demolitions is a dangerous job. If the characters continue, the Storyteller inflicts a Condition
or Environmental Tilt. Punching through a load bearing wall might drop a ceiling on a character, or the fire
might start early forcing the characters to work in an inferno or flee.
Success: Progress is made. If the target number is reached the Taint is destroyed, or one spark away
from going up in flames.
Exceptional Success: The demolition goes faster than expected. Either reduce the threshold by the char-
acters’ Skill dots, or reduce the interval by a quarter.

Cleansing
Every Tainted place at least the size of a single room has a Nightscape, a nightmarish representation of its
inner rot that can be found in the Dark World “beneath” the Tainted Place. A creature of the Darkness (includ-
ing one of the Darkened) may enter the Nightscape from any point within the Tainted place, appearing in the
corresponding location within the Nightscape. Likewise, he may cross from the Nightscape back to the Tainted
place from anywhere within it. For everyone else, it’s a bit more complex.
Every Tainted place has what is known as a Dark Door, a portal to the Nightscape. It is found near the place
where the Taint first appeared, the site of the original act of cruelty that gave birth to it. A Dark Door always
appears as a portal of some sort, normal enough to be ignored but sinister enough to catch the eye of anyone
who knows what they’re looking for, though they seldom appear in plain sight. Anyone can spend a Willpower
point to gather their courage, open the door and face the nightmare within; the door stays open, letting any
character pass through, for turns equal to the opener’s Resolve + Composure. Passage through the Dark Door
leads to a fixed point within the Nightscape. This is also the only point from which the character may leave the
Nightscape again. Anyone in the Nightscape can open the Dark Door and flee back to the mundane world; this
does not cost a point of Willpower.
The first step in gaining access is figuring out where the Dark Door can be found. This could be a simple
Perception check to find the spot with faded blood stains and peel back the wallpaper, or it could require a thor-
ough search through an abandoned facility, all the while fighting off the monstrous residents. Given the dangers
involved many Princesses like to identify likely spots before even setting foot on Tainted grounds; piecing old
newspaper reports back together, talking to witnesses, and reconstructing the history to find the site of the
original crime. This uses the Investigation rules [CofD 77-81]. A successful investigation narrows the location
of the Dark Door to one or two likely locations, but insufficient Clues might result in complications such as:
Blundering into an ambush, a race to find the Dark Door before hostages are eaten, or even mortals following
the Princesses in and getting into danger.
The Tainted place’s Aspirations remain in effect inside of the Nightscape, as do the penalties associated
with its Severity rating, and any other effects for being inside of the Tainted Area. Once inside, the way to cleanse
the Tainted Place depends on the type of Nightscape it possesses. The base type, which most Nightscapes belong
to, is the Echo type. Nightscapes which diverge greatly from their origins, or that were formed by an amalgam of
various different crimes with little common theme, may be of the Maze variety instead. If the atrocities that cre-
ated the Tainted place were committed by a supernatural being who still frequents it to this day, the Nightscape
may form into a Lair. Finally, if the act that creates a Tainted place or increases one’s Severity also transforms
a Darkened into a Darkspawn, the new Darkspawn may merge into the Nightscape in body and soul, leaving
their flesh behind to become a permanent fixture of the Tainted place, making it Guarded. This last one isn’t a
separate type, but an additional threat to intruders layered upon one of the other three types.
When a Tainted place is successfully cleansed, creatures of the Darkness (aside from the Darkened) inside
of the Nightscape are pushed out into the Dark World, while all others translate back to the mortal world, ap-
pearing in the spot corresponding to where they were within the Nightscape.

270 Tainted Places

Closing a Dark Door
The Dark Door of a Tainted place can be closed and locked, once it’s been found, to provide a little temporary
relief from its curse. Both the Light and the Darkness provide powers for that purpose - the Purifying upgrade
to the Consecrate Charm, and the Caligo Burying the Crime respectively - but even mundanes can manage it,
forbidding passage to the Dark by power inherent in the human soul. The technique is similar to abjuration
[CofD 140] and uses the same system; the Tainted place contests by rolling Size + Severity. On a normal success
the Door closes for a day, and can’t be opened from the Nightscape; on an exceptional success it closes for three
days. The abjurist must be at the Dark Door itself, and know what it is, to abjure it.
A Tainted area with its Dark Door shut appears entirely mundane; its Aspirations and Curses are sup-
pressed, and it can’t inflict the Tainted or Darkened Conditions. No power that affects or requires Taint will
work on the area until the Door is opened again. In the Nightscape, the effects of the Taint remain in force, but
the shut Door blocks the trickle of light that sustains what life exists there - the whole Nightscape falls into
the Extreme Taint Tilt. Also, Dark creatures can’t pass between the Tainted area and the Nightscape, except by
opening the Door.

Echoes
Inside of an Echo, the crime (or crimes) which shaped it is repeated over and over by shadowy versions of
the original perpetrators and victims. The shadowy echoes have Attributes and Skills, just like the people they
represent, though they lack supernatural traits even if the originals had them. The Tainted place can be cleansed
by giving the events a “good” ending: usually saving the victims. The higher the Severity, the trickier this tends
to be. Not only will a high Severity Tainted place have more rights to wrong (and thus often more victims to
save), but the events can blur together into a narrative that is more than the sum of its parts, a story of cruelty
that almost seems to adapt to the efforts of those trying to cleanse it, actively thwarting them. Indeed, many
Princesses fervently believe Echoes do just that.
Aside from the Darkspawn monsters and shadowy perpetrators that inhabit these Echoes, would-be
cleansers face another danger: that of being drawn too deeply into the story. Thoughts and memories contrary
to the narrative of the echo begin to fade, buried under intrusive self-recriminations, doubts and fears. It re-
quires effort to convince yourself that what you are seeing is not real, for once you believe it to be real for even
just a moment, it gains power over you. Whenever a character acts in line with the narrative — she pretends
to be another prisoner to avoid a monster’s notice, she fails to rebuff a Darkened treating her like an echo —
she makes a Resolve + Composure roll.
Dramatic Failure: The character utterly forgets herself and is sucked right into the scene around her.
She takes the Nightmare Come Alive Condition, and cannot leave the Nightscape until it is resolved.
Failure: The character’s concentration lapses, and that short moment of weakness is enough for the
Echo. She takes the Nightmare Come Alive Condition.
Success: The character stays focused, and does not forget herself.
Exceptional Success: The character sees the pitiful shadows playing around her for what they really
are; pale imitations only. Armored in her resolve, she is ready for whatever the Echo may throw at her next.
She gains the Steadfast [CofD 291] Condition.
Creatures of the Darkness are immune to this effect. Darkened may willingly take on the role of one of
the perpetrators, in order to make a good resolution harder to reach, but they retain awareness that they are
playing a role.
Example: To cleanse the boarding school of horror, you have to get the bullies to repent
and bring the evil headmaster, who made naughty kids “disappear”, to justice. You enter at the
dorms and talk (or beat, if talk fails) some sense into the bullies. After that, you walk across the
nightscape to get from the bully’s dorm room to the headmaster’s office. Possibly while dodging,
or fighting, echoes of prefects and teachers who think nothing of using corporal punishment to
discipline a “student skipping class. ” The original teachers and students may still be present, now
mutated into monstrous forms and possessing supernatural powers that they will use to defend
their home. If the Taint has stood for a while any manner of monster may have wondered in to
take up residence in a comfortable Nightscape. If the Princesses haven’t investigated the history
of the school they may have to thoroughly explore the Nightscape to find what they need to fix.

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Mazes
When the crimes defining a Tainted place become too diverse to maintain a coherent image, or simply
become so numerous that none of them really stand out above the others anymore, its Echoes may coalesce at
the heart of a new type of Nightscape: a Maze.
Where an Echo is awash with sounds and images endlessly replaying past crimes, Mazes are often eerily
silent. Harsh winds sweep through dusty corridors, doors creak ominously, shadows seem to reach and claw
at those who pass by, and a subtle aroma of rot underpins everything. Underneath this all, a malign presence
broods. Hallways shift to confound intruders, doors lock behind the unwary, and swarms of rats, insects or
churning shadows appear as if out of nowhere to chase invaders from its halls.
Deep within the Maze, its Heart can be found, looking like nothing so much as a cancerous lump made
up of a grotesque collection of icons representing the key crimes committed to form the Tainted place. There
might be manacles used to restrain victims, a replica of a gnashing jaw, a sacrificial knife, or all manners of
torture devices, all sticking out of a misshapen pulsing lump of bloody flesh. While its appearance may not be
reminiscent of a “heart”, the name becomes more appropriate once you know that destroying it will cleanse the
Taint. The destruction itself is generally a pretty simple task: a single point of lethal or aggravated damage is
enough to destroy it; however, actually getting to the Heart tends to be anything but.
A Maze’s power isn’t endless. If it was, it would just block off its Heart completely and be done with it.
Generally, a Maze has enough strength to assail intruders with one obstacle (that takes a scene to overcome) for
each point of Severity it has. It never repeats obstacles of the same type, diversifying instinctively so that if one
of its defences doesn’t prove to be a suitable barrier against the invaders, another one will. These obstacles can
take nearly any form imaginable (and several forms that are altogether unimaginable), from three dimensional
mazes, to harrowing climbs up a ladder made from dangerously hot heating pipes, to air conditioning vents
that release choking fogs to madden intruders, and even to walls that seize and grasp as if the Maze itself were
striking back.
If the Maze has Dawkspawn subsisting inside of it, one or more of the obstacles can be geared towards
assisting the Dawkspawn in dealing with the intruders for the Maze, providing a battlefield that is hindersome
or downright dangerous for the average Princess, Hunter or mortal, but not bothersome to that particular
Dawnspawn breed at all.
All in all, traversing a Maze is a harrowing experience, and few will make it through unscathed.

Lairs
It doesn’t take the touch of the supernatural to create a monster, but supernatural monsters can leave their
mark upon the Taint they create in a way a mere mortal cannot. When a supernatural being inhabits a space,
reworks it to their liking, Taints it through their actions, and continues to frequent the locale, the Nightscape
might form into a Lair.
Lairs are the most curious form of Taint for while they can be purified or purged like any other Tainted place,
cleansing a Lair might not require entering the Nightscape at all. In fact, if the master is not in residence, entering
the Nightscape might not even be an option. The Dark Door is sealed and barred while the master is away, and
if he stays away too long the Nightscape begins to lose coherence, eventually exposing any Darkspawn lurking
there to the unmitigated cold of the Dark World. Cleansing a lair instead requires dealing with the monster that
created it, whether that means destroying a it in battle, convincing it to repent, or even bringing a Slasher to
face justice before the courts.
Of course, if the Taint’s creator makes regular use of the Nightscape, Princesses might have to follow them in
(especially if they spot it dragging along its latest, still living, victim). The Nightscape of a lair warps and reflects
its owner. A serial killer’s lair manifests grizzly trophies and shrines to their victims, past and future, while the
lair of an animalistic Darkspawn might be covered floor to ceiling with claw marks. Within the Nightscape, the
Lair’s master adds its Severity to all their rolls, not just the ones that match one of the Taint’s Aspirations.

Guarded
Whenever a Darkened transforms into a Darkspawn at the same time as they create a new Tainted place,
or increases the Severity of one that isn’t yet Guarded, they may leave their corporeal form behind and merge

272 Tainted Places

with the Nightscape, making it Guarded. No roll is needed for this, making the choice is enough. Tainted places
instinctively wish to be Guarded in this way, and exert a subtle temptation upon Darkspawn to accept the offer,
which is stronger the more bestial the Darkspawn is. Becoming Guarded doesn’t change the Nightscape, it re-
mains an Echo, Maze or Lair, like it was before.
When he merges with the Nightscape, the Guardian receives a number of Shadows dots equal to the Sever-
ity of the Tainted place. These Shadows do not count when measuring if the Guardian can increase Shadows
the normal way. If the Tainted place later grows in Severity, the Guardian gains a new Shadow dot as well. In
addition, the Guardian heals rapidly while inside the Nightscape. At the start of each of its turns, downgrade
the rightmost box of damage in its health track once. A Guardian is not negatively affected by having its health
track filled with bashing or lethal damage (aside from wound modifiers), and when its health track is filled with
aggravated damage, it simply discorporates, losing physical form until its wounds are fully healed and its health
track is empty once more.

Tainted Objects
Taint doesn’t always infect an entire location; a movable object can be Tainted if it was integral to an act
of infamy. Mechanically these Tainted objects work like a Tainted Place of Size 0; anyone holding or touching
the object (gloves are no protection) is treated as though they were standing inside a Tainted place. Naturally
a Tainted object has no Nightscape. Apart from that limitation it can be dealt with in all the same ways as a
Tainted place. As disposing of a simple item is much easier than destroying an entire building most Princesses
just smash any Tainted object they find and call it a day.

Sample Tainted Places

Mary Ann’s Bathtub
After a breakup with her boyfriend of four years Mary Ann ran herself a nice hot bath, poured herself a
glass of wine, and slit her wrists. Four years of emotionally manipulating her vulnerable boyfriend condensed
into one single act, tainting the bathtub. When they came for the body it was cleaned up of course, the tub was
bleached and washed until it gleamed and not a drop of blood remained but cleaning isn’t enough to remove
Taint. If they wanted to do that they should have replaced the tub.
Even to this day, no matter how hot you run the water the porcelain always feels uncomfortably cold against
your flesh. Lying in for a good soak comes with feelings of loss and distance from the people you care about.

Size: 0 (just a bathtub)

Severity: 3
Aspirations: Emotionally abuse someone close to you; Commit suicide.
Nightscape: None; Tainted places acquire a Nightscape at Size 1.

Ellinson Junior High Utility Shed

In 1925, there were repeated instances of students disappearing from the Ellinson Junior High campus.
When the number reached 6, the school was nearly forced to close down, but they finally discovered the school’s
janitor was behind it. Disturbingly, he had kidnapped, sexually assaulted and murdered the girls right on cam-
pus, in his utility shed.
This place was briefly much more powerful, but the police investigation provided symbolic opposition that
partially purified the taint. Unfortunately, today the shed mostly remains as a popular location for students to
sneak a cigarette, or have an illicit tryst. It’s private and out of sight, but the Taint makes things uncomfortable
and clumsy at best; at worst, neither sweetheart is likely to be feeling very good about what the other gets up to.
Usually no one stays long enough to actually risk becoming Tainted themselves, but one repeat truant hid
there just a few too many times. She’s currently running on the rush; being in that shed makes her feel strong

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in a way nothing else ever did. She doesn’t know why, but she knows she can grow the taint and is looking for
ways to do just that.

Size: 1 (the shed’s interior)

Severity: 2
Aspiration: Have emotionally uncomfortable sex.
Nightscape: Echo.

White Picket Lane

White Picket Lane always was a superficial place, a place where appearances counted for more than sub-
stance. Then it turned spiteful. The correct appearances became ever narrower. Those who did not fit in were
passively aggressively driven away. The Taint is mild, but widespread.
Today White Picket Lane doesn’t feel that different from normal. The minor amount of Taint is not enough
to compete with the lovely climate and obsessive cleaning performed by the residents. On the surface the people
would sooner be seen dead as impolite, keeping up appearances is everything; but peel back the surface and
you’ll see that the residents have become embroiled in constant games of one-upmanship, false smiles and social
backstabbing.
White Picket Lane has few Darkspawn but many Darkened, most are in the mold of the Malicious Gossip.

Size: 5 (an entire neighborhood)

Severity: 1
Aspiration: Destroy someone’s trust in another person.
Nightscape: A gravity defying, three dimensional Maze of suburban streets.

Meditech Universal
Meditech Universal started as a hopeful venture, the kind of place that would have any Princess’ full ap-
proval. In its early years, it lead research into many topics which benefit the medical world even today, and
collaborated on a handful of well-known projects. Sadly, the dream was not to last. A string of fruitless projects
and the loss of a governmental grant brought the lab to the brink of financial ruin. Many jumped ship, but the
founding core remained. They worked tirelessly to save the company, but it was never enough. Whenever they
neared a breakthrough, larger organisations like the Cheiron Group released a similar product just weeks before
theirs was ready to go. Eventually, their ideas became more “out there”, their methods more radical. Corners
were cut, and at some point, human rights (and whether or not someone had volunteered to be a test subject)
simply ceased to matter.
The situation devolved rapidly when figuring out ways to dispose of the bodies became a recurring theme,
and eventually the remaining lab members slaughtered one another in a fit of paranoia. All but one, who became
one with the taint. With the lab members having been long estranged from any friends or family in their obses-
sive drive, nobody ever came to check on the remote lab in the woods. The corpses and the Taint are all still
there, waiting for a hapless explorer to wander in and continue the researchers’ bloody work...

Size: 4 (a large medical research facility)

Severity: 5
Aspirations: Steal someone else’s precious work and take credit for it; Kidnap someone and hold them
against their will; Perform questionable medical experiments on someone. (If you’re not scientifically in-
clined, this could amount to just cutting someone open bit by bit to “see how they work”.)
Nightscape: Guarded Echo. Labs full of twisted experimentation are still stalked by the man who just
could not let go.

274 Tainted Places

The Dark World
Beyond the fields we know, just outside the field of vision, in the sins of mankind and the slow rot of entropy,
there is another place. A place where the streets are ruined and the crash of rotting concrete as it falls from
gutted buildings is just a whisper. A place where the sun is a faint red dwarf, barely brighter than the other stars
in the blackened sky, and the moon is a void in the night’s sky which devours light, warping the twisted skies of
this place around it. A place where the air hangs still and chill, where nothing lives and everything rots. A place
where frozen Creatures of the Darkness, bereft of their contaminated life, line the streets, like corpses.
Welcome to the Dark World. Few among the Enlightened have been here more than once, but they feel its
presence. Tainted areas connect to this place, like arterial wounds pumping light to this place, and in such areas,
the Darkness within stirs to light. Its Taint leaks into the world, and in return, the sleeping monsters wake, and
begin to make their way to the real world. This is the main source of Darkspawn - for men and women are not
yet evil enough that they can be made in the numbers which Princesses encounter - and it is the secure bases
used by Mnemosyne cult-leaders and Cataphractoi dark generals. And from within the depths of the Dark World,
Dethroned howl at the blackened sky, the fallen Nobles and near-gods to monsters, and the Darkspawn shiver,
for there are things that even monsters fear.
There are ways to the Dark World. All creatures of the Darkness possess the innate capability to both enter
and leave it. Some of them can grab human men and women, and take them to their place as playthings and
meals; certainly, all can take corpses, meaning that some people are forever lacking closure for a disappeared
loved one. Certain blasphemous rituals and powers can open wider holes, and it is under these circumstances
that a Princess may find herself in this cursed place. But, certainly, it should be understood that the Dark World
is a terrible place, that nevertheless must be acknowledged for it is the source of the most dire threats that the
Enlightened must face.

The Nature of the Dark World

The perpetual bane of Princesses who wish to understand this place is that, as creatures of the Light, they
are not welcome here. Most of the knowledge which has been gathered comes from those who have dabbled in
Lacrima, for it grants the ability to temporarily become a Creature of the Darkness, and that way it is possible to
reach that place. Moreover, defectors from Tears have bought more hard-earned knowledge, from aeons of the
Alhambran attempts to maximize the light they can steal from the world. Some knowledge has also come from
the Queen of Storms, who hates that place in all its manifestations, and teaches her followers ways to cauterize
the wounds in the world which are Taints. Knowledge is scarce, but some facts have been established, which are
generally reliable enough to be used as rules of thumb.
Firstly, in most places, and certainly around Taints, the Dark World looks like the real world, reflected
through a mirror darkly. The worst images of a post-nuclear apocalypse Earth do not equal this place of rot
and cold and damp and decay, but they do at least provide some fuel to the imagination. Imagine your house,
your street, every place you know and love. Now, kill all the plants, and leave their rotting, slimy remains to
smear the frozen earth. Let water pool in very corner and every recess, freeze and melt, freeze and melt, over
and over again, until the damage has cracked and weakened everything once solid. Let the buildings crumple
from neglect, staying just upright enough to endanger those who go in them, and fill the air with the scent of
decay. Make it eternally cold, a cold which bites at the soul and fills one with melancholy. And let it exist like this
forever, always at the end of all things, never quite permitted to end. Around a Taint, things are lighter, warmer,
less soul-crushing. And that’s where the Dark’s monsters are awake.
This is the Dark World, even before the more supernatural elements are bought in. And those are there en
masse. Outside of Taints, all the worst Dark-tainted dregs of humanity sleep, dead, undreaming, for even Crea-
tures of the Darkness cannot survive in this hellish place. It is a massacre of monsters, the hunting dogs of the
Darkness betrayed by it, too. Sometimes fogs of Darkness come down from the void of the moon, and rot and
corrode everything they touch, leaving empty scars on the landscape behind them. Sometimes Dethroned - who,
alone, perhaps due to their former connection to the Light, can wake sometimes - pass through, and the Dark-
spawn are twisted into the figments of their insane dreams, along with the landscape. Sometimes everything
freezes and the air snows down, in a moment of bitter purity, for the frozen air rots and melts almost as soon
as it reaches the ground. And then there are the Other places, drifting through the sky and through the land,

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which do not mimic the world as we know it, but may be something that the Darkness is digesting. Some say
that they’re remnants of the Kingdom. Other say that they’re other worlds. And as one gets further from the
nearest Taint, things get stranger. More viscous, as if the world is melting. Maybe the Dark World is only a real
place when it leeches light, but if that’s true, where do the Darkspawn sleep when a Taint is not around?
Some Princesses have claimed that this is the future, this is what the world will be like just before the
Darkness wins. Even if they’re not right, it’s a good metaphor, at least.

The Nobility in the Dark World

Entering the Dark World is almost suicide for most things. Even Creatures of the Darkness must cling to
areas around Taints, if they wish to retain agency and free will, monsters huddling around a campfire. Mortals
are doomed. But sometimes the Nobility find themselves in this place, and a few points should be noted.
Firstly, the Dark World is dangerous. This has been said before, but it bears repeating. It is not the Dream-
lands which, for all that they were intended as a trap, have an allure and an elegance and a certain safety to
them. They are not even like the stranger otherworlds which some Embassies can reach, for even in the place
of the spirits that the members of the Ephemeral Embassy can reach, not everything is a foe. In the Dark World,
everything, without exception, wants you dead. Even the world will seem to contort to kill a Noble within it,
roads collapsing and buildings crumbling on their heads. Away from a Taint-lightened area, the entire World
steals energy from every living thing in it, imposing the Extreme Taint Tilt. And that ties into the second point,
which is…
Secondly, they know where you are. Technically, this isn’t quite true. Technically, it is merely the presence
of the Transformed self which alerts the creatures of the Darkness in the Dark World. However, as previously
noted, given that everything around you wants you dead, going unTransformed is not an option for anyone but
the most subtle and sneaky of the Nobility. Moreover, evidence suggests that, although it is not a common thing,
the mere proximity of a Transformed self for extended periods can wake the Darkspawn in an area, like a Taint
does. Therefore, the Noble can be tracked like a beacon of Light by the things that are awake and so will face
frequent attack, but they cannot rest, for resting will wake more Creatures. This gives it a feel like a survival
horror film, with a depth and intensity few of the Enlightened will have felt before.
Thirdly, it’s hard to get to, and can be hard to escape. The borders of Nightscapes fade into the Dark World
proper, for they’re embedded in it and coalesced out of it. But finding the Dark Door between a Nightscape and
the Tainted area it reflects is tricky in all but the smallest Taints, and navigating a Nightscape carries its own
perils. This means, if you’re diving into a single, known, Taint to rescue someone, it can be possible, for the
Darkspawn will tend to stay within the Taint, as to remain active. But Mnemosyne and Cataphractoi are smarter,
and if they take someone - often as a lure - they won’t just keep them in the obvious Taint. They’ll move them,
force Darkspawn to freeze to death to set up a position in one of the areas away from a Taint.
Why would anyone go there? That’s a very good question. Some among the Enlightened hold that there is
never a good reason to go there. Ever. Even if a loved one is taken, at least they will probably die quickly. Most
cannot be so cold-hearted. And that is the most common reason by far; rescues, which all too often turn into
revenge when they find the person already dead. Some believe that there are secrets within the Darkness, a way
to destroy Alhambra - which hides within the Heart of the Darkness, lost Queens trapped in the Dark World,
secrets, even the remnants of the other cities in the Kingdom which it too so long ago. And to date, few of those
explorers have returned alive, and even fewer with anything worth the losses to them and their hollow eyes.
The Darkness has such places. Let it keep them, and concentrate on stopping it taking anything else.

Creatures of Darkness
“By my honor, I can’t recall the last time I was in a fight like that! No moral ambiguity, no
hopeless battle against ancient and overwhelming forces! They were the bad guys, we were the
good guys, and they made a very satisfying sizzle when they felt my light.”

The creatures that live in Darkness, and emerge from Tainted Places hunting for scraps of light and warmth,
were once creatures of flesh and blood; many were men and women. The infection that comes of staying in

276 Creatures of Darkness

a Tainted place twists mortals out of the human shape, and tempts them with offers of occult power if they
consent to being twisted farther.

Systems
All creatures of the Darkness share some abilities, and a few weaknesses. A Dark being’s Virtue is greatly
weakened, and he feels called to exemplify his Vice, as normal people are called to fulfill their Virtue. He may
regain only one Willpower point by fulfilling his Virtue, though he may do so once a scene and without risk to
himself. In addition, he may regain Willpower from Vice in the same way, and may regain all Willpower once
per session by fulfilling his Vice with an act of great depravity. Anything that would be a breaking point for a
mundane character is likely to qualify for a full refresh of a Dark being’s spent Willpower.
When another suffers from a Dark being’s acts, or those of his intimates, the Darkness’ grip on him tightens,
and its presence offers him power. The character has a form of Sensitivity, and rolls it under the same conditions
that the Hopeful do. Unlike others with Sensitivity, his base pool is 0 dice, and he never takes a Condition from a
Haunting, but he gains a dot of Shadows if he rolls more successes than his current Shadows rating or achieves
an exceptional success.
Most Dark beings have ceased to think or feel as humans do, and wholly lack the Integrity trait or any
equivalent. They have no breaking points and are capable of doing anything without turning a hair. Those Dark
beings who do retain Integrity lose the trait if they fail a breaking point roll at Integrity 1.
A Dark being’s flesh cannot bear the touch of jade. He takes 1 lethal damage per turn as long as a piece of
jade is in contact with his body.
A Dark being knows a Tainted area for what it is the moment he enters one, and can estimate the depth
of its corruption. As an instant action, he may learn the Severity rating of the place he’s in and the Size of the
area affected. (The same sense allows him to recognize Blessed Places and assess their Size and Beauty, though
Dark beings prefer to avoid those.)

Entering Darkness
In the long ages since the Kingdom fell, the Darkness has bled a great deal of substance out of the world
we know; and while most of it has been consumed, and is gone past recall, the part that remains uneaten still
keeps the general shape of the world it came from. In the annals of Alhambra, this crepuscular otherworld is
named “the Lost Provinces”; the Radiant Hopeful who know of it just call it the Dark World. Only Darkspawn
subsist there (you can’t say they live there, really) but when they stand in a Tainted place, any creature of the
Darkness can go there, and return.
For a Dark creature, crossing between a Tainted area and its Nightscape is an instant action; he rolls
Willpower + the Severity of the Tainted area.
Dramatic Failure: The Taint rejects the Dark being. He cannot cross between this Tainted area and its
Nightscape, even through the Dark Door, under his own power for a full day.
Failure: The Dark being fails to cross. Subsequent attempts in the current scene take a cumulative -2
penalty.
Success: The Dark being fades into or emerges from the Nightscape, going to the point in his destination
corresponding to his starting point. Anything he is wearing or carrying travels with him, except for other
intelligent beings.
Exceptional Success: The Taint welcomes the Dark being and feeds him energy. He regains a point of
Willpower.

Darkened
Darkened are the earliest form of Darkspawn. They are still human, but infected by the Darkness. The Taint
flowing through a Darkened’s veins dulls virtuous thoughts and transmutes cruelties into fine delights. As the
Darkened sinks further into depravity the Taint grows, warping their mind and body. Yet until the final moment

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the Darkened remains a human infected by Taint, and infections can be cured. This infection of Darkness is
represented by the Darkened Condition.

Dark Warping
The Darkness offers those in its grasp opportunities to gain power by sacrificing their consciences, their
connections to uncorrupted humanity, and in some cases their bodily integrity. When a character with the Dark-
ened Condition loses an Integrity dot from a breaking point, he must choose the manner of his alienation. Ei-
ther the Darkness corrupts his flesh, granting him an Umbra, a strange ability combined with a drawback that
isolates him from the unDarkened; or it enters his mind to corrupt his conscience, partly destroying his sense
of right and wrong.
In the latter case, the Darkness takes from the character the perception that certain events are morally
wrong or unnatural; one of the character’s breaking points ceases to disturb him. As long as he remains Dark-
ened he never reaches a breaking point from that specific cause. Usually the Darkness removes the breaking
point that made the character lose Integrity, but not always - it will never, for example, remove a breaking point
caused by learning or using Caligines. A character’s moral code, or willingness to accept social restraints, will
be undermined before his belief in a rational universe, unless the latter is strongly assaulted. Finally, although
the character is proof against one psychic injury, the rest of his mind has been dangerously weakened. For each
breaking point the Darkness has removed, the character takes a -1 penalty on all other breaking point rolls (to
a maximum of -5.)
The full price of Umbrae comes due when a Darkened character either frees himself of the Condition, or
loses the last scrap of his soul to Darkness. On resolving the Darkened Condition, each Umbra a character has
instantly converts into a point of aggravated damage. Characters with Umbrae (even one Umbra) who lose their
last dot of Integrity die the next time they sleep. Their bodies, suffused with Darkness, decay swiftly, becoming
variously desiccated, putrefied, or transformed to a black ectoplasm. Within a day, the corpse reanimates and
becomes a new Darkspawn; this creature has all the traits of the dead (and the same character sheet) but, as a
rule, is bestial, unable to form a connected train of thought.

Darkspawn
The commonest fate of a Darkened character is to become a Darkspawn. Vicious beings whose minds have
been eroded by the Darkness until they are little more than beasts driven by cruel sadistic instincts. The Dark-
spawn are by far the most common creature of the Darkness for the stronger and more intelligent varieties are
rare, and the Darkened are, sadly, often just a brief transitional state between an innocent human and a Dark-
spawn. Most Darkspawn search out Tainted areas, haunt them, and try to drag others into them, or else stalk
the people they knew in life.
Darkspawn have the powers and weaknesses of creatures of the Darkness. As animalistic creatures Dark-
spawn calculate Defense from the higher of Wits and Dexterity.

Mnemosyne
More dangerous creatures of the Darkness than the animalistic Darkspawn do exist. One such are the
Mnemosyne; these are Darkened who reach Integrity 0 without gaining a single Umbra. Their bodies have not
shifted to welcome in the Darkness, so they retain their lives and intellects. While not Darkspawn themselves,
they can organize and direct the Darkspawn; and being utterly without scruple, they invariably direct their
minions to commit acts of monstrous depravity.
As the most human creatures of the Darkness Mnemosyne often specialize in manipulation, many live on
Earth preferring to sow suffering in their own quiet way. The reason is simple, they retain enough of their former
selves to yearn for the luxuries of Earth (even as they work to corrupt everything they desire) and for all that
a Mnemosyne delights in its supernatural abilities, it knows that against the Radiant it is unlikely to survive a
direct fight. And so it hides, and it spreads its Taint through cults and subtle manipulations.
While Mnemosyne have no Umbrae, their warped minds do connect them to the Darkness, and nearly all
of them draw on this connection to gain dreadful supernatural abilities, the Caligines. What’s worse, they are

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able to train other creatures of the Darkness in these techniques. It’s dismayingly common for a Mnemosyne to
found a cult that teaches people to meditate for hours in Tainted areas, thus Darkening them, and then teach
the new Darkened Caligines and send them off to use them.
Mnemosyne have the powers and weaknesses of creatures of the Darkness.

Cataphractoi
Cataphractoi (singular; Cataphract) are intelligent creatures of the Darkness, above the bestial Darkspawn
in comprehension, and sometimes mistaken by the ill-informed for a Mnemosyne. Indeed, those who have only
encountered Darkspawn before tend to conflate the two, because they are both intelligent, albeit in a warped
manner. However, their origins are rather different. A Cataphract does not need to have been a man or woman
tainted by the Darkness. Instead, a human must come to accept, in their heart of hearts, that despair is better
than hope, that the evil of men is all that humanity can ever aspire to, and that there is nothing of value in the
world. Too often, these are the people who have seen the horrors of the world and who have nothing to live for.
If hell is the absence of light, of goodness, of anything worthwhile… then these people know hell. And if they die
in that state - and sometimes they will just lie down and cease to breathe - then, sometimes, at the moment of
death, their soul inverts and all the horror and emptiness and cold and silence of the Darkness comes rushing
into this empty soul, and a new Cataphract opens their eyes, the space behind their eyes flooded with the void.
There are Cataphractoi who are aware of how they form, and will take people and subject them to tortures to
break them, just so they reach that empty point.
Initially, they appear like the human they once were (although many acquire inhuman traits as time passes),
save for the fact that, if one holds their gaze too long, their pupils appear to writhe, as if something was trying
to get out. In a feat of irony, the Cataphract clings to the memories and recollections that the human rejected,
because it is aware, at an instinctual level, that they are all that distinguish them from the formlessness of the
Outer Darkness. As a result, they display a painful mockery of their former behavior, a simulacrum that would
be pathetic if it were not the fact that it’s a monster collecting tiny model soldiers and painting them, or who has
their ex chained up in the “marital home” in the Dark World that she dragged him to. It’s pathetic because… they
don’t get it. The tiny model soldiers are painted in clashing colors and the Cataphract will use blood if they can’t
get their hands on paint (or, frequently, because all their paint has dried up because they couldn’t remember to
close the lids); the “lovely home” that she cleans over and over again is in the Dark World, and so the mildew-
soaked carpet won’t come clean no matter how much she scrubs. Despite all this, it means that they can… well,
not function, per se, in society, but they can at least walk down the street without mauling people to death, and
possess higher level thought and planning, which means that more than one Princess has dubbed them “the
Generals of the Darkness”. And that is something that must not be forgotten; they may be the hollow shells of
what were once men and women, but now they are only creatures of the Darkness.
Cataphractoi have access to both Caligines and Umbrae, and invariably possess Subsumed by Another Shad-
ow, dominating every Darkspawn they encounter. In addition, flooded as they are with the Outer Darkness,
they possess the capacity to shed the limits of human form imposed by their false memories, in a sort of “false
Transformation”. While a Transformed Princess is still human, with only a veiling illusion preventing others
from seeing her as she is, no such condition applies to the Cataphractoi, and their forms plumb the depths of
monstrosity. Dark-skulled, two-headed hellhounds the size of a car, silhouettes of walking void, spectral blots
of stillness and silence; all of these can be forms that a Cataphract might take. A Cataphract’s transformation
is an instant action, and lasts for the rest of the scene. The transformation grants it transformed dots, Umbrae,
and Caligines that it does not normally possess; usually these powers add to its combat prowess. The transfor-
mation is trying for them and their mimicry of humanity, though; it costs them a dot of Willpower. A Cataphract
recovers one Willpower dot lost in transformation after a full month without using that power.
Cataphractoi have the powers and weaknesses of creatures of the Darkness.

Merit: Dark Palace (•-•••••)

Not all touched by the Dark can hide themselves among the mortals who live in the light lit world.
Some Mnemosyne can blend in, but few Cataphractoi can hide the Darkness in their eyes for long. Certainly
Darkspawn can’t pass as normal and even Darkened occasionally have to flee when their tainted vices attract
too much attention.

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 With the need to hide deep within the Dark World it’s unsurprising that occasionally the Darkness’
pitiful victims like to tidy the place up just a little bit. This is usually basic, if that, few touched by the Darkness
really have the mindset for long term DIY projects. However some Mnemosyne or Cataphractoi have learned
to twist the Dark World, replacing the tumbled down reflection of the real world with something entirely
different - occasionally even pleasant looking on the surface.
A Dark Palace can only be built beneath a Tainted place and has a Size no larger than the Tainted place
on the Sanctuary scale, at least if its builders want to be able to live in it. The dots in the Merit set the area
that the character has claimed, again on the Sanctuary scale.
Special: Trust does not come easily to the Darkspawn, but when it does it is possible to build a shared
Dark Palace, with each member contributing Merit dots towards the Palace.
Any character with a Dark Palace can apply the Safe Place Merit [CofD 54] to the Dark Palace to protect
it from other Darkspawn who might try to occupy it without leave. This does not defend the Dark Palace
from creatures of Darkness entering the Palace from the world of light; to do that, Safe Place must be taken
again, applied to the Tainted area above the Dark Palace.

Umbrae
The following list of Umbrae should not be taken as comprehensive; the Darkness has many ways to distort
its servants. Each Umbra confers a benefit, balanced by a drawback.
If an Umbra opposes another supernatural power, the character’s dice pool for the Clash of Wills equals
his Shadows.

Animate Shadow
The character’s shadow develops a mind of its own and serves them as a familiar. The shadow is treated
as an ephemeral being (though not of the types in the Chronicles of Darkness book) with the following traits.

Rank: 1
Power: lowest of the character’s Intelligence, Strength and Presence
Finesse: lowest of the character’s Wits, Dexterity and Manipulation
Resistance: lowest of the character’s Resolve, Stamina and Composure
Size: The character’s
Influence: Shadows 1
Numina: Innocuous, Telekinesis (appears as the shadow reaching for the thing it moves)
Manifestations: Twilight Form, Discorporate
Max Essence: 10
Ban: The shadow will indulge the character’s Vice whenever an opportunity offers. Being a shadow it is
limited but makes up for that by stooping to rather petty acts. The shadow of a greedy man will swipe loose
change. The shadow of a lusty woman will take any opportunity to pinch a cute hunk’s bum. The character
may roll Composure as an instant action to restrain the shadow - it will do nothing for one turn per success.
Bane: Direct sunlight, when the shadow is out of its natural position.

The shadow cannot speak. Its default shape is a silhouette of the character. It moves by crawling along
the ground or across the walls, but always remains attached to the character’s feet. It regains 1 Essence per
day from its attachment to the character, and 1 Essence when the character does something that can create
Taint. If damaged to the point of losing all its Corpus, the shadow hibernates in the character’s body, invisible
to everyone.

280 Creatures of Darkness

 Drawback: The character has a shadow that commits petty sins and impertinences unless strictly watched,
or (if the thing was discorporated) casts no shadow at all, which will draw notice.

Cold Flesh
The character’s skin turns cold, as if they have poor circulation. They are now immune to all penalties from
extreme cold, and will not suffer damage from it, no matter how low the temperature gets.
Drawback: The sun’s touch is now painful against their chilled skin. Being in direct sunlight is now an
extreme environment for the character [CofD 97] at a level equal to their current Shadows, to a maximum of
4. Strong suncream and clothing that wraps one’s whole body serve as survival gear against sunlight, reducing
the effective level.

Corruption of Blood
The character’s blood, spittle and sweat are laced with necrotic fluids. He need only touch someone bare-
handed to inflict a moderate Sick Tilt [CofD 286]; if he injures someone with his natural weapons (even bashing
damage) he inflicts a grave Sick Tilt. Moreover, when the Sick Tilt ends (or immediately, outside of combat)
an infectee must roll Stamina + Resolve, penalized by the character’s Shadows (for a moderate sickness) or
his Shadows + Stamina (for a grave one) once an hour to avoid taking lethal damage equal to the character’s
Shadows, a number of times equal to the character’s Stamina.
Drawback: The character’s fluids are always necrotic. He cannot touch anyone without infecting them.

Faceless in the Crowd

The Darkness begins to subsume the character’s identity. People just ignore them. All individuals are at -3
to even notice them, and must roll Intelligence + Composure each time they want to remember them, failure
producing a description of “Well… he… I think it was a he… was sort of tall? Maybe?” Mechanical and electronic
records are not affected.
Drawback: This applies to all rolls to notice or remember the character … not just their present life, but
their past deeds, before they gained this Umbra. Childhood friends forget their names, old acquaintances don’t
recognize their faces, neighbors are startled on noticing them in a home they’ve owned for years.

Grip Onto Your Fear

The flimsiest Darkspawn’s grip can become the unheeding grasp of death once it locks its palm around you,
and woe to the ones who panic, for the darkness feeds off of their despair. When the character is in a grapple, he
gains a +2 bonus to the Hold and Restrain moves. Against an opponent with the Shaken Condition, the bonus is
+3. In actions that involve gripping an object, the character gains a +1 bonus, and attempts to remove an object
from his grasp take a -1 penalty.
Drawback: The character’s hands, while normal to the eye, are repulsive to the touch. His palm could al-
ways be sticky with sweat, rough as if covered in wood chips or cold as ice. Only thick gloves can stop the sen-
sation of disgust in those he touches. In any Social rolls against a person the character has ever put a hand on,
he suffers a -2 penalty; in social maneuvers against such people, the character must open one extra Door.

Hollow as a Shadow
The character becomes hollow and empty within, with effort they can twist themselves to become hollow
and empty without as well. The character may shift into or out of Twilight. They roll Stamina + Composure as
an instant action to shift between the two states. It is not uncommon for Darkspawn with this Umbra to forget
how to become solid.
Drawback: When you’re hollow you’re hollow. The character always feels unsubstantial, like they have
little to offer and don’t belong. In any stressful social situation where others are not directly paying attention to
them, such as preparing to enter an interview room, the character must roll Composure; on a failure they shift
into Twilight and must remain there for the rest of the scene.

Creatures of Darkness 281

Hunger Means Nothing
The character is immune to deprivation from dehydration or hunger. They no longer need to eat, nor drink;
though they can, they gain no benefit from it, nor do they taste anything.
Drawback: Quite apart from the fact that they can never eat again, the character wastes away. They reduce
their Health by one box, and look too thin, like a cancer patient, or (some more cynical Princesses might remark)
a top fashion model.

Light is Dark
The character’s eyes transform; he now sees by the absence of light. Complete darkness is for him what
bright light is for normal people, and he suffers no penalty from low light.
Drawback: Contrariwise, bright light is to him what complete darkness is for normal people - the character
is blind when directly illuminated, and takes penalties for any task that requires looking at things that give off
light. Characters with this Umbra are forced into a largely nocturnal existence.

Miasma of Madness
The character exudes a colorless, odorless mist with a radius of Presence + Shadows. Anyone breathing in
the mist must make a Resolve + Composure roll or spend a Willpower point to prevent the mist from clouding
their mind. Any one affected suffers from the Insane Tilt [CofD 285] for the rest of the scene.
Drawback: The character is not immune to the mist. They must make the same roll or spend a Willpower
point every scene, or gain the Insane Tilt.

Roteater
The character can eat anything, up to and including broken glass, and will suffer no more than one point of
bashing damage as the “food” goes down. Anything less resilient than metal will be digested; things undigested
will be passed, again causing no more than 1 point of bashing damage. They also receive one dot of the Hardy
Merit for free, ignoring the normal prerequisites for it.
Drawback: Of course, with such a universal diet, one can always have… preferences. In this case, when-
ever they are hungry or thirsty, the character must succeed on a (Resolve + Composure) roll or else spend 1
Willpower not to eat any rotting meat or drink any stagnant, dirty water they see. They suffer a penalty on this
roll equal to the Size of the rotting meat. Darkspawn with this Umbra almost always have Grotesque Bulk, and
tend to make themselves larders of hung corpses (which need not be human; the first sign may well be all the
pets going missing) in case they get peckish.

Scuttling Spider’s Sense

The character becomes hypersensitive to sounds and changes in air-pressure, so sensitive that he gains a
limited kind of precognition. He can’t be surprised [CofD 88] and applies his Defense against Firearms attacks.
Drawback: People move constantly in a hundred small ways, every twitch, every breath could be a threat
and the character can’t keep up with all of them. When in the same room with more people than their Composure
the character starts to get panicky. After Resolve minutes he takes the Terrified Condition, with other people as
the source of his fear. Other creatures of the Darkness don’t trigger this blind panic and are never the source of
the Condition (though objectively they’re far more likely to be dangerous to the character!)

Sound of Silence
The character’s hearing becomes exceptionally acute. They gain +3 to all hearing-based Perception rolls.
Drawback: So acute, in fact, that they are deafened by their own voice. They cannot speak above the level
of a soft whisper. This, as might be guessed, makes day-to-day life rather hard. They cannot drive a motorcycle,
or attend concerts while in this state. Should they go to a supermarket, they must use the self-checkout, to avoid
clamorous small talk with the girl at the checkout counter.

282 Creatures of Darkness

Subsumed by Another Shadow
Whenever the character comes within (Willpower + number of Umbrae) yards of a Darkspawn, he reflex-
ively and automatically rolls Presence + Resolve, contested by the Resolve + Composure of the Darkspawn. The
character makes this roll separately for each Darkspawn he meets, but no more often than once a scene. If the
character gets more successes, the Darkspawn believes him to be its natural superior, and will seek to protect
him as best it can, and gratify what it thinks are his desires. It will continue to do so until it has been separated
from the character for (Willpower + number of Umbrae) hours; after that, it forgets the character’s existence.
The character can try to give his servant an order as an instant action; the dice pool is Presence + Compo-
sure, and the order can have no more than (successes) conditions (so, “Break the light” is one, while “Break the
light outside” is two.) By default, a Darkspawn servant will also use all its powers/abilities to prevent others
from seeing it, but it will break cover if an order requires it. The one order it won’t obey is to leave and not return.
Drawback: Of course, most people don’t really want vicious Darkness-beasts following them around. Dark-
spawn servants consistently assume that their master wants them to do harm, and will kill or wreck anything
that seems to be an obstacle, or even inconvenience, for him. Any expression of dislike for somebody, even for a
trivial reason (being pushed aside by a passing stranger, say) might inspire the Darkspawn to deliver his severed
head to the character’s doorstep. In addition, most Darkspawn aren’t the prettiest of things, and being followed
by monsters that don’t seem to show themselves to others is quite nasty on the psyche.
Darkspawn that possess this Umbrae are immune to its effects; they are not going to serve another, and
will often attack anyone or anything else which possesses it. Moreover, they seem prone to retaining a wor-
rying cunning quite unlike human intelligence; the limited use of language (enough to call out “help me” in a
normal voice while trying to lure someone in), tactics (send weaker ones to make a noise outside while it and
the stronger ones it controls come in through the roof), and the ability to control other Darkspawn make them
notably more dangerous, especially since there is no way, on sight, to tell them apart.

Subtle Tongue
Devious cunning becomes easy for the character, as the nothingness and antipathy for form of the Darkness
enters through the mouth. All Manipulation-based rolls, except for activations of supernatural powers, are at
+1; this is increased to +3 if the character is lying.
Drawback: Correspondingly, forthright openness becomes hard. All Presence-based rolls, again except for
activations of supernatural powers, lose the 10-again quality; on a dramatic failure, targets become convinced
that the character is lying to them.

Tainted Allure of Vice

There is something… fascinating about the character which calls to mortal souls; a sick, degrading allure to
its presence which draws others closer. The character gains the Striking Looks •• Merit [CofD 54] as the entire
way they move, speak, act becomes attractive, even if they do not change much physically. Darkspawn with this
Umbra retain some allure and do not become ugly, instead gaining a beauteous depravity in their inhumanity.
Drawback: … and it brings out the worst in others, for it is a guilty pleasure that wracks at the soul. At the
time of purchase, the character chooses a Vice (Cruel, Treacherous, and Violent work well here.) As soon as the
bonus dice from the Umbra apply to a Social roll against a person, that person gains the Vice-Ridden Condition
with the chosen Vice (if that is already their Vice, there is no effect). The Vice gives Willpower only if indulging it
harms, subjugates, or degrades the character in some way; for nearly everyone this behavior will be a breaking
point. In packs of Darkspawn, ones with this Umbra are right at the bottom of the pack, because they suffer the
indignities of their “peers” just as much as they had in life.

Thief’s Touch
The character’s fingers are quicker and more nimble, subtly guiding the character in dark deeds. All Dexter-
ity-based rolls to get into places without being detected, bypass security systems, or make a convincing forgery
gain the 8-again quality.

Creatures of Darkness 283

 Drawback: The character is always the first to be suspected of any wrong doing, even if he made a clean
getaway or is innocent.

Caligines
The Darkened and creatures of the Darkness can choose to twist themselves even farther, drawing on the
Darkness for supernatural powers, the Caligines. Each Caligo is rated in dots from 1 to 5; to learn a Caligo a
character spends 2 Experiences per dot. While a Darkened character still has Integrity, learning any Caligo is a
breaking point with a -5 penalty, and using many of them is also a breaking point - the descriptions note which.
(Naturally this is an issue only for Darkened characters.)
Several Caligines are so simple to learn that a Darkened person can acquire them spontaneously when the
Darkness cracks his soul. In what follows these Caligines are tagged with the keyword Umbra. Characters may
take a Caligo with this keyword as an Umbra; this lowers its rating by 1 dot, and makes it into a permanent,
costless feature of the character, accompanied by a drawback.
If a Caligo opposes another supernatural power, the character’s dice pool for the Clash of Wills equals his
Shadows + the Caligo’s rating.

Variable-dot Caligines
Dark Dreams (•-•••, Umbra)
Action: Full turn
Dice pool: Wits + Shadows
Cost: Forgo Willpower gain from sleep
Duration: One night’s sleep
The Darkness is everywhere there is sin or vice or absence, and some of this knowledge is fed into the
character’s brain. When they go to sleep, the character may forgo regaining Willpower to receive an oracular
dream. The results of the Caligo are identical to those of the White Rabbits Merit at an equal number of dots,
though the dream has nothing to do with the Dreamlands.
Umbra: The dreams come unwillingly, and every night. As a result, the character never regains Willpower
from sleeping again.

Diminutive Size (•, ••• or •••••, Umbra)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Unrolled
Cost: 1 Willpower
Duration: 1 scene
The character twists and shrinks, often becoming animalistic or insectoid. At 1 dot, the character becomes
Size 4; at 3 dots, he becomes Size 3; at 5 dots he becomes Size 2. See the table in Size Changes for the modifiers
the character’s new Size applies to his traits.
Umbra: The character’s Size is permanently reduced, and the modifiers from this always apply. People
will often treat the character as a child or (at 5 dots) a talking doll, and many tools built for adult humans are
unusable. A Darkspawn with this Caligo often shows more animal cunning than the simple brutality of its peers
by virtue of Darwinian necessity. Many seek powerful protectors like Cataphractoi or Mnemosynes and earn
their keep as spies or scouts.

284 Creatures of Darkness

Encacogen (••-••••)
Action: Instant and resisted
Dice pool: Shadows + Occult - local Gauntlet Strength or target's Resolve
Cost: 1 Willpower, breaking point at -2
Duration: 1 scene
The Darkness within a Tainted area doesn't just eat away at the material world; it reaches into the world's
spiritual shadow as well, giving birth to spirits of special malevolence. The character has learned to open a road
into that twisted image of a Tainted place and bring forth ephemeral allies to the cause of spreading hatred,
misery and despair.
At two dots, the character may enact a ritual (taking at least 10 minutes) that makes a passage between
a Tainted area and its reflection in the Shadow, creating the Shadow Gate Condition [CofD 136] at the site of
the ritual. The ritual will work only in a Tainted area, for it blends the Dark World with both realms to weaken
the Gauntlet.
At three dots, the character learns a variation of the previous ritual that exposes a person or object to the
influence of the spirits that attend a Tainted area. Like its predecessor the ritual works only in a Tainted area.
A successful use inflicts the Open Condition [CofD 134] on its target, attuned to any spirits that have a natural
Resonance with the area it was performed in. The Condition fades when the scene ends, unless the spirit applies
a Manifestation that locks it in place.
At four dots, the character knows how to consign his target to an evil spirit, and fuse the two into a single
supernatural creature. The ritual to expose a person or object may now inflict the Controlled Condition [CofD
133] on top of Open, allowing a spirit to Claim the target immediately.

Grotesque Bulk (•, ••• or •••••, Umbra)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Unrolled
Cost: 1 Willpower
Duration: 1 scene
The character swells and bloats, becoming gigantic. This Caligo increases the Size of those who use it; the
1-dot version adds 1 to Size, the 3-dot version adds 2, and the 5-dot version adds 3. See the table in Size Changes
for the modifiers the character’s new Size applies to his traits.
Grotesque Bulk and Diminutive Size are not compatible - a character cannot use both at once.
Umbra: The character’s Size is permanently increased, and the modifiers from this always apply. The char-
acter has problems getting through doors and standing up in normal rooms; clothing has to be custom tailored.

Loathsome Weapon (•-•••••, Umbra)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Unrolled
Cost: 1 Willpower
Duration: 1 scene
The character can transform a part of his body into a lethal weapon - his mouth grows into a muzzle full of
fangs, or his fingers stiffen into knife-like claws. At 1 dot the altered body part is a lethal weapon with 0 Damage;
each dot after the first enlarges the body part further, and adds 1 to its Damage. The altered part is razor-sharp,
and has the Armor Piercing quality at a level equal to the Caligo dots. The character need not grapple to attack
with the altered part, even if that would be necessary before the alteration (as bites often are.) A character may
take multiple Loathsome Weapons, with each one affecting a different part of his body. The body part cannot
be used for anything but attacking foes while it is changed: a character with a changed mouth cannot speak
intelligibly, one with changed hands cannot grasp or manipulate objects. The body part reverts to its normal
shape at the end of the scene.

Creatures of Darkness 285

 Umbra: The body part is permanently altered and never changes back.

Night Air (•-•••••)

Requires Corruption of Blood
Action: Full turn and contested
Dice pool: Presence + Shadows vs. Stamina + Resolve
Cost: 1-5 Willpower, breaking point at -3
Duration: Indefinite
In the past people feared the dark itself just as they feared what it may hide. They believed it the source of
illnesses, the pathogens striving in the absence of light. With the advances of modern science, they were proven
wrong… or perhaps their fears held some merit after all, for some Darkspawn bring plague wherever they go,
and where they have gone, no shade or evening is safe.
The character releases the necrosis in his blood and sweat into infectious vapors that spread throughout a
darkened area. Everyone who breathes the vapors must contest the Caligo. The character affects an area with
a Sanctuary rating up to the number of Willpower points he spends to activate Night Air, and may spend points
up to the dots he has gained in the Caligo.
Dramatic Failure: The character is infected by his own necrosis. He immediately takes the grave Sick
Tilt, and must roll to resist the disease just as anyone whom he infects must.
Failure: The vapors produce nothing more than an upset stomach or runny nose in the infected.
Success: Anyone failing the contest is infected by the character’s necrosis, as if he had touched them.
Exceptional Success: Those whom the vapors infect suffer as if the character had attacked them.
The vapors remain infectious just as long as the area where the character released them is unlit; in any
well-lit place they denature and dissipate instantly. (Thus, if the character is illuminated, Night Air does nothing
whatsoever.) Also, the vapors cannot pass through an airtight seal or an illuminated area. Each person exposed
to the vapors rolls only once to resist them, whether infected or not.

Shadowblade (•-•••••)
Action: Instant and resisted
Dice pool: Crafts + dots in Shadowblade - levels of Shadow-Worked
Cost: 0 or 2 Willpower, breaking point at -1
Duration: indefinite
If he can feel the Dark World, the character may imbue Darkness into an object to make it an instrument
of pain, or bend shadows around his will into a weapon. The character must be able to Enter Darkness where
he currently is to use this Caligo. The character can work on any object up to Size 5 that he can easily carry;
or, if he has nothing he wants to remake, he may spend 2 Willpower to conjure a dagger out of shadows and
the local Taint.
The Caligo uses the rules for the Build Equipment action [CofD 101-103] except that the equipment bonus
is a number of levels of the Shadow-Worked Condition applied to the object. Also, each level of that Condition
weakens a material object, removing 1 point of Structure. If an object is down to its last point of Structure
the Caligo cannot be used on it. A knife made of shadow and Taint has Structure equal to its levels of Shad-
ow-Worked, but 0 Durability.

Vile Gobbets (•, ••, ••• or •••••)

Action: Reflexive
Dice pool: Unrolled
Cost: 1+ Willpower
Duration: 1 scene

286 Creatures of Darkness

 The character grows a new organ within his body that produces missiles to hurl at his foes. The form the
missiles take varies; acidic spittle, tumorous growths that tear off, and hardened feces have all been reported.
The character reflexively spends 1 Willpower to activate his organ; he may spend more Willpower at any time
to increase the Damage his missiles do. Each missile is an aerodynamic thrown weapon of Size 1 that breaks into
powder or goo when it hits. Each point of Willpower the character spends on this Caligo adds 1 to his missiles’
Damage, up to his Shadows dots - that is, after 1 Willpower the missiles are Damage 1, after 2 Willpower they
upgrade to Damage 2, and so on. The organ shuts down when the scene ends.
Dots in the Caligo set the organ’s productivity. At 1 dot it makes a few missiles each turn, enough for a short
burst at most. At 2 dots the organ makes enough missiles for a medium burst, or covering fire. At 3 dots it makes
enough for a long burst. At 5 dots the organ can make grenades that do explosive damage; their Blast Area equals
the character’s Speed, their Damage equals the Willpower he spent, and their Force equals his Shadows. The
character chooses to make one grenade or a set of missiles each turn - he can’t do both.

Voidblast (•, ••, ••• or •••••)

Action: Reflexive
Dice pool: Unrolled
Cost: 1+ Willpower
Duration: 1 scene
The character draws forth the Taint within him to create blasts of cold emptiness that drain Light from
those they hit. Each blast is fired as a ranged attack, using Dexterity + Firearms, with a range of 20/40/80 yards.
The character must spend 1 Willpower to activate the Caligo, and may spend more at any time; each point
of Willpower he spends on this Caligo adds 1 to his blasts’ Damage, up to his Shadows dots. Damage from a
Voidblast is bashing; however, for each point of Damage done the blast also inflicts 1 level of the Listless Tilt. A
character who already has the Listless Tilt takes the worse Tilt if it’s inflicted on him again.
Dots in the Caligo broaden its area of effect. At 1 dot the character can throw a short burst each turn, at 2
dots he can throw a medium burst or covering fire, and at 3 dots he can throw a long burst. At 5 dots he can
hurl an explosive blast; its Blast Area equals the character’s Speed, its Damage equals the Willpower he spent
and its Force equals his Shadows. However, it does only lethal damage at ground zero, bashing damage in the
primary blast, and no damage in the secondary blast. Characters caught in the explosion, even the secondary
blast, take the Listless Tilt at a level equal to the final damage.

Zombie’s Flesh (•-•••••, Umbra)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Unrolled
Cost: 1 Willpower
Duration: 1 scene
The character pulls his blood away from the outer layers of his flesh, and calls upon Taint to harden them;
his skin takes on the waxy pallor of a corpse embalmed for burial. This hardening preserves the character from
nearly all forms of injury. At 1 dot, the character downgrades damage from mundane sources; he takes only
bashing damage from things that do lethal damage to a normal human, and lethal damage from sources that do
aggravated damage to humans. Each dot after the first gives the character +1/+1 Armor for the whole body on
top of downgrading damage when he activates the Caligo. Both effects stack with mundane armor. However,
the Caligo also inspires revulsion in normal people who can see his skin - the character suffers a -2 penalty on
all Empathy, Persuasion and Socialize rolls for interacting with anyone but creatures of the Darkness.
Zombie’s Flesh gives no protection against the effects of jade on the character - quite the reverse, in fact: he
cannot roll Integrity to avoid damage from jade while the Caligo is active, and if jade is used as a weapon against
him, it always does lethal damage. Zombie’s Flesh also doesn’t downgrade damage from a supernatural source.
Armor from the Caligo does subtract damage from all sources, including jade and magic. The character’s flesh
returns to normal at the end of the scene.
Umbra: The character’s flesh is permanently corpselike, and the social penalties apply at all times.

Creatures of Darkness 287

One-dot Caligines
Avoid All Eyes (•)
Action: Instant
Dice pool: Wits + Shadows
Cost: none
Duration: 1 scene
The character blurs in the sight of all witnesses; no one who sees him can tell exactly where he is. He adds
his activation successes to his Defense for the rest of the scene. If an attack bypasses his Defense (as firearms
usually do) the attacker still takes a penalty equal to the activation successes; this penalty stacks with other
forms of concealment. Avoid All Eyes may be used only once in a scene.

Darkness Enfolds (•, Umbra)

Action: Permanent
The first and most simple rule of the Darkness is that it must consume all Light. And how better than from
the very souls of the Light’s servants? The character reflexively senses the presence of all Light-touched charac-
ters and objects - Blessed Places, Nobles, Shikigami, Sworn, Beacons and Bequests - in his immediate proximity.
Moreover, by concentrating (an instant, unrolled action) he can locate and identify any such beings that are
present. Powers that conceal a Light-touched being’s nature defeat his passive sense automatically, but concen-
trating starts a Clash of Wills with such powers.
Umbra: Recognizing the Light at work inspires the character with deep hatred which he cannot conceal.
If the character does find a Light-touched being with this power, he must take the Obsession Condition [CofD
290]; he is obsessed with destroying the person, place or object that the Light has touched, by whatever means
come to hand. This power is responsible for many of the Darkness’s most cruel attacks.

Defiling Touch (•, Umbra)

Action: Permanent
The character has bound himself to the Darkness, and it reaches through his evil acts with special virulence.
When he commits an act that generates Taint, the Severity of his crime increases by 1, to a maximum of 5.
Umbra: The character needs the Darkness around him, as an alcoholic needs his drink. If he leaves Tainted
areas for more than one scene, he takes the Deprived Condition [CofD 288], which resolves when he returns to
a Tainted area or successfully generates some Taint where he is.

Enervation (•)
Action: Instant
Dice pool: Unrolled
Cost: none
Duration: instant
The character steals will and energy from others, leaving them listless. While touching a target’s skin with
his bare flesh, the character may steal 1 point of Willpower from the target, adding it to his own pool. If the target
tries to avoid him, the character must roll Dexterity + Brawl to touch him, avoiding any part of the target’s body
covered by armor - this imposes a penalty for specified targets [CofD 92] Any Willpower points stolen when the
character’s pool is full are wasted. A target with no Willpower points is immune.

288 Creatures of Darkness

Gathering Shadows (•)
Action: Instant
Dice pool: Animal Ken + Shadows
Cost: 1 Willpower, breaking point at -1
Duration: Shadows turns
When the character calls, other Darkspawn gather to him.
Dramatic Failure: For the rest of the scene, any bestial Darkspawn the character meets either attacks
him or runs from him.
Failure: No Darkspawn respond to the summons.
Success: Every bestial Darkspawn within (activation successes * 100) yards, and in the same world, goes
where the character is if it can move at all, and remains within walking distance of him for turns equal to
his Shadows.
Exceptional Success: The character can claim one of the Darkspawn he summoned as a servant. He
gains the Bonded Condition [CofD 288] to one bestial Darkspawn.
Intelligent Dark creatures within the affected area automatically know who used Gathering Shadows and
where he was when he activated it, but are not compelled to respond to the summons.

Hear Darkness Slither (•, Umbra)

Action: Permanent
The bitter irony of light is, most everything casts a shadow in it. And, as darkness is a gate to the World
beyond, due training or the Dark World’s corruption may allow creatures connected to its vileness to notice
when it moves.
The character’s uncanny sense allows him to hear when shadows cast by creatures or objects change po-
sition. When rolling to avoid being surprised [CofD 88] or to find an opponent while blinded [CofD 288] the
character adds his Shadows dots to his dice pool, unless the person he’s listening for does not cast a shadow.
Umbra: Any moving shadow, including the character’s own, seems to him to be an incipient threat. Every
so often his control slips, and he jumps away from (or attacks) a soft slithering that none but he can hear. The
character suffers the effects of the Madness Condition [CofD 289] whenever he is not in complete darkness, far
away from anything that casts a shadow.

Liar’s Heart (•)

Action: Permanent
The character buries his Taint under a thick layer of deception. Passive abilities that detect creatures of
Darkness automatically fail to recognize the character as such, and active abilities must win a Clash of Wills to
detect him. The Caligo wards only against direct detection of the supernatural - it will not, for instance, keep
anyone from noticing the physical deformation from Loathsome Weapon.

Open Hellmouth (•)

Action: Reflexive
Dice pool: Unrolled
Cost: 1 Willpower
Duration: Shadows turns
When the character enters a Tainted area from its image in Darkness, he opens a wide breach through
which his servants can follow him. If the character spends a Willpower point as he uses Entering Darkness in
the Dark World, then for a number of turns equal to his Shadows any other entity that leaves the Dark World
from the same place he did gets a bonus on its roll equal to the character’s successes on his roll. The character

Creatures of Darkness 289

does not get the bonus himself if he Enters Darkness again, and if Open Hellmouth is used again before the last
activation expires, the second activation supersedes the first.

Shadow Cloak (•)

Action: Permanent
The character fades into shadows, unnoticed by anyone unless he steps into the light. When no part of him
is directly illuminated, the character adds his Shadows to mundane Stealth dice pools, and Perception rolls to
find him automatically fail.

Taste of Sin (•)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Empathy + Shadows
Cost: none
Duration: Instant
The character may assess another character’s psyche. Each success on the roll reveals the target’s Vice, one
of the target’s breaking points, or the presence of a Condition such as Guilty, Embarrassing Secret, Obsession or
Addiction and a general description of its cause. The character may assess each target once a day. If a person
has the Vice-Ridden Merit [CofD 46] or has a second Vice for any other reason, the character knows it on first
seeing him, without a roll.
A psyche that hasn’t bent under the horrors of the World of Darkness, or one that did bend but has sprung
back, gives real pain to the character if he tastes it. Using the Caligo on a target with Integrity of 7 or more
is a breaking point for the character, at a penalty of -1 for each point of Integrity above 6. If a person has the
Virtuous Merit [CofD 46] or a second Virtue for any other reason, the character cannot come within five feet
of the person unless he succeeds on a Resolve + Composure roll at a penalty equal to his Shadows, or spends
a Willpower point.

Voice-Eating Hunger (•)

Action: Permanent
The Darkness is eternally silent. Within the depths of the Dark World, there is no noise but what outsiders
bring with them, and what little the creatures of the Darkness retain from their old lives. The Darkness takes
that too, in time. This Caligo enhances a character’s natural attacks. Whenever he injures a target or damage an
object, the target also gains the Silenced Tilt for a number of turns equal to the successes rolled on the attack.
As a passive benefit from knowing this Caligo, the character only makes sound when he wants to, giving
him a Stealth specialty in “Moving Silently”.

Void Magic (•)

Action: Permanent
The Dark World is always hungry, especially for magical power, and it readily feeds on power directed at
those it touches. The character has Supernatural Tolerance equal to his Shadows.

Two-dot Caligines
Autophage (••)
Action: Reflexive
Dice pool: Unrolled
Cost: 1 lethal damage
Duration: 1 scene

290 Creatures of Darkness

 The character can drain life from his own body to fuel dark magic. When he activates the Caligo, a part
of his flesh rots away, inflicting a point of lethal damage, but he gains a pool of temporary Willpower equal to
his Shadows. The Caligo cannot be used again until all the temporary Willpower has been spent. Any unspent
points dissipate at the end of the scene.

Bogeyman (••)
Action: Instant and contested
Dice pool: Presence + Intimidation + Shadows vs. Composure + Supernatural Tolerance
Cost: 1 Willpower, breaking point at -1
Duration: concentration
The character wraps himself in the deepest fears of those around him. As long as he concentrates, others
see him as whatever they dread most.
Dramatic Failure: The character only appears ridiculous, like a man dressed in a Halloween costume.
He cannot use Bogeyman for the rest of the scene.
Failure: Nobody is frightened by the character’s appearance.
Success: Everyone who sees or hears the character, and who gets fewer successes on the contested
roll, gains the Fearful Condition, centered on him. His appearance is continuously frightening; newcomers
catching sight of the character reflexively contest the Caligo, and gain the Condition if they lose the contest.
Exceptional Success: Onlookers who lose the contested roll gain the Terrified Condition, centered on
the character.
Bogeyman lasts as long as the Darkened concentrates on keeping it going, or until the end of the scene; if
the Darkened does anything that uses his action for a turn, the witnesses’ unnatural fear of him fades away.

Burying the Crime (••)

Action: Extended, 10 minutes/roll, threshold = Tainted area’s Size + Severity
Dice pool: Intelligence + Occult + Shadows
Cost: 1 Willpower
Duration: Shadows in days
Sometimes a Tainted place has to be hidden for a little while, lest agents of the Light find and purify it. At
other times a creature of the Darkness may wish to remove its fellows from a Tainted area. Using this Caligo
within the area serves both those ends. When the character reaches the threshold, the Dark Door of the Tainted
area he stands in is closed and barred from the Nightscape side; no one can open it from the Tainted area. It can
be opened from the Nightscape at any time, and will open of its own accord after the character’s Shadows in days.
The Caligo may be used in either a Tainted area or its Nightscape. If the Consecrated Condition is applied to
a Tainted area while its Dark Door is shut, opening the Door will destroy or erode the Condition. Taint Awareness
does not react to the Caligo’s expiration; the Taint is not removed, only suppressed.

Dark Thoughts Consume (••)

Action: Instant and contested
Dice pool: Intelligence + Expression vs. Composure + Supernatural Tolerance
Cost: 1 Willpower, breaking point at -1
Duration: 1 turn or 1 scene
People are, on occasion, mistaken to hold a bad personality, weakness, outdated tradition or flawed ideal
dear. They are fond of them, take solace in them. But sometimes, the attacks come from the inside. Dark magic
prompts the target’s own vileness to disturb their imagination, and the traits they went far to protect to stab
them in the back. The creature of the Dark gives them clues, encouragement, ideas, to pain the unfortunate soul
to place their trust in what never warranted any. The Darkness within them betrays them, for absolute evil
knows no friend nor loyalty.

Creatures of Darkness 291

 Dramatic Failure: The thoughts intended to scare awaken happiness and joyful memories, or they are
so unscary while obviously intended to frighten, the target finds them funny. The target regains a point of
Willpower.
Failure: The target is mildly perturbed, but not distracted.
Success: The target is rattled by dark thoughts spawned of their own worries and anxieties. At the Sto-
ryteller’s choice, the target either has a psychotic fit (the Insane Tilt [CofD 285]), is bemused to the point of
ignoring his surroundings (the Stunned Tilt [CofD 286]) or loses interest in what he was doing (the Listless
Tilt, at a level of half the character’s Shadows, rounded up.)
Exceptional Success: The target freezes in place or collapses from sheer dread and despair. They gain
the Insensate Tilt [CofD 285].
All Tilts created by Dark Thoughts Consume resolve normally, once imposed.
Modifiers: For the character: Integrity 8-10(-2), Integrity 6-7(-1), Integrity 2-3(+1), Integrity 0-1(+2), the
character knows the target(+Sympathy). For the target: Integrity or equivalent is 4 or lower(+5-Integrity), the
target has a form of Sensitivity(-2), the target already has one or more of the Tilts listed(-1/Tilt), the target has
the Shaken Condition(-2), the target has Shadows(-1/Shadow dot)

Enervating Hex (••)

Action: Instant and resisted
Dice pool: Crafts + Shadows - object’s capacity for Willpower
Cost: 1 Willpower, breaking point at -1
Duration: indefinite
The character converts an object to a sink for others’ will and energy, applying the Enervating Hex Con-
dition to it. The Caligo uses the rules for the Build Equipment action [CofD 101-103]; a normal failure always
applies the Fragile Condition, triggered only by attempts to remove Willpower from the object. If the object has
other uses, Fragile will not spoil it for those - it removes only the Enervating Hex.

Evil Influence (••)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Persuasion + Shadows
Cost: 1 Willpower, breaking point at -1
Duration: 1 scene
The sight of the character rouses the Darkness in one’s heart, and inspires impulses to crime.
Dramatic Failure: The character is totally unpersuasive. He takes a -1 penalty to all Social dice pools
for the rest of the scene.
Failure: The character is about as convincing as usual.
Success: For the rest of the scene, all the character’s actions to induce other people to perform acts that
cause suffering (anything that would trigger a Princess’ Sensitivity) get bonus dice equal to the character’s
activation successes. If a suggested action accords with a target’s Vice the character gets a further +1 bonus
die.
Exceptional Success: The character is amazingly good at persuading people into sin.

Grasping at Shadows (••)

Action: Instant and resisted
Dice pool: Dexterity + Brawl - target’s Defense
Cost: none
Duration: concentration or 1 scene

292 Creatures of Darkness

 With a sweep of a hand or foot, the character catches hold of an opponent’s shadow. If the target is not
casting a shadow (for instance, he isn’t illuminated) the Caligo has no effect.
Dramatic Failure: The character cannot use Grasping at Shadows for the rest of the scene.
Failure: The target feels a momentary weakness, but is not otherwise affected.
Success: The target gains the Insensate Tilt [CofD 285]. He remains in this state as long as the character
keeps hold of his shadow. The character must remain close enough to touch him, and have one hand free -
any action that requires both hands or requires leaving the target removes the Tilt. The Tilt also ends if the
target takes damage, as normal.
Exceptional Success: The target gains the Insensate Tilt for the rest of the scene, even if the character
releases his shadow. Taking damage still ends the Tilt.

I Have You Now, My Pretty (••)

Action: Reflexive
Dice pool: Unrolled
Cost: 1 Willpower
Duration: 1 scene
The character develops some grotesque power that allows him to capture his foes: arachnid like web spin-
ners, fast growing tentacles or a dark sorcery that conjures rusty bloodsoaked chains out of shadows and fears.
Whenever he grabs an opponent [CofD 89] the character may activate this Caligo; his roll to grab and all rolls
he makes while grappling that opponent get a bonus equal to his Shadows from the webs, tentacles, chains etc.
that materialize in his hands. Moreover, the character can use these bonds for a Restrain maneuver - they will
remain solid until the end of the following scene, and have a Durability equal to the character’s Strength.

Nowhere Untouched (••)

Action: Permanent
The Dark World exists everywhere, gnawing at all that is real. With Nowhere Untouched, the character may
use Entering Darkness outside of Tainted areas; all he requires is a place large enough to stand or sit in, and
which is not currently lit - a deep shadow will do. Anywhere there’s enough light to read by, the character still
needs Taint to cross over. He cannot cross reliably from the Dark World outside a Tainted area, only to it. When
crossing in unTainted areas, the character treats the local Taint as 0, using Willpower alone as his dice pool.

Scapegoat (••)
Action: Instant and resisted
Dice pool: Manipulation + Shadows - target’s Composure
Cost: 1 Willpower
Duration: indefinite
Throw mud enough and some will stick … and servants of the Darkness know just where to throw it, and
how to make it stick. To use this Caligo the character publically accuses another person of something heinous
or humiliates and mocks him.
Dramatic Failure: The audience sees the character’s words only as proof of his bigotry and barbarity.
He gains the Notoriety Condition.
Failure: The character’s scorn falls flat; no one joins him in condemning the target.
Success: The audience believes the character’s denigration and regards the target with mistrust. The
target gains the Notoriety Condition [CofD 290].
Exceptional Success: Even the target half-believes that he has somehow transgressed. He also gains the
Guilty Condition [CofD 289] related to what the character said about him.

Creatures of Darkness 293

So Many of Me (••)
Action: Instant and contested
Dice pool: Subterfuge + Shadows vs. Wits + Supernatural Tolerance
Cost: 1 Willpower
Duration: 1 scene or 1 day
The character throws his own appearance onto anyone who resembles him. To use this Caligo the character
chooses some feature of his physical appearance that others might use to describe him. This feature may be
permanent (e.g. black hair) or temporary (e.g. wearing a baseball cap) and can be as specific or general as the
character wants.
Dramatic Failure: The character is incredibly obvious. For the rest of the scene all his attempts to hide
or disguise himself, even supernaturally, fail automatically.
Failure: The Caligo does nothing.
Success: Anyone who loses the contested roll perceives everyone else present in the scene who shares
the feature that the character chose as the character. In addition, if the character successfully conceals his
chosen feature, anyone affected by the Caligo cannot recognize him as himself. The illusion extends to all
senses, including supernatural senses, but affects only those who can see the character. Also, it does not affect
reasoning; the victims can be persuaded of the character’s identity.
Exceptional Success: The character can (but need not) sustain the illusion until the next sunrise.

Three-dot Caligines
Blood Diamonds (•••)
Action: Extended, 1 hour/roll, threshold = Sanctuary
Dice pool: Intelligence + Shadows
Cost: (Rating of Sanctuary) Willpower, breaking point at -2
Duration: indefinite
When the character sees a place that uplifts the heart, a beautiful landscape or a grand monument, the
Darkness whispers to him of ways to claim its virtue for himself, and turn it into cash. This Caligo exploits an
area; before activating it the character must establish a legal claim to the area, a right to make use of it, or a strong
influence over its owners. The time to activate is spent carefully surveying the area and listening to suggestions
from the Darkness. The activation dice pool is modified if the target area is Tainted or Blessed: each dot of a
Tainted area’s Severity gives a -1 penalty, each dot of a Blessed area’s Beauty gives a +1 bonus.
On reaching the threshold, the character learns a way to profit from the area by desecrating and ruining
it; he imposes the Strip-Mined Condition there.

Call the Black Dog (•••)

Action: Instant and resisted
Dice pool: Manipulation + Shadows - target’s Resolve
Cost: 1 Willpower, breaking point at -2
Duration: indefinite
The character deprives his target of the comforts of nightly rest, by sending a shadowy hunter to pursue
him in his dreams. He has to touch the target to use the Caligo.
Dramatic Failure: The target’s dreams withstand all assault; the character can never use Call the Black
Dog on this target again.
Failure: The target has a nightmare when he next sleeps, but it does not affect him further.
Success: The target gains the Dream-Hounded Condition.

294 Creatures of Darkness

 Exceptional Success: The hunter is persistent; the target’s roll to escape the dreams takes a -2 penalty.
Suggested Modifiers: The target has had the Caligo used on him within the past month (-1 for each use)

Flesh of my Flesh (•••)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Stamina + Shadows
Cost: 1 Willpower, breaking point at -3
Duration: instant
When all is reduced to an empty bleakness such trifling things as property will hardly matter a bit. In a
Dark world you have far more important things to worry about than someone trying to steal your money, your
goods, or your flesh.
With this Caligo the character can heal himself of physical injury, replacing damaged flesh with stolen flesh.
Every success heals 1 bashing or lethal damage, provided the character has some spare human flesh; bashing
damage is healed first. Some stitch new flesh to old, but most simply eat and push the stolen flesh through their
veins to where it’s needed. The flesh must be consumed or acquired in the current scene and fresh enough to
safely eat (which can be very old if the character has the Roteater Umbra). If the character takes flesh from a
living person they must eat one point of lethal damage’s worth of flesh to heal one lethal damage or three bashing
damage. With some sort of bite attack the character may reflexively swallow after a successful attack to stock up.

Handful of Dust (•••)

Action: Instant and contested
Dice pool: Presence + Persuasion + Shadows vs. Composure + Supernatural Tolerance
Cost: 1 Willpower, breaking point at -2
Duration: (activation successes) weeks
The character utters a sentence that blights the confidence of one to whom he speaks.
Dramatic Failure: The character cannot use Handful of Dust for the rest of the scene.
Failure: If the character does not win the contest, the sentence means nothing to the target; there is no
effect.
Success: If the character wins the contest, the words haunt the target, condemning him as incapable
and worthless. The target gains the Stumbling Condition for a number of weeks equal to the character’s net
successes; the character chooses the Skill affected by the Condition.
Exceptional Success: The target’s will breaks. In addition to the Condition, if currently in combat with
the character, the target gains the Beaten Down Tilt [CofD 280].

Sin Whisperer (•••)

Action: Instant and resisted
Dice pool: Manipulation + Subterfuge + Shadows - target’s Resolve
Cost: 1 Willpower, breaking point at -2
Duration: until Condition ends
The character infects a victim’s psyche, inflaming and spying on his target’s worst impulses. He must speak
to the target without interruption for a minute or so to use the Caligo.
Dramatic Failure: The target resists the psychic infection - the character can never use Sin-Whisperer
on this target again.
Failure: The target is not affected.
Success: The target gains the Addicted Condition [CofD 288] with respect to actions that accord with
his Vice. The target may resolve the Condition normally, or try to purge himself by accepting the Deprived

Creatures of Darkness 295

 Condition for a number of days equal to the character’s successes without resolving it. Each time the target
follows his Vice, the character makes a Perception roll reflexively to learn what the target did; he learns as
much as he might have gleaned from a Perception roll if he had been present.
Exceptional Success: The infection is both deep and persistent; there are no further effects.
The character can infect only one person at a time with Sin-Whisperer; until the current infectee recovers,
the Caligo fails automatically when used on anyone else.

Skinmask (•••, Umbra)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Stamina + Subterfuge + Shadows
Cost: 1 Willpower
Duration: 1 scene
The character can physically reshape his body to create a perfect disguise.
Dramatic Failure: The character’s body escapes his control, fluxing constantly into obviously unnatural
features. He is Immobilized [CofD 284] and must use the Caligo again to remove the Tilt before the scene ends.
Failure: The character’s body returns to its normal shape.
Success: The character can change his ethnicity, sex, height, weight and appearance; given a reference
to work from he could mimic a real person. However, he cannot change his Size or overall body plan; a human
cannot shift to look other than human, and a Darkspawn that naturally resembles some sort of canine will
always resemble a four-footed animal. Further, if the character has any Caligines or Umbrae with a drawback
that affects his physical form, he cannot mask that drawback: a character with Hunger Means Nothing will
always look thin and starved. The best he can do is adopt a disguise where looking starved makes sense or
wear a thick padded coat to hide the thinness of his body.
No mundane effort can see through the change to the character’s true appearance (though if he’s mimic-
king a real person the impersonation can be detected normally); a supernatural power that pierces disguises
will start a Clash of Wills.
Exceptional Success: The disguise is unnaturally convincing; any attempt to recognize it as a disguise,
whether mundane or supernatural, takes a -2 penalty.
Umbra: The character no longer has a fixed appearance. He must activate the Caligo at the start of every
scene, or suffer the effects of a dramatic failure. Also, if the character is asleep or unconscious he suffers the
effects of dramatic failure until he wakes. The first activation in a scene is reflexive, and costs nothing; later
ones work normally.

Such Pretty Eyes, I Think I’ll Keep Them (•••)

Action: Instant and contested
Dice pool: Presence + Intimidation + Shadows vs. Resolve + Supernatural Tolerance
Cost: 1 bashing damage, 1 Willpower
Duration: until Condition ends
The Darkness knows that a touch of evil lies in every heart, and a hint of envy blinds every eye. This Caligo
makes use of that truth, allowing the character to see through another’s eyes. Some creatures of Darkness use
this to spy through their enemies’ eyes, others use it on their own minions to help lead and org anise their assets.
To use this Caligo the character smears a drop of blood on the eyes of his target.
Dramatic Failure: The character sees through the target’s eyes, just for a second, but he sees not images
but the target’s viewpoint. If the target’s Integrity is higher than the character’s Integrity - Shadows he sees
himself for what he truly is and gains the Guilty Condition [CofD 289].
Failure: Nothing happens.
Success: The character gains the Stolen Sight Condition, focused on the target.

296 Creatures of Darkness

 Exceptional Success: The target forgets that the character put blood in her eyes, and does not know the
character can spy through her.
The character may have up to Intelligence + Shadows people tagged with the Stolen Sight Condition at any
one time.

Walk in Darkness (•••)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Athletics + Shadows
Cost: none
Duration: 1 hour
Beyond the Nightscapes of Tainted places, the form of the Dark World distorts away from that of the land
it came from. Those who dare to travel in the Dark World, if they have learned this power, find paths that lead
from one Tainted place to another, far more swiftly than any road in the world of light.
The character must use Walk in Darkness in a Nightscape. If he succeeds, the landscape of the Dark World
has shifted, opening a path from his current location to the place he wants to go that is significantly shorter than
the smallest distance between the places they are images of. Each activation success cumulatively doubles his
effective Speed in the real world for the next hour, or until he next leaves the Dark World, whichever comes first.

World-Corroding Entropic Touch (•••)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Unrolled
Cost: 1 lethal damage, 1 Willpower
Duration: 1 scene
Within the Darkness, all things shatter and break. Taking the Darkness into her flesh, the character imbues
himself with that alien property. For the remainder of the scene, the character inflicts 1 point of damage per turn
to any object he touches, ignoring any Durability it has. The ground under his feet melts in his black, stinking
footsteps, his clothes turn to dust on his back, all his hair flakes away and dies, and trails of dark ooze streak
down his face as his tears hiss and boil on his skin. In a grapple, he does 1 point of aggravated damage per
turn to the other grappler. When attacking with a natural attack, one level of damage is upgraded to aggravated
damage, no matter what the original kind of damage done was.
This Caligo can be converted into a permanent condition, in which the effects are permanently on, and
cannot be deactivated. There are deep pits in the Dark World which form where Darkspawn who know this
Caligo are trapped, for even when trapped in dormancy they still corrode the ground below them, until they fall
at last into utter Darkness and are seen no more.

Four-dot Caligines
Dance, Puppet, Dance (••••)
Requires Non-bestial
Action: Extended, 10 minutes/roll, threshold = target’s Durability
Dice pool: Crafts + Shadows
Cost: 2 Willpower, breaking point at -3
Duration: until target disintegrates
The character instills a part of his will and the corruption of the Dark World into an object, urging it to an
unnatural life. When he reaches the threshold, the target object animates; it will obey any order the character
gives to the letter. The animated object follows the rules of the Claimed Condition [CofD 133] as if an ephemeral
being had melded with it. The Power, Finesse and Resistance of the “being” begin at 1 apiece. The character may
apply successes past the threshold to improve the object’s traits. One success gives one of the following:

Creatures of Darkness 297

• Add 1 to the object’s Power, Finesse or Resistance.
• Add +1 to the object’s Speed and Initiative.
• Give the object 1 dot in either Grotesque Bulk, Loathsome Weapon or Vile Gobbets.
The Caligo ends when the object disintegrates from decay of its Physical Attributes.

Drink Pain Like Wine (••••)

Action: Instant and contested
Dice pool: Presence + Persuasion + Shadows vs. Composure + Supernatural Tolerance
Cost: 1 Willpower, breaking point at -3
Duration: indefinite
The character preaches a creed of suffering and cruelty, and instills his words with a dreadful power to
convince one who listens to them. He must spend five minutes in conversation with the target to activate the
Caligo. If he wins the contest, the target gains the Vice-Ridden Condition; the character chooses the second Vice
that the target will gain from the Condition.

Everyone Dies Alone (••••)

Action: Instant and resisted
Dice pool: Manipulation + Persuasion + Shadows - target’s Composure
Cost: 1 Willpower, breaking point at -3
Duration: indefinite
The character offers to show the target a vision of the hatred and despair that lies under everything she
loves. He can activate this Caligo without any knowledge of the target, but the more he knows of her and the
people she loves, the easier it is for him. This Caligo creates a false vision, it does not require an actual betrayal
to function.
Dramatic Failure: The target sees a vision that reminds her of how much her friends need her, renewing
her will to fight. She regains one Willpower. If the target is a Princess, if she prefers she may instead reflexively
roll her (Belief - Shadows), gaining one Wisp per success.
Failure: No vision appears.
Success: The target sees a vision of a friend or loved one betraying her. Depending on the character’s
successes this may be as simple as insulting her behind her back or a deadly betrayal that puts her life in
jeopardy. Etched into her mind by dark magics the target can’t help but believe it’s true; she gains the False
Memory Condition at a level of the character’s successes. While the Condition lasts she has a -2 penalty on all
Social dice pools related to the friend (if the target is a Princess this may include regaining Wisps from her
Circle) and teamwork actions with him.
Exceptional Success: The penalty from the target’s False Memory Condition rises to -3.
Modifiers: The character does not know the target’s name (-3), the character chooses a specific person to
show, who is the target’s friend (+3)

Hope’s Eclipse (••••)

Action: Instant
Dice pool: Strength + Survival + Shadows
Cost: 1 Willpower, breaking point at -3
Duration: 1 scene
The character may summon the deadly chill of the Dark World to swallow up the light and hope around him.
Dramatic Failure: The area is covered in total darkness for a single turn; when it lifts, the character is
gone, fallen into the Dark World.

298 Creatures of Darkness

 Failure: People in the area feel a momentary chill, and the light flickers.
Success: The character may impose any one of the Extreme Taint, Ice [CofD 285] or Poor Light Tilts
throughout the current scene. If he imposes Extreme Taint, each activation success past the first subjects
characters to an hour’s exposure to its effects, penalizing their actions.
Exceptional Success: The character may impose two Tilts from the list.

Oblivion’s Sign (••••)

Action: Extended and resisted, 1 turn/roll, threshold = target’s Willpower
Dice pool: Manipulation + Persuasion + Shadows - target’s Resolve
Cost: 1 Willpower, breaking point at -3
Duration: indefinite
The character invests an image or a verbal phrase with the will-destroying quality of the void, and forces
another person to see or hear it. When his victim sees or hears the trigger again, he follows orders without
question. When the character reaches the threshold, the target gains the Tranced Condition, with a trigger of the
character’s choice and at a level of his Shadows; this overrides any Tranced Condition the target had before. If the
character fails, any Tranced Condition already existing on the target ceases to influence him, and the character
cannot use Oblivion’s Sign for a full day.

One of Us (••••)
Action: Instant and resisted
Dice pool: Manipulation + Shadows - target’s Presence
Cost: 3 Willpower, breaking point at -2
Duration: indefinite
The Darkness embodies and shelters all those things that have no place and deserve no place. With a little
effort, things outside its benevolent hands, in or out of the Light, can be drawn in and welcomed to the fold. If
their former “friends” turn on them, well… that just proves they weren’t real friends in the first place. This Caligo
is used on a being with supernatural abilities within sight of the character; mundane characters and creatures
of the Darkness are immune to it.
Dramatic Failure: The character only exposes his inner night to the otherworldliness of his target. He
loses two dots of Shadows if targeting one of the Radiant or other beings of the Light, or one if targeting any
other type of supernatural creature.
Failure: The Caligo brushes up against the target’s supernatural nature, but runs off like rainwater.
Success: Motes of Darkness infest the target’s powers, laying in wait. The next time the target uses a
supernatural power of any kind, they gain the Walking Stain Condition.
Exceptional Success: Being treated like a creature of Darkness inspires some sympathy for the devil in
the target. All creatures of Darkness capable of making social maneuvers improve their impression level with
the target by one step until the Condition ends.

Out of the Depths (••••)

Action: Permanent
The character extends his senses into a Tainted area from its Nightscape, allowing him to watch and listen
without being perceived. The ability is automatic - the character sees and hears whatever happens in the Tainted
area above his location as if he were there. His senses also extend into the Dark World from a Tainted place,
letting him see and hear its Nightscape.
If the character also has Nowhere Untouched, his senses extend into any area where he could enter the
Dark World, and he can use Entering Darkness to cross to those areas as well as from them. He may use Open
Hellmouth simultaneously with Nowhere Untouched to let other characters follow him out of the Dark World.

Creatures of Darkness 299

Twisting the Bane (••••)
Action: Extended, 10 minutes/roll, threshold = 2x Taint’s Size
Dice pool: Presence + Occult + Shadows - Taint’s Severity
Cost: 2 Willpower, breaking point at -4
Duration: until next sunrise
Taint, the Mnemosyne say, only anticipates the final state of the world under Darkness. With this Caligo, the
character calls up a different aspect of that final state in a Tainted area; while touching the Taint’s Dark Door,
he prays to the powers of Darkness. On reaching the threshold, the character may change one of the Taint’s
Aspirations. The area’s Taint remains altered until the next sunrise, and then returns to its original Aspiration.
The character may use Twisting the Bane for a number of times per week equal to his Shadows.

Five-dot Caligines
Crafted with Love and Care (•••••)
Requires Non-bestial
Action: Extended and resisted, 1 minute/roll, threshold = target’s Integrity + Resolve
Dice pool: Presence + Crafts + Shadows - target’s Composure
Cost: 2 Willpower, breaking point at -4
Duration: indefinite
Ingredients: One helpless captive held fast, Darkness fresh from the Dark World, tears and raw material.
Plastic or burlap will do. With this profane Caligo the character physically creates some kind of doll around the
victim, trapping their body and their mind. On reaching the threshold the wrapping sinks beneath the victim’s
flesh. Only supernatural senses, and curiously a canine or feline’s sense of smell, can detect anything wrong. If
the character fails the wrapping remains nothing more than inert material which can be easily removed.
Dolls created by this power have the target’s original Physical Attributes, the Darkened Condition and the
Umbra Tainted Allure of Vice. They are also entirely mindless and act as the people around them expect them
to act. They even use the Mental Attributes, Social Attributes and Skills of those around them - if a gourmet chef
expects a Doll to cook his steak at exactly 550 degrees, it will. Being entirely mindless Dolls do not have Integrity
and so cannot reach breaking points.
Killing a doll kills the person trapped within; this counts as killing an innocent, which constitutes a breaking
point for anyone but the truly depraved.
Barring an external influence there is no transition from a Doll to other types of Dark Creature. So long as
the Doll exists there is a possibility to break the curse with magic. Of course, this is only a drawback from the
Darkness’ perspective.

The Demon Within (•••••)

Requires Non-bestial
Action: Extended and resisted, 5 minutes/roll, threshold = target’s Resolve + Composure
Dice pool: Manipulation + Empathy + Shadows - target’s Composure
Cost: 2 Willpower, breaking point at -5
Duration: until target wakes
The character removes the Vice from his target, gives it a separate body, and turns it loose. The target
must have the Immobilized Tilt [CofD 284] or the Caligo fails. When he reaches the threshold, the target falls
unconscious and a dense black smoke boils off of him, gathering into a human figure that somewhat resembles
him. By default the unleashed Vice has the same traits as its owner, except Integrity and Virtue, which it lacks
altogether. The character can apply successes past the threshold to increase the Vice’s Physical Attributes, or to
give it Grotesque Bulk, Loathsome Weapon or Zombie’s Flesh, at the rate of 1 success per Attribute dot or Caligo
dot. The Vice draws Willpower from its owner, and regains Willpower by indulging itself; as it lacks Virtue and
does not sleep, no other way of gaining Willpower is open to it.

300 Creatures of Darkness

 The Vice is likely to carry out any requests the character makes; on any Social rolls regarding it, the charac-
ter adds his Shadows to the dice pool. (This stacks with Evil Influence.) If the character asks for nothing, the Vice
does what its owner would do if he lacked a conscience. The Vice remains embodied until its Health track fills
with damage (of any type) or its owner wakes up, at which point it dissolves into the black smoke that formed
it and dissipates. The target cannot be wakened before the end of the current scene, and will wake after a full
night’s sleep (though without recovering Willpower); within those limits, the time the target stays asleep is at
the Storyteller’s discretion. If the Vice does anything while free that is a breaking point for its owner, he rolls
once when he wakes, using the penalty for the worst sin the Vice committed.

I am Your Master (•••••)

Action: Extended and resisted, 1 day at sunset/roll, threshold = highest Resolve among the targets + the
number of targets
Dice pool: Presence + Intimidation + Shadows - targets’ highest Resolve
Cost: 1 lethal damage per target, 1 Willpower per roll, breaking point at -5
Duration: indefinite
A taste of the true Darkness in the heart is enough to break a beast to the will of someone stronger for life.
To begin using this Caligo, the character feeds a measure of his own flesh or blood to the Darkspawn he wants
to influence, enough to do 1 lethal damage per Darkspawn. He need not remain within sight of his targets after
the first night; the process works from within. Once this is done, the character spends 1 Willpower at sunfall
each night and rolls reflexively.
While the Caligo is in progress, the Darkspawn will obey verbal orders the character gives them during the
hours of darkness, to the best of their abilities, but they won’t risk their lives, and they return to their normal ac-
tivities when the sun rises. Giving an order follows the same rules as the Umbra Subsumed by Another Shadow.
After reaching the threshold, though, the Darkspawn become fanatically loyal; they will continue to carry
out an assigned task until it’s complete without regard for day or night, and will fight to the death if so ordered.
They will attack anyone who tries to break their master’s control, doing as much damage as they can (making
all-out attacks, spending Willpower, etc.) until either they or the other is dead. In addition, the character can
give his servants orders mentally, without speaking aloud, and adds his Shadows to the roll.
If the character fails or abandons the Caligo, his control over his servants breaks. The Darkspawn now
desire nothing more than to feast upon his flesh again, and seek him out to kill and eat him. They know exactly
where their former master is for a number of nights equal to their Wits; if the character evades them longer
than that, they lose the trail.
If the character gains an exceptional success, the bond between master and servant becomes a source of
power. One of the Darkspawn affected adds 1 dot in a Physical Attribute; the master chooses the Darkspawn
and the Attribute. The new dots remain as long as the character’s control persists.

Profanation (•••••)
Action: Extended, 10 minutes/roll
Dice pool: Shadows + Severity of Tainted area
Cost: 2 Willpower, breaking point at -5
Duration: indefinite
The Dark wants to Taint everything, and its servants can channel it towards the best places to infect with a
well-timed murder. At a Tainted area’s Dark Door, the character prepares a weapon or tool for murder. When he
reaches the threshold, 1 dot of the Taint’s Severity transfers from the area into the weapon. While stored in the
weapon, the Taint is inert - it doesn’t register to Sensitivity, and doesn’t affect anyone’s dice pools. However, if the
weapon is used to take the life of a non-Darkened, intelligent being, the place the murder was done immediately
becomes Tainted, sharing an Aspiration with the area from which the Taint came.
If the weapon does damage to anyone or anything without taking a person’s life, the stored Taint escapes
from it and returns to the Tainted place from which it came. If the weapon is destroyed before it takes a person’s
life, the stored Taint disappears entirely.

Creatures of Darkness 301

Shadow Step (•••••)
Action: Instant
Dice pool: Dexterity + Shadows
Cost: 2 Willpower, breaking point at -3
Duration: 1 scene
In the dark, all places are alike. The character can move from one unlit place to another without crossing
the intervening space.
Dramatic Failure: The character cannot escape the light. For the rest of the scene he cannot use Entering
Darkness, and all his Stealth rolls are reduced to a chance die.
Failure: The character can only move normally.
Success: For the rest of the scene, if the character is standing in an unlit location, he may move to any
other unlit location within (1 + activation successes) times his Speed in yards. This replaces his normal move-
ment for the turn. No obstacle can block his motion; the character seems to dissolve where he stands and
reforms at his destination in less than a second. However, light enough to read by will block the Caligo - if any
part of the character is illuminated he must move normally, and if an unlit area is not big enough to contain
him he cannot move to it.
Exceptional Success: The character may treat a Tainted area as if it were unlit throughout; light within
a Tainted area does not block the Caligo.

Undying Heart (•••••)

Action: Permanent
The character cuts the heart out of his body and hides it far away. As long as the heart remains safe, the
character cannot be killed by anything less than complete destruction of his body.
If the character’s health track is filled with lethal damage he will not begin to bleed out, and does not require
medical care to begin healing, though he still falls into coma. Undying Heart does not increase the character’s
ability to heal; it only provides infinite time for the healing process to take hold. If the character’s health track
is filled with aggravated damage, he’s still dead.
If the heart is destroyed, the character dies instantly. If the character retrieves his missing heart he may
sacrifice the Undying Heart Caligo, and all the Experiences invested in it, to instantly heal to perfect health.
However, if any other creature of Darkness finds the heart, they may eat it for a free dot of Shadows (which
destroys it, and kills the character.)

Venom of the Soul (•••••)

Action: Instant and resisted
Dice pool: Presence + Shadows - target’s Stamina
Cost: 1 Willpower, breaking point at -4
Those whom the character has killed by his own hand are marked: with the taint in himself, he desecrates
their bodies and consigns them to the Darkness. When a foe has taken lethal damage from the character’s natural
weapons or one of his Umbrae or Caligines, and that foe is bleeding out or dead, he becomes a valid target for
this Caligo. The character must use the Caligo within an hour of the target’s death, but need not be anywhere
near the target when he does so.
Dramatic Failure: The character’s flesh corrodes as the taint on his soul manifests. He takes 1 point of
aggravated damage.
Failure: The target is not corrupted.
Success: The character pushes one dot of his Shadows into the target; he loses that dot, the target dies
(if alive) and the corpse corrupts into a new Darkspawn. The Darkspawn has the same traits as the target did
when it was alive, the innate abilities of Darkspawn, 1 dot of Shadows, and all the Umbrae that the character

302 Creatures of Darkness

 had when he activated the Caligo. It also gains Loathsome Weapon 1 (as a bite) and Zombie’s Flesh 1 as Um-
brae, and Venom of the Soul, but no other Caligines.
A character who currently has no Shadows dots can still raise a Darkspawn by sacrificing willpower; he
loses 1 Willpower dot when Venom of the Soul activates, and the Darkspawn rises with 0 Shadows.
Exceptional Success: The Darkspawn rises as a terrifying fighter; it gains Loathsome Weapon 2 and
Zombie’s Flesh 2.

Example Dark Beings

Deluded Vigilante
Given a choice the Darkness doesn’t do Virtue. Sometimes it doesn’t have a choice, sometimes the only hook
it has is a person’s Virtue so the Darkness does its best to twist that Virtue right around and back into Vice again.
The Deluded Vigilante always wanted to be someone special with cool powers. Not to be superior or to
abuse them, but to do something positive and interesting with their life. This wouldn’t be a problem except that
powers they got came straight from a realm of pure evil. They think that they can use their powers for good,
protecting the night from hidden threats be it crime or Darkspawn; as their name implies they’re deluded. Their
powers isolate them from humanity and tempt them into pouncing on flimsier evidence with ever increasing
brutality.
The Darkspawn created when a Deluded Vigilante falls often resemble urban legends. Mysterious killers
who hunt down anyone who commits a seemingly innocent “crime”.
Fortunately Deluded Vigilantes consider themselves on the side of the angels. If the Princess arrives soon
enough this makes it easier to talk some sense into them, offering powers that aren’t inherently evil - such as
becoming Sworn and a couple of Bequests - usually works.
The possibility of an undeluded vigilante exists, such an exceptional individual would almost certainly have
at least 7 Willpower and could be a great ally if the Princess needs to work with powerful Taint or the Dark
World. Though even then such potential is probably put to better use as a Sworn.

Type: Darkened
Attributes: Intelligence 2, Wits 2, Resolve 3, Strength 4, Dexterity 3, Stamina 2, Presence 3, Manipula-
tion 1, Composure 2
Skills: Crafts 1, Investigation 2, Medicine 1, Athletics 2, Brawl 3, Drive 2, Firearms 2, Stealth 2, Intimi-
dation 3, Persuasion 2, Streetwise 2
Derived Traits: Health 7, Willpower 5, Size 5, Defense 4, Initiative 5, Speed 12
Integrity: 4
Vice: Violent. Brutal justice.
Virtue: Just. A typical expression.
Umbrae: Faceless in the Crowd, Dark Dreams 1
Caligines: Shadowblade 1

Invisibles
A common form of Darkened, though you wouldn’t be able to tell – few people without magic might be
able to spot them even when they look for them. The Invisibles are Darkened people who were overlooked to
begin with. Most were homeless, the mentally ill, and others who society might pretend don’t exist until they
had no choice but to shelter in a Tainted Place; but some were middle class folk who just had nothing noticeable
about them.

Example Dark Beings 303

 As the Darkness takes hold what little social life they had is lost to them as their friends stop calling them to
the few meetings they’d have normally gone to, their love life lost its modest little sparkle, and all which remains
of them is destined to slowly die as they are stripped of any self-esteem, living with an ever decreasing sense
of purpose. Or they might learn to abuse their Darkness-given assets to commit crime, and plummet deeper
into depravity.

Type: Darkened
Attributes: Intelligence 2, Wits 2, Resolve 1, Strength 2, Dexterity 3, Stamina 2, Presence 1, Manipula-
tion 2, Composure 2
Skills: Crafts 1, Investigation 3, Athletics 1, Brawl 1, Stealth 4, Persuasion 1
Derived Traits: Health 7, Willpower 3, Size 5, Defense 3, Initiative 5, Speed 10
Integrity: 5
Vice: Petty. The Invisibles’ lives lack any trait outside normalcy, and they cling to any minor achievement
they can claim credit for.
Virtue: Humble. The Invisibles expect little of life – just don’t threaten what little they have left to hold
dear.
Umbrae: Faceless in the Crowd, Hollow as a Shadow

Malicious Gossip
Humans are social creatures, they easily learn the importance of forming a coherent group with a cultural
identity. Like most things to do with humanity it has both its good side and its bad side, and like most things to do
with humanity it can be corrupted by the Dark. Conformity becomes the goal instead of the means. Relationships
become a way of scoring points. People outside the group become “the enemy”.
Malicious Gossips rarely become true Darkspawn, their sins are just too… petty. Slander and malicious
gossip rather than serial murders and gruesome torture. They remain as Darkened putting on a smiling face
and living their lives. The communities they call home tend to be cesspits of petty one-upmanship (even if they
remain pretty or idyllic on the surface), either because they dragged it down or because every better community
saw through them and sent them packing. Living alone of course was never an option.

Type: Darkened
Attributes: Intelligence 2, Wits 3, Resolve 2, Strength 2, Dexterity 2, Stamina 2, Presence 2, Manipula-
tion 3, Composure 3
Skills: Academics 1, Computer 1, Investigation 2, Occult 1, Politics 2 (Neighborhood), Athletics 1, Drive
1, Stealth 2, Empathy 2, Expression 2, Intimidation 1, Persuasion 2, Socialize 3 (My People), Streetwise 1,
Subterfuge 2 (slanderous gossip)
Derived Traits: Health 7, Willpower 4, Size 5, Defense 3, Initiative 5, Speed 9
Integrity: 5
Vice: Envious. It isn’t enough to succeed, others must fail.
Virtue: Peaceful. The Gossip has no stomach for violence.
Umbrae: Subtle Tongue, Tainted Allure of Vice (Treacherous)

Serial Killer
The Darkness pushes everyone it infects to become as wicked and cruel as it is. Sometimes it strikes paydirt
and creates a Darkened as bad as any Darkspawn, a monster that delights in the ultimate crime of murder.

304 Example Dark Beings

Darkened serial killers are rare though, and certainly rarer than Darkened who face the full wrath of the law
after their first murder or even on charges of attempted murder before anyone died. The Darkness pushes its
victims to peruse their vice with reckless abandon, to engage in brute sadism, and to erode their Integrity. None
of these traits create a calculating and precise killer who can get away with repeated murders.
However the stats below represent an exception, someone with the willpower to contain their urges until
their tracks are covered and skills to have a successful career of murder … at least until their own crimes reduce
them into a simple Darkspawn.
If you want your antagonist to have a longer career, or a longer backstory, you can upgrade the Umbrae to
Caligines Shadowblade 1 and and use these stats for a Mnemosyne.

Type: Darkened
Attributes: Intelligence 3, Wits 3, Resolve 4, Strength 2, Dexterity 2, Stamina 2, Presence 1, Manipula-
tion 3, Composure 3
Skills: Academics 1, Investigation 2, Occult 1, Athletics 2, Drive 2, Larceny 3 (homes), Stealth 3, Weapon-
ry 3 (against non-combatants), Animal Ken 1, Expression 1, Intimidation 3 (isolated situations), Streetwise
2, Subterfuge 3
Derived Traits: Health 7, Willpower 7, Size 5, Defense 4, Initiative 6, Speed 9
Integrity: 4
Vice: Hateful. He has a favoured type of victims.
Virtue: Patient. A good crime takes time and planning.
Merits: Anonymity 3, Untouchable 1
Umbrae: Defiling Touch, Loathsome Weapon 1
Caligines: Shadow Cloak

Corpse-Eaters
Survival… needing to survive can bring out the best in people, it can bring out the worst in people but
some say what it does is bring out the truth in people. Sometimes it would be best if the truth remained hidden.
Eating human flesh when you’re starving isn’t enough to make a Darkspawn, it’s not even enough to make a
Darkened but when the ground’s already Tainted by whatever sins put a human being into such a position, when
the Darkness already has a hold. Some people get a taste for human flesh, and if the supply dies up they’ll take
matters into their own hands.
Corpse-Eaters still look human, under the thick layer of filth and the accumulated results of terrible table
manners. Then they open their mouths, stretching their human looking lips back to their ears and unhinging
their jaws to reveal a mass of broken stained teeth in all shapes and sizes three layers deep.

Type: Darkspawn
Attributes: Intelligence 1, Wits 2, Resolve 5, Strength 4, Dexterity 3, Stamina 4, Presence 1, Manipula-
tion 1, Composure 3
Skills: Athletics 2, Brawl 2 (grapple, bite), Stealth 2, Survival 3, Intimidation 2
Derived Traits: Health 9, Willpower 8, Size 5, Defense 5, Initiative 6, Speed 9
Vice: Gluttonous
Virtue: Cautious
Umbrae: Roteater
Caligines: Loathsome Weapon 2 (jaws), Flesh of my Flesh 3

Example Dark Beings 305

Cradlesnatchers
Grotesque fat sloshing around within drooping folds of loose skin. It’s the voice in the cupboard, the pres-
ence under your bed. It’s every mother’s worst nightmare: The Cradlesnatcher. They pass like a shadow of si-
lence and leave behind empty beds and broken families. In life Cradlesnatchers were the servants of organized
crime and politicians everywhere. The briber and blackmailer who corrupted or at least neutered the innocent
so they could not oppose their employers, though even those scum of the earth would pale in horror if they saw
what they would have eventually become.

Type: Darkspawn
Attributes: Intelligence 1, Wits 3, Resolve 3, Strength 4, Dexterity 1, Stamina 3, Presence 3, Manipula-
tion 1, Composure 2
Skills: Politics 1 (School) Science 1 (physics of light), Athletics 2 (Squeezing into things), Brawl 3 (grap-
ple), Stealth 4 (Bedroom, Moving Silently), Survival 2 (The Dark World), Intimidation 2 (Children)
Derived Traits: Health 9, Willpower 5, Size 6, Defense 5, Initiative 3, Speed 11
Vice: Envious
Virtue: Discreet
Condition: Fearful (of dogs, cats, and being under a blanket)
Umbrae: Light is Dark, Faceless in the Crowd
Caligines: Void Magic 1, Nowhere Untouched 2, Grotesque Bulk 1, Zombie’s Flesh 2, Voice-Eating
Hunger

Duskhounds
Were Duskhounds human who warped into canine bodies, or dogs who grew into grotesque parodies of
their masters and mistresses? It’s impossible to tell for sure, for the hounds’ bodies lie somewhere halfway be-
tween man and beast. In mind though, there is no question. Duskhounds are half wolf, and half pure evil sadism.
They are pack hunters who have no need to eat, only a love of the pain and suffering they inflict. In combat
Duskhounds fight like wolves; one monster will keep their target’s attention and fight defensively while others
circle around to strike. They favor quick attacks to inflict Tilts then fall back before retaliation. Duskhounds will
use this strategy even against obviously inferior foes, for cruelty’s sake if nothing else.

Type: Darkspawn
Attributes: Intelligence 1, Wits 3, Resolve 3, Strength 4, Dexterity 3, Stamina 3, Presence 4, Manipula-
tion 1, Composure 1
Skills: Investigation 1, Athletics 3, Brawl 4 (Jaws), Stealth 3 (in darkness, moving silently), Intimidate
3 (growl)
Derived Traits: Health 7, Willpower 4, Size 5, Defense 6, Initiative 4, Speed 14
Vice: Cruel
Virtue: Clever
Merits: Fleet of Foot 2, Martial Arts 1 (Focused Attack)
Umbrae: Hunger Means Nothing, Light is Dark, Loathsome Weapon 2 (jaws), Scuttling Spider’s Sense
Caligines: Voice-Eating Hunger 1, Shadow Step 5
Duskhound packs always have a leader. The pack leader has the Umbrae Grotesque Bulk 1 and Sub-
sumed by Another Shadow, and the Caligo Open Hellmouth, in addition to the listed traits.

306 Example Dark Beings

Filthcrawlers
Filthcrawlers are large slimy centipedes that in many ancient cultures were associated with spiritual filth
for their ability to spread Taint. Physically they are a bit larger than most centipedes with a distinctive red head.
Individually they’re not much of a threat to a Princess or even a mortal. Their only weapon, a poisonous bite,
cannot penetrate a thick boot, let alone a Champion’s supernatural armor, and they have no more durability
or fighting skill than a common centipede. All that taken into account, a wise Princess will not underestimate
Filthcrawlers. If they do manage to bite skin their jaws contain a deadly supernatural toxin, and their poisons
create Taint as they chew upon furniture, buildings, and whatever they can get their little jaws on. Worst of all,
with their tiny size they find it very easy to sneak out of a Tainted place in search of a new home to corrupt.

Type: Darkspawn
Attributes: Intelligence 0, Wits 0, Resolve 1, Strength 1, Dex 2, Stamina 1, Presence 1, Manipulation
1, Composure 1
Skills: Brawl 1, Stealth 3
Derived Traits: Health 3, Willpower 2, Size 2, Defense 2, Initiative 3, Speed 6
Vice: Destructive
Virtue: Persistent
Umbrae: Corruption of Blood, Light is Dark, Loathsome Weapon 1, Roteater
Caligines: Defiling Touch 1, Diminutive Size 5, Gathering Shadows 1, Night Air 1, Nowhere Untouched
2, Walk in Darkness 3, World-Corroding Entropic Touch 3
The Filthcrawlers’ version of Gathering Shadows summons only other Filthcrawlers, but brings them in
from miles around - it consistently calls in a swarm of the creatures.

Heartleeches
Sometimes, when a new Darkspawn tears itself out of someone who has betrayed all they love and given
everything in the name of their own hubris, the corpse is left behind, putrid and rotting. Instead, that traitor’s
tongue squirms free, sprouting centipede-like legs of wispy shadow, and crawling around far, far too quickly.
Such beings, Heartleeches, are the epitome of the madness of paranoia and the terrible things that mistrust does
to a man, for no-one even remembers them when they’re gone. Small, globules of inky darkness roiling off them,
they find sleeping people, and whisper into their ears, filling their dreams with Darkness. Some say that they
can even crawl down the throat of a sleeper, and whisper from within their gut, in the mad, senseless burbling
of the Beyond, but that is just paranoia in its own right. Right?

Type: Darkspawn
Attributes: Intelligence 2, Wits 2, Resolve 1, Strength 2, Dexterity 4, Stamina 2, Presence 2, Manipula-
tion 5, Composure 4
Skills: Investigation 1, Athletics 2 (Scuttling), Brawl 1 (Trying to Escape), Stealth 5 (Bedrooms), Survival
3 (The Places No-One Thinks To Look), Animal Ken 3 (Inspiring Fear), Empathy 4 1, Intimidation 2 (Inspiring
Paranoia), Persuasion 4 (Everyone Dies Alone)
Derived Traits: Health 4, Willpower 5, Size 2, Defense 6, Initiative 8, Speed 8
Vice: Cruel
Virtue: Patient
Umbrae: Light is Dark, Faceless in the Crowd, Scuttling Spider’s Sense
1
Only for the purposes of negative emotions and judging someone’s psyche; 0 otherwise

Example Dark Beings 307

 Caligines: Diminutive Size 3, Avoid All Eyes 1, Everyone Dies Alone 4

Hundredhands
Hundredhands are monstrous Darkspawn that resemble bulging cancerous lumps of flesh striding atop two
thick legs; many mismatched arms emerge from the flesh and reach inside to rip out poisoned organs to throw
at anyone nearby. Nobody knows what kind of sin and depravity creates this strange monstrosity, though it is
commonly assumed that they are formed from many Tainted bodies. As far as anyone has seen all Hundredhands
do is feast upon dead flesh, and try to kill anything living they come across. But do not take their mindlessness
for weakness, Hundredhands are strong combatants and being mindless means they are more easily controlled
by smarter Darkspawn who can use their strength to its full potential.

Type: Darkspawn
Attributes: Intelligence 1, Wits 1, Resolve 1, Strength 4, Dexterity 5, Stamina 4, Presence 1, Manipula-
tion 1, Composure 1
Skills: Athletics 2, Brawl 1 (wild flailing), Firearms 3
Derived Traits: Health 12, Willpower 2, Size 8, Defense 7, Initiative 6, Speed 14
Vice: Gluttonous
Virtue: Persistent
Umbrae: Corruption of Blood, Grip Onto Your Fear, Roteater, Sound of Silence
Caligines: Grotesque Bulk 5, Loathsome Weapon 1 (bite), Vile Gobbets 5, Zombie’s Flesh 2, Void Magic
1, Autophage 2, Flesh of my Flesh 3, Hope’s Eclipse 4

Lickermen
Long of arm and hunched over are the Lickermen, those among the Darkspawn which hunt for the innocent
and sup from the taste of violation. They are shrivelled, like a long-dried, starved corpse, their leathery skin
loose around their too-small bones, and a vile, blackened tongue as long as a man’s arm protrudes from a mouth
otherwise sewn up with stitches of their own bone. Examination reveals that they are sexless; whatever they
were before they were monsters is gone. As they pass by, they wuffle, like some kind of tracking hound, and they
are often used for that purpose by Mnemosynes and Cataphractoi who want a stalking hound which is mostly
reliable. In combat, they will flee against anything they think they cannot beat, but will gleefully attack anyone
alone, especially children under the age of seven, and individuals with an Integrity of 8 or higher. They do not
eat the body, however, for they cannot open their mouths; it is the destruction of innocence that they seem to
feed off.

Type: Darkspawn
Attributes: Intelligence 1, Wits 5, Resolve 3, Strength 1, Dexterity 3, Stamina 2, Presence 2, Manipula-
tion 3, Composure 2
Skills: Craft 1 (Improvising Weapons), Investigation 2 (Lost Things), Physical Skills: Athletics 3 (Climb-
ing), Brawl 2 (Tongue), Stealth 4 (From Surprise), Survival 1 (The Dark World), Animal Ken 1 (Inspiring Fear),
Empathy 3 1, Intimidation 2 (It’s Behind You)
Derived Traits: Health 4, Willpower 5, Size 4, Defense 8, Initiative 5, Speed 8
Vice: Cowardly
Virtue: Pragmatic
Umbrae: Diminutive Size 1, Hunger Means Nothing

308 Example Dark Beings

 Calignes: Loathsome Weapon 2 (a blackened, barb-like tongue), Void Magic 1, Enervation 1, Taste of
Sin 1

Shadowpuppets
They say all evil needs to win is for good people to do nothing. Well evil won here and it won because the
good person who was Tainted simply did nothing. For convenience they turned a blind eye to the curse that
surrounded them, the living shadow that delighted in others suffering.
Perhaps they still find it convenient, they still don’t need to worry about the shadow. They don’t need to
worry about anything any more. Now the shadow thinks for both of them, but then the Princess sees a flash of
recognition, terror and guilt deep within the glassy zombified eyes. Not so convenient then.

Type: Darkspawn
Attributes: Intelligence 2, Wits 4, Resolve 2, Strength 2, Dexterity 5, Stamina 2, Presence 2, Manipula-
tion 3, Composure 2
Skills: Investigate 1 (shiny things), Athletics 3, Brawl 2, Larceny 5 (Sleight of hand), Stealth 5 (just a
shadow), Survival 2, Intimidation 2, Subterfuge 2
Derived Traits: Health 6, Willpower 4, Size 5, Defense 8, Initiative 2, Speed 12
Vice: Greedy
Virtue: Patient
Umbrae: Animate Shadow, Cold Flesh, Hunger Means Nothing, Light is Dark
Caligines: Zombie’s Flesh 5, Loathsome Weapon 1 (claws)

The Shadow
Attributes: Power 2, Finesse 3, Resistance 2
Derived Traits: Corpus 7, Willpower 5, Size 5, Defense 3, Initiative 5, Speed 5
Other traits as under Animate Shadow.

Shadow-wraiths
Not all Darkspawn were once people, in fact most were not. Shadowwraiths are formed not from people,
but from their little mementoes. Sometimes when a prized possession is lost within a Tainted place or the Dark-
world the memories, the humanity, invested in such an object can give form to the Taint. It becomes twisted and
corrupt, a hungry creature of the Darkness.
Shadow-wraiths are immaterial beings and have the simplified traits of such beings, such as ghosts and
spirits. The Hollow as a Shadow Umbra allows them to materialize more easily than a spirit, and much more
so than a ghost.

Type: Darkspawn
Attributes: Power 6, Finesse 2, Resistance 4
Derived Traits: Corpus 9, Willpower 11, Size 5, Defense 6, Initiative 6, Speed 13
Vice: Hateful
Virtue: Cautious

Example Dark Beings 309

 Umbrae: Hollow as a Shadow, Light is Dark, Roteater
Caligines: Avoid All Eyes 1, Enervation 1, Loathsome Weapon 3 (claws)

Dr. Arnow
Needs must be met, I merely provide a service.

Mr. Arnow as he was called was a fine upstanding Victorian gentleman. By fine and upstanding we wish it
to be understood that he had a great deal of money. He was in fact the rotten scum of the Earth. A man who saw
his fellow humans as nothing more than a resource, and a slum lord who treated his tenants in the most awful
manner. His cruelties tainted his tenancies and through that, himself.
At first Mr. Arnow delighted in his status, believing he held vast powers at the tips of his fingers. All too
soon he learned that he could never master the Darkness, instead the Darkness had already mastered him.
Now a Mnemosyne called Dr. Arnow he resides in the Dark World and sends his Darkspawn servants to capture
victims from the world above as parts for his Dolls. Every Doll he creates is another chance for people to fall
to temptation, to Darkness.
Dr. Arnow is old (though a good chunk of his life was spent frozen in the Dark World) and powerful, but he
is a coward at heart and prefers to avoid direct involvement.

Type: Mnemosyne
Attributes: Intelligence 3, Wits 2, Resolve 3, Strength 4, Dexterity 5, Stamina 3, Presence 2, Manipula-
tion 5, Composure 5
Skills: Academics 2, Crafts 5 (dolls, flesh), Investigation 2, Medicine 1, Brawl 2, Firearms 3, Expression
2, Intimidation 3 (Psychological manipulation), Persuasion 3 (Psychological manipulation) Subterfuge 2
Derived Traits: Health 11, Willpower 8, Size 8, Defense 2, Initiative 10, Speed 17
Shadows: 4
Vice: Ambitious. Money no longer has any meaning for him, but power is always the sweetest currency.
By spreading Vice and Taint he increases the Darkness’ power and thus the portion of it delegated down
to him.
Virtue: Patient. Moderation is the key, don’t overplay your hand. Find a method that works, than stick
to it.
Merits: Dark Palace 2, Safe Place 2 (He’s twisted his small corner of the Dark World into a Victorian
dollmaker’s workshop.)
Caligines: Grotesque Bulk 5 (He’s ludicrously tall but thin and spindly), Zombie’s Flesh 3, Handful of Dust
3, Everyone Dies Alone 4, Void Magic 1, Enervation 1, Enervating Hex 2, Grasping at Shadows 2, Shadowblade
3, Such Pretty Eyes, I Think I’ll Keep Them 3, Dance, Puppet, Dance 4 (He sends puppet dolls to attack), I am
Your Master 5, Taste of Sin 1, Crafted with Love and Care 5

Dewain
A lie is such a blunt tool, I find a well placed truth to be far more dangerous.

Dewain does not seem like much, a crippled African man in his late teens who speaks with impeccable
manners. This is his greatest defense, he slides beneath notice. Unlike many of his peers he has no power base
to defend him from Princesses or even mortals, only by avoiding attention does he survive.
Behind the mask is the banal evil of the Darkness. A born sociopath even before he first encountered Taint,
the Darkness has eroded the edges of his personality, leaving behind something simple and directed. Once he

310 Example Dark Beings

manipulated for personal gain, now he manipulates people simple simply because he can. The worse atrocities
he can push people into, the better. His usual method is simple, tell the right person the right truth and watch
the fun begin.
Wherever he travels, Dewain is always accompanied by his maid Tamila.

Type: Mnemosyne
Attributes: Intelligence 3, Wits 3, Resolve 2, Strength 2, Dexterity 3, Stamina 1, Presence 2, Manipula-
tion 5, Composure 3
Skills: Academics 2, Investigation 3 (Horrific Truths), Medicine 1, Stealth 2, Survival 2, Expression 2,
Intimidation 3, Persuasion 4 (Telling the right truth), Streetwise 2, Subterfuge 2
Derived Traits: Health 6, Willpower 5, Size 5, Defense 3, Initiative 6, Speed 2
Shadows: 2
Vice: Cruel. Hurting people because why not.
Virtue: Honest. Dewain scorns deception - his voice is his only weapon, and people must trust his words
to be hurt by them.
Condition: Crippled [CofD 288]
Caligines: Void Magic 1, Nowhere Untouched 2, Walk in Darkness 3, Taste of Sin 1, Evil Influence 2, Sin
Whisperer 3, Drink Pain Like Wine 4, Such Pretty Eyes, I Think I’ll Keep Them 3, I am Your Master 5

Tamila
You are working too hard again, I’ll run you a bath and cook dinner.

Tamila was one of the first things Dewain used his dark powers for. Even before he became a Mnemosyne
he sought out powers that would give him control over others, the Caligo I Am Your Master. With it he sought
out Darkspawn to make his own. Tamila was the first he found, and the one he kept by his side when he began
his current subtle way of life. When Dewain found Tamila she was nothing more than an animalistic monster
in human flesh, but he’s trained her beyond that. Now she serves as a one woman domestic staff, bodyguard
and pushes the wheel chair.
Tamila is a striking African woman who wears an increasingly tattered maid’s uniform at all times.

Type: Darkspawn
Attributes: Intelligence 1, Wits 3, Resolve 5, Strength 4, Dexterity 5, Stamina 4, Presence 1, Manipula-
tion 1, Composure 5
Skills: Crafts 2 (Domestic), Athletics 2, Brawl 2, Stealth 2, Survival 1, Weaponry 4 (Polearms), Intimida-
tion 2
Derived Traits: Health 9, Willpower 10, Size 5, Defense 7, Initiative 12, Speed 17
Shadows: 4
Vice: Violent. Tamila is still a dangerous brute, enjoying nothing more than ripping into flesh.
Virtue: Loyal, to Dewain. For a Darkspawn being the right hand of a successful Mnemosyne is about
as good as it gets.
Merits: Fast Reflexes 2, Fleet of Foot 2, Iron Stamina 3, Striking Looks 2
Umbrae: Roteater
Caligines: Grasping at Shadows 2, Shadowblade 3, Loathsome Weapon 2 (jaws), Flesh of my Flesh 3,
Vile Gobbets 5

Example Dark Beings 311

The Boogyman
I am the who when you call who’s there?
The Boogyman is not the strongest Cataphract, though he is one of the strongest Cataphractoi. The Boogy-
man is not the oldest Cataphract, though he is one of the oldest Cataphractoi. But the Boogyman is the worst
Cataphract because in his reign of terror he has a special focus. Children.
For over two thousand years he has ruled one kingdom or another in the Dark World, drawing minions and
wining their loyalty with bread and circuses: an unending supply of young children to torment and consume. It
hasn’t all been fun and games, no matter the culture, no matter how much people disbelieve in the supernatural.
If you target children their parents are going to come after you.
Aided by the priests of Nox the centurion Cornelius led his legionnaires into the Dark World and slaughtered
the Boogyman’s citizens. The shamans from a dozen native American tribes joined together to send an unending
swarm of maggot spirits to devour the Boogyman’s kingdoms. The Caliphs’ greatest scholars created alchemical
fires and the Japanese crafted swords of pure jade. In time every kingdom the Boogyman has founded fell to
those it preyed upon but the Boogyman itself survived, fled deep into the Dark World to found its kingdom anew.
Whenever the Boogyman creates its kingdom he builds it to look as much like the world above as he can,
but with hidden and grotesque traps in every corner. He builds with a particular focus to schools, playgrounds
parks or homes - places children are likely to know well. This as much as everything he does is a cruelty, it blurs
the nice safe division between the Dark World and Earth for any child to escape. Children do escape too, the
Boogyman finds the sweetest sensation is hope breaking apart and so he plays fair and gives children hope. He
always has a soft spot in his heart for the children who try to keep their companion’s hope alive, if they fail he
keeps them apart from the others. He tries to turn them into a Mnemosyne and set them to destroying the hope
they once protected.

Type: Cataphract
Attributes: Intelligence 2, Wits 3, Resolve 4, Strength 4+2, Dexterity 3+2, Stamina 4+2, Presence 4+4,
Manipulation 3, Composure 3
Skills: Crafts 5 (The Dark World), Investigation 2, Medicine 2, Occult 1, Athletics 3, Brawl 4, Stealth 5,
Survival 3, Expression 2, Intimidation 4 (Children), Persuasion 3 (Followers), Subterfuge 4
Derived Traits: Health 10+2, Willpower 7, Size 6, Defense 6, Initiative 6+2, Speed 13+4
Shadows: 8
Vice: Cruel. It’s simple really, all he wants is to make children suffer.
Virtue: Persistent. He pursues children without rest; driven out of one kingdom, he goes on undaunted
to the next.
Umbrae: Cold Flesh, Grotesque Bulk 1 (loathsomely fat and sweaty), Hunger Means Nothing, Subsumed
by Another Shadow, Zombie’s Flesh 5
Caligines: Avoid All Eyes 1, Bogeyman 2, Void Magic 1, Nowhere Untouched 2, Walk in Darkness 3,
Enervation 1, Grasping at Shadows 2, Taste of Sin 1, Voice-Eating Hunger 1, Such Pretty Eyes, I Think I’ll Keep
Them 3, I am Your Master 5
Transformation: Add Loathsome Weapon 2 (claws).

Maria the Cleaner

For most of her life Maria was just a face in the crowd, a number on a spreadsheet; her only misfortune was
to be an immigrant working as a housekeeper for a politician. A minor bureaucrat in the immigration service,
wishing to embroil her employer in scandal, “lost” the records proving her to be a legal immigrant and issued
an order for her deportation. Although the resulting furor did not, in the end, remove the politician from office,
it consigned Maria to years of official persecution. The stress of fighting a rigged system, combined with a neu-
rochemical imbalance, led to Maria’s suicide and rebirth as a Cataphract.

312 Example Dark Beings

 The monster that thinks it’s Maria has trouble remembering what it’s supposed to be doing. It knows
it’s supposed to clean, but the details elude it. Consequently it directs its minions to “clean” different houses
throughout both the Dark World and on Earth. Inhuman monsters know nothing of sanitation, so their attention
looks closer to a ransacking. If her minions fail to clean to her standards then their punishment is brutal. Maria’s
criticism resembles a physical enactment of self-loathing, but directed against Darkspawn it makes an effective
way of whipping her minions into shape. Maria can essentially beat Caligines into her minions, for Tainted is
the closest to clean in her Dark-addled eyes. Also, Maria remembers that business hours exist but she can’t re-
member what time they are, so like most Dark creatures she prefers to operate at night, which means people
are usually at home when the monsters come knocking at their door.
A town cursed by Maria’s attention finds itself the target of a vicious campaign of terror and Tainting tar-
geting the homes of the richer residents, the sort who can afford to hire domestic help. Other servants of the
Darkness, even those that fear enslavement to a Cataphract’s will, often move in to colonize the Tainted Places
that Maria creates and forgets about. If not dealt with quickly, Maria’s presence can lead to a rapid escalation
of both the Darkness and the Stormwracked.

Type: Cataphract
Attributes: Intelligence 2, Wits 3, Resolve 2+3, Strength 2+2, Dexterity 3, Stamina 3+1, Presence 2,
Manipulation 2, Composure 2
Skills: Academics 1, Crafts 3 (Domestic), Athletics 1, Drive 1, Firearms 2+1, Larceny 2, Stealth 2+1, Sur-
vival 2+1, Weaponry 2+1 (polearms), Empathy 2, Intimidation 3+2 (subordinates), Streetwise 2
Derived Traits: Health 8+1, Willpower 4+3, Size 5, Defense 4, Initiative 5, Speed 10+2
Shadows: 3
Vice: Hateful. The justified anger Maria felt when she died has congealed into a toxic hate that latches
onto any convenient target.
Virtue: Patient. Like the tortoise Maria believes that slow and steady wins the race.
Umbrae: Light is Dark, Sound of Silence, Scuttling Spider’s Sense, Subsumed by Another Shadow
Caligines: Shadowblade 3, Vile Gobbets 1, Voidblast 5, Open Hellmouth 1, Defiling Touch 1, Burying the
Crime 2, Walk in Darkness 3, Twisting the Bane 4, Hope’s Eclipse 4, I am Your Master 5, Profanation 5

Dr. Goldstein (the Ring-Eater)

Don’t leave. We can’t leave until we figure out what the problem is between you two. Pay no
attention to the rattling.
—Cataphract

No seriously, it’s a good idea to get away from here. I said get away. *demonic* GET AWAY!!!!
—Dybbuk

Once, he was a shrink. He’s pretty sure of that, even if his memory isn’t so good. He used to be the person
failing marriages went to before the divorce lawyer, and he was good at it too - not the best, but he was regularly
referred to by other, successful customers. The fact that they appreciated him was probably good for his sanity,
too - Ishmael Goldstein himself had struggled with borderline personality disorder and depression for most
of his life, a product of his parents’ own relationship difficulties being visited on their son. Eventually though,
everyone fails, and for Ishmael, it couldn’t have happened at a worse time in his life. His own wife had begun to
cheat on him, his daughter grew distant for reasons he couldn’t explain, and to top it off, the failed treatment
happened to be that of a city councilman, meaning Ishmael was facing losing his medical licence to make his
patient happy. Caught in a spiral of self-loathing and feelings of rejection, Dr. Goldstein came home, kissed his
sleeping wife, locked himself in the guest room, and proceeded to follow in the footsteps of many psychiatrists
and BPD sufferers before him - with a bottle of sleeping pills.
The Darkness had other plans for him. Thus, even as Ishmael’s soul left his body, an infinitesimal fragment
of the Outer Dark, drawn by his daughter’s recent Blossoming, filled the vacuum left behind. Now an enigmatic,

Example Dark Beings 313

cerebral Cataphract with a soft, too-white smile and a penchant for nibbling the flesh off the ring-fingers of his
victims, Dr. Goldstein has a new practice in the Dark World, kidnapping couples he sees in the midst of even the
tiniest, most inconsequential argument for “therapy” in his Palace of Dark Delights. A very composed and lucky
few able to keep up the appearances of “working through their difficulties” to his satisfaction and are returned to
their homes, likely to face a life of traumatic stress from there on, but alive, and unDarkened. Those who are too
panicked to coherently address - or even remember - the “issues” he sees or too quickly for his liking (he noted
that on occasion, patients will lie to keep up appearances) are killed and returned to Earth, their ring fingers
nothing but bone … or worse, implanted with Shadows, so that they may “understand where your counselor is
coming from”. They become ticking time bombs, the Darkness slowly devouring their capacity for love …
… Except for some reason, there’s two Dr. Goldsteins. One is the font of Dark energies wearing his skin,
and the other is, in fact, the real Ishmael Goldstein - or at least, his unusually cognizant phantasmal afterimage
in Twilight. Normally, it doesn’t happen due to the corrosive effect the Darkness has on forming anchors, but
on rare occasion, a Cataphract whose death was almost perfect for forming a ghost - the proper design for the
house, the method of death enabling one’s soul to get cold feet, attachment to the physical plane - will have his
own ghost rise from the grave, as was the case with Dr. Goldstein. Needless to say, the shock of finding himself
floating above his bed was nothing compared to finding his body had apparently decided to get up without him
(after that, realizing it was a monster born from a force of entropy disincarnate was almost a relief). Always a
fairly calm man in between his BPD-induced stormy moods however, Ishmael logically deduced that what God
wanted to remain on Earth for (though he wasn’t a devout person before, being unliving proof of an afterlife
tends to change your mind) was to stop the monster now wearing his body like a coat (and given how ghosts
work, destroying Dr. Goldstein the Cataphract will probably resolve Ishmael’s unfinished business and allow
him to move on to the afterlife). The problem with this is that, due to Ishmael’s religious convictions about what
a ghost is, he has become a dybbuk, the Jewish version - one noted for its inability to communicate with the
living. While his powers of possession are most useful in warding away potential victims - he’s saved dozens of
lives by faking seizures and leaving evidence of the Ring-Eater’s hunting grounds - there’s really not much he
can do other than make windows rattle - and the Cataphract is aware of his presence.
Thankfully, one of the rules about exorcism is that one needs Integrity to do so - something Darkspawn are
in short supply of. But Dr. Goldstein is clever. He may not be able to rid himself of the dybbuk, but someone else
might. Say, a gullible Noble or two … or three … or a nakama …
Appearance: Dr. Goldstein - or more accurately, the Darkness wearing Goldstein’s flesh - is the archetypal
shrink: chubby, besuited in tweed, and with kind, inquisitive eyes that usually have sunglasses to disguise his
distinctive pupils. He also tries to be unassuming as possible - partially out of habit from the living Dr. Goldstein,
mostly because drawing attention to himself begins to show certain… oddities. His teeth look more like porce-
lain than enamel, his slight girth like well-embalmed dead weight and the fact that his shadow is occasionally
missing. Like many serial killers however, Dr. Goldstein is very good at diverting attention from his more un-
natural qualities, right up until he feels he has no choice then to activate a False Transformation. What is his
true form, devoid of humanity? A round, squat, squamous thing with many eyes and many limbs, with a great
maw in his belly, inside of which pulses a constant storm, always ready to be vented outwards in a destructive
gale of black magic.
The Dybbuk, on the other hand, doesn’t have an appearance to begin with - Ishmael believed the dead were
possessing spirits, and that has been represented by him being nothing so much as a great mist, with lights
akin to that of an amoeba’s organs scattered about him. He doesn’t even have a real voice when he’s possessing
someone, either - instead, they become a more frantic, more demented version of themselves that is constantly
twitching, as if trying to leap out of their own skin … unless one develops an effective means of communicating
with him (see below), in which case he uses whatever means are available (telekinetically moving the wedge of
an Oujia board, misting over a mirror before drawing letters in it) to communicate extremely laconic, straight-
forward messages (in particular things like D-O-N-T-T-R-U-S-T-M-Y-B-O-D-Y and W-E-A-R-I-N-G-M-Y-S-K-I-N,
if he thinks his contactees asked a question that allows him to segue into that). This does not require Numina
- rather, it’s the Essence released by the rite allowing him to work around his lack of a voice, more like a form
of ghost Sign.
Storytelling Hints: Dr. Goldstein is meant for two purposes. Firstly, he is meant to play with PCs expecta-
tions of ghost stories - just imagine how priceless the looks on their faces will be when they realize the myste-
rious, body-hopping ghost is actually the good guy, and their patron is a monster who, quite simply, should not
exist. The second is to provide a definite end to any debate over whether the Cataphract is the same person
whose body was animated by the Darkness - a definite no. The Cataphract’s soul is long lost to its body, even to

314 Example Dark Beings

the point of possibly forming a ghost, and what’s left is simply a dark spirit, wearing the previous occupant’s
body and memories like a human suit. Sun Protection Factor 3000.
For his part, Dr. Goldstein does his best to look like the victim, ordering his Animate Shadow to create pol-
tergeist activity that seems directed at him, using his Caligines (especially Call the Black Dog - he’s learned how
to manipulate it so that the dreamer is hunted by something of Goldstein’s choice, such as a bloodthirsty ghost)
to subtly put his dupes on the wrong course, and attempting to confuse the issue of what a dybbuk actually is. Of
course, the Ring-Eater is still a Darkspawn, and does whatever is within his power to fulfill his purpose - “fixing”
relationships. His minions are under standing orders to find problems for him - they deliberately go about ruin-
ing the relationship between couples (stealing momentoes, delaying dates, erasing memories of anniversaries -
that sort of thing), which they then show to him. For his part, Dr. Goldstein is aware of the fact that he is the cause
of many relationship difficulties, but to his Darkness-spawned mind, he is simply provoking troubles that would
have happened anyway and are to be nipped in the bud (no one said a Cataphract’s arguments were sensible …)
By contrast, Ishmael may not be able to communicate normally, but he does his best to use his hosts to
direct player characters to information about Jewish ghost lore. He doesn’t actually know if the old rituals and
ceremonies will work, but he believes the Cataphract to be the source of legends of shedim, the grave-haunting
demons of Semite myth, and thinks it’s his best shot. It won’t work the way he intends, but given what does
happen, it’s likely he won’t be too upset. Thanks to the Darkness wearing away at the barrier between worlds,
trying to exorcise Ishmael using Catholic-inspired rituals of denial or similar “cast thee out” exorcisms is a very
bad plan - besides quite possibly sealing one of the few controls on a young Cataphract’s growth in the Under-
world, it also forms a portal there, as per the rules in Book of the Dead. Naturally, Dr. Goldstein will attempt to
fool any well-meaning priests into doing so, knowing that even if the exorcism fails, he will quite possibly have
a potential threat on an impromptu nekyia. On the plus side, the stabilizing effects on the corpus of ghosts the
Underworld has will allow the Dybbuk to manifest as a human with perfectly normal speech, likely to beat some
sense into the trapped exorcist before attempting to help guide them out to fix their mistake.
On the other hand, rituals meant to appease ghosts, such as Chinese wandering ghost offerings or, appropri-
ately enough, Jewish exorcism rites, have a rather different effect than normal. Firstly, Ishmael does not contest
the roll - remember, he wants the rite to succeed so he may somehow weaken or destroy the Cataphract. Rather,
the Darkness within the Ring-Eater subconsciously senses the attempt to communicate with his wayward soul
and rolls Resolve + Composure to resist, which manifests as a rather different “feeling” then the Dybbuk (imag-
ine the lightless depths of an underground lake as compared to a well-lit freezer). The contest is resolved as
normal, with failure on the part of the exorcist meaning that the Cataphract becomes aware of the attempt -
he will attempt to persuade the exorcist that the Dybbuk is beyond help, and failing that, attempt to either kill
her or flee. If and when the exorcist wins, every net success allows Ishmael one minute of coherent, two-way
communication. If nothing else, the exorcist will likely realize she hasn’t been told the whole truth.

Dr. Goldstein, the Ring-Eater

Type: Cataphract
Attributes: Intelligence 4, Wits 3, Resolve 3, Strength 2+2, Dexterity 4, Stamina 3, Presence 4, Manip-
ulation 5, Composure 2
Skills: Occult 3, Academics 4 (Psychology), Investigation 2 (Psych Profiling), Medicine 3 (Pharmaceuti-
cals), Athletics 1, Drive 2, Firearms 2, Empathy 4 (Psychological Diagnosis), Intimidation 3 (Creepily Serene),
Persuasion 5 (Break The Cutie), Socialize 2 (Lowering Psychological Defenses), Subterfuge 2
Merits: Meditative Mind 4, Dark Palace 3 (His offices as reflected in the Dark World), Safe Place 1 (the
reflected offices)
Derived Traits: Health 8, Willpower 5, Size 5+3, Defense 4, Initiative 4, Speed 11+2
Shadows: 5
Virtue: Generous. The Ring-Eater honestly believes he is helping people avoid the utter despair of lone-
liness that led to his creation.
Vice: Pessimistic. The Ring-Eater also honestly believes that even the slightest faults of character will
doom a relationship without his counsel. He invariably puts the worst construction possible on anything his
clients say.

Example Dark Beings 315

 Umbrae: Animate Shadow, Dark Dreams 1, Subtle Tongue, Subsumed by Another Shadow, Tainted
Allure of Vice
Caligines: Avoid All Eyes 1, Bogeyman 2, Handful of Dust 3, Everyone Dies Alone 4, Enervation 1, Ener-
vating Hex 2, Call the Black Dog 3, Shadowblade 3, Such Pretty Eyes, I Think I’ll Keep Them 3, Taste of Sin
1, Flesh of my Flesh 3
Transformation: Add Hollow as a Shadow, Miasma of Madness, Grotesque Bulk 3, Zombie’s Flesh 3
and Voidblast 5 (from the storm in his heart).

Ishmael the Dybbuk

Rank: 2
Attributes: Power 4, Finesse 2, Resistance 4
Derived Traits: Corpus 9, Willpower 8, Size 5, Defense 2, Initiative 6, Speed 11
Essence: 15
Integrity: 6
Manifestations: Twilight Form, Fetter, Possess
Numina: Dement, Host Jump, Innocuous
Anchors: Dr. Goldstein’s offices in the Dark World, his house (still lived in - since Ishmael is usually
hanging around Dr. Goldstein and doesn’t possess the inhabitants, it’s only slightly morbid due to the deathly
Essence saturating the area).
Virtue: Generous. Dr. Goldstein was indeed an ideal psychiatrist. He was very kind in life, and he remains
so in death - even if he can’t exactly do much now other than save people from his possessed body.
Vice: Pessimistic. When Dr. Goldstein was alive, he suffered from a creeping sense of self-loathing,
combined with a tendency to demonize people close to him for every perceived fault and slight (and begging
for forgiveness by said people when he came to his senses). Sometimes, the Dybbuk wonders if his path
is an attempt to prove to himself he isn’t completely worthless. (The Ring-Eater has reduced this Vice to a
caricature.)
Ban: Ishmael cannot cross a doorway to which a mezuzah is affixed, or on which the prayer Shema
Yisrael has been written.
Bane: Jade (shared with the Ring-Eater.)

Cults of the Darkness

The Darkness may corrupt your soul and melt your mind down to a bestial being of sin and hunger but it
does offer power. The temptation of power has always attracted people, from sinister and powerful sorcerers
to easily duped fools. When the opportunity presents itself those who have access to the Dark’s power often
try to become its gatekeepers, demanding loyalty and servitude in exchange for access to Tainted places and
the secrets of Caligines.
Some cults are devout practitioners of fringe beliefs, others are cynical organizations designed to accrue
power and wealth for their leaders. Cults worshipping the Outer Dark are exclusively of the latter variety. What-
ever creed of sin and hopelessness they preach, it is merely a tool for controlling the lives of the cultists or lur-
ing in fresh recruits. Many Dark cults aren’t exactly well run and they can be almost transparent in promising
immoral power to their members (and if people aren’t tempted, locking them up in a Tainted area often takes
care of those pesky morals). Such cults rarely last long, even without a Princess around the police usually take
care of them, or victims of the cultists become Stormwracked and avenge themselves.
It is usually Darkened or Mnemosyne who lead the Dark’s cults for both are human enough to interact with
people and human enough to desire power and luxury.

316 Cults of the Darkness

 Status in a cult of the Darkness is represented by the Mystery Cult Initiation Merit [CofD 51]. Becoming
a creature of the Darkness (usually by gaining the Darkened Condition) is required to advance to four dots in
the Merit.

Broken Dreams Society

Pain. Sadness. Suffering. Misery. None may escape these things completely.
The Broken Dreams Society preaches that one should seek them out. Embrace them. The Society is a Dark-
ness-influenced organization that idolizes suffering, elevating it as the only genuine noble thing in human life.
Happiness is a sham and only through suffering do we experience reality and have the opportunity to grow. Its
temples are built on Tainted places, its leaders seeking out to spread misery and indoctrinate more and more
people into the fold.
Members are always on the lookout for those who are suffering from a tragedy or another, and don’t know
how to deal with it. In some cases, members actually arrange for tragedy to happen (their beliefs allow them to
rationalize it as being for the victim’s own good - “real” pain being preferable to “fake” happiness). They then
approach the prospective recruit, telling them how they bounced back from their own sob stories, and mention
the Society that helped them find meaning in their own darkest hour. They are encouraged to attend society
meetings, where they are met by sympathetic members who “know what it feels like”, and offer moral support
at first. But, step-by-step, indoctrination begins.
Slowly but surely, the prospective members are exposed to the Society’s ideology and taught to define
themselves by their suffering. At the same time, they are encouraged to participate in exercises where they
inflict physical pain upon themselves; the official purpose is to become stronger by learning how to handle the
pain, but as time progresses, the self-torture becomes harsher and harsher. This encourages them to rationalize
and justify their involvement with the group.
As indoctrination progresses, the recruits are eventually taught to see happiness as a sham, and to dismiss
as unreal anything that isn’t based on misery. Their self-torture progresses to become emotional in nature, as
they are encouraged to willingly abandon their dreams and cut ties with loved ones… except where doing oth-
erwise would serve the Society’s goals. Some of the more promising members are selected to join the Society’s
inner circle, and are brought to one of its “temples”. The latter are always located in Tainted areas; with enough
time, those brought there become Darkened.

Initiation Benefits
• New recruits are shown how to torture their own bodies, to steel them for the pain of living. The
knowledge applies for torturing others too; the recruit thus gains a free Intimidation specialty in Torture.
•• Full members are partly hardened against physical pain; they receive one dot of Iron Stamina [CofD
48] free of charge.
••• Promising members start a course of study within a temple, learning to expose others to the reality
of pain. On completing it they gain the Vice-Ridden Merit [CofD 46] granting a Vice of Cruel.
•••• The inner circle of the Society are expected to take students/victims. They have three dots in
Retainers [CofD 53] allocated as the player wishes.
••••• The Society’s leaders know a mystical phrase which shows its hearers, ineluctably, that nothing
of them is true but their pain. They receive the Caligo Handful of Dust free of charge, without the Shadows
required for it (though that usually isn’t an issue.)

Pleasure Principle
“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” Civilization, laws, morals - all these are cages. The free
man, the true man, is a barbarian, a wolf who walks the world, taking what he wishes, stalking the sheep who stay
fearfully within their fenced pastures. Those who build the fences are predators too, just cleverer hypocrites

Cults of the Darkness 317

than the honest wolves who break them. So says the Pleasure Principle, who will help anyone who asks to shed
their inhibitions and indulge all their appetites.
For this cult, the early stages of recruitment are fairly easy. They fish regularly in the clubs and bars where
people go to drink themselves blind and find sexual partners whom they can forget the morning after, baiting
their hook with offers of nights of pleasure beyond what most ever experience. While the claim is not untrue -
the Pleasure Principle does know how to stage an orgy - the cult’s masters carefully study anyone who accepts
their invitation, looking for the vices they keep secret from the world. Once these are identified, the cult arranges
situations to tempt the prospect, break down his sense of shame, and keep him coming back for more. Tainted
places with the right kind of curses come in handy for staging these.
Deeper initiation reveals more and more of the cultist’s life outside the Pleasure Principle to be a foolish
self-imposed crippling of what he ought to be: an illimitable appetite. The bonds of the criminal law, of con-
science formed in childhood, of friendship and family, all must yield to naked desire. Those who accept this
doctrine are brought to live in the cult’s Tainted houses of pleasure. For those who balk when they hear it …
well, there’s always blackmail. No one gets far enough to learn what the Pleasure Principle is about without
doing something they were once ashamed of, and if they insist on wearing a leash, the cult is happy to hold its
other end.

Initiation Benefits
• For the recent recruit, the Pleasure Principle is a constant party with hints of depravity to add spice.
Regular attendance gives a recruit a free Socialize specialty in Seduction, Carousing, Debauchery, or some
other kind of sensual indulgence.
•• Junior initiates are taught to assess people’s weaknesses and exploit them for social advantage. They
gain the Pusher Merit [CofD 53] free of charge.
••• Those who fully accept the Pleasure Principle can feast on others’ reserves of will; caresses, or
more intimate relations, become opportunities to feed. Even if they haven’t yet become Darkened, trusted
and established members can use the Enervation Caligo.
•••• The higher ranks of the cult define themselves by their appetites, and easily insinuate themselves
among those who share it. The free specialty they gained from the first dot becomes Interdisciplinary [CofD
45] and they gain a variant of the Barfly Merit [CofD 50] tied to places where that specialty commonly applies.
••••• The masters of the Pleasure Principle can bring out anyone’s darkest desires, given a few mo-
ments alone with him. They gain the Sin Whisperer Caligo free of charge.

Sodality of the Harpuiai

“Behind every great fortune there is a crime,” and that crime ought to be punished. Let anyone who has
profited from a sin be shamed, disgraced, held up to scorn, outcast; the Sodality of the Harpuiai gladly bear
the duty of humiliating them and driving them into the wilderness. Secretly they know that to be wealthy or
successful, to be learned or trained, even to be born with an unusual talent - in short, to be in any way better
than some poor wretch born in squalor - is to profit from a crime; all are guilty, so any may be punished.
The Sodality named itself after the wind-spirits of Greek myth, who were divine punishers and torturers.
Its methods are as bodiless as a wind, and as cutting: the members are masters of rumormongery, spreading
scandal, and judicious character assassination. Those with the ill luck to cross the Sodality soon find themselves
the subject of malicious tales, coming from almost any direction and untraceable to its source. If they are only
moderately unlucky they will be baseless (though hard to refute); but the Sodality has an unnerving nose for
the embarrassing or humiliating truth.
In prior decades a cult like the Sodality would have faced great difficulties in establishing itself, but the rise
of the Internet has given this cult incredible opportunities for expansion and recruiting. These days a Harpuai
need only log onto a forum where college students go to discuss the latest political cause and drop a few honeyed
suggestions, and dozens of prospects will fall over themselves to learn from the Sodality. Demonstrating the
heady power of destroying an opponent with a few whispered words leads to personal meetings with the fas-

318 Cults of the Darkness

cinated recruits, where the credo that advantage as such is criminal and should be punished can be thoroughly
taught.
The effects of this doctrine, when believed and followed, are not pretty. Sodality members are far more
inclined to defame and sabotage the work of other people than to attain excellence on their own merits (since
to have merit is itself proof of complicity in crime) and therefore consistently alienate themselves from anyone
who does not share their beliefs. Older cultists, self-deprived of any healthy aspirations, take pleasure only in
denigrating the “guilty”, blight their environment with Taint, and fall to the Darkness almost without noticing.
Among Dark cults, the Harpuiai are unusual for not seeking out Tainted areas to live in - and alarming, because
they seldom need to. Taint permeates their homes just from what they usually do.

Initiation Benefits
• Good prospects for the Sodality learn the delicate art of verbal knife-work. They gain a free Expression
specialty in Damaging Reputations.
•• Full initiates have been trained to look for the small but telling detail that exposes a shameful secret.
They gain the one-dot version of the Trained Observer Merit [CofD 46] free of charge.
••• Senior Harpuiai have not only mastered character assassination, but can apply it to a host of prob-
lems; they acquire the Area of Expertise [CofD 44] and the Interdisciplinary Specialty [CofD 45] Merits, both
for the Damaging Reputations specialty they gained at the first dot.
•••• When the Darkness first enfolds Sodality members, it grants them insight into the crimes of others.
They gain the Taste of Sin Caligo free of charge.
••••• The oldest members of the Sodality of the Harpuiai can destroy a reputation with a single accu-
sation. They gain the Scapegoat Caligo free of charge.

Upas Covens
Throughout the world there are folk tales of people bargaining with evil spirits to gain power over their
neighbors. While the vast majority of those tales are no more than paranoid fantasies, a few are accurate. The
Upas Covens are a network of old families whose ancestors learned to summon devils and damned ghosts (or so
they thought) from places made unholy by murder. They have handed down their secrets, father to son, mother
to daughter, for centuries, and refined what they knew into an anti-theology that worships the Darkness.
The Covens’ normal practice is to search for Tainted places, buy the properties, build shrines to the dark
powers they venerate on them, call to any spirits across the Gauntlet that feed on the Tainted resonances, and
bargain with the creatures who answer. As the cult has no qualms about deepening a Tainted area’s curses,
or using their spirits’ powers for commercial or political gain, the Covens accumulate wealth and enemies at
fairly quick rates; they tend to arrive somewhere as refugees from “persecution”, build up a fortune over a few
generations by ruining rivals, only to have their demon-worship exposed, forcing them to flee again.
The Covens recruit strictly by inheritance. It is possible for outsiders to join the cult by marrying in, but
the family elders won’t approve a marriage unless the bride or groom already has an interest in black magic.
To compensate for this the Covens go to great lengths to make sure their children follow the family tradition,
participate in the rituals, and make pacts with the cult’s pet demons. Children of a Coven who escape becoming
Darkened before their maturity are rare, and every generation has produced at least one Mnemosyne.

Initiation Benefits
• Children of the Covens are taught the basics on evil spirits from their infancy, and new in-laws are
drilled on the subject. They gain a free Occult specialty in Tainted areas and their spirits.
•• The Covens have a traditional system of apprenticeship; each family member is tutored by a more
experienced elder, who is also supposed to be their advocate within the cult. They gain one free dot in
Mentor [CofD 51] to represent this tutor.

Cults of the Darkness 319

 ••• The Covens expect a good general grounding on the supernatural from their adult members. Those
who pass their apprenticeships have learned enough to gain a free dot in the Occult Skill.
•••• Senior members of the Covens can reliably use the central rite of the cult to summon spirits in
Tainted places. They gain the Encacogen Caligo at two dots, free of charge.
••••• The Covens’ elders cultivate the twisted spirits of Taint, trading favors with them regularly. Each
elder has three dots of Allies (Tainted spirits) [CofD 50] that they can call on like mundane Allies. They may
exchange their free Mentor dot from the second level of initiation for a fourth dot in this Merit; most elders
do so, as their tutors are now peers, or dead.

Dark Cults as Organizations

The cults that worship the Darkness are natural antagonists to the Nations, and may easily be repre-
sented with the same system. However, though they are true mystery cults, the Storyteller should not give
them the specific advantages of Nations. Just stat them out as mundane organizations. The Supernatural
Membership Merit covers Umbrae and Caligines as much as the supernatural Merits from Chronicles of
Darkness. And while many cults can enact horrific rites with the Darkness’s aid, any that exceed the scope
of a Caligo can be represented as projects for the PCs to disrupt.

The Dethroned
They had been watching the warehouse for hours when the Darkspawn came. It wasn’t an
attack, no, they were running. The Darkspawn ran straight into the firing lines in a blind panic.
In moments monsters were reduced to smouldering corpses in a rain of noble magic. Then the
Princesses saw what the Darkspawn were running from.
It was enormous, taller than the warehouse and tearing the building apart like tissue paper
as it strode forward. Its body was human, with its flesh peeled away exposing muscles intertwined
with unearthly clockwork. Its movements stuttered in an unnatural mimicry of human grace. It
gave out a scream of screeching metal, the sound staggered the Princesses. In its cry they felt its
despair, impotence, and something else.
“My God. That thing’s a Princess!”

The Dethroned are born from suffering, and from their birth they’ll create little else. It’s not as if she plans
it, for all intents the Dethroned are incapable of planning anything. No, things just happen around her. A fallen
Noble is like a poisoned wound, spreading toxins through the Dark World. Her very presence twists the Darkness
around her until it reflects the events and pain that led to her fall.

The Nature of the Fallen

When a Princess calls upon the final transformation, the Darkness corrupts each of her innate traits into
a mockery of itself. Her Inner Light trait inverts, becoming an Inner Night trait, which acts as Supernatural
Tolerance and limits her abilities - though to the transformed maximums on the Inner Light table.
The Charms the ex-Princess once knew are lost to her. Instead, her Inner Night draws her deeper, body and
soul, into the substance of the Dark World, which both gives her power over that world and its inhabitants, and
imprisons her within it. Each dot of Inner Night grants a Dethroned a Chain, a power to command either her
land or her subjects. The Dethroned also develop black magics called Hexes that project their corrupted power
into other forms.
Where she once had Wisps, the Dethroned now has Clouds, fragments of misery and despair that fuel her
Chains and Hexes. Inner Night determines both the maximum Clouds she can keep, and the number she can
spend in a turn; the limits are identical to those Inner Light sets for Wisps. The Dethroned have two standard
ways of regaining spent Clouds, and several Hexes grant additional ways to regain them.

320 The Dethroned

• Merely by existing, a Dethroned constantly remembers the pain and grief that led her to abandon the
Light. She regains 1 Cloud each night at midnight.
• Witnessing (or causing) the suffering of others confirms a Dethroned in her choice to cleave to the Dark-
ness. Her Inner Night gives her a Sensitivity dice pool, identical to that given by Inner Light. Each time the
Dethroned is present at a tainting, she rolls this pool, with all modifiers that apply to the tainting; for each
success, the Dethroned regains 1 Cloud.
It must be noted that although the Dethroned have become creatures of the Darkness, they do not have the
Darkened Condition or any of the powers being Darkened can confer. In particular, they fell into the Dark World
at the moment they became Dethroned, and lacking the power to Enter Darkness, they cannot leave that world.

Chains of the Fallen

All Dethroned are bound to the Dark World until they die, and all are given authority over it; but the amount
of that authority varies with their supernatural strength. As Inner Night rises, new Chains manifest.

Fortress of Regrets (Inner Night •)

Even in their fallen state, every Dethroned retains their natural authority, and extends it over the part of
the Dark World they now must reside in. The first Chain, the Fortress of Regrets, is that part of the Dark World
which a Dethroned claims for her own. It is warped by the memories of her sins, failures and losses of faith, so
anyone inside the Fortress is walking through an endlessly repeated allegory of her fall.
The Fortress has all the traits of a Tainted Place, but it isn’t reflected in the world above - it’s sustained
by the Dethroned herself, and only her death will banish it. Its Size is equal to the smaller of the Dethroned’s
Resolve and Composure, and its Severity equals the Dethroned’s Inner Night (maximum of 5). The Aspirations
from the Fortress reflect the circumstances of the Dethroned’s fall, and encourage others to follow her example.
A Dethroned can move her Fortress just by walking through the Dark World while concentrating; when
she approaches its boundary the Fortress shifts ahead of her. No other power can move the Fortress or alter
its curses. If the Dethroned moves her Fortress into a Tainted area’s image, its curses stack with the area’s own
Taint, but its Size and Severity don’t.

Companions in Misery (Inner Night ••)

The second Chain expands the authority of a Dethroned from her Fortress to the creatures of Darkness that
shelter within it. Any Dark being who enters the Dethroned’s Fortress or meets her in person changes their goals
and loyalties, becoming a willing supporter of her despair and hatred; her whim is their law. At the moment a
creature of Darkness meets the Dethroned, or after the creature has spent a scene in the Dethroned’s Fortress,
the Dethroned’s influence twists the creature’s will. It’s this power which makes intelligent Dark beings very
wary of the Dethroned - they imagine themselves to be masters, and don’t wish to lose their autonomy.
Action: Reflexive and resisted, Dethroned’s Presence + Inner Night - target’s Resolve
Dramatic Failure: The creature proves indomitable; it immediately gains the Steadfast Condition.
Failure: The creature keeps its selfhood for now.
Success: The creature accepts a role in the tale of the Dethroned’s fall; it takes the Dethroned Follower
Condition.
Exceptional Success: The creature barely recalls its life before meeting the Dethroned. The Dethroned
Follower Condition lasts for one week per dot of Inner Night after it leaves the Dethroned’s Fortress.

Gates to Lamentation (Inner Night •••)

With the third Chain, the Dethroned perceives the light of hope that shines (compared to the rest of the Dark
World) in the images of Tainted areas. In her fallen state, however, even that dim light’s a painful reminder of
what the Dethroned lost. She lashes at it, drives it from the land it illuminated, and claims that land for her own.

The Dethroned 321

 While within the Nightscape of a Tainted area, the Dethroned may tear off a small part of her soul, and
plant it into the Nightscape to claim it as a Gate to her Fortress. (If the Nightscape is a Lair the Dethroned must
defeat its master first, or make him her follower.) It costs her 1 Cloud to claim a Gate, which she can’t recover
until she relinquishes her claim by taking back the part of her soul she planted in it. (That is, her pool of Clouds
shrinks by 1 for each Gate she claims.) While her claim remains, the Dethroned’s Fortress combines its influence
with the Gate’s - every Aspiration from the Fortress applies within all its Gates, and every Aspiration from one
Gate applies in the Fortress and every other Gate. In addition, the effect of Companions in Misery extends to
the Fortress’s Gates.
The Dethroned’s soul fragment changes the appearance of a Gate, layering the symbols of the Fortress
proper over the existing geography. It also creates gateways, roads or passages which don’t exist in the world
above, leading to the Fortress and to its other Gates. No matter what the real distance between the areas these
gates link, any character who finds one may pass through it, reaching the other side in a single turn - a consid-
erable convenience for those in the Dethroned’s service. However, the fragment of a former Noble’s soul also
opens a path from the world above for the Light-touched: they can enter the Dark World through a Gate, using
the same system they normally use to leave.

Spawn Darkchild (Inner Night ••••)

Every Dethroned constantly molds the stuff of the Dark World to reflect her memories; the fourth Chain,
though, lets a Dethroned impart a semblance of life and motion to the Darkness, and creates servant for herself,
Darkspawn who never were alive. Many a Princess has realized the first sign that a Dethroned is in the area is
often the similar Darkspawn who start entering the world.
The Dethroned can create a Darkspawn as an instant action, spending one Willpower point. The newly
made monster takes a turn to get its bearings, before it begins to act independently; it automatically has the
Dethroned Follower Condition. It will not be intelligent. The Darkspawn created this way will reflect the De-
throned’s fall in some fashion, and most Dethroned will make two to four distinct “species” of Darkspawn, each
reflecting a specific role in her perpetual tragedy.

Welcome to My Personal Hell (Inner Night •••••)

With the fifth Chain the Dethroned can use their corrupted power to invade the world above, though for-
tunately even they can’t hold territory for long. When the Dethroned is in one of her Gates, she may spend 4
Clouds to collapse the entire Tainted area above into its Nightscape. Anyone moving out of the Tainted area
ends up in the Dark World near its Nightscape. People outside the Tainted area in the world above can still en-
ter it, but cannot retrace their steps. The worlds separate again at the end of the scene; if they haven’t left, the
Dethroned remains in the Dark World, creatures of Darkness can choose which world they end up in, while all
other characters return to the world above.

Recalled Torment (Inner Night ••••• •)

Any of the Dethroned will interpret current events as a recapitulation of her personal tragedy. With the
sixth Chain, though, she can make her companions share her interpretation, even when it bears no resemblance
to the truth. The Dethroned may spend 1 Cloud as an instant action to create a belief in everyone who currently
has the Dethroned Follower Condition from her. The belief must be about a matter of fact, so it can’t convey
an order to her followers; and it must harmonize with the Dethroned’s past before she fell. (For example, a
Dethroned could create the belief “the intruders have come to burn me as a witch” if she had faced witch hunters
in life.) The belief is unshakeable for at least one scene; after that, each character affected will believe it until
shown convincing evidence of its falsehood.
Drawback: The Dethroned makes her followers believe as she wishes only because she has persuaded
herself. The belief she creates is fixed as firmly in her mind as in those of her companions.

Call of the Pit (Inner Night ••••• ••)

A potent Dethroned cannot be separated from her domain against her will, and no part of it can escape her
presence. The Dethroned may call on the seventh Chain to merge her body into the substance of the Dark World,

322 The Dethroned

swim as a distortion in the earth to any location within her Fortress, and emerge again, rebuilding her body
from its foundations. Merging with the earth is an instant unrolled action that costs 1 Cloud within the Fortress
and 2 Clouds elsewhere; returning to flesh takes another instant action and another Cloud. While merged the
Dethroned may not take any action except emerging. However, no attack or power can reach her except through
a sympathetic connection.

Mistress’ Care (Inner Night ••••• •••)

The boundary separating a Dethroned from the beings under her rule becomes porous with the eighth
Chain. When a being that gained the Dethroned Follower Condition from her takes damage or falls into distress,
the Dethroned reflexively makes a Perception roll. On a success, the Dethroned becomes aware of her follower’s
situation, understanding it as well as the follower does itself.
The Dethroned’s power to create beliefs also expands; she may use Recalled Torment to inform her fol-
lowers of a task she wants done. Everyone with the Dethroned Follower Condition who can understand the
Dethroned’s desire must try to complete the task as if it were part of their assigned role, until someone has
actually done so.

Despondent Labyrinth (Inner Night ••••• ••••)

Under the ninth Chain, the Dark World’s decayed substance tamely reshapes itself in obedience to the De-
throned’s will. The Dethroned may spend 2 Clouds as an instant action to transform the terrain and buildings
of her Fortress, or of a Gate, into almost any shape she desires, and move characters and objects within it to
arbitrary places in the reshaped area. There are a few limits on this power: the Dethroned can’t reshape an area
more than once per day, she can’t create impossible terrain or unsound buildings, and she can’t make any part
of the area impossible to get into or escape from. Characters in the area when it’s reshaped must succeed on an
extended Wits + Survival roll with a threshold equal to the area’s Size to understand the changes and navigate
the area properly.
Reshaping a Fortress is permanent. A Gate stays reshaped while the Dethroned claims it; when her claim
lapses, the area reverts to an image of the world above it in weeks equal to its Size. If the Dethroned uses Wel-
come to My Personal Hell on an area, then reshapes it, both worlds are reshaped identically.

All Hope Abandon (Inner Night ••••• •••••)

The final Chain turns the grief of a Dethroned into a blight that can infect almost anyone. Companions in
Misery is able to inflict the Dethroned Follower Condition on any mundane character who is not under the
Light’s protection (a Beacon or Sworn is safe, as are supernatural beings), if they are in its area of effect for
long enough. Further, for this purpose only the Dethroned’s Fortress extends into the world above her Gates.
The few Dethroned with this ability invariably spawn whole cults of Dark worshippers whenever they surface,
which thankfully is not often.

Hexes of the Fallen

No two Dethroned develop their tainted powers in exactly the same way, apart from their Chains. Each Hex
is a separate power, and a Dethroned can have any Hex.

Bind Familiar
The Dethroned can claim another Dark being as an extension of herself, to act as her agent beyond the
Dark World. Doing so costs her 3 Clouds, and she must succeed on a roll of Presence + Inner Night - the target’s
Resolve. Once claimed as a familiar, a Dark being gains a pool of Clouds (which is initially empty) and access
to some of its mistress’ Hexes; when using a Hex it has an effective Inner Night of 1. (Hexes that are available
to familiars will say so in their descriptions.) However, it has the Dethroned Follower Condition permanently -
the Condition cannot resolve or end. Familiars are usually sent out of the Dark World to spy and gather Clouds
for their mistress.

The Dethroned 323

 Whenever a familiar is with its mistress, the Dethroned can consume part or all of its flesh to restore her
power. Consuming a familiar is a normal Bite attack [CofD 89] except that it does lethal damage to the familiar.
Each point of damage inflicted transfers one Cloud from the familiar to the Dethroned, and if the familiar dies
from the attack the Dethroned gains all the Clouds left in its pool.

Blast
The Dethroned can wound enemies at a distance with a dark magical blast. The blast is a Firearms-based
attack with a range of 10x Inner Night yards that never takes range penalties; its Damage is 0, and its Initia-
tive modifier is also 0. (Like normal weapons, the blast does lethal damage when it hits.) The blast costs the
Dethroned nothing but its action for the turn. The Dethroned can spend Clouds either to increase the blast’s
Damage (adding +1 for each two Clouds spent) or to give the blast autofire - 1 Cloud for a short burst, 2 for a
medium burst, and 3 for a long burst or covering fire.

Covetous Form
With a hair of coiling serpents or a body of grasping vines the Dethroned can reach out in every direction
at once. She may apply the autofire rules to any attack using Brawl.

Cry of Anguish
A Dethroned exists in eternal torment and some have learned to use their suffering as a weapon. The De-
throned spends a point of Willpower and rolls Inner Night + Presence + Intimidation vs. Composure + the tar-
get’s Inner Light - her Shadows; if she wins the contest, the target’s Sensitivity triggers, adding dice to the pool
equal to the margin of success. Cry of Anguish only works on characters who draw power from the Light (Bea-
cons, Sworn and Hopeful); anyone else reacts only to the sound of someone in pain.

Decaying Mantle
Taint and its curses surround the Dethroned, casting her authority and protection over every creature of
Darkness in her presence. When she is not in her Fortress or a Gate, the place the Dethroned is in counts as a
Tainted area with the traits of her Fortress, though not those of any Gates attached to it; the Taint extends to the
area she can reach without moving. In the Dark World proper this Hex cancels the Extreme Taint Tilt, allowing
the Dethroned and anyone with her to move without impediment. In a Tainted area the Dethroned’s Taint stacks
with the area’s in that part of it she can touch.
If a Dethroned has Decaying Mantle her familiars will have it as well, turning them into moving gates to the
Dark World wherever they go on Earth.

Infectious Madness
The fallen Noble sings out a song of madness and despair. She spends up to 5 Clouds, and rolls Presence
+ Expression - the highest Composure possessed by a non-creature of the Darkness in the area. On a success,
whenever a character reaches a breaking point during the scene, they roll at a penalty of at least the number
of Clouds the Dethroned spent.

Kiss of a Princess
The Dethroned can bind a Cloud into a mundane character. She rolls Inner Night + Presence + Intimidation;
the target contests with Composure + Integrity. If the Dethroned wins the contest the target immediately gains
a level of the Tainted Condition. In addition the Dethroned may regain Clouds through her victim; whenever
a tainting takes place in the target’s presence the Sensitivity of the Dethroned activates. If the Dethroned is a
Misery Glutton she may also benefit from the victim’s misery as per the rules for that Hex.
The Dethroned may end the Tainted Condition at any time, and reclaims the Cloud she bound into the target
if she does so. Otherwise the Condition resolves or ends in the usual way. The Dethroned cannot regain the spent

324 The Dethroned

Cloud by any means for as long as the Tainted Condition remains. If a Dethroned knows Kiss of a Princess her
familiars will as well.

Loathsome Weapons
The Dethroned’s body has been bent to violence and pain. Her natural attacks always do lethal damage, and
she may spend Clouds to make them more deadly. Each Cloud she spends increases the Damage of her attacks
by 1 for the rest of the scene.

Mark of Torment
The Dethroned can hex someone to become a magnet for suffering much like they have become. The De-
throned spends two Clouds and rolls Manipulation + Expression vs. Composure + Supernatural Tolerance. If
the Dethroned wins the target gains the Tainted Allure of Vice Umbra, with a Vice of the Storyteller’s choice.
Using Mark of Torment does not turn the target into a Darkened, the Dethroned is able to inflict an unwanted
Umbra on a mere mortal. The Mark of Torment remains until the Hex is removed with counter magic. Charms
that remove Umbrae or Charms that undo lasting magical effects will eradicate the Hex.
If the Dethroned knows Mark of Torment, her familiars will as well.

Misery Glutton
The Dethroned are everything a Princess should not be, and they draw mindless strength from that. When-
ever a character reaches a breaking point in their presence, the Dethroned regains 1 Cloud if the character fails
the roll. Whenever a character spends their last Willpower point, the Dethroned regains a point of Willpower.
Should a character, through their own free will or otherwise, commit suicide in her presence, the Dethroned
regains all spent Clouds and all spent Willpower.
If a Dethroned is a Misery Glutton her familiars will be as well.

Misery Voyeur
Misery loves company, and the Dethroned finds her existence easier to bear when others suffer as she does.
Whenever anyone with power from the Light is within the Dethroned’s line of sight and makes a Sensitivity
check, the Dethroned gains one Cloud for each success they roll.
If a Dethroned is a Misery Voyeur her familiars will be as well.

Monstrous Size
The Dethroned has swelled into immensity. Her Size is 10 (increasing Health), and her other traits are
modified as under Size Changes. Dethroned may take this Hex more than once; each instance after the first adds
+4 to her Size, and modifies other traits accordingly.

One Thousand Weeping Eyes

The fallen Noble is keenly, painfully aware of events that mirror her own fall. If anyone commits a similar
action within (Inner Night) miles of the Dethroned’s Fortress or its Gates (in either Earth or the Dark World)
she is instantly aware of it. This Hex does not imply she reacts in any particular way, though more than a few
Dethroned mindlessly lash out when their unnatural senses are triggered.

Regeneration
Oozing void seeps from every wound, scabbing over as a protective layer against the blows of the light. The
fallen Noble regains either one point of lethal, or two points of bashing damage per turn as a reflexive action.
Bashing damage heals first, lethal only being removed when there is no bashing damage in her Health track.

The Dethroned 325

Swarming Horror
Even the integrity of the body is not sacrosanct to the Darkness. The Dethroned may dissolve her body
into a swarm of radius (Inner Darkness + current number of unfilled health boxes). She follows all the normal
rules for swarms while dissolved. She can reassemble her body at will, or disperse herself to escape danger.
Dispersing leaves her unable to act for the rest of the scene, but she will survive if any part of the swarm escapes.

Toxinous Kiss
The Dethroned perpetually surrounds herself in a haze of polluted emotions and her own sins. Everything
within Inner Night yards of her is exposed to a Toxicity 3 poison, resisted with Stamina + Resolve + Inner Light.
Should she kiss someone, which requires her to be in control of a grapple, the spiritual poison is far more acute,
and its Toxicity rises to 7.

Unceasing
The fallen Princess is perpetually alert and awake, unable to sleep or dream. She never takes penalties
for tiredness, and as a roleplaying note, will always be aware and twitchy, never letting her attention slip. Any
powers which would cause her to lose focus or cease to pay attention automatically fail.

Unnatural Senses
What is mundane darkness to a creature like this? All penalties to actions based on poor visual conditions
are reduced by three, to a maximum of 0.

Walpurgisnacht
The Dethroned may manifest herself in the world above and hold revel with lesser creatures of Darkness.
If she has brought her Fortress into a Nightscape, or turned one into a Gate, she may spend 1 Cloud while in that
area to exist simultaneously in the area itself and its image. She is wholly present in both worlds, moving and
acting as if they were merged, but she can’t transfer anything between the worlds. Walpurgisnacht lasts for one
hour per dot of Inner Night, or until the Dethroned leaves the Tainted area, whichever comes first.

Redemption
So long as someone cares for you then redemption is always possible, but sometimes, it’s really hard. A
Dethroned is too far gone to redeem herself, it will need someone to carry it for that first step on the way.
After a Dethroned is defeated – its health must be filled with lethal damage or worse – but before it is swept
away on the formless currents of the Darkness (about ten minutes) any Princess can try to reach out to it through
Sensitivity. This is an extended action with a dice pool of Belief; each roll takes one minute of concentration,
and the Princess accrues one Shadow per roll. If the Princess reaches the threshold of the Dethroned’s Inner
Night, the Dethroned feels that somebody understands its suffering. The soul of the fallen Noble departs from
its tainted body and takes up residence deep in the Princess’ soul.
From this point on the Princess simply has to remove the Shadows she gained while catching the De-
throned’s soul. She may not use Charms that remove Shadows, such as Choke It Down, while she is carrying a
Dethroned within her soul. Overcoming the Shadows upon her soul is easier said than done when she’s probably
collapsing under the emotional weight of the Dethroned’s unceasing grief (not to mention rolling chance dice
for transformation and Wisp recovery), but if somehow she does ever remove all her Shadows then when she
next falls asleep she will see for the first time the face of the one she’s sacrificed so much for. Together they will
climb through the Crawlspace, travel through the Dreamlands, at the edge of the Light itself they will say their
tearful goodbyes before the redeemed departs.
As for what happens next? Who can say. Perhaps the redeemed soul will have a chance to make up for what
she has done in her next life, perhaps she hangs up the crown that grew too heavy and moves on to some manner
of afterlife? As for the rescuer, unless she wants to leave her life behind to enter the Light she’ll have to get

326 The Dethroned

back to her royal duties the next day. But redeeming a Dethroned does grant two dots of Belief, as well as fully
refreshing her Wisps and Willpower.

Sample Dethroned
The Witch in the Woods
Her memories come in snatches. She remembers being cast away from her village for her magic. She re-
members trying to raise two children alone in the forest, sometimes she can even remember their faces. She
remembers relying on her magic to feed her family, she remembers hating her magic for making her an outcast,
and she remembers her magic failing her because she hated it. Sometimes she can almost remember enough to
ask why she ate her own children, but most of the time she can’t even remember why you wouldn’t.
The Witch in the Woods dwells deep within the Dark World, she lives in a log cabin deep within a (small)
forest that looks like a washed out watercolor. She puts up a good pretense of being able to think, but it’s all
a script, eternal and unchanging. She lures Darkspawn to her, and sometimes living children, she attempts to
take care of them as a mother should but it never lasts. In the end she always eats them alive to keep them safe
deep within her own Tainted body.
In battle the Witch is a deceptively dangerous foe. Though she appears as a frail old woman the Witch can
take an enormous amount of damage. If she is significantly injured she is likely to call Darkspawn to her aid,
disgorging the strange malformed children that she has eaten. More serious wounds can cause her to discorpo-
rate into a swarm, as severed body parts return to life to defend themselves and to stitch themselves back into a
whole. If the fight is going her way the Witch is likely to see her attackers as her own misbehaving children, and
offer to forgive them if they apologize (and she will, until one day she eats them for their own good) but if the
fight turns against her she will recast her attackers and begin begging them to spare her because she has a family.

Attributes: Intelligence 1, Wits 3, Resolve 4, Strength 6, Dexterity 4, Stamina 6, Presence 2, Manipula-

tion 1, Composure 2
Skills: Athletics 3 , Brawl 2, Stealth 1, Weaponry 4 (Knife)
Derived Traits: Health 11, Willpower 6, Size 5, Defense 3, Initiative 6, Speed 15
Vice: Violent (She will do anything to protect her children)
Virtue: Hopeful (Her children may not have much, but she tries to keep their spirits up)
Inner Night: 4
Hexes: Bind Familiar, Cry of Anguish, One Thousand Weeping Eyes, Regeneration, Swarming Horror,
Unceasing, Walpurgisnacht
Fortress Aspirations: Curse of Weakness; Eat human flesh, knowing what it is.

The Dethroned 327

 The Queen of Tears
AKA: The Ever-Flowing One, Lady of Alhambra, The Last Empress
Kingdom: Alhambra
Followers’ Epithets: Handmaidens, Esquires, Ravens (derogatory)
Have you ever really looked at the world? Not casually, I mean, really looked at it? It’s broken.
It’s flawed. People fight each other in stupid, pointless wars. Everyone just want to hurt each
other, and there’s no rhyme or reason to it. But you know it too, don’t you? Everything was better
in the Kingdom.
And I follow its Queen.
Alhambra is out there. I’ve seen it. The Kingdom is not dead, it has survived, under the guid-
ance of the Ever-Flowing One. She’s not a ghost in a Darkness-made dream-world, not a monster
who’d burn the world. She cries for what the world has become. She’s kept the Kingdom safe for
thousands of years, and she asks our service to help her, so that the last parts of what which was
once glorious don’t fade. I give mine willingly. Sometimes it hurts, what she asks us to do. I know
it makes a few people suffer, but it’s only a lesser sacrifice, for the greater good. Because we need
to save the Kingdom, need to keep it safe and hidden and safe… and then, maybe one day, we can
get all of world back under the guidance of the Queen, and we won’t have to have wars any more
and… and no-one will hurt anyone.
I really hope so.

The Queen of Tears is unique - she is the only known, still-human survivor of the Kingdom who remains to
the modern day. For uncounted aeons she has dwelt in Alhambra, the last remnants of the capital of the Kingdom,
and ruled it from where it hides, within the heart of the Darkness. Her domain holds off the Darkness with Light
stolen from the world, bringing misery and sorrow to the so-called “Rebellious Provinces”, and though she weeps
for what she does, she will never stop, because she will do anything to protect her city, and so she teaches her
followers, native Alhambrans, and Princesses from the outer world lured into her service, alike to do the same.

Tales of Alhambra
In the center of Alhambra’s noble quarter the Queen of Tears holds her court upon the roofs and battlements
of her palace. As she speaks hey eyes are constantly inspecting the defenses of her city for weakness. Once the
Lady of Alhambra was considered the worlds great beauties but no longer. Her bronzed skin has faded and
become pale under the dim Alhambran light. Her dark brown eyes, once hailed in song and poetry, have become
dull and liquid with never ending tears that mingle with the rains. She has discarded all the adornments and
embellishments of royalty for dark purples and blues of mourning worn above her armor, for Alhambra is a
city under siege. One hand always grips Ever Dutiful, her simple naginata that has defended Alhambra from
countless threats. The Lady of Alhambra is quiet and softly spoken, when she speaks the whole court falls silent
and strains their ears.
The only people the Queen will pause her endless vigil for is her fellow Nobles, she receives them in pri-
vate and in the presence of those she calls her almost-equals she promptly allows herself to fall to pieces. The
endlessly crying Queen turns hysterical as she unburdens centuries of unceasing sorrow upon the Princess and
begs her for help. Even the most composed Grace, knowing what to expect is swept away by the flood of emotion.
Dedicated Radiant Princesses have been known to become a Handmaidens from this display, either out of guilt
or because they saw a possibility of redemption when they looked behind her composed mask.

Philosophy
The archives of Alhambra are filled with texts and teachings from the products of uncounted numbers of
scribes, analyzing every word of the Queen (and she seldom speaks, now), and building a philosophy, a faith
around it. You could spend ten lifetimes, and only scratch the depths of paper, the bottom layers eaten by Dark-
Things where no light could reach. But at heart, the principles of Alhambra are remarkably simple.

328 The Queen of Tears

 Alhambra Must Survive: Alhambra is the Kingdom. The Kingdom is Good. The Kingdom is the Light. The
Kingdom must be Protected. Alhambra must remain unchanged and true to the Kingdom. Anything done in the
name of Alhambra is done in the name of the Light. If Alhambra falls, the Darkness wins. This is fundamental
and unchallengeable dogma.
There Is No Price Too High: This is the vital corollary to the first principle. This is what leads to the drain-
ing of Light, and the horrors that result. Every action which which furthers the cause of Alhambra is not only
good, but mandatory. This is the hardest part of the Alhambran cause for many Earth-born Enlightened; the
idea that they serve the last remnants of the Kingdom is both romantic and admirable, but they blanch at the
idea that they must hurt Earth to allow a rain-drenched city in the heart of the Darkness to survive. But this
goes beyond the actions of Alhambra, and into the mind of the Queen of Tears. She, and those who internalize
her, will do whatever it takes to protect their Nation, no matter what it involves, and she would do it if she led
a small charity in Tokyo just as much as she does as the Lady of Alhambra.
A few Princesses of Tears have asked why the Queen does not simply leave the bubble-realm, and stake out
a claim of the real world. If they were very lucky, no one heard them ask it.
Subdue the Rebellious Provinces: Protecting Alhambra is protecting a way of life, the last bastion of the
Kingdom’s civilisation. Alhambra keeps its legacy safe for all of humanity. Thus Alhambra’s final philosophy: to
share the Kingdom’s glory with the darkened world. For the majority of the history of Alhambra, this has been
little more than a principle, much akin to the White Queen’s promise of jam tomorrow. “We will reconquer the
Rebellious Provinces, the rest of the outside world, and impose the peace of the Queen upon them, restoring the
Kingdom,” promise the Alhambrans, “… only not right now.”
Attempts have been made, of course; there are tales of strange castles ruled by pale figures from Beyond
the Fields We Know in medieval England, and of white-skinned lords in Central America before Cortez, but they
all failed, partly because the lack of Alhambran comprehension of the sheer scale of the outside world, partly
because of the self-destructive draining of the Light from their lands, and partly because there is always the
clay and green-fire of Storms waiting for them. Officially, although it is of course desirable, it is also a waste of
resources which could be used for the city.
But as it stands, in the modern day, this sentiment is undergoing a revival. The Queen of Tears has an un-
precedented number of Handmaidens and Esquires, and there is a strange coalition forming, between young,
idealistic Enlightened from the outside world who want to restore the Kingdom, and the cynical, ambitious high-
ranking field operatives of Alhambra who, although still loyal, have grown used to the wonders of the outside
world, and want them.

Duties
As the Princess of the only remnant of the Kingdom still alive the duties placed upon the court of Tears
are further removed from the ground than the subjects of any other Queen. It is common for even young and
inexperienced Princesses to lead a small number of Sworn retainers. Alhambra still holds to old social ideas
and any Princess who swears loyalty to Alhambra is guaranteed status and luxuries, but the city lives under a
constant threat of destruction and even the most important citizens must do their part for survival. A Princess’
status means that she can normally push her way onto choice assignments in whatever area of her Calling she
desires.
Champions of Tears fight in Alhambra’s cautious, even conservative manner; they specialize in using their
magic to control the battlefield and curse their foes.
Graces of Tears are bureaucrats, their job is to keep the city functioning despite all the hardships they face.
Out in the Rebellious Provinces Graces tend to be given the largest commands, up to and including running
entire Enclaves where they direct Sworn and even other Princesses to tax hope for Alhambra.
Alhambra runs on magic, and it is the Menders of Tears who keep that magic running. In Alhambra they
serve as a one Calling worker caste, they are not denied prestige so much as frequently overlooked. So long as
nothing is going wrong, it is easy to take the Menders for granted.
Tears’ Seekers would perhaps be more accurately called spies. They serve Alhambra as infiltrators, blend-
ing into the Rebellious Provinces to find undefended targets ripe for taxation. In established enclaves the Seek-
ers keep an eye on Alhambra’s enemies, making sure the forces of Tears can vanish back into their city before
retaliation strikes.

The Queen of Tears 329

 The Court of Tears is somewhat of a loss for what to do with Troubadours. There is only so much art you
can create on the subject of Alhambra’s glorious past before creativity and artistic integrity demands you ex-
periment. Unwilling to endorse new thoughts and ideas Alhambra actually uses its Troubadours as Champions,
it turns out that Troubadours magic is actually very good at battlefield control. Unsurprisingly the Troubadours
themselves are not happy about this.

Background
There are two broad categories of followers of Tears. The first of these are the young, inexperienced ones.
They are found by Alhambran operatives shortly after Blossoming, or are drawn to the Queen of Tears in their
dreams, perhaps renewing old oaths, and so are inducted to Hopeful society via Alhambra. Their point of view
is rather different from the majority of Princesses, because they have internalized the philosophy of Tears; they
are usually true believers, serving the Kingdom, who found them and trained them. Likewise, instead of a large-
ly-self-taught mess of other Radiant Princesses, they know they are the Handmaidens and Esquires of Tears,
and so are far more well informed about the technical matters of the Hopeful than Princesses years their senior.
Some followers of Diamonds are mildly concerned by how much terminology of the Radiant comes from defec-
tors from this time, and worry that the influence of Tears might be seeping into the paradigm.
The other kind are usually older, and broken by their duties among the Radiants. Tears offers support, help,
mortal Sworn to aid you, and can, above all, guarantee safety and support. Many underestimate the influence
that a simple “You are doing the right thing” can do to someone whose will is flagging; Tears does not. Likewise,
the families of Princesses too frequently become targets in the War of Hope, and Alhambra offers sanctuary,
somewhere safe and away from enemies, taking in guests of the Princesses who serve them. That these guests
can become hostages is something that it would be tactless to say.
In addition, there have been a few Blossomings in Alhambra itself since the Release. This is viewed as a
great blessing itself, and would tend to be more of one, if they did not have a regrettable tendency to be of the
“guests”, those relatives and loved ones of other Tears Princesses given a refuge from the Provinces, or worse,
rebels and non-conformists, rather than loyal Alhambran citizens.

Character Creation
The Queen of Tears does not discriminate based on grounds of physical fitness or social abilities. She is the
Last Empress, after all, and all the Hopeful should serve her. With that said, there are remedial training facilities
in Alhambra for any Noble who cannot carry out their tasks, and, notably, for teaching them the Alhambran
language, so they can actually interact with the natives. For the duties that they must carry out, though, the
Queen desires most high Resolve and Composure. It is a shame that so many of those experienced Princesses,
who have served another Queen but who are now called to her are often lacking in those Attributes. It is one
of the reason that she prefers young, newly Blossomed Princesses, who can be molded into the proper, King-
dom-trained Nobility that they should be.
Heraldry: One might expect the Alhambrans to have strict codes for the form of Regalia, but actually it
has been long-held tradition that the Regalia is the innermost expression of the Hopeful’s soul, and it would be
wrong to interfere with that. Now, there are certain standards of propriety, but at most, a Princess who breaks
them and parades around in hotpants, a tank top and an unbuttoned jacket will only suffer informal censure, as
long as the color is correct for formal events. The Regalia of an follower of Tears, especially out in the Rebellious
Provinces, is just as flexible as that of a Radiant Princess in its manifestations.
That said, Alhambra is a repressive and conformist society, so any Princess who grew up in Alhambra or has
assimilated will project their conformity through their choice of Heraldry. This is the way the court likes it; the
Handmaidens are free to express themselves, and they freely choose to follow Alhambran traditions. The official
colors of Alhambra are dark purples and blues (but never, ever black), and white. The Queen still mourns for
the lost Kingdom, and so should her followers, after all. Bright colors are correspondingly condemned, because
there is such a thing as taste. Veils are not uncommon, and garments are oft-times long and flowing, like how
the water cascades from the roofs of the Plaza of Dignities.
Many Ravens incorporate symbols of their official positions within Alhambra into their heraldry. These can
include coats of arms, medals, and even hairstyles. Most of these date back to the Kingdom and fit uncomfortably

330 The Queen of Tears

with Alhambran mourning fashion; bright cheerful colours are buried under veils like happiness lost beneath
grief, or are worn openly like a grieving widow offering a welcoming smile to family arriving for the funeral.

Practical Magic
A Noble of Tears makes the hard decisions, does what’s needed in morally fraught situations, and does
so with sublime competence. If a Raven takes an action that risks a compromise of her Belief, she gains an
exceptional success on three successes.
The Last Empress expects her agents to receive a proper deference, and for others to comply with their
requirements. If a Raven chooses to force Doors [CofD 83] in a social maneuver with a Goal that serves her
Nation or Alhambra, she may spend Wisps to offset the penalty from the remaining Doors. Each Wisp spent
adds a +2 bonus to the roll.
High Belief (a rarity in the Court of Tears) increases the Raven’s authority: at Belief 8 the first Wisp spent
adds +3, at Belief 9 the first and second Wisps add +3, and at Belief 10 the first Wisp adds +4 and the second
adds +3.

Invocation: Lacrima
The Invocation of Lacrima is the principle embodied and founded by the Queen of Tears, and which her
Handmaindens and Esquires find come naturally to them. It is conceptually linked to several things, including
ghosts, silence, the element of void, “necessary” actions, and all things connected to these, allowing Invoked
Upgrades and Invoked Charms to be based around it. Princesses loyal to Tears are encouraged to attune to this
Invocation as fast as they can, because most of their signature Charms require it, and use of Lacrima inures
them to their actions. However, many non-Tears Princesses have been known to dabble in it, especially more
mature ones, who have founded Nations, and have begun to feel the echoes of the devotion that the Last Empress
feels towards her own. This will make them suspicious, especially to younger, more idealistic Princesses, but
there is an acknowledgement that it happens sometimes, and so such dabblers should be watched, but are not
automatically followers of Tears.
Lacrima has the unique disadvantage that many of its Charms expose the user to the Darkness. This
is counted as part of their activation cost, and so may not be bypassed. The cold, hard necessities of Lacrima
wear down at the soul, sharpen its response to spiritual pain, and smother it in uncaring void through which
no joy can be felt. As a result, many Lacrima Charms are marginally more powerful than their equivalents from
other Invocations, because of the greater cost paid to use them.
Lacrima applies at no cost when a Princess touches a ghost’s anchor, or is within Alhambra or the Under-
world; and when the target of her Charm is a ghost. It also applies without cost in times of true desperation,
when failure means death or ruin, and when a Princess intends to act on behalf of the Queen of Tears or her
subjects, or in the interests of her own Nation and its members.
The Invocation does not resonate with those who will not do everything for those they protect, who show
any moral compunctions in the deeds needed for survival. If a Princess’ situation is such that her present goal
can be reached at the least cost to herself and her Nation by a compromise of her Belief, and she chooses another
course of action, she cannot use Lacrima for the rest of the scene, and for a further number of scenes equal to
the penalty on her breaking point roll for that compromise.

Stereotypes
• Clubs: Delusional. The strength of the Kingdom always lay in its cities, not the wilds, and she will only
weaken us against the Darkness.
• Diamonds: It is a shame to see such brilliance going to waste, frittered away.
• Hearts: So close. So very close… and yet so far.
• Spades: Insubordinate curs! Born traitors who serve someone who shows no regard for the burdens
of leadership!

The Queen of Tears 331

 • Swords: With their loyalty, Alhambra could be rendered safe, and the Rebellious Provinces pacified
- but they will not be loyal.
• Storms: Monsters. They may once have been the loyal army of the Kingdom, but now they’re nothing
less than crazed beasts who try to thwart our every effort!
• Mirrors: Hubris-filled egotists. To think that anyone but our Lady could be a True Queen… it makes
me sick!
• Vampires: We are nothing alike.
• Werewolves: Beasts. Keep away, and do not carry out operations in the savage areas they claim. It’s
easier in the long run.
• Mages: Avoid. Do not let them know of you. Do not let them find you. There are tales of the Dragon.
• Prometheans: Walking corpses, fuelled by some kind of fire? Clearly some kind of Darkened, if they
actually exist.
• Changelings: Why should we care, as long as all they do is hide?
• Sin-Eaters: We know about ghosts in Alhambra. But these things aren’t quite normal ghosts possess-
ing people.
• Mummies: Just another rebellious province time has turned to dust. Only Alhambra is eternal.
• Beasts: Before Alhambra’s rise they kept us alive at the cost of our humanity but now we have our
Lady to teach us. She scoured them from the Earth and when Alhambra is restored she’ll do it again.
• Mad Scientists: They’d tear the world down just to see what would happen if they did. Despicable!
Despicable yet very dangerous.
• Leviathans: No! It can’t be! They were said to be extinct! They can’t be back! They can’t… not again.
• Hunters: Rebels from the Rebellious Provinces. Why am I not surprised?
• Mortals: Why won’t you see? It’s a necessary sacrifice.

Inspiration
Homura Akemi (Puella Magi Madoka Magica)
Taylor Hebert (Worm)
Ignorance of the law is no excuse - you are all subjects of Alhambra.

332 The Queen of Tears

Alhambra
Depression is the inability to construct a future.
—Rollo May

There is a city there, and it will stay there until time stops.
There are houses, high-arched, broken stone washed clean by thin teary rainwater, and people in coarse
clothing. The servants of the city wear their jobs constantly: the stern high priestess and her crystal scales serve
the Parrot, and the hard-edged man wields a baton and straightens his military shoulders in the name of the
Hyena. The poor are unadorned, because one lesson of Alhambra is that beauty must be earned.
Walk down the street and pass through half the people you meet, like smoke. The younger ones speak ar-
chaic dialects of the city’s tongue, while the older ones mumble glossolalic half-words; though Alhambra strives
to ensure that its language changes as little as possible over time, the weight of years without a beating heart
takes its toll.
The streets are silent. Nobody will talk to you as you pass by, but to duck their heads and continue on. They
glance up very seldom, except to check that the lamps are all lit; a lamp in Alhambra invites citizens to look up,
just once, to make sure that the starved green holy light they produce is still bright. They never linger too long
on one lamp, because to keep looking is to see the vacant sky and the faint impression of buildings, far away.
The light only shines so far, and maybe this time, when you look up, something made from feather-shadow and
the bones of birds will drop on you from above. It could happen, if you keep looking up. So you look down.
Welcome to Alhambra. Try not to think about the sun. It will only make you homesick.

The City
Alhambra exists on the inner surface of a bubble, nearly six miles in diameter. Roughly half the surface is
covered by a saltwater lake, out of which rise a number of islands, made of what appears to be black volcanic
rock. One seldom sees that rock, however, because nearly every acre above the waterline has been built over, in
an intricate maze of streets and courtyards winding between houses faced in brick, granite and marble, and lit
by green-burning lamps set on iron poles. Above the buildings and the lake, in the bubble’s center, clouds form
and dissolve constantly, and let fall a rain of slightly salted, but still potable, water; water that tastes almost
exactly like human tears. The rains move around Alhambra on a remarkably regular schedule, on a cycle of 24
hours and 10 minutes; the city keeps time by this cycle, not by the days and years of Earth.
The lamps in Alhambra are its only source of light, and they are kept burning constantly … for darkness,
within the bubble, is more than a mere absence of light; it is a destroyer, eating away anything left within it.
Moreover, any place left unlit for long tends to spawn Darkspawn monsters, which resemble shadows of the
things (or people) caught within the darkness. The monsters invariably seek out any and all lights they can, and
destroy whatever lights they reach. Every Alhambran is taught from childhood to fear darkness as one fears
death; every Alhambran learns, from a very early age, how to light the lamps that burn in every street and room
in the city, and as part of his schooling serves a term in the lamplighter squads that patrol the city and keep
the lamps burning.
The city streets appear, at first, to be thronged with people. A visitor soon notices, though, that most of the
crowd are faded or washed out, and a few are barely present - they cast no shadow, and pass through other
people like ghosts. As it turns out, that’s because they are ghosts. Roughly four out of five of the figures one passes
in the street on any given day are of the “venerable” or “departed”, for nearly all Alhambrans whose bodies die
remain as ghosts to oversee and advise their living descendants. Memorial prayers to one’s departed ancestors
are a point of honor and pride in Alhambra; to have the venerable of your household always substantial and
active is a mark of piety.
Those aware of how ghosts behave on Earth will be surprised by Alhambra’s departed. For one, while they
usually prefer to remain near the places or people they knew in life, they aren’t bound to them as Earthly ghosts
are to anchors. They do not, in fact, have anchors at all; Alhambra’s departed regain Essence only from being
remembered by the living. Being remembered, fortunately, is much easier for the venerable, as they need not
take time or effort to manifest - they are always Materialized, and even tangible as long as they have even 1

Alhambra 333
point of Essence. (There is no such thing as Twilight in Alhambra, and thus no way for a ghost not to manifest.)
Finally, the departed never have the Manifestations that allow a ghost to take over a living person (e.g. Fetter
and Possess) and there is good reason to believe that those Manifestations don’t work inside the city.

The Language
As far as can be determined, the day-to-day language spoken in the closed sphere which is Alhambra is
a hybrid tongue, despite the claims of the inhabitants of that place. Linguistic drift is inevitable, even though
imposed stasis, and there are an incredible number of concepts and ideas that exist in the modern day that are
widely agreed to have not existed in the cultural purity of latter days of the Kingdom. It has picked up words
from modern English, from Revolutionary French, from Han-Dynasty Chinese and from Ngurai-illam-wurrung,
and a hundred other dialects which have existed throughout the millennia the last remnants of the Kingdom
have stood in their rain-drenched realm. Moreover, it contains sounds, especially in the emotional words, which
resemble the shapeless glossolalia of the Royal Tongue, which violate the normal structure and flow of the lan-
guage.
The base of the language has some noted similarities with the language of the Kofun culture, including
a logosyllabic writing system, and similar grammatical and noun-formation structures, yet it also has some
differences such as a rare use of color to make minute clarifications that appears to be adapted from the Royal
Tongue. Some think the similarities are just a coincidence, there are a lot of languages after all.
The later words, clearly alien to the root language and most likely absorbed from Alhambran agents re-
turned home, are molded to fit into the standard structure, including the imposition of the dual grammatical
genders, the animate and the inanimate, meaning that, even with the influx of modern words from the develop-
ments of the previous century, their structure fits into the rigid grammatical structure which the rest of the lan-
guage is composed of. The linguistic divergence, too, is notable; many of the living inhabitants of the city would
have problems understanding the elder shades which haunt the place, let alone the dictates from the Queen.
Like any language, modern Alhambran may be learned as a one dot Merit. However Old Alhambran is treat-
ed as a distinct language which must be learned separately.

The Orders
Under the law of Her Ever-Flowing Majesty, the people of Alhambra are divided into nine great chivalric
Orders, whose knights and officers direct the city’s affairs. Each of these carries the name of a bird or beast of
Earth - an ascription dating to the Kingdom’s day, and therefore never altered, though not one Alhambran in a
thousand knows anything about the animals for which the Orders were named. (There was a tenth Order, in the
days just after the Fall, and children told to recite the Orders’ names always list it last … but no one belongs to
it now, so no one but children thinks about it. Even the ghosts of its members ceased to appear many centuries
ago.) Each also has a representative at the Queen’s court, appointed by Her Majesty to carry Her word to the
city as needed.

Order of the Parrot

Representative: Mistress (Master) of Ceremonies
A tragedy ancient in Alhambra relates the tale of a boy and girl of the City, who loved without the knowledge
of their ancestors. Because they lived on islands separated by a strait, and the boy was a strong swimmer, the
girl took up a lamp and shone a beam across the water, making a clear path for her lover, when they wished to
enjoy one another. One night, however, the girl’s mother found the lamp and turned it away when the boy was
in mid-strait; the boy was never seen again alive, and when the girl learned what had passed she plunged herself
into the strait to join him. To this day the monsters that breach the water in that strait look almost human, and
sometimes even beautiful. The lesson drawn from this tragic tale - in Alhambra, every tale has a lesson, or it
isn’t told - is stern: never grasp at love untimely. Court within the rules of courtship and the knowledge of your
elders; follow the established ceremonial rites of the City in love as in all other things, for else the Darkness rises.

334 Alhambra
 It is truly said that the only god or goddess worshipped in Alhambra, apart from the Ever-Flowing Herself,
is Ceremony; the Order of the Parrot, first in precedence of the nine knightly Orders, bears more resemblance
to monastic orders on Earth than to the warriors the title of “knight” suggests, and its head the Mistress of
Ceremonies, who bears no weapon but an orb of crystal and a measuring rod, is a hierophant not a general.
While the substance of most things done in the City is the province of the other Orders, the proper time, place
and manner for all actions whatsoever is set down in the records of the Parrots, and the Order is ready at any
time to counsel the perplexed citizen on the path of proper conduct. Moreover, as keeper of the calendar the
Mistress of Ceremonies tells all Alhambra of the proper times and methods to celebrate the City’s past, so that
the ongoing work to establish the City’s rule in the rebellious provinces is not allowed to obscure the goal of
bringing the Kingdom back in truth.
Lest there be any in the City who neglect the proper way of things, the Order of the Parrot has the duty of
teaching every child born in Alhambra between the ages of six and thirteen those things which every subject of
the Kingdom must know: the city’s history and poetry, mathematics, rituals and etiquette, and the threat of the
Darkness. It is they who set the rota of the lamplighter squads, sending their charges into otherwise deserted
buildings with fuel cans and cleaning rags to keep them in order; and while a Spotted Hyena is normally in
charge of a squad, in case of trouble, a Parrot is expected to accompany his students if he is capable.

Alhambra’s Calendar
Alhambra uses a calendar that, by tradition, was invented in the later days of the Kingdom. It is basically
lunisolar, with 12 months of alternating 30 and 29 days in a normal year; 123 years out of 334, a 13th month
of 30 days is added, to keep the start of the year on the first new moon after the spring equinox. This calendar
would be quite accurate, if Alhambra counted the months in Earth’s days; alas, the “day” of the calendar is the
cycle of the rains, so the months and years drift out of sync with the real planetary movements by more than 2
days each year. This does not trouble the Order of the Parrot; the cycle of festivals in the Kingdom’s capital is
far more important than the seasons in rebellious provinces.

Order of the Beaver

Representative: Serene Architect
Even in a city as unusual as Alhambra, the necessities must be taken care of. The Serene Architect is re-
sponsible for Alhambra as a physical city. Her order manufactures the raw materials the city is built from in
charmed furnaces, and fashions them into the streets and buildings that form Alhambra.
Architecture in Alhambra is defined by two constants; the near omnipresent rains and the need for constant
light. Buildings are built with large sloping roofs and large open drains can be found on every street to carry
the rains away. Indoors Alhambrans use large open plan spaces to maximize the spread of light, what furniture
they use is often set into the walls or at floor level – mats instead of tables, cushions instead of chairs – to avoid
casting shadows. Only important buildings can afford to light narrow corridors, and even then only when they
are needed for defense.

Refineries and Furnaces

Scattered through the islands and neighborhoods of Alhambra are the refineries. These are, from the out-
side, square towers of black basalt, five stories high - the only places in the city where the rock of the islands
appears undisguised. It’s within these towers that the precious luminous oil collects, from which the refining
masters distill the fuel for Alhambra’s lamps. All the curious devices in the Redoubts that drain light and virtue
from our world are focused on the clouded crystals kept in the upper floors, which sweat honey-gold glowing
nectar into porcelain vats. The refiners crack the oil with an alchemical process, developed shortly after the Cat-
aclysm, that separates it into the rarefied spirits of lamp fuel and a gum-like taffy, which they mold into blocks.
These blocks, like lamp fuel, will burn, but produce heat instead of light.
Furnaces of various sizes, from half a man’s height to a large room, dot the neighborhoods of Alhambra.
These are all built to the same plan: a ring chamber filled with taffy blocks from the refineries, around a shaft

Alhambra 335
driven into the ground covered by a hatch, which lets into a room above that can be sealed off. The hatch can
be opened and closed by a lever outside the upper room.
The purpose of these furnaces is a strange magic that creates the stone and metal from which the city is
built. Samples of the stuff desired are placed within the upper chamber, which is sealed, leaving it in darkness;
then the hatch above the shaft is opened. This lets the Darkness, lying thick under the hatch, spring out to attack
whatever is in the upper chamber. But, when the first sound of the shadow-beasts attacking can be heard, the
taffy blocks are ignited, bringing the upper chamber to a red or yellow heat. When enough time has passed to
melt everything within, the hatch is closed, the upper chamber’s seals are broken, and the substance left inside
(now multiplied several times) cools off. The corpses of shadow-beasts that come from other darknesses are
usually melted in this way as well.
Construction and maintenance of the furnaces and refineries is the Serene Architect’s most important duty,
and the Beavers also control the furnaces’ use - logically enough, as they have the most need by far for the stone
and metal made in them. Use of the refineries, however, is the province of the Order of the Vulture, thanks to
the same Writ that gave the accountants the duty of harvesting hope from the Rebellious Provinces; the animus
between the two Orders provoked by that Writ is perennial and shows no sign of fading.

Order of the Pelican

Representative: Premier in Craft
In every society there are jobs that can only be done by people with years of skill and experience. In Alham-
bra these jobs, the doctors, the master craftsmen, the bankers, they all belong to the Order of the Pelican. The
Pelican is in many ways something of a historical anomaly, it is the miscellany of the Orders. In many ways the
Pelican is more of a special interest group protecting its members interests from being drowned out by the more
focused Orders. The Premier in Craft, officially chosen for being the best craftsman in Alhambra, is something
of a career politician.
For all that it is an oddity, the unusual design of the Order is perhaps the only way it could function. There
are some tasks that require a certain flexibility of mind, even in the rigid environment of Alhambra. The Pelican
never formed the rigid hierarchies found in the other orders, partly because skill as a doctor does not qualify
you to manage craftsmen, but mostly because the Pelicans felt that they didn’t spend years studying medicine
to go into management. Instead they form their own smaller hierarchies under the umbrella of their Order,
hierarchies small enough to still have the flexibility craftsmen require.

Order of the Tortoise

Representative: Vicegerent of Ages
The Order of the Tortoise blend the role of librarian, archivist and castellan. Like their namesake, the Order
makes its home in a fortress on the same square as an imperial palace. Behind its enormous Charmed walls
they archive millennia of records from all walks of Alhambran life and they drill themselves hard to defend
those documents. They are scholars and librarians who are mostly interested in their work. You could call them
reserved, even shy, but if they must they’d lay down their very lives to protect their archive.
Of all the orders, few can claim the prestige that is given to the Order of the Tortoise. In Alhambra, history is
everything. The present is bleak, the future is more of the same, but the past, the past is glorious. As the keepers
and trustees of Alhambra’s history the Order of the Tortoise is considered the closest thing to that glorious
history, save for the Lady of Alhambra who was alive even in those glorious times.
It would therefore break an Alhambran’s heart to know that if any order were to doubt the righteousness of
their civilization it is the Tortoises; deep within the very heart of their fortress they keep their greatest treasure,
documents and artifacts that predate the Fall: treatises on philosophy, codes of law and the diaries of people
who would deplore Alhambra’s sad and parasitic existence. Those few who have read these prized texts, like
their namesakes, withdraw into their shells and hide their doubts deep in the heart of Alhambra.

336 Alhambra
 The Fall
The Alhambrans boast in a thousand ways of the Kingdom’s rise and glory, but none will speak of its
fall; so it’s very difficult to learn how Alhambra came to be. Throughout the city, in fact, only one memorial
of that event is known to exist: a bronze plaque, mounted in the Observation Room at the top of the highest
tower in the Queen’s palace in Alhambra. The tale inscribed on that plaque runs:
In the final days of the Kingdom, the minor courts turned from the Light to contend
with one another, and to resist the efforts of Her Majesty the Ever-Flowing to impose order
and peace upon them. None now can say who was the first to use monsters of the Dark-
ness as weapons in these battles; but those who did were inevitably betrayed, as are all
who think to master Darkness. Their lands became the monsters’ bastions, their peoples
(if they were fortunate) were killed or (if less blessed) changed into abominations and sent
to conquer other courts in turn.
Some few Queens, realizing the world’s peril at last, came at the invitation of Her
Majesty the Ever-Flowing, with their subjects and armies to this, the eternal city Alhambra.
Here they prepared to carry war into the lands taken by Darkness, under the command of
the Seraphic General, the first of all Queens after Her Majesty the Ever-Flowing. From the
gates of the eternal city the armies set forth, and within a day’s march the swollen horde
of abominations fell upon them and broke them.
Her Majesty the Ever-Flowing, with her loyal knight commanders, looked out from this
place and saw the Seraphic General rise from the field of battle, transmuted into a living
storm; they knew in that moment that all the world save Alhambra was lost forever. In
this place Her Majesty the Ever-Flowing and her knight commanders performed the Grand
Sacrifice of Inversion, enveloping the eternal city within a perpetual ward and shield, so
that the last refuge of the Light would be preserved undimmed.
The wisdom of Her Majesty the Ever-Flowing shall illuminate the cosmos forever.
—translated from Old Alhambran by Opal Star Cuyler, Knight Lieutenant of the Order of
the Ghost Owl

Bequests
The Tortoise stores more than just documents, their treasuries serve as Alhambra’s central repository for
Bequests; this makes the Tortoises perhaps the best armed group in Alhambra, and the order is drilled daily in
use of the various magical items they stockpile. All in case they are ever called to fight in defense of their archives.
The most valuable Bequests in Alhambra are those that date back to the Kingdom themselves, some of
which still contain a spark of Invocations that have long ceased to exist. Most of these Bequests are far too
valuable to actually use, for they contain unique and irreplaceable magics that cannot be duplicated in today’s
day and age. Three of these lost Invocations are detailed here.
• The principles of Fulmine were one of contrasts. They were sensual, yet serene. They were giving, yet
also took. Fulmine gave the power to enhance the senses and experience from another perspective. The most
powerful Fulmine Bequests can temporarily transform a Princess into other types of supernatural beings,
and even transfer all a Princess’ powers to a mortal for a short time.
• The Invocation of Metallo emphasized humility, hard work, a practical approach to magic, and sacrific-
ing one’s own goals and desires for the good of others. Metallo Bequests often specialize in domestic tasks,
with powers that aid in farming, cooking, homemaking and other aspects of everyday life. It is the only lost
Invocation that is regularly used within Alhambra; these powers are just too useful to forsake.
• Vuoto was an Invocation of forethought and judgement. Its Charms could guide you down the right path,
and even predict the outcome of an action. Masters of Vuoto could see across time and space, and rarely made
a decision in ignorance.

Alhambra 337
Order of the Spotted Hyena
Representative: Marshal of the Virtues
The Hyenas are one of the most prestigious Orders; their members are both Alhambra’s army, and its police.
It is the Hyenas whose strong sword arms guard every Enclave within the rebellious provinces, and who patrol
every district of Alhambra in search of Darkspawn. The Marshal of the Virtues boasts that his men are the best
of Alhambra, and this claim has some merit for in a city under siege the Queen of Tears has granted her Marshal
a royal writ of conscription: the Hyenas have the first pick of each new generation as they leave the Parrots’
school. The right of conscription causes the inevitable conflicts, other orders fear being starved of talent and
even attempt to hide the abilities of promising individuals until they are past the age of recruitment. Like so
much else in Alhambra there is no chance that this shall change, even if it is divisive the defense of Alhambra
must come first.
Because of Alhambra’s perpetual manpower shortages the soldiers of the Spotted Hyena are trained as light
skirmishers; their drills cover both the ars militaris and ars magica and specialize Alhambra’s military for urban
conflicts both in Alhambra itself and in the cities of the rebellious provinces, where most taxes can be collected.
The Hyenas favor working in small squads and using their magic to control the terrain or establish defensive
positions, they also train hard on how to evacuate back to Alhambra with a minimum threat to resources or the
all important Wisps Alhambra’s operatives harvest.

Order of the Otter

Representative: Steward of the Household
There once was a man, of noble birth but undistinguished occupation who nonetheless rev-
eled in his work. He often encountered six people, his equals in birthright but revered for their
different occupations. The six alike oft mocked the man from the height of their seats. Why would
one choose such a menial job as gathering food? And so they offered to take him under their wing
and work with one of them, but met with his refusal they shrugged and went on, for food was
aplenty and the sun always shone.
And yet, one day, the Night fell. The six panicked, for they knew not where or how to find
nourishment! So they turned to the little man for assistance, and so he answered their pleas: "You
mocked me and called me a knave from the height of your seats, yet you come running my way
when it now suits your fancy. My only request therefore is this: I want to stand among you, equal in
birth and importance, and you shall never forget who has helped you during this time of duress."
The six were appalled, such boldness! But their strength would soon wane, and who knew
what lurked in the night, and so they accepted him among their group.
Thus, the six became seven.
This old Alhambran tale, of whom many different tellings exist, has a twofold purpose. Firstly, it is a cau-
tionary tale, telling one of the basic morals of the city: in the Darkness, nothing is free. Only the mercy of Her
Everflowing Majesty has no price, for she herself already paid it herself.
Secondly, it has been unofficially adopted as an allegorical retelling of the Order of the Otter’s creation. The
Order’s history is an interesting one, for it can be said to be both the oldest and youngest of the city. Some of the
oldest ghosts still inhabiting the City claim to have heard of stories of groups with similiar goals to the Otters
being active before the Fall but, as any Tortoise will be quick to point out, no official recording of such activities
taking place during the Kingdom can be found in their archives.
The Order’s job is to procure the means for the city’s continued sustainment, and their main means to do
so is by harvesting the Lake of Tears, for which they thank their Queen daily. The Steward of the Household
oversees both the gathering process and the distribution, and in this respect some find a third meaning to the
old tale: never run afoul of an Otter. For they are the ones that best know the depths of Alhambra’s wilds, and
their skill in herblore is unmatched by all but the most experienced Pelican. For this reason, the lesser Stewards

338 Alhambra
seem to hold a strange amount of hold in the city, for nobody wants to displease one of the people who may very
well decide of their family’s foreseeable future.
The Alhambrans draw their daily meals from the lake. A few feet below the surface begins a layer of weeds
strongly resembling kelp, among which swim a host of fish, pale white or ink black. Fleets of small boats row
out constantly with nets to trawl the lake, bringing up weeds and fish, both of which the Alhambrans eat. The
weeds are tough and stringy, the fish turn rubbery when cooked, and both taste strongly of salt, but they’re
edible and plentiful enough. Oddly, in any place where the weeds can be found, no one has ever found a bottom
to the lake. The plant stalks continue downward into unlit depths, as far as any diver has dared to go, without
ever reaching soil. Few divers have dared go far, of course, since the darkness is just as hostile under the water
as it is on land, and Alhambra’s usual lamps are extinguished by water. Those reckless (or desperate) enough
to plunge beneath the weeds come back corroded and battered, or not at all.

Order of the Ghost Owl

Representative: Fool of the Summit
Once, long ago, before the Darkness consumed the world outside, a foolish man decided to
climb a vast pile of stone; so vast, that its peak was concealed by rainclouds. Still, step after step,
he climbed, until he reached the top. But he had climbed long enough that, head in the clouds, he
was sure that there must be another step. So he fell down, and broke every bone in his body, and
died. Do not try to exceed your station in life, children, or you too shall die.
From this story, told to Alhambran children, comes the traditional role of the Fool of the Summit. Face
painted like a skull (to remember that first, dead Fool), dressed in black, white and red, the Fool holds a position
much akin to that of a court jester and devil’s advocate combined. Their job is to observe proceedings and they
are tasked to provide distractions, through silent mummery and witty commentary alike. Their life depends on
their ability to keep others entertained, for if they are boring (or, worse, unfunny), the best that can happen to
them is a honor duel. The worst does not bear thinking of. They are tragic figures, forced to break the minor
social conventions of Alhambra in pursuit of a tradition which mostly dooms them.
However, notably, the Fool does not have any immunity to ramifications from his comments. He is not
granted freedom to mock anyone, and must always consider the complex ramifications of any of his remarks
on any member of the court. As a result, a Fool who manages to survive any time is almost inevitably a laconic
figure, a master of the double-entrendre and the loaded statement. In a sense, it is their weakness that gives
them strength, because they are a pathetic figure, below the attention of any true aristocrat to eliminate for
anything but an overt insult, and too many will take killing a Fool to be an admission that their insinuations
are grounded in fact. The greatest art a Fool can manage is to make ones target humiliate themselves, slowly
goading a chosen target through passive-aggressive remarks and subtle insinuation until an improper outburst
results, and the consequences fall upon their target’s head.
And in that, the Fool’s true purpose is revealed; for one who cannot withstand the jibes and insinuations of
a Fool, will not be able to resist the temptations of the world outside nor the whispers of the Darkness, and are
thus unworthy of their status. Fools of the Summit are chosen from the Order of the Ghost Owl, whose remit is
the discovery of hidden weakness, both within the city and in the rebellious provinces outside it. Lesser Fools
walk in every neighborhood, observing and satirising as they go, and many Alhambrans believe these are the
whole of the Order; in fact, though, many citizens belong to both that order and another, and report suspicious
behaviors to the Ghost Owls’ officers in secret. Those who wear the skull mask are honing the arts of social
assassination in preparation for the most delicate mission: being sent to a land under the Darkness to root out
secrets of Alhambra’s enemies.

Order of the Vulture

Representative: Bearer of Eternal Flames
Once it grows past a certain size every civilization seen so far has required some form of central organiza-
tion and governance. This in turn requires resources, the administrators must be fed, paid, and supplied with

Alhambra 339
ink and parchment. Alhambra uses one of the more common methods: taxation, and it is the Order of the Vulture
who tax Alhambra’s citizens and advise its Queen on economics and matters of the royal treasury.
But Alhambra needs something far more than it needs mere currency, to survive Alhambra needs hope.
Under Alhambran law all of Earth is governed by Her Majesty, the Queen of Tears. It was therefore a simple
decision to say that instead of being taxed in money, the provinces will be taxed in hope. The Vultures, delighted
by the expansion of their duties and prestige, eagerly accepted their Queen’s decree. When the forces of Alham-
bra steal into the Rebellious Provinces to collect their taxes they do so under the banner of the Vulture. They
may travel with a guard of soldiers from the Hyena and travel to a target suggested by the Ghost Owl, but it
is the Vultures who started it all with their dispassionate tables of numbers saying how much they must tax
for Alhambra to survive another year, and it is also the Vultures who sit at the top of every Enclave, and at the
bottom doing the physical work of collecting Wisps.

Order of the Raccoon

Representative: Inspector General
For many years it was questioned why Alhambra needed an Inspector General at all; only Alhambra’s dis-
like of change kept the Order alive. The reason is simple enough, the Order of the Raccoon deals with the strange
and the unusual, they investigate anomalies and create plans for contingencies that fall far outside Alhambra’s
standard operating procedures. Consequently Alhambrans often fear and distrust the Raccoons as a represen-
tation of everything they fear.
For all of the Long Night the Order of the Raccoon were underfunded, understaffed, and a (sometimes self
selected) dumping ground for those whose out of the box thinking was unwelcome in the other Orders. They
spent their time wargaming unlikely situations, sometimes just plain wargaming, writing plans for bizarre and
often completely fictional threats, and wondering if anybody was going to file an anomalous phenomena report
this month. But since the Release, the Raccoon’s star is rising. Alhambra’s immediate post-Release strategy was
based on one of the many plans generations of Raccoons had been dreaming up for exactly this situation. As
the world begins to notice the Nobility even the quiet Alhambrans are finding it harder to hide, and it is the
Raccoons who are called to investigate reports of all the strange weirdness that is beginning to cross paths with
Alhambra’s operatives on Earth. If anything, now that the Raccoons are symbolic of actual changes rather than
potential they are liked even less than before.

Order of the Peacock (extinct)

Former Representative: Blessed Merrymaker
Entertainers, revellers, perhaps even pop-stars. Once the Order of the Peacock provided leisure and relax-
ation to all of Alhambra. Now they are no more. Alhambra is a city in mourning, revelry it was considered dis-
tasteful under such circumstances and so the Order was suspended on a temporary basis. The last entertainers
died millennia ago still on paid leave; now all that remains of the Order are some old ghosts still entertaining
empty auditoriums.

Story Seed: Novus Ordo Pavonis

A movement begins in Alhambra to reconstitute the Order of the Peacock, and name a Blessed Mer-
rymaker to head it. Alhambran agents on Earth are taking interest in the arts here, with a view toward im-
porting examples, or even imitating them. Might this be a lever to start the city’s redemption, by teaching
them the meaning of joy and fun?

340 Alhambra
Judiciary
Careful readers will note that none of the Orders is dedicated to resolving disputes between citizens, nor
what is and what isn’t legal.
There exists a code of laws, with the usual items (no stealing, no murder, etc.), but the most important item
is that any of the Orders (but usually either the Spotted Hyenas, Raccoons, or Vultures) may, with a proper Writ
signed by The Queen, do whatever is ordered on the Writ.
How a member of an Order goes about getting a Writ is ambiguous; you talk to the next person up in the
chain of command if you think you or one of your underlings needs one (going above your CO’s head, unless
you can’t find them or the matter involves them personally, is heavily frowned upon), and sometimes the Writ
comes down. Sometimes the Writ comes down at the request of another Order; sometimes, the Writ comes
down without anybody asking for it.
If you need binding arbitration of any other kind of dispute, you just go to the Order who covers your
dispute. Food? Go to the Otters. Who owns a particular bit of land? Beavers. Who owes what to whom when?
Vultures. Criminal matters? Spotted Hyenas. And so on. Each Order has Arbiters who hears cases; but note that
the Queen can, at whim, override any Arbiter. (When a corrupt Arbiter is discovered, expect the Ghost Owls to
get her to do so. Otherwise, the Arbiter’s word is usually final; wasting the Queen’s time is against the law, such
as it is.) Just don’t expect an Arbiter to resolve a matter hinging upon an ambiguity in the law anywhere near fast,
as millennia upon millennia of records and precedents take time to work through, and most such judgements are
pronounced years after they have been taken for consideration. The Tortoises and Parrots still have a committee
going over where the school records of Tortoise-members should be stored, and this argument has been going
on for longer than Alhambra’s own written records can reliably tell.

Darkness Visible
When a part of Alhambra is not lit, by the lamps or any other source of light, anything in that area is grad-
ually destroyed. At the start of each turn a dark area exists, the Storyteller rolls 1 die for each 10 square feet
left unlit; each success on this roll inflicts 1 bashing damage to something within the dark area. People will suf-
fer first, then other living things; once nothing alive remains, the attacks begin destroying objects, up to and
including the walls. On an exceptional success, a shadow-beast emerges from the dark area into the light, and
immediately attacks the nearest light source. (If there are two separated dark areas in a scene, the Storyteller
should roll separate pools for each area.)
Each time a character activates a supernatural ability in Alhambra, the Storyteller rolls a dice pool equal
to the number of times such abilities have been activated in the scene so far, including the current time (so on
the first activation, roll 1 die, on the second activation roll 2 dice, and so forth.) For each success on this roll,
a lamp is extinguished - start with the nearest lamp still burning, then the next closest, and so on. Moreover,
anyone who activates a supernatural ability within a dark area suffers an immediate attack: each success on the
roll for snuffing lamps also inflicts 1 bashing damage on that character, and an exceptional success summons
a shadow-beast.
Any Alhambran, and anyone who has entered the Queen’s service, can relight an extinguished lamp auto-
matically as an instant action, as long as it has fuel and is undamaged.
While dark areas in Alhambra aren’t fully Tainted, they are close enough to the Darkness that being in one
counts as entering a Tainted area for anyone with the Tainted Condition.

Story Seed: Power of the Atom!

When electric lighting spread throughout the Rebellious Provinces, the Order of the Beaver took an
avid interest - with lights that didn’t depend on the Wisp harvest, the greatest threat to Alhambra could
be banished forever! Unfortunately it didn't pan out. The city has no rivers, or even large streams, that can
be dammed and used to run a generator, and no coal or oil exists underneath its ground. Fuel for a power
plant would have to be imported, or created in the furnaces; and the traditional lamps proved to be more
efficient than created coal.

Alhambra 341
 Now, though, an enterprising Beaver who wants to revive the electric light project has been researching
nuclear power plants. Uranium is much more energetic than coal and oil, and if that can be made in a
furnace… Of course there's no natural uranium ore in Alhambra either, so some will have to be procured
from the Rebellious Provinces. This faces serious obstacles: Alhambra is not, of course, a signatory to the
Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, so its agents can’t buy fissionable materials openly.
But there are people willing to sell uranium and plutonium secretly … it’s just a matter of finding them.

Shadow-beasts
These creatures resemble shadows of the things, animals or people caught in the darkness from which they
emerge, dull black, lacking in detail, and sometimes weirdly distorted. They are Darkspawn, with all the powers
of Dark beings, and invariably have the Umbra Light is Dark. Although that Umbra leaves them blind in most
ways under lamplight, shadow-beasts have the Darkspawn’s innate sense for Wisp Seeds, and with that sense
they can also find any store of lamp fuel (which the Alhambrans refine from Seeds.) Worse, drinking lamp fuel
allows a shadow-beast to regain Willpower, as if the stuff were still a Seed - a full lamp holds enough to give a
shadow-beast 1 Willpower - so the beasts routinely smash lamps to guzzle the precious fuel…

Junkpile shadow-beast
Description: A jumble of wooden boards, painted black, that suddenly throws itself at anyone who comes
too close, wrapping them up in rubble. It’s fairly weak, preferring to avoid or frighten off people capable of
harming it, but will lash out if cornered or if a lamp is brought within its reach.

Attributes: Intelligence 1, Wits 3, Resolve 2, Strength 2, Dexterity 3, Stamina 2, Presence 1, Manipula-

tion 1, Composure 2
Skills: Brawl 3, Stealth 2 (ambushes), Intimidation 4
Derived Traits: Health 6, Willpower 4, Size 4, Defense 3, Initiative 5, Speed 10 (species factor 5)
Umbrae: Light is Dark
Caligines: Avoid All Eyes 1, Bogeyman 2
Attack: Grapple, 0 Damage, 5 dice

Child shadow-beast
Description: A child-sized figure dressed in a black version of the Lamplighter uniform, with nothing but
a suggestion of human features for a face. Usually, when first found, it’s collapsed itself into a flat shadow, and
returns to solidity only when everyone has dropped their guard. Even when solid, it’s hard to hurt; its flesh
yields to any blow, then puffs out again like a pillow. Sometimes it asks, in a high piping voice, “Why did you
leave me here in the dark?” - a question that fills one of its hearers with dread.

Attributes: Intelligence 1, Wits 5, Resolve 3, Strength 3, Dexterity 3, Stamina 4, Presence 3, Manipula-

tion 2, Composure 4
Skills: Athletics 1, Brawl 2, Stealth 3, Intimidation 4, Persuasion 3
Derived Traits: Health 7, Willpower 7, Size 3, Defense 6, Initiative 9, Speed 11
Umbrae: Hollow as a Shadow, Light is Dark
Caligines: Avoid All Eyes 1, Bogeyman 2, Handful of Dust 3, Zombie’s Flesh 2
Attack: Fists, 0 Damage, 5 dice

342 Alhambra
Warrior shadow-beast
Description: A hulking beast on two legs, with a long knife-claw for one hand and a net of kelp strands
in the other. It’s a deadly fighter, killing without compuction; and it dominates lesser shadow-beasts, ordering
them into battle with a tactical cunning beyond most Darkspawn.

Attributes: Intelligence 2, Wits 4, Resolve 5, Strength 6, Dexterity 5, Stamina 5, Presence 4, Manipula-

tion 2, Composure 5
Skills: Athletics 3, Firearms 3, Weaponry 4 (knife-claw), Intimidation 5
Derived Traits: Health 10, Willpower 10, Size 5, Defense 8, Initiative 9, Speed 16
Umbrae: Light is Dark, Subsumed by Another Shadow
Caligines: Avoid All Eyes 1, Bogeyman 2, Zombie’s Flesh 1, Loathsome Weapon 2, I Have You Now, My
Pretty 3, Voidblast 3
Attack: Knife-claw, 1 Damage, 11 dice

The Radiant in Alhambra

While the Ravens have a variety of unflattering opinions on the philosophies of the Radiant Courts (and
the Court of Mirrors), they see the individual Princesses as people to flatter and recruit, and Alhambra’s culture
includes a strong bias to look up to and respect the Nobility. Any Radiant Princess who finds herself in Alhambra
will discover that she’s treated better than the average local citizen so long as she obeys Alhambran law. She will
be provided with a modest mansion and a couple of maidservants or menservants of her own for the duration
of her stay, as well as access to luxuries like food from outside and electricity (this may come in the form of a
Bequest capable of powering technology). This is similar to what a new Princess of Tears can expect, save that
a Raven’s maidservants will be loyal to her and not reporting on her every activity.
If a Princess is prepared visiting Alhambra need not be dangerous. The Court of Tears has a standard policy
of not permitting Princesses to leave Alhambra until they have demonstrated loyalty, “for their own safety”, but
a prepared Princess can over come this. The much more important policies of recruiting Radiant Princesses
and respecting Nobility requires the Court of Tears to honour deals from the Radiant if they’re made in good
faith and don’t threaten Alhambra’s safety. If a Princess agrees to visit Alhambra on the condition that they’re
permitted to return at a time of their choosing that deal will be honored.
If she forgets to specify a right of return escaping is rarely that hard. A visitor’s maidservants will report on
her every activity, but they are still expected to cook, clean, and run errands for their Noble guest, and Alham-
brans are raised to defer to Nobility. As such a visiting Princess can distract her minders with errands while
she slips off and browbeats some poor Sworn into taking her home. She will, sadly, get everyone involved into
serious trouble.
The real danger is accidentally violating Alhambran law, which is bureaucratic, frequently contradictory,
and worst of all forbids everyone from speaking against either the Queen or the harvests. A visitor’s servants will
try to steer her safely, but following their advice will also steer the Princess away from accomplishing anything
significant. Trying to turn your minders into double agents can work but carries risks, but so does trying to work
around your servants. Though the pro-Nobility bias in Alhambra’s culture will allow a visiting Princess to be
judged according to the more favorable interpretations of the law it’s still possible for a Princess to accidentally
commit a crime. If this happens house arrest is the best a visitor can hope for. A Noble trying to fight her way
out of trouble will rapidly attract the Queen of Tears’ personal attention.
Because of this, but mostly because Radiant Princesses don’t even like the Court of Tears, Alhambra gets few
visitors. However there’s usually a couple of Radiant in Alhambra; either waiting for their request to visit the
uncensored part of Alhambra’s archives to crawl through the bureaucracy, nurturing a friendship that formed
across party lines, or just curious to see what the last remainder of their heritage actually looks like.

Alhambra 343
Ghost Princesses
She sits in an empty palace, the tapestries are moth eaten and threadbare. The floor is cov-
ered in dust, no one has been this way in years. In a ghostly whisper she answers petitions from
courtiers and subjects long departed from their mortal coil. And yet she carries a presence about
her, she still radiates with the power of her magic. The Princess is dead but her subjects still need
her. Long live the Princess.

Princesses do not naturally form ghosts; the cycle of reincarnations draws the royal soul onwards with a
gentle call that cuts the threads of anchors. To the followers of Tears this is a problem - ghosts are useful and the
ghost of a Princess is more so. With the powerful Charm named Long May She Reign they can help a Princess
remain on this plane after death and continue her duties to Alhambra.
In most respects the ghost of a Princess is much like any other ghost; all the rules for ghosts [CofD 122-140]
apply to her. However, she is consistently more powerful than ghosts tend to be outside the Underworld, thanks
to her ties with the Light in life. Every ghost Princess is self-aware and retains her memory, and has a Rank of at
least 2; a Princess with an Inner Light of 6 or more in life rises as a ghost of Rank 3. Moreover, ghost Princesses
retain lucidity equal to one of the living - they have the Belief trait, suffer breaking points, and may improve their
traits without going to the Underworld. The person who cast the Charm on her is always an anchor for a ghost
Princess, as are the people in her Circle and things or places associated with her Mandate Merit (if any), and
the Storyteller may give a ghost Princess more anchors than these. Ghost Princesses generally have Influence:
Anchors 2 and the Image and Materialize Manifestations at minimum, gaining more if their Rank rises.
When it comes to Numina, the ghost Princesses again are atypically powerful. Instead of picking from the
list of Numina, a ghost Princess knows the Charms she knew in life as Numina, substituting her Rank for Inner
Light, an Attribute + Rank for activation rolls (or Attribute + Attribute when the Charm uses two Attributes) and
Essence for Wisps at a 1-to-1 rate in the activation costs. A ghost Princess also keeps Invocations she had while
alive, and may apply them whenever a Charm allows it, spending 1 Essence instead of 1 Wisp to do so, except
when the Invocation is free. Ghost Princesses cannot learn more Charms or Invocations on their own, and have
none of a living Princess’ innate abilities other than their Charms - though they always count as transformed,
and thus may use Charms at any time.
The Banes of ghost Princesses vary widely, usually related to what the Princess hated or feared in life (al-
though, due to the affiliation of most of them with Alhambra, creatures of Darkness are a distressingly common
type of Bane.) However, all ghost Princesses share a Ban among them, inherited from the Charm that creates
them. All possess Sensitivity and are subject to Hauntings, as they were in life; the dice pool for the roll begins
equal to the ghost’s Rank. The Shadows a ghost Princess has at the moment of her death become permanent
and cannot be removed by any means.
As a royal ghost acquires more Shadows from Hauntings her pure form loses its shining light; her Corpus
becomes marked with signs of obvious decay and Darkness while her mind grows cracked and damaged. Each
Shadows dot adds 1 to the points of Essence a ghost Princess must spend each day to remain active, and when
she finally acquires a number of Shadows equal to her Belief, she experiences a crash similar to what happens
when a living Princess falls to Belief 0. For most this just means that as their Willpower fades their Corpus
fades along with it and quietly dissolves into motes of Light until they run out of Willpower and pass on, but
an unlucky few have become Dethroned.
Unlike the living, a ghost Princess cannot cleanse herself of Shadows unaided. The Protectorate of Amethyst
are responsible for caring for the ghosts of departed Princesses; they keep them in walled luxurious palaces far
from any sight that might trigger their Sensitivity, and when a ghost is called to perform royal duties for the Last
Empress the Protectorate endeavors to travel with the ghost to keep her safe from infection by the Darkness.

344 Ghost Princesses

 The Queen of Storms
AKA: The Seraphic General, Lady of the Cleansing Flame, The Dragon-Slayer
Former Kingdom: Gonel
Followers’ Epithets: Seraphim, Furies, Sworn Guard, Crazies (derogatory)
The world hurts. The world always hurts. The Darkness is everywhere, subtly writhing in the
night and in the hearts of corrupt bastards, and those fucking parasites in Alhambra make the
world a worse place just by existing.
So we burn it out. We burn it all out. When some bastard takes children, we’re there to make
sure he dies and make sure that the Taint he leaves doesn’t get to spread. We’re not soft-hearted
fools like the so-called ’Radiant’, who prattle on about hope and self-belief and innate kindness
and the like. The world is stinking and wretched and corrupt, and, like a cancer, the evil must be
excised. By any means necessary.
It’s better to light a fire than curse the Darkness, after all.
Because the Kingdom was betrayed from within. We were all betrayed. Our Queen gave her
life protecting something which wasn’t worth protecting, and we now know that you can flap
around talking about the Light all you want, but what the world needs is for all the bastards to
die. They all deserve to die. And we’re willing to give our lives to do so. We won’t compromise, and
if we die, we’ll keep on fighting. Even in the face of the end of the world.
Even after the world ends, we’ll keep fighting by our Queen’s side. We’ll keep on fighting until
the Darkness is ash.

The Queen of Storms was once a mortal woman, but is one no longer. As the hordes of the Darkness closed
in on the last city of the Kingdom, she led the fight back, at the head of an army. And they were slaughtered.
Transcending her mortal flesh as rage burned her alive, since the Fall of the Kingdom she, and her followers,
have sought to cleanse the Darkness, and the traitors of Alhambra, from the world no matter the cost. She was
not trapped in the Dreamlands, and she has raged and she has fought all this time. The forces of Storms are
composed of mortal cultists, those who the world has taken everything from, and is backed up by strange ghost-
like beings, which build bodies for themselves out of flesh and clay; now, with the Release, Nobility join their
ranks.

Tales from the Darkness

Deep within the Dark World there is a storm that never ceases. Green fire scorches the sky. Bolts of thunder
split mountains and carve the ground open. The wind sings hymns of defiance. The clouds are formed of people
in their millions, they burn with rage hot enough to warm the frozen heart of the Darkness. Wherever this Storm
travels, it leaves nothing but ash.
The Queen of Storms died during the fall. She died faithful to her duties, she died untainted, and she died
fighting. In her final battle she burnt herself to ashes with the fury of her rage and the power of the magics the
channeled against the Darkness. Her body was destroyed, her mind was consumed by hate, and her soul was
transformed. The Queen has become the very embodiment of Tempesta. She battles the Darkness itself within
its world; she exists deep within the soul of any who knows hate and rage within their hearts. Every feeling of
rage is a petition for the Queen, all hatred is a prayer, and the requests of those who feel hate at the Queens
ancient enemies are granted. The Queen bestows her powers and her favor on all who would take up her banner
and fight for her cause.

Philosophy
Let the scholars of Alhambra mumble over the vague pronouncements of the Traitor Queen. The commands
of the Seraphic General are clear, and she gives them to everyone in her service.

The Queen of Storms 345

 Death to the Darkness: This is perhaps the simplest order given. Kill the Darkness. Kill Darkspawn, kill
Darkened, kill Mnemosyne, kill Cataphracti, burn Tainted locations to the ground and salt the earth so that no-
one returns to them. Of course, when it’s your sister, who became Darkened through no fault of her own, it’s
different for you. Not for the Queen of Storms. Every Darkened is a potential Darkspawn.
The Flesh Is Weak: This principle has rather more depth than might at first appear. It is simultaneously a
warning, a message for self-improvement, a threat and a caution. It warns that human beings, whether mortal
or Enlightened, cannot always maintain the level of dedication needed to save the world, and so that must be
remembered, so that flagging souls may be spurred on further. It is a message that followers of Storms are weak
physically, and so should strive to improve themselves, so that they may continue to fight better, by training
and by, if they have access, Goalenu-made Grafts. It is a threat, because failure will not be tolerated. And it is
a caution, because followers of Storms frequently push themselves harder than their bodies can stand, and so
they will learn that they hurt themselves.
And finally it is a promise, for those who die from use of Tempesta Charms; they transcend their weak flesh,
and join with the Queen in her eternal battle. One day, the heralds of Storms promise, when enough souls have
joined their Queen she will vanquish the Darkness and scour its every trace from all the worlds that ever were,
are and will be. Only then will the Sworn Guard know rest.
Burn the World to Save the World: The final statement is one of their purpose, and, again, it is both in-
struction and warning. Although the nature of their powers is such that they frequently cause collateral damage,
it does not matter, as long as they are doing it to save the world. The opposite also stands; they are not like the
Traitor Queen of Tears, and they do not drain the world for their own selfishness. Even in the rage-filled mind
of the Queen of Storms, burning down an apartment to destroy the Tainted Site within it is completely different
from random violence. Collateral damage is acceptable - indeed, even meaningless - but if it doesn’t hurt the
Darkness (as filtered through her warped perspective), it’s wrong.

Duties
If asked, the Radiant will tell you that the duties of the Seraphim are summed up in a single word: Fight.
Fight the Darkness until your last breath leaves your body, and then fight on until it’s purged from the world.
This is essentially true, but it does gloss over the details. The “duties” of a Fury are the complex byproduct of
her burning hate and the practical advantages of their Calling. Among young Enlightened and fresh recruits, the
hate is bright like actinic lightning. All of them fight. Champions are the purest expression of the purgatorial
violence of Storms’ call, but they are not alone. Graces empower and boost themselves and any allies they have
with destructive hatred, ramping emotions up so they fight to the very last. Menders are armored titans whose
control of their environment and their own bodies makes them surprisingly effective fighters. Seekers blind
foes with illusions and hunt down targets who try to flee into Twilight, their magic homing in on the Darkness’
weaknesses. Finally, Troubadours control the battlefield with magic and illusions, and as heralds of Storms’ rage
leave scenes of battle as a warning to those who would oppose them.
Older Furies tend to be a little more cynical about matters - or, rather, the ones who survive longer are the
ones who are more mentally flexible. They are still driven by hate and rage, yes, but the burning emotions are
banked, waiting. When they need them, fresh fuel is thrown onto the fire and they flare to terrible life, but until
then they are better at thinking in the long run. The icy cold rage of an experienced Seraph is a terrifying thing
to behold. Time and hatred has worn away any last inhibitions, and taught her every dirty trick. A young Fury
might not care about collateral damage, but kicking down the door gives people some sort of warning, while a
bomb does not. Experienced Furies can appear from nowhere in a whirlwind of destruction and vanish, leaving
only the bodies of their enemies to mark their passing.
Unlike the five Radiant Courts, the Furies are not alone. Mortals who hate the Darkness may become Sworn
to the service of the Seraphic General, and they can become allies and even companions to a Princess of Storms.
It is among these cells, especially if multiple Seraphim are in a single cell, that more conventional Calling-based
roles start to emerge. Champions take to the front, using their abilities to tie down the strongest opponents so
their weaker allies are free to fight. Graces often gravitate to the unenviable task of trying to organize the cell,
though most find it far easier to express their calling on the front line, blessing their allies and countering their
enemies’ magic. A Mender often finds a specialty in arms and armaments and on the battlefield she heads where
the fighting is thickest, taking the blows others cannot. Of all the Callings Menders are the closest to the terrible
Goalenu, learning to maintain and repair Vessels and acquire the parts - one way or another - to construct fresh

346 The Queen of Storms

ones. Seekers make expert scouts and trackers, and when they find their foes the fury of the Storm is rarely far
behind. A rare few have the will to overcome both Tempesta’s demands and their own hate, to scout and depart
unseen. If you meet such a Seeker, fear her. Troubadours turn their hatred and combat into a macabre work of
art, inspiring their allies in battle. When the fighting is over the more rational Troubadours use their skills to
hide the Cell’s presence from the investigations righteous battle invariably spawns.

Background
For those who are called to the Queen of Storms from their Blossoming, one thing is frequently true. The
world has treated them badly. Many of them were exposed to the World of Darkness before their blossoming,
and the Seraphic Legion counts a notable number of former Hunters among it; some have retained their links,
and both offer support and request assistance from their own allies. Others have broken homes, or anything
else which would have exposed them to the things that people do. The Queen of Storms, for all her flaws, offers
a home to such people, enables them to get back at the things in the world.
One of the notable things about the Queen of Storms is the sheer number of Twiceborn who join her ranks.
In some ways, it is not surprising. The Twiceborn, those among the Hopeful who Blossomed in the long years
before the Release, never knew the Kingdom. They are those who fought a desperate struggle against a world
of darkness, and died. While those among the Kingdom-born can call upon their memories of a better time, the
Twiceborn have seen the things that lurk in the shadows, and moreover many of them have served Storms in
another life. Her call is the call of familiarity.
Disturbingly to the forces of the Radiant Queens, there are also those among the Seraphim who are not
merely bereaved or distressed. There are those who appear to have logically thought about the state of the World
of Darkness, and decided it is better that it burn than it be smothered in Darkness. Worse yet, this ideology can
be attractive to inexperienced Princesses, especially since Storms can provide money, and training, and allies
from the networks, and so such more-rational members tend to accumulate groups of younger Princesses, in
the same way that the more experienced among the Radiant do. This is obviously a threat, but on the other hand,
such cells are more willing to deal with the Radiant if doing so will aid them in the destruction of the Darkness. In
such areas, Storms can become an uneasy ally, which usually lasts until the levels of collateral damage becomes
unacceptable for more moral individuals.
Likewise, among the Radiant, there is a public perception that the Queen of Storms is the one of the Twilight
Queens who gets the most defectors. In part, it is because of the relative publicity of such defectors (Tears tries
to hide, and Mirrors isn’t quite as loud as an explosion), but it is also true that the Queen of Storms offers much
to a certain type of Noble. When one has seen too many friends (and then their replacements, barely out of
childhood) die, when one has seen the Darkness come back and ruin everything you’ve worked for, when one
has had enough of vague platitudes from Queens who live in the Dreamlands and don’t know what the world is
like… well, then Storms, with its cells of organized mortal cultists, and its simple mission to destroy the Darkness
no matter the cost, starts to sound awfully tempting.

Character Creation
The Queen of Storms not only admires strength, but demands it. Seraphim tend to have above-average
Physical Attributes, with Stamina prized, because it allows them to keep going longer and absorb the negative
consequences of the use of the Tempesta Invocation better. In addition, both Presence and Resolve are prized;
the former is the force of will needed for a soldier, and the latter the ability to keep going, no matter the odds
against you. And for individuals particularly deficient in these, there is always the option of Goalenu Grafts,
which can boost attributes, but at a cost …
Heraldry: The colors of the Seraphic Legion are steel grey, brilliant acidic green, and white. These colors are
proudly displayed, and mandatory; they are the Last Legion, who remain loyal to the idea of a Kingdom betrayed
by its leaders. From this background, some would expect the clothing of Seraphim to tend to the militaristic
and armored. In fact, although some have a certain harshness of trim, the peculiarities of the Tempesta armor
Charm, Best Defense, mean that their garb is based around permitting as free movement as possible. Short skirts
and shorts are common among both genders (although Princes prefer to call the skirts "kilts"), and where the
clothing is not militaristic, it instead takes on elements of antiauthoritarian counter-cultures.

The Queen of Storms 347

Practical Magic
Storms’ followers reach their peak of excellence in the face of their great adversary. When a Noble of Storms’
action is impeded by a Tainted area’s Aspiration, or a Tainted area’s Curse affects her, she gains an exceptional
success on three successes.
The Seraphic General sustains her acolytes in battle; the Furies can shrug off blows that would put down
any lesser fighter, and strike all the harder as their own flesh bleeds. In either Transformed or mundane state,
a Princess of Storms may spend 1 Wisp. For the rest of the scene, she reverses wound penalties into bonuses
(-1 becomes +1, -2 becomes +2 -3 becomes +3) and does not check for unconsciousness if her last Health box
fills with bashing damage.
When a Fury has Belief 8 or 9, the -1 wound penalty changes to a +2 bonus. When she has Belief 9, the -2
wound penalty changes to a +3 bonus. When she has Belief 10, all three wound penalties change into +3 bonuses.

Invocation: Tempesta
The Invocation of Tempesta is the principle embodied and founded by the Queen of Storms, and which her
Enlightened find come naturally to them. It is conceptually linked to several things, including anger, acid, ra-
dioactivity, martyrdom, cleansing and sterilising, and all things connected to these, allowing Invoked Upgrades
and Invoked Charms to be based around them.
Tempesta has the unique disadvantage that many of its Charms inflict damage upon the user. This
is counted as part of their activation cost, and so may not be bypassed. Damage so inflicted is Resistant, and so
may not be healed by magical means of any kind, as the rage and hatred of Tempesta burns at the Enlightened
body and soul alike. Because of these costs, many Tempesta Charms which have such a price are more powerful
than equivalent ones which lack such painful payment.
Tempesta applies at no cost when a Princess has taken enough bashing damage to suffer wound penalties,
or any amount of lethal or aggravated damage; and in the midst of violent storms, earthquakes, explosions or
other widespread devastation. It also applies without cost when a Princess is fighting servants of the Darkness
or agents of the Queen of Tears.
Those who would use Tempesta must be merciless and swift, striking without hesitation and never showing
fear. Displays of mercy to those who have wronged the Princess or those she protects or loves, or retreating
from battle, render this Invocation inapplicable until the sun next rises. (Pulling back from a foe for tactical
advantage is acceptable; fleeing or refusing to fight is not.) If the target spared is a servant of the Queen of Tears
or the Darkness, the Invocation cannot be used until the Princess’s final health box is filled with damage, for
their flesh cannot channel these powers until the weakness has been forced out through pain. (A Princess may
injure herself to regain use of Tempesta; in fact, such penance is expected and encouraged among the Furies.)

Stereotypes
• Clubs: So… when’re you actually going to do something useful, then?
• Diamonds: You’re real smart. Now look at the real problem.
• Hearts: The kind of cattle who followed the Traitor Queen into betrayal.
• Spades: Yeah, let’s go prank the Darkspawn on Fifth, who’re there because some fucker killed his
kids. That’ll make things better.
• Swords: We kinda get them. They just need to focus on the real problem.
• Tears: You’re in with the Darkness! Your Queen is a traitorous bitch! So just die already!
• Mirrors: Arrogant blind self-righteous bastards.
• Vampires: Bloodsucking parasites. The world will be a better place when you are all ash.
• Werewolves: Sometimes… I just want to smash everything, too.
• Mages: How the fuck did you do that!

348 The Queen of Storms

 • Prometheans: They’re like the Goalenu, I think. I saw one tear something that looked like a Dark-
spawn apart.
• Changelings: Keep out of our way.
• Sin-Eaters: Huh. I see a dead person who isn’t dead anymore.
• Mummies: Priest, I gain nothing from your death. Send your god against the Darkness and I shall
let you live.
• Beasts: Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate makes me strong. You want my fear, mon-
ster? Take it and choke on it!
• Mad Scientists: Who cares how the fuck this works, we can nuke Darkened from orbit with it.
• Leviathans: I’m not running, not even from a fucking god. I hope I fucking give you indigestion.
• Hunters: They get it, you know. We’re like them.
• Mortals: FUCK! How can you just sit back and… argh!

Inspiration
Frank Castle (The Punisher)
Damon and Mindy McCready (Kick-Ass)
It doesn’t matter if I die, just how many I take with me.

The Queen of Storms 349

Goalenu
AKA: the Chimerical Barons of the Lady of Storms, the Knights of Proteus, the Sworn Guard
A man strides down the street, in a long, greenish-blue coat and broad-brimmed hat. He
keeps both covering him as best he can. If you could see his flesh, you could see the cracks of green
fire which spread out from his joints, skin cracked and dried as this shell weakens. He walks, legs
overly stiff, past the shops, and towards the school. The color is being drained from the surface of
everything around him, leaving a fine grey ash layered all around.
The woman in the bar catches your eye, and you walk over to introduce yourself. You realize
your mistake in the alley outside, when the woman with the flirty, bright green eyes unhinges her
jaw to an impossible level, revealing the burning green fire which she has in place of a heart. He
seemed a little distracted when he got home, your wife says to the police, after the atrocity which
the thing wearing your shape commits at your office, the next day.
It’s not even vaguely human, that thing. It, if you had to describe it, most resembles some
unknown animal thing, covered in oil with harsh light reflecting off, but the animal is invisible.
There’s nothing there but the reflections and the shimmers and the glimmers and your torn off
leg, jammed into a man-sized doll of wet clay and stolen flesh. It’s building itself a new vessel.

Background
There is a tale that the Knights of Proteus tell themselves. As the Kingdom fell, a squad of knights, sworn
only to the service of the Kingdom, not the corrupted and weakened leaders, held the gate against the tide of
the Darkness which swarmed and writhed around the city. They were true, they were faithful, and they held to
their oaths. While She Who Would Become Tears cowered in the keep, playing with the Darkness and inviting it
in, the burning green light of the weapons of the Sworn Guard, led by the woman who would become the Queen
of Storms, fought off the Dark, even as they died from the power that they were channelling. One by one they
fell, from the fiends that they fought, or as their bodies collapsed, burned to empty husks. Soon, only the Queen-
to-be was left, and the play took its final, tragic act.
But the other members of the Sworn Guard, though their bodies were dead and their souls blasted by the
powers they were wielding, would not give up the fight. They would see every single trace of the Darkness
burned from the world, even if they had to reduce the world to ash. They had sworn it; it would be so. They would
see the traitors who had betrayed the Kingdom, from within and without, dead and more than dead. They had
sworn it; it would be so. To this day they remain, in communion with their Queen and each other, and sometimes
sally out to destroy the enemy when the General or her living servants discover it. And as the centuries pass,
and others bring fire to the Darkness, the Sworn Guard adds recruits to serve their cause beyond death.

Description
When not in a vessel, a Goalenu often looks like a stormcloud forced into the shape of a man - grey or black
smoke, lit from within by green flickers - or a shimmering distortion of the air, outlined in ghosts of color. It
is always taller than most mortals, never less than six and a half feet, and usually more than seven feet tall; it
always has a generally human body plan, with two arms, two legs and a head; and its bulk is such that, were it
substantial, it would be taken for a bodybuilder. But a Goalenu is never quite substantial, even when it has fully
materialized, and the glimmers and flickers that delineate its form sometimes shift when the Guard itself is still,
showing eyes on its hands or a face in its stomach.
A Goalenu’s speech and behavior show an odd combination of monomania and absent-mindedness. In mo-
ments of direct threat, or when a spawn of Darkness is present, the Guard focuses wholly on the enemy’s de-
struction; at other times it grows a bit forgetful and indecisive, needing a few moments’ thought to recognize old
acquaintances. Goalenu have even been heard talking to - rather, arguing with - themselves, when they thought
no one else was in earshot. To those who have questioned them about this, the Goalenu explain that they are
“many by birth, one by the General’s will” and that to those who fight the General’s war, death is promotion to
a post of greater trust. And in proof of this, Goalenu who lead a cult of Stormwracked very often remember, in

350 Goalenu
detail, the lives of cultists who have died in the cause … suggesting that the deceased are now one with it, ready
for the eternal war.

Systems
The Goalenu are ephemeral beings, and use the rules for such [CofD 122-140], but they are not ghosts,
spirits or angels of the God-Machine; they are formed of a different type of ephemera. The typical Goalenu is
Rank 2, with the Attributes and Essence pool appropriate to that Rank, and has a Size of 5 - somewhat larger
than most humans, but not gigantic. Though Goalenu are living avatars of Tempesta they retain enough of their
human nature to be affected by any magic that works on human souls, and their version of Essence is practically
identical to a Princess’ Wisps, in that powers which transfer Wisps work just the same way on their Essence.
(Thus in what follows, we speak of Goalenu spending and regaining Wisps or Essence indifferently.) Contrari-
wise, powers that specifically affect ghosts or spirits don’t do anything to the Goalenu. A Goalenu forced into
hibernation drifts slowly towards anyone pledged to the Seraphic General within its range; if a Goalenu runs
out of both Wisps and Corpus, it discorporates, returning to the train of the Queen of Storms.
Unlike ghosts or spirits, a Goalenu can have Skill dots, but these only matter when it animates a vessel - it
never uses them directly. Goalenu retain the Virtue and Vice they had in life. Courageous is rather common, due
to the mentality required to kill yourself through overuse of your powers, rather than surrender; as is Righteous,
out of their desire to see the Darkness, no matter its form or how it conceals itself, destroyed. Meanwhile, Hateful
and Arrogant are common Vices; the former from their desire for vengeance, while the latter from the fact that
they follow the only true Queen of the Kingdom, the only one who did not betray them to the Darkness and isn’t
an imaginary spectre, futilely whispering into the wind.
Goalenu are tied to things and people that resonate with the Tempesta Invocation. All of them have the
Influence: Tempesta 2 - they automatically regain 1 Wisp per day when in the presence of the Stormwracked,
or a human who knows the Invocation, or whose mind is fixed on vengeance; or when they are close to an
unoccupied vessel. Also, once per day, when a Goalenu fights servants of the Darkness or agents of the Queen
of Tears, or is in the midst of great destruction, it rolls Power + Finesse as an instant action and regains 1 Wisp
for each success. It can do this at any time during combat, or immediately after a combat ends. A Goalenu’s
sense for Essence will find both servants of the Darkness and people loyal to the Queen of Storms, and it never
mistakes its fellow warriors for the creatures it is pledged to fight. Goalenu suffer from Essence bleed like other
ephemeral beings, but are safe from it when within five yards of a Resonant (Tempesta) Condition.
The Sworn Guard of the Seraphic General all share a bane: they must avoid anyone who has unjustly taken
grave injury from the hands of another and refuses to take vengeance, and touching such a one dissolves their
cloud-like corpus. Both the injury and the refusal to avenge are necessary - Goalenu may safely approach people
who have never suffered, and often seek out those who wish for revenge but dare not take it. Moreover, one
who has been hurt several times must have forgiven or forgotten all the hurts to ward a Goalenu away. Even
one shadow of anger or resentment is enough to let the Sworn Guard come. On the other hand, each Goalenu
has its own ban, as long as it exists separately from its Queen. Often these bans relate to the Tempesta ban;
some Goalenu cannot stop fighting any foe before they or the foe are down, others must pursue anyone who
spills human blood (not their own) in their presence without provocation. Some, though, especially those of
high Rank, have strange, inexplicable bans - the Baron named Badegisel has been seen to stop entranced by
music from a church organ.
Goalenu have the Manifestations Twilight Form, Materialize and Animate Vessel (a variant of Claim unique
to them.) Goalenu of higher Rank than 2 learn more Manifestations, but all have the basic three. No Goalenu
may use Discorporate, as that would return them to their Queen prematurely. Likewise, they cannot use Claim,
and while they can use Possess, creating the Possessed Condition inflicts a point of lethal damage on both the
Goalenu and the host, and so, frankly, most of the Chimerical Barons would rather build themselves a man, with
blond hair and a tan, than wear the skin of a mortal in that painful fashion. To accomplish that, all Goalenu have
the Craft Vessel Numen (also unique to them); as for other Numina, they like to use Blast to harry enemies and
Implant Mission to instruct allies.

The Craft Vessel Numen

Craft Vessel is an exceptionally unusual Numen, only ever found among the Goalenu, and (if you are to
believe them) taught directly to the first of their kind to take upon new bodies of ephemera by the Queen of

Goalenu 351
Storms herself. The vessel is a construct, of flesh and clay in varying proportions, which provides a host which
can contain the essence of the Protean Knight, and unleash its powers to the full. Indeed, it is not quite a body, but
more of a weapons system, fuelled by the Essence of the Goalenu, and manifesting it to ends that the ephemeral
creature could not have reached on its own.
The Goalenu requires two things before the ritual construction can start; flesh and clay. In order even to
start, moreover, the Chimerical Baron must be able to manipulate the material world, generally through use
of the Materialize Manifestation; other possibilities are Possession of a convenient mortal, or Influences over
Flesh and Clay. When the pieces are gathered together, the Goalenu spends 2 Wisps and begins an extended
roll of Power + Finesse, one roll per hour. It must reach a threshold equal to its Power + Finesse + Resistance
to craft the vessel properly.
Not all vessels are made alike. Although certain constraints must be followed (the heart must be flesh, torn
from a human chest, while the brain must be replaced by a tiny sculpture, of the self-image of the Chimerical
Baron), for all other things there is a wonderful degree of flexibility in their creation. Flesh and clay may be
merged almost without limits. The face of that woman is wonderful, but her body? Well, let’s just say that a
much better job could be done. And it has been found that the way the essence of the Goalenu fuels the Vessel
changes depending on whether certain major organs are flesh or clay. It comes at a cost, though; vessels which
are mostly clay are more resilient to the vitriolic sun that lives within it, but far less able to pass for human, while
the opposite is true for the ones which are mostly flesh. The appearance of the vessel is averaged out over the
parts; one which is entirely flesh, apart from the brain, is almost identical to a human, perhaps with a little cold
skin, while a vessel of clay (apart from the heart) is an exquisitely painted china doll, squatting at the bottom
of the Uncanny Valley.

The Animate Vessel Manifestation

Once a Goalenu has finished crafting a vessel, it may proceed to inhabit it. The vessel must be Open to the
Goalenu - which it is immediately after crafting finishes, for turns equal to the Goalenu’s Finesse; after that it
drops back to Resonant (Tempesta). The Goalenu spends 3 Wisps to dematerialize its corpus and infuse its
substance into the vessel, which applies the Goalenu’s Vessel Condition to it. When in a vessel, the Goalenu still
gains Wisps from its Influences, but cannot use them otherwise, or any Numina or Manifestations. Instead it
uses the advantages and powers inherent in the vessel.
Before being animated, a vessel has the nine Attributes of corporeal characters, with values determined by
the materials used in the crafting. Each of nine organs in the vessel are linked to an Attribute. An organ from a
human’s flesh gives the vessel dots in the linked Attribute equal to what the human had while alive; an organ
molded from clay gives the vessel 1 dot in the linked Attribute. Because flesh from a superior person is so much
more effective, some vessels are made from a truly horrendous number of individuals (rather than just the one
who contributed the heart), as the Goalenu, often using Storms-serving cultists, finds the best people to claim
each organ from. And, although you can survive the loss of an arm, you certainly can’t survive the loss of your
spine.

The Goalenu’s Vessel Condition

The Goalenu distributes its Power dots across the vessel’s Intelligence, Strength and Presence; its Finesse
dots across the vessel’s Wits, Dexterity and Manipulation; and its Resistance dots across the vessel’s Resolve,
Stamina and Composure. After this is done, the vessel’s Resolve, plus the number of clay organs used to craft
it, must exceed twice the Goalenu’s Rank. Derived traits are calculated normally. The vessel’s Skills are those of
the Goalenu. An animated vessel also has a Revelation track, initially with a number of dots equal to the vessel’s
Resolve + the number of Clay organs - 2x the Goalenu’s Rank as a spirit, to a maximum of 10 dots.
Vessels do not heal naturally. All damage done to them remains forever unless repaired by the ritual of
Ritual: Potter’s Sacrifice, which Goalenu cannot perform for themselves, or by a supernatural power that directly
heals damage. Powers that restore the Structure of an object will heal bashing damage in a Goalenu at a 1:1
ratio; lethal and aggravated damage require powers that heal a living being for that type of damage.
All vessels have 9 powers named Reprisals, each linked to an organ, which cost Wisps and/or Revelation
to activate. Spending Revelation fills in dots on the track; when the last dot of Revelation is filled, the vessel
reduces the track’s length by 1 permanently, and empties the remaining dots. 2 Reprisals are common to all

352 Goalenu
vessels (linked to the heart and brain) while the other 7 have a choice between 2 powers, depending on whether
the linked organ is flesh or clay. There are rumors of other powers (what an organ cast out of iron does, for
example), but flesh and clay are the only materials used regularly by the Goalenu.
Each clay organ increases the vessel’s initial Revelation by one, but imposes a -1 to its Social rolls. Some
clay organs provide persistent bonuses, which are noted in the Reprisal entry for that part.
As Revelation dwindles, the Vessel’s basic inhumanity grows more obvious. Some effects always appear;
others appear when the Goalenu uses a Reprisal, and last until the end of the scene.

• Revelation 8+: The Vessel appears wholly human.

• Revelation 7: After using a Reprisal, the Vessel’s eyes change color; they now have green irises.
• Revelation 6: The Vessel’s eyes always have green irises. After using a Reprisal, they become a bril-
liant green. Those familiar with the Goalenu can roll Wits + Occult, at -4, to notice this.
• Revelation 5: The Vessel’s eyes are always brilliant green. (Those familiar with the Goalenu can roll
Wits + Occult, at -4, to notice this.) After using a Reprisal, babies, animals, and, oddly, car alarms in the
area all start wailing in terror. The source of the disturbance can’t be located, though.
• Revelation 4: The Vessel’s presence terrifies animals; none will dare to attack it. Just walking down
a street sets all the dogs howling. After using a Reprisal, its eyes glow green, and anyone can roll Wits +
Composure to notice this. Even if you’re not familiar with the Goalenu, he had glowing eyes, man!
• Revelation 3: The Vessel looks slightly sick and pallid, the flesh around the joints raw. When it touches
things, there’s a slight discharge of static electricity. After using a Reprisal, its skin cracks when it bends,
and a network of fine green lines can be seen across them. If a good look can be got, the Vessel’s certainly
supernatural; most Vessels at this point wear heavy clothing to conceal the cracks.
• Revelation 2: There is a greenish cast to the Vessel’s features, as if it’s nauseous or ill from some
disease. Its lips are cracked, and the bits where clay and flesh merge are now clear to the sight, forcing it
to wear long garments to cover up. After using a Reprisal, the environment chars and flakes around the
Vessel. Where it stands, the pavement cracks, and ash accumulates in the corners; ash that no-one left.
Touching it is like touching a weak electrical source (2 bashing).
• Revelation 1: The Vessel’s skin is bone dry, and if it’s dark, the eyes radiate a slight light… and so does
the mouth, when open. It’s spread to the environment, too; things around it slowly bleach, like in intense
sunlight, and there’s a thin layer of ash, like cigarette ash, covering surfaces left unwatched. After using
a Reprisal, the Vessel has no eyes any more, just blazing green holes into an inner sun. When it opens
its mouth, green light spills out. Everywhere the skin bends, it is cracked like broken clay, light glowing
through. Lightning crackles off it; anyone who touches it takes the same damage as someone who touches
mains electricity.
• Revelation 0: The Vessel explodes, as if it had used the Reprisal Let There Be Light.

Causing the Condition: The Condition is created by a Goalenu using its Animate Vessel Manifestation.
Ending the Condition: The Condition is permanent until the vessel is destroyed, by damage from outside
or the Goalenu’s Reprisals.

Partial Vessels
The Goalenu can use the Craft Vessel Numen to graft clay or flesh organs into a human being’s body, and the
Animate Vessel Manifestation to empower it, thus giving that person access to the corresponding Reprisal. The
new organ also transforms the person it’s grafted into; one of his Attributes, the one associated with the grafted
organ, is replaced by whatever value the Goalenu gives the organ in the crafting. Craft Vessel’s threshold to make
a grafted organ drops to the highest of the Goalenu’s Power, Finesse or Resistance, and when it uses Animate
Vessel the Goalenu may spend Wisps above the activation cost to boost the Attribute linked to a clay organ at a
rate of 1 Wisp/dot. The Attribute replaced by grafting a vessel organ cannot be raised further with Experiences.

Goalenu 353
Goalenu cannot replace a human’s heart or brain, so they can’t replace a human’s Resolve or Intelligence, or
grant the Reprisals Let There Be Light or Ever Glowing Sun.
A human with a grafted Vessel part initially has a Revelation track equal to his own Resolve, plus the number
of Clay parts in him. He takes -1 on all Social rolls for each Clay part. If his Revelation track is reduced to 0, all
the grafted parts simply shut down. All dice pools involving the associated Attributes drop to 0; replaced limbs
support no weight, replaced eyes leave you blind, a replaced tongue leaves you mute, replaced lungs suffocate
you, and a replaced spine inflicts paralysis. Unlike a Goalenu, though, a human can regain lost dots of Revelation
- by concentrating for a full round and taking 1 lethal damage, he gets back 1 dot of Revelation, up to his original
maximum.

Merit: Goalenu Graft (••••)

Requires Stormwracked Initiation, Sworn to Storms, or Princess following Storms
A Goalenu has replaced one of your organs with part of a Vessel. You gain access to either the flesh or
clay Reprisal for the replaced organ. When you take this Merit, you may buy dots in the associated Attribute,
ignoring the limits of humanity, and even those of your Inner Light score if you have one. You may not buy
any dots in that Attribute after taking this Merit. You follow all the rules given above. You may take Goalenu
Graft once for each Attribute, except Resolve and Intelligence.
If you have the Tempesta Invocation, you may invoke it when activating a Reprisal to add your dots in
Tempesta to the dice pool.
Drawback: In addition to the other disadvantages mentioned above, if you try to break the Ban of
Tempesta, the parts grafted in you will oppose your intentions, either by shutting down, or by attacking any
servant of Darkness you are inclined to spare. In the latter case, they will use Reprisals if that will hurt the
enemy, and you have the necessary resources, taking no regard for you. If you have Tempesta, they add
your dots in it to the Reprisal dice pools for free.

Flesh and Clay: Reprisals

Activating a Reprisal requires a roll of the Goalenu’s Rank + the associated Attribute. In a Clash of Wills,
the Goalenu uses the same dice pool.
Dramatic Failure: The shell of the Vessel weakens, as the unconstrained power of the activation proves
too much for the clay and flesh. The character erases the final dot of their Revelation track, reducing it by one.
Those with grafts suffer something worse; not only do they reduce the size of the Revelation track, but they
also suffer one point of lethal damage for each graft they have, as their flesh rejects it.
Failure: The Reprisal fails to activate. The Wisps and the Revelation are wasted.
Success: The Reprisal activates as desired.
Exceptional Success: The extra successes are their own reward.

Organ Attribute Flesh Reprisal Clay Reprisal

Heart Resolve Let There Be Light n/a
Brain Intelligence n/a Ever Glowing Sun
Eyes Wits Taken Revelation Cleansing Fire
Right Arm Strength Honesty of Purpose Rip and Tear
Left Arm Dexterity Betrayal of the Betrayers Immaterium
Legs Stamina The Hunting Beast Unstoppable
Tongue Manipulation Flesh Over My Flesh Veil of Ignorance
Lungs Presence Venomous Words Storm’s Vengeance
Spine Composure Killing Words Unseen Hunter

354 Goalenu
Ever Glowing Sun
Requires Clay Brain
Action: Instant
Dice pool: Rank + Intelligence
Cost: 1 Revelation
Duration: instant
The Goalenu sacrifices some of the vessel’s integrity for fuel. It regains 1 Wisp per success rolled.

Taken Revelation
Requires Flesh Eyes
Action: Instant and resisted
Dice pool: Rank + Wits - target’s Resolve
Cost: 2 Wisps, 0 - 2 Revelation
Duration: instant
The Goalenu locks eyes with the target, dissolving memories with a single vitriolic thought, before letting
the solution return to their own mind, to be studied at will. One memory per success is taken; the Chimerical
Baron knowing it in full, and the target permanently losing access to it. The Goalenu may select an area of knowl-
edge, or may just choose to take memories important to the target; either way, the Storyteller decides which
memories exactly are taken. Any character may only suffer this Reprisal once per week, regardless of the source.
A Goalenu may spend 1 Revelation to inflict the Fearful Condition on the target for a week, or 2 Revelation
to inflict the Terrified Condition for a day. The source of the fear is something prominent in the memories that
were stolen.

Cleansing Fire
Requires Clay Eyes
Action: Instant
Dice pool: Rank + Wits
Cost: Wisps equal to the blast radius in yards, 0 or 1 Revelation
Duration: instant
The Goalenu closes its eyes, and when they open, they provide a sight into an inner green sun. Success on
this Reprisal creates an explosive; its Blast Area equals the Wisps spent, and its Damage and Force equal the
activation successes. The explosive is also an incendiary, starting fires of Intensity 3.
The blast of green light may then be “thrown” as an aerodynamic grenade would be, but using Wits + Com-
posure to target, rather than Dexterity + Athletics. The Goalenu may choose to accept one Revelation to make
the explosive as a reflexive action, thus permitting them to fire on the same turn that they create it; if not, mak-
ing the explosive is an instant action.
Vessels with this Reprisal cannot suffer the Blinded Tilt [CofD 281] from a non-magical source, and always
retain dim vision even if blinded with magic (-3 to all rolls).

Honesty of Purpose
Requires Flesh Right Arm
Action: Reflexive
Dice pool: Rank + Strength
Cost: 2 Wisps, 0 or 1 Revelation
Duration: instant
The vessel is a supreme unison of flesh and clay and Light and ephemera. What lesser object, composed
of only inanimate matter, can stand against it? This Reprisal enhances an attack against an inanimate object.

Goalenu 355
When resolving damage, the Durability of the target object is counted as 0, meaning that all damage is inflicted
directly to Structure. A Goalenu with this Reprisal active may punch their way through a bank vault, or through
a ritually sanctified Alhambran gate, with no signs of effort.
If the Goalenu takes 1 Revelation when activating this Reprisal the blow against the object also counts as
a Killing Blow, with dice converted directly into successes. This may only be used against mundane inanimate
objects, or those belonging to servants of the Darkness (actual Creatures of Darkness, and Alhambrans, including
Princesses of Tears).

Rip and Tear

Requires Clay Right Arm
Action: Reflexive
Dice pool: Rank + Strength
Cost: 1 Wisp, 0 or 1 Revelation
Duration: instant
The Goalenu’s blows leave grievous wounds. This Reprisal supplements an attack, and adds the activation
successes to its Damage; moreover, the vessel reduces the penalty for inflicting the Arm Wrack, Blinded, Deaf-
ened and Leg Wrack Tilts by the activation successes, to a minimum of -0.
If the Goalenu takes 1 Revelation when activating this power, the attack does aggravated damage.
Vessels with this Reprisal do lethal damage with unarmed attacks.

Betrayal of the Betrayers

Requires Flesh Left Arm
Action: Reflexive
Dice pool: Rank + Dexterity
Cost: 1 Wisp, 0 or 1 Revelation
Duration: instant
The Goalenu strikes with blinding speed. This Reprisal enhances an attack. Its target must succeed on a
Wits + Composure roll to apply Defense against it, just as if it were delivered from ambush.
Once per scene, the Goalenu may take 1 Revelation when activating this Reprisal. If the target fails the Wits
+ Composure roll, the attack becomes a Killing Blow.

Immaterium
Requires Clay Left Arm
Action: Instant
Dice pool: Rank + Dexterity
Cost: 2 Wisps, 1 or 2 Revelation
Duration: instant
It has been believed that man was created from dirt; flesh from clay. But the Chimerical Barons have shown
that both clay and flesh are but a shell for the spirit. Raising their arm to the skies above, hand clenched, the
vessel tears itself apart into a cloud of blood and sand, reforming in another location within sensory range in (10
- successes) turns. The Goalenu is not aware of what happens when so dematerialized, and may require a Wits +
Composure roll to be able to act on the turn they reappear, if the situation has changed drastically in that time.
If the Goalenu takes 2 Revelation when activating this Reprisal, it can reform anywhere within its Dexterity
in miles. In that case, the delay until reformation is increased to (10 - successes) minutes. The Goalenu may not
use this option if leaving its current location would break its Ban.
Vessels with this Reprisal add +3 to their Speed.

356 Goalenu
The Hunting Beast
Requires Flesh Legs
Action: Instant
Dice pool: Rank + Stamina
Cost: 1 Wisp, 0 or 1 Revelation
Duration: time of chase
You cannot run. You cannot hide. The Chimerical Barons are ready for you, and you will not escape them.
This Reprisal enhances any kind of physical chase [CofD 84-85] whether vehicular or on foot. The Goalenu be-
comes tireless and gains a Speed equal to 1 + their target’s (unless it was already higher) for the chase’s duration,
increasing the opponent’s required successes by 3. On an exceptional success, the Goalenu’s Speed increases to
twice the opponent’s, raising the opponent’s threshold by 5.
If the Goalenu takes 1 Revelation, it controls the terms of the chase, whatever the circumstances; it auto-
matically has the Edge in every turn.

Unstoppable
Requires Clay Legs
Action: Reflexive
Dice pool: Rank + Stamina
Cost: 2 Wisps, 0 or 1 Revelation
Duration: instant
Death did not stop the Last Guard of the Kingdom. Why would you believe that you can? Whenever the
vessel is attacked, it may activate this Reprisal. Each success on the activation roll downgrades 1 point of aggra-
vated damage to lethal, 1 lethal to bashing, or cancels 1 point of bashing damage.
If the Goalenu takes 1 Revelation when activating the Reprisal, the damage from that source is capped at 1
point, of whatever kind it was, instead of being downgraded. This works against environmental dangers just as
much as it does direct attacks (in which case the Goalenu must activate this power once per damage increment);
few things are more horrifying than a Goalenu climbing out of the vat of liquid metal you just pushed it into.
Vessels with this Reprisal cannot suffer the Knocked Down Tilt.

Flesh Over My Flesh

Requires Flesh Tongue
Action: Extended, 1 turn/roll, threshold = Size of shape (usually 5)
Dice pool: Rank + Manipulation
Cost: 3 Wisps
Duration: indefinite
A Vessel is but flesh and clay. Why should it not be able to welcome more flesh into itself? Why should it
not use this new flesh as a mask, so that which must be done may be.
To use this Reprisal, the Goalenu must consume a human being, cramming bloody meat into their mouth,
inflicting 1 lethal damage for each success rolled. The flesh itself is not digested, but burns to smoke and a fine
white ash which is exhaled by the Goalenu (characters who take a flesh tongue graft may also need grafted lungs,
to avoid damage from this). Once the target number has been reached, the vessel shifts and flows, transforming
into the person consumed. Physically, they are identical, except for the fact that the vessel still suffers from the
visual effects of low Revelation. The social penalty for clay organs does not apply when disguised in this manner.
However, the Goalenu does not gain any of the target’s memories, and so may suffer notable problems if it tries
to impersonate its victim. The Goalenu may switch between its true form and its current disguise as an instant
action. A Goalenu may only have one disguise at a time; if it consumes another person, it loses the older disguise.
If the Goalenu wishes to use Reprisals without ruining the disguise, it must take 1 additional Revelation
whenever it activates one, on top of any other cost. If it fails to do this, the layer of stolen flesh crackles and
burns away like charred meat, and access to the disguise is lost.

Goalenu 357
Veil of Ignorance
Requires Clay Tongue
Action: Instant and contested
Dice pool: Rank + Manipulation vs. targets’ Resolve
Cost: 1 Wisp/person affected
Duration: 1 scene
The Goalenu’s rage overwhelms and bewilders those who see it. To use Veil of Ignorance, the Goalenu must
spend 1 Wisp for every person in its line of sight. Each person who rolls fewer successes than the Goalenu
believes the Vessel is a normal human being for the rest of the scene, and cannot afterward remember the
Vessel’s appearance. This automatically conceals all the effects of a low Revelation bar.
Vessels with this Reprisal reduce their penalties on Social rolls from clay organs by 2; taking a clay tongue,
that is, reduces the Social penalty by 1, net, instead of increasing it.

Venomous Words
Requires Flesh Lungs
Action: Instant and contested
Dice pool: Rank + Presence vs. targets’ Composure
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: 1 scene
The Goalenu incites its hearers to madness. Everyone who hears the Goalenu speak and rolls fewer suc-
cesses than it does gains the Insane Tilt [CofD 285].

Storm’s Vengeance
Requires Clay Lungs
Action: Extended, 1 turn/roll
Dice pool: Rank + Presence
Cost: 1 Wisp/roll, 1 Revelation
Duration: 1 scene
The Goalenu summons the fury of its Queen. As it accumulates successes, the sky fills with thunderclouds,
and rain and high winds buffet everyone and everything standing. The Reprisal applies the Heavy Winds Tilt
[CofD 283] within a radius of 50 yards times half the Goalenu’s accumulated successes, to a maximum of 250
yards (10 successes.) The wind’s rating is highest within 50 yards of the Goalenu, equal to half the Goalenu’s
successes; for each step of 50 yards farther away, the wind’s rating drops by 1. The vessel itself is not impeded
by the storm in the least. The violent weather endures for the rest of the scene.
Vessels with this Reprisal are immune to inhaled toxins. They do require oxygen, but toxic gases don’t affect
them.

Killing Words
Requires Flesh Spine
Action: Instant and resisted
Dice pool: Rank + Composure - lower of target’s Wits and Manipulation
Cost: 1 Wisp
Duration: instant
The voice of the vessel corrodes those who listen to it. The Goalenu uses this Reprisal by speaking to a
target - usually it utters threats, but a simple greeting is enough to carry the venom if it wants to be subtle. Each
success inflicts 1 bashing damage on the target. The damage manifests as an unexplained weakness. Victims
must be able to hear the Goalenu; unconscious people cannot be affected by Killing Words.

358 Goalenu
Unseen Hunter
Requires Clay Spine
Action: Reflexive
Dice pool: Rank + Composure
Cost: 1 Revelation
Duration: instant
Vessels with this Reprisal walk through any barrier, and strike from an intangible ambush. The Goalenu
converts its vessel into ephemera of its own type, sending it into Twilight; or returns it from that state to ma-
teriality.

Let There Be Light

Requires Flesh Heart
Action: Extended, 1 turn/roll, threshold = remaining unmarked health boxes
Dice pool: Rank + Resolve
Cost: The vessel’s destruction
Duration: instant
The cataclysmic energy contained within the vessel is released all at once, in one, terrible explosion. Raising
its face to the skies, the Goalenu sings out, a scream of hate and rage and betrayal in the Royal Tongue, as they
crack and glow, before finally, exploding. That is not the end for them, though, for the newly freed Goalenu is
ready to continue its war.
When the target number is reached, the vessel becomes an incendiary explosive and goes off. It has a Dam-
age and Force equal to the Goalenu’s Rank and a Blast Area equal to the number of unmarked health boxes the
vessel had remaining. This happens whether Let There Be Light was activated, or the Goalenu merely had its
Revelation emptied through use of powers. However, if the activation was deliberate, then, in the middle of this
inferno, the unbound Goalenu appears in the Materialized Condition, ready to wreak havoc on those who sur-
vived the blast. If the Vessel’s Revelation ran out, the blast throws the Goalenu into Twilight Form.

Stormwracked
In his dreams he stands upon a plain covered in the legacies of war from all eras. Ruined
buildings pockmarked by cannonfire and machine-gun bursts rise up beside ruined statues of
Egyptian kings. Damaged arms and armor from a hundred centuries lie where they fell, tanks be-
side horse-barding and stone axes, trenches dug for crossbowmen. There are never any bodies, but
the dried splatters of blood tell their own tale. Above it all is the Storm. The wind screams hymns
to her rage. The lightning branches like fingers to pummel the ground. She cries out in a voice
made of the screams of dying women and horses and the staccato beat of automatic weapons.
She promises and demands vengeance, vengeance against the monsters who took his family.
Wherever the Darkness treads it creates its own enemies. The Darkness is cruel, it hurts, it tortures, and it
leaves behind friends and loves weeping over broken bodies. Their tears turn to hate, their rage spurs them to
action. All across the globe individuals take up arms against the Darkness and fight. They fight under the banner
of the Seraphic General.
A Queen is more than just a person with immeasurable magical power. A Queen’s power resonates in the
heart of everyone who follows her ideals. Through this her followers unlock new potential: Princesses can apply
Practical Magic and enhance their Charms with Invocations, Mortals can become Sworn and so unlock a measure
of the Light’s power.
Of the Queens none have demonstrated such a strong connection to their followers as the Queen of Storms.
She goes beyond resonance, she exists in every heart that echoes the ideals of Tempesta, even those who have
not learned her Invocation. To the Lady of Cleansing fire every feeling of hatred is a petition and she judges them
all, if the anger is strong enough and directed at her ancient enemies she will ask those who feel it to fight in
her name. In return she offers potent weapons.

Stormwracked 359
 No one knows why the Queen of Storms alone is able to do this. Perhaps it is because her transformation
unlocked new abilities, maybe it’s because she has no other way to interact or possibly the consolidation of many
souls into a greater entity has made the Lady of Cleansing Fire stronger than the other Queens. Her followers
of course don’t care either way.

Stormwracked Cells
Those who have heard the Queen of Storms have a variation of Mystery Cult Initiation [CofD 53] although
the mystery cult of the Seraphic General is not a singular monolithic organization. It’s a loosely organized net-
work united more in purpose than anything else, and for all that they all share the goal of destroying the Dark-
ness their methods, customs, rituals and reasons all differ. Even in the same city where it’s not unknown for
multiple Stormwracked cells to operate at the same time each individual cell is likely to believe that they are
the only ones fighting the Darkness in the service of the Storm.
Following Tempesta’s ideals makes for an effective but short career as a hunter of all things Tainted; mean-
ing that most die in battle before they have long enough to think about recruitment and long term strategy.
The tactics used by the Stormwracked tend to be loud and noticeable, though a few small groups can blend in-
to the background of crime statistics as Stormwracked cells grow in size they inevitably draw the attention of
law enforcement and anti-terrorist task forces, effectively putting an upper limit on the size of Stormwracked
organization.

Initiation Benefits
• New recruits to the Seraphic General’s cause gain one free dot in Stormwracked Dreams. This is a
Merit similar to White Rabbits, but the prophecies and portents come from the Queen of Storms, not from
the Dreamlands; and the Queen, being who she is, always sends information about Dark tainted monsters to
be killed. The Stormwracked may buy more dots in Stormwracked Dreams if he wants, but it isn’t required.
They are also Resonant with Tempesta [CofD 135], which allows them to support a Goalenu if one is sent
to them.
•• The Queen of Storms guides her servants in battle once they have proved themselves. The
Stormwracked gains a free dot in the Improvised Weaponry Style [CofD 62] when they have the prerequi-
sites for it.
Note that many Stormwracked of this rank are also Sworn; though they typically lack the Bequests and
Hopeful support that the Sworn of the Radiant Queens and Alhambra enjoy they still have a few advantages
over the average human. While it’s not unknown for mundane people to serve the Seraphic General in
some capacity, no mundane will ever gain greater authority than this without Swearing themselves into the
Seraphic General’s service as one of her soldiers.
••• The Sworn Guard has been fighting the War of Hope for millenia, and the Queen of Storms whispers
in their ears how to find the Darkness so it may be purged. Those of the Guard find others who hear the
voice of the Seraphic General can hear these shreds of sighs, screams and conversations lost in the fury of
the Storm, granting them the Unseen Sense (Darkness) Merit. [CofD 60]
•••• Few Furies grow old and experienced enough to reach this rank, but those that have have grown
very familiar with the Darkness, while also gaining a better understanding of the Queen of Storms and the
advice she offers. Senior cell leaders gain a version of Encyclopedic Knowledge [CofD 44] related to creatures
of the Darkness, the Queen of Tears, and the Goalenu, and automatically know how to summon one of the
Chimerical Barons and what they require to sustain themselves.
Although some Furies of this rank have grown influential and well known among Hopeful society as the
leaders of a large network of Stormwracked cells (and to the local government’s anti-terrorism units), most
simply lead a single cell that is more successful than usual.
••••• If any Stormwracked survived long enough to rise this high, the Queen of Storms would certainly
take a personal interest in him. The most likely blessing for her to grant is to send him a Goalenu as a body-
guard and advisor; this Goalenu would act as a three-dot Mentor [CofD 53].

360 Stormwracked
 Finally, the Stormwracked may benefit from Royal Favors - the Queen of Storms herself works magic
through them, burning their flesh to power it. Once per story, the player of a Stormwracked may ask for a Royal
Favor. The Queen (represented by the Storyteller) responds by activating a Charm, either general or Tempes-
ta-invoked, rated at dots no higher than the character’s Stormwracked initiation. The Stormwracked does not
pay the normal cost of the Charm or roll to activate it - instead, the Queen chooses the number of activation
successes for the Charm, and the Stormwracked takes 1 resistant lethal damage for each success. If the Charm
requires no roll to activate, the Queen inflicts 1 damage for each dot of the Charm. Yes, the Queen has killed
Stormwracked who asked for her favor, when she thought truly potent magic was called for; it is no small risk
to summon the personal attention of Tempesta’s incarnation.

Ritual: Potter’s Sacrifice

Requires Stormwracked Initiation •, Sworn to Storms, or Princess following Storms
Action: Extended, 1 minute/roll
Dice pool: Dexterity + lower of Craft and Medicine
Cost: 1 Wisp or Willpower, plus any damage transferred
Duration: instant
The follower of Storms kneads a quantity of freshly dug clay with his bare hands in a bowl that has been
consecrated to the Queen of Storms. (This bowl is made when learning the ritual, and no one can use another
person’s bowl. If it’s destroyed, the follower cannot use Potter’s Sacrifice until it is replaced.) As he works, his
own blood and life pass into the clay, converting it into the raw stuff of a Goalenu’s vessel, which is then molded
into a vessel’s wounds to cure them.
Before the kneading starts, the follower declares how much damage, and the type of damage, the clay is
intended to heal. Aggravated damage to a vessel must be healed completely before any lethal damage, and all
lethal damage must be healed before any bashing damage. The follower must accumulate successes equal to
the amount of damage healed, of all types; for each success rolled, he takes 1 damage of the type being healed
(first aggravated, then lethal, then bashing.) Aggravated and lethal damage appears as bleeding from hands and
wrists; if the follower heals only bashing damage, it appears as bruises on hands and arms.
When this step is complete, the follower molds the clay into the vessel’s body, represented by further rolls.
He must accumulate successes equal to the Goalenu’s Rank to complete the repair, over those that inflicted the
damage. The vessel gains no benefit from the clay until the last success is earned. The follower does not take
damage during this stage of repair.
Two or more people who know Potter’s Sacrifice may use it cooperatively, as a teamwork action. The pri-
mary actor takes all damage; if he is incapacitated or killed by it, a secondary actor may take over as a new
primary and finish the repair.

Stormwracked 361
 The Queen of Mirrors
AKA: The Hierophant, The Crown’s Custodian, The Child Queen
Former Kingdom: Crystal Heril
Followers’ Epithets: Lightbearers, Heirs, Brats (derogatory)
Come on! Just a little bit more! You can do it! I’m leading you, and you don’t want to let me
down!
Yeah, see, I was just a 13-year old, wandering ignorant and doing silly things. But then I
started having these odd dreams, and I found I could do these strange things that I could never
before. I was really scared at first, but this really pretty lady with silver eyes told me about what
I was, and how the Light had chosen me to lead it, how it was destiny. Everyone’s just got to work
together, and follow my orders, and we can beat the Darkness do it forever. I believe in you, you
see, so that means you have to believe in yourself. It’s your duty to fight for the Light.
And when we rebuild the Kingdom, everything won’t just be okay again, it’ll be better.

Although the Queen of Mirrors is reckoned as one of the Twilight Queens by the Radiant Queens, this is not
such a universal opinion among the Enlightened on Earth. The Crown’s Custodian certainly rejects such a title,
and in fact claims the so-called Radiant Queens to be nothing more than echoes, memories of Queens. In some
areas, Princes and Princesses of Mirrors are welcome among the Radiant, for there is a desperation for allies,
and far too many among the Radiant hold dual allegiance, not seeing the contradiction in such split loyalties.
Some are thankful that the followers of Tears and Storms cannot seem to do the same, while others view that as
the true cancerous nature of Mirrors showing through, reflecting and stealing the magnificence of others, while
contributing nothing themselves.
Darker secrets lurk within the heart of Mirrors, though. It has been noted that sometimes the psyches of
her followers are as fragile as the glass and silver that she is named for, that they lack the resilience of the
other followers of the Light. Some blame the stresses that the Heirs impose on themselves, the constant self-
expectations, while others suspect something darker, that gazing into a mirror too long, and, worse, modelling
yourself after it, cannot be good for a mind.

Tales from Behind the Mirror

None are ever invited to the realm of the Hierophant Queen, save each Prince and Princess of Mirrors who
visit but once in their dreams, when she reveals their future to them. The Last Empress may sit in the Heart of
the Darkness, weeping as the voices of her hidden city wash over her, and the Seraphic General may ebb and
flow to the hate of men, but the Hierophant is self-cursed to be alone, in her tower of reflections as she gazes out
beyond the edges of eternity, searching the future. No eyes save hers gaze upon the secrets hidden in the Hall
of Future Reflections, which surrounds and protects her inner sanctum. No other living soul has looked into the
Lunargent Speculum, which once stood in the courtyard to her temple-palace, for all those pure of heart to gaze
into and see glimpses of their own future, joys to be enjoyed and terrors to be prevented. And what is within her
personal quarters, where the motifs of silver and mirrors are broken to show her innermost heart, is completely
unknown, unseen even in the dream-flickers that have mapped out clues of her hidden place. According to some
readings of Prophecies, there may be hidden paths within the Dreamlands for a wandering Noble to wander
that lead to the Queen’s Realm, for “… in quicksilver chance lies the Edge and the Sleep, and the Heart Turned
Without may find the Lady of Reflections within her recursions by following the smile of the rainbow.” If this
is true, there have been no confirmed reports of anyone ever meeting the Queen of Mirrors within her hidden
place, save her followers - and they do not return to it.
Instead, the Queen of Mirrors contacts those who serve her and those who she would speak with by other
means. To those who have caught her eye, every reflective surface is a means of communication. Like a fleeting
ghost she takes the form of the reflections, whose eyes gleam silver, and who talk in the voice of the mimicked.
Those reflections are bound to the mirrors, though, and when she must risk herself in a Darkened world - and
she does not like to do that often - she can weave herself a false body. She casts neither shadow nor reflection
nor does her voice echo, and like her servitor-priests she can wear many faces. In that form she wanders the

362 The Queen of Mirrors

world, observing and sometimes acting - though the false body is little more potent than a mortal, only a tiny
fragment of her imperial might - and though she does not like to interfere for both fear of Darkness and ruining
her own prophecies, there have been times when she has broken her self-imposed restriction. The destruction
of a false body does not kill her, but it has been observed to weaken her capacity to act in the real world in the
short term, and so she does not often take risks - not if there is another way.

Philosophy
The philosophy of Mirrors is a simple ideal: an ideal of self exultation that reflects a Princess’s own light
back at her, dazzling her eyes so that she may be spared the painful sights of Sensitivity.
The Mandate of Light: It’s all in the name: Princess. The Lightbringers know that as royalty they possess
the divine right of queens. No earthly authority is above them for they derive their mandate from the Light itself.
Modesty is a False Virtue: A Blossoming is not a random occurrence. It’s a rare event that only affects the
best of humanity and bestows ability beyond mortal men and women. Trying to be just another of the masses is
neither honest nor helpful. No matter the circumstances, one of the Enlightened should use her natural brilliance
to take the lead. Anything less is a waste of their talents and a disservice to everyone who is depending on them.
It is their duty to take charge, and therefore it is the duty of everyone else to acknowledge that duty, and aid
them in that goal. They’re only trying to help, after all.
Hard Choices Imply You’re Not Looking Hard Enough: Throughout her life every Princess will come
across a situation which seems hopeless. No matter what she does someone is going to get hurt and all she can
do is accept responsibility, take tough choices and look for the least of many evils. To a Noble of Mirrors this
is defeatism and laziness of the worst order. Of course there is a good solution! It is their duty to never accept
defeat, never look for the least-evil outcome but instead to throw everything they have into the search for a
solution without sacrifice. The very idea that they accept the death of one person to save five more is abhorrent!
They should save all six, and they will, because they have justice on their side!
If only the World of Darkness didn’t put so many hard choices in their way, and respected the fact that
they’re fighting the good fight…

Duties
One might imagine that the Court of Mirrors duties revolve around becoming the True Heir, maybe fulfilling
an ancient prophecy or two. In fact the Queen of Mirrors is quite clear that becoming the True Heir isn’t some-
thing you accomplish. You just be yourself and it will happen, because the True Heir is destiny.
Consequently the Court don’t really have formal duties, they are allowed to go at their own pace. Take some
time off for dating. Having permission, and a philosophical justification, to get some much needed sleep once in
a while is perhaps the most tempting reason to join the Court.

Background
Like the other Twilight Queens it is possible to divide the Heirs into those who were once among the Radiant
and those who were not. Those who left the Radiant for the Lightbringers tend to have been among the best.
They were the leaders of their Nakama, they were martyrs who went above and beyond for the least of people
and they were isolated. They had to stand brave while their allies were allowed to be scared, they gave expecting
nothing when others could ask for help in return and they couldn’t cope. The Hierophant told them that it was
OK to think of themselves. That they could still make a difference, the biggest difference of all, without such self
sacrifice and hardship. Like a drowning man grabbing a lifebuoy they took her philosophy and her quest. She in
turn showed them how to build a mirror around their souls reflecting the light inwards.
As for the others. It would be nice if there were a uniform background that drew the newly blossomed to
the Hierophant, but, sadly, that is not true. The followers of the Radiant Queens may call them hubristic and
shallow, but the Lightbearers can have been the nerdy boy sitting in the back just as much as they can have been
the queen bee socialite prior to their Blossoming. They come from all socioeconomic brackets, and can be driven
by an urge for respect and dignity never known before just as much as arrogant entitlement. Many of them,
after the Blossoming, though, have an odd duality of self-belief and neediness; they can believe in themselves,

The Queen of Mirrors 363

but they need others to see them be self-reliant. They are people who need other people around, even when
they are in charge.
Perhaps the most tragic aspect of the Queen of Mirrors is that she seems to have a particular allure for
the youngest Blossomings. It is unclear whether they find her more attractive than any of the other options, or
whether she specifically believes that they are more likely to be the True Heir to the Kingdom, but too many of
those precious Blossomings have been lured to her. The Queen of Mirrors is already tempting for the idealism
of many Enlightened, with her promises and her easy solutions and self-belief; how much worse must it be for
the young mind, suddenly exposed to Sensitivity and given power?

Character Creation
Followers of Mirrors favor flashy and impressive actions over subtlety and favor Power over Resistance
and Resistance over Finesse. Lightbringers typically cultivate skills that focus on what their fellows deem im-
portant. When they maintain a level of self awareness the Heirs tend to favor Manipulation and Wits to manage
underlings and make the quick decisions leadership requires. No matter where they find themselves grace and
dignity are always key for a leader so more successful Lightbringers have good Composure. While all members
adore the spotlight the court is divided between those who can lure others into their vainglory and those who
only think they can meaning that Presence tends to either extreme.
A socially successful Princess of Mirrors tends to attract sycophants or distant but fawning crowds but
few true friends meaning that while she may have dots in Retainer or Allies, Circle tends to be low. Since they
base their Transformed self on how they wish to be seen by others, Striking Looks limited to the transformed
identity is common. Those who take the Mandate of Light literally may attempt to cultivate White Rabbits to
better speak with the light itself. Destiny is not common, but Heirs are more likely to have it than other Nobility,
for the Heirophant looks for Princesses who have been marked by fate.
Heraldry: Like any true egotist the courtiers of Mirrors care very deeply about other people’s opinions.
They care about how other people look at them. Nothing reflects this truth more than their Transformed ap-
pearance. When a Princess adopts the ideals of the Court of Mirrors her Transformed appearance stops reflect-
ing how she sees her true self and embodies how she wants others to see her. There is certainly a lot of room
for variety, she may wish to appear powerful, intelligent, beautiful, pure or pious but at heart she is reflecting
the ideals and standards of those who surround her.
When she is reflecting mortal culture rather than that of her fellow Hopeful this can make the Princess of
Mirrors seem almost ordinary; the most popular cheerleader at school simply doesn’t stand out in a Nakama
of gallivant knights and the nobility of future civilisations. Their iconography tends to compensate as hard as it
can within the rigid confines of social normality. Expensive designer clothing, jewellery and subtle hints of the
superhuman. At least one Princess of Mirrors glows softly.

Practical Magic
The Heirs of the Crown’s Custodian are always at their very best. They can assume their transformed self
at any time with a reflexive action and remain Transformed indefinitely. Power is there for a reason, not to be
hidden. In fact it requires deliberate effort to become mundane; a Princess of Mirrors must make a Transforma-
tion roll to resume their normal form, much as a normal Noble would have to do to Transform. Falling asleep or
exhausting her Wisp pool doesn’t force an Heir to change forms; she changes only when she chooses to. A high
Belief score has no effect on an Heir’s Practical Magic.

Invocation: Specchio
The Invocation of Specchio is the principle embodied and founded by the Queen of Mirrors, and which her
favored find comes naturally to them. Specchio is usually turned inwards, more than any other Invocation it
can propel a Princess upwards to monumental heights, the abilities it grants tend to be flashy and showy but
no less effective for them. Fittingly Specchio can sometimes be inverted as though looked at through a mirror,
though less common to making the Princess better than others it can also be used to make others worse than
the Princess.

364 The Queen of Mirrors

 Specchio has the unique disadvantage that its power leads to madness. When a Princess invokes Spec-
chio her mind becomes a bit like mirror glass, prone to crack at the first blow - she takes the Unbalanced Condi-
tion, if she doesn’t have it yet. Every use of the Invocation leaves her Unbalanced, even when it applies at no cost.
Specchio applies at no cost when the target of a Princess’ Charm is the Princess herself; it also applies at no
cost when the target is a literal mirror constructed for purpose, when the Princess intends to set an example,
to convert others to her cause, to impress others, when failure would lead to humiliation or embarrassment, to
focus attention on herself or to prove how unique and special she is.
Those who would use Specchio are expected to be the shining light for the world, the Invocation does not
resonate with Princesses who show humility, who deny or attempt to downplay their own accomplishments,
or let others shine brighter. Even on a simple disagreement the Princess must prove herself correct, or at least
convince the crowd, or else she loses access to this Invocation until the next day.

Stereotypes
• Clubs: Wasting your life where no one but the beasts can see you, how does that help anyone?
• Diamonds: Maths class is BOOORING!
• Hearts: Formality and protocol. You wouldn’t need any of that if you were as good as me.
• Spades: What’s the point of a joke if people don’t realize how funny you are?
• Swords: You know, your bravery and… stuff is pretty cool. But I think you should do it this way instead!
Chop-chop!
• Tears: Why are you wasting your life defending a city? You’re more important than a city.
• Storms: You fight, and then you die. Get someone else to die, royals are too important.
• Mirrors: No, you’re not the True Heir! I am!
• Vampires: Creature of the night, begone in the name of the Light! Unless you’re one of the hot ones
that I can save, of course!
• Werewolves: You’re the archetypical wild man, filled with raw animal strength and passion. How on
earth did you make that look savage and unattractive?
• Mages: Years of study, and you can’t even do magic in front of people? You got the boring powers.
• Prometheans: God, is that thing ugly.
• Changelings: You’re hiding, that means you’re scared. Now me, I’m not hiding from anything!
• Sin-Eaters: Sweet party. Real nice… um, death-theme. And the… ghosts. And… um. I have to go.
• Mummies: Stop worshipping it! It’s old and ugly. I’m the one you should be worshipping!
• Beasts: I’ll vanquish you and show the world how awesome I am!
• Mad Scientists: You can’t show them all with a death ray, there’d be no one left to be shown. It’s a
good thing I came along, clearly you need my help.
• Leviathans: Um, eww! I think it’s trying to talk to me.
• Hunters: I’m glad someone’s trying to do something, I think I’ll make you my knights.
• Mortals: Don’t worry everything will be perfect, you just have to do every little thing I say.

Inspiration
Libby Chessler (Sabrina the Teenage Witch)
The evil cheerleader archetype in general
Why don’t you let me do that for you … you could at least be grateful, commoners!

The Queen of Mirrors 365

 What’s so Bad About These Girls?
When talking about the Heirs asking what is so villainous is a fair question; and in truth even the Ra-
diant don’t always consider the Lightbearers among their enemies. Unlike the Ravens – who steal hope to
let Alhambra live another day – and the Furies – whose crusade against the Darkness often kills innocent
bystanders – the Lightbearers don’t do anything that’s blatantly immoral. While nothing prevents a Princess
of Mirrors from being a bad person, most rarely sink to anything worse than vanity and general bitchiness.
The truth is that while the Brats aren’t evil, their views are completely impractical and can often get
people hurt. A Radiant Princess when called to defend a village against a raid might train the people into a
militia, she knows that some will die in battle but their sacrifice will keep the village safe. In contrast a Brat
would tell everyone to relax and let her protect the village single-handedly with her “unstoppable” magic,
so no one needs to sacrifice anything. When it inevitably turns out that she cannot fight one hundred people
alone, the untrained villagers are slaughtered.
Even when it is not a matter of life and death, the Lightbearers thrive among the sort of idolization that
causes one to rely utterly on the Heir; then inevitably the Court’s impractical philosophies causes the Brat
to fail everyone who placed their trust in her.

366 The Queen of Mirrors

The Dreamlands
I can’t go back to yesterday because I was a different person then.
—Alice

The home of the Radiant Queens, a land of infinite adventure and wonder that, for every Princess, lies just
beyond the wall of sleep … and that had, once, entrapped the Hopeful in webs of illusion, drawing them away
from the real world’s pain.

The Trap
The monstrous armies that conquered the Light’s Kingdom in the age before history were led (or so modern
Princesses assume) by subtle and devious generals who wished to secure the Darkness’ victory for all time. They
found a way to prevent the return of Princesses, the Light’s most capable servants, by constructing a trap for
their souls, deep within the mind and soul of the world. The trap was a mirror, reflecting the Light shining on
the world; it drew to itself the souls of the Princesses who died in the Kingdom’s fall, and enfolded them within
an imaginary world where they could dream of fighting Darkness and defeating it, without disputing its sway
over its new conquest.
And the trap worked, possibly beyond its makers’ expectations: not only were the Princesses of the King-
dom’s day drawn into the dream and held, but so was everyone whom the Light touched and empowered in
all the long ages since. And as the millennia passed, the illusion grew and ramified, reflecting the thoughts and
dreams of every human alive, but shaped by memories of the captives into a new Kingdom, governed as the fall-
en Kingdom was by a council of Queens, and surrounded by a wilderness where monsters bred and made war.

The Release
And then, everyone within that imaginary land was struck by revelation: they knew, quite abruptly, that
they were dreaming, and life in a truer reality lay open to them. Many of them took the opportunity immediately,
returning to the bodies of infants just conceived; and these were born, and grew, and flourished, and before long
they Blossomed, becoming the first Princesses of the modern age. And as they Blossomed, the new Princesses
discovered that the lands of dream they had left to become human again still existed; for gates to those lands
stood open to them whenever they slept, and the souls they left behind welcomed their visits, begging for news
of the waking world. Many more souls have followed those first pioneers; new Princesses are born and Blossom
every year.
Naturally, the Hopeful wondered what it was that revealed the Dreamlands’ true nature to its inhabitants.
Over the decades since the Release, speculations have been floated, arguments proposed and refuted. It’s now
generally believed that the key event was the first landing on the Moon in July of 1969. The Queen of Diamonds
argues that the Dreamlands are in some metaphysical way linked to the Moon, that their property of reflecting
a more fundamental reality is tied to the Moon’s appearance of shedding light that in fact is reflected from the
Sun. And so, in her opinion, when a human foot trod the lunar surface, by proving the Moon to be not luminous
in itself, it also proved the Dreamlands to be not real in themselves …

Entering the Dreamlands

Have you been half asleep and have you heard voices? I've heard them calling my name.
Is this the sweet sound that called the young sailors? The voice might be one and the same…

—Rainbow Connection

Although the Dreamlands no longer trap Light-touched souls after they die, they call out to such souls in
sleep, and - almost, but not quite, inaudibly - to everyone not in the Darkness’ grasp. Hearing that call is easiest
when one of the horrors or cruelties which dot the World of Darkness has touched you; a mundane person

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whose life is presently happy pays no attention to dream-promises of a world where virtue can triumph and
often does. Those with any Sensitivity hear the promises intermittently; once they’ve Blossomed the Nobility
hear them every night, and nearly all of them follow the paths leading to the Dreamlands.
The journey begins in a reverie; at rest in a safe and familiar place, you find yourself drifting half-awake,
giving half an ear to familiar noises, and then - you notice something. It isn’t dangerous, but it doesn’t belong.
You’re in your back garden, say, and a passing rabbit pulls a smartphone out of his coat pocket to check the time;
you’ve gotten up in the middle of the night for a glass of water, and there’s a light on inside your closet. So you
investigate (who wouldn’t?) and find a passageway. It’s a bit difficult to get through in some way - the rabbit
went down a burrow that’s very big for it, but pretty cramped for you; the closet has an extra door in the back
that opens just wide enough for you to squirm through it - but you instinctively feel that the passage will lead
somewhere wonderful, if you can but follow it long enough.
Then, if this is the first time you’ve seen a passage like this, you probably wake up. But you’ll have the
dream again, and the next time you’ll make an effort, get through the opening and find a labyrinth, filled with
curious mementos that remind you of things you’d mostly forgotten. But you mustn’t stay to remember, you
have somewhere to be; so you go on until something stops you - a steep cliff you have to climb, an iron gate with
an intricate puzzle lock, a guard in knightly armor barring the only door? Probably you wake again before you
solve that obstacle, but you’ll meet it again another night. And after that obstacle, or maybe two or three, the
cramped corridors or narrow paths open up and past one last door you see a wide sky … and then you have
arrived, and discover the Dreamlands.
Collectively the passages from the waking world to the Dreamlands are called Crawlspace, largely because
almost all of them force dreaming travelers to crawl for a large part of the way. Entering and navigating Crawl-
space is much like social maneuvering, in which the dreaming character is considered to be persuading herself.
The impression level - thus, the time the dreamer needs to reach a Door - varies with the dreamer’s awareness
of the Light and her state of mind. A wholly mundane character initially has a hostile impression, and needs
unusual circumstances even to begin the journey. A character with Sensitivity or the Dream Travel Merit has an
average impression; a Princess has a good impression. (With an average or good impression, a journey to the
Dreamlands begins as a series of linked dreams, occurring weekly or daily; with an excellent or perfect impres-
sion the Crawlspace can be traversed in a single night.) A character who currently has the Shaken or Spooked
Conditions improves her impression by one step, as does one who has recently gained a dot of Shadows (that is,
if she hasn’t tried to reach the Dreamlands since gaining the Shadows, raise her impression one step). However,
a character not deliberately seeking out the Dreamlands (as, for instance, before she knows they exist) worsens
the impression by one step.
The entrance to Crawlspace a dreamer finds, and the successive obstacles she meets along the way, are
Doors, erected by her subconscious awareness that she’s leaving her responsibilities behind her and might
not be able to return (for while the Dreamlands cannot imprison anyone now, that remains the purpose of
their construction.) The number of Doors standing in her path begin equal to the lower of her own Resolve
and Composure. Any relation between the dreamer’s Virtue, Vice or Aspirations and the goal of getting to the
Dreamlands has the same effect on the Doors and impression level as for a social maneuver. Safe and careful
travel opens Doors in sequence with ordinary actions, as for opening Doors in social maneuvers. An impatient
dreamer can try to force all remaining Doors in the passage with a single action, and even gains a bonus if that
action is a breaking point for her, as for forcing Doors in social maneuvers.
From the outside, by the way, a journey into the Dreamlands looks just like falling asleep, or just being
asleep. Those who are awake when they look for an entrance will nod off where they are, or wander sleepily
to their bed, at the moment that (from their viewpoint) they find what they’re looking for, and open the first
Door on the path. The inadvertent travelers - those taking their first trip not knowing what they’ll find, and
those summoned by a White Rabbit to hear a message - they are already sleeping, and just begin to dream of
their passage.
Once found, a Crawlspace passage continues to exist as long as the dreamer remembers it, and vanishes if
she forgets it. (One Princess had a doorway in the depths of her bedroom closet, which faded while she went
to university. A few days after coming home, when she needed to visit the Dreamlands, she remembered the
old door and there it was.) Thus once the dreamer has stood at the Dreamlands’ border, walking the path there
again is a simpler matter whether she turned back or went on. Each successful trip down a Crawlspace passage
either removes one Door the next time the dreamer takes that passage, or improves her impression level for
that passage by one step; these modifiers are cumulative, though the number of closed Doors in the passage

368 The Dreamlands

are never less than one, and the impression level cannot rise above perfect. Failed trips and hard leverage add
Doors as their analogs in social maneuvering do, and those modifiers are cumulative too.
A Crawlspace passage normally leads to a district in the Dreamlands that reflects the dreamer’s physical
location or social context in some way, and be fairly close to (but not actually in) a house or village where the
people are hospitable. A dreamer who has become familiar with other parts of the Dreamlands, however, can
move their Crawlspace’s exit to another district. To do this she must pass more obstacles, adding Doors to her
journey; the number depends on her sympathetic connection to her intended destination. Add 1 Door when the
dreamer has Intimate Sympathy, 2 Doors for Known Sympathy, and 3 Doors for Acquainted Sympathy. After
being moved in this way, the passage stays where the dreamer put it. (A Princess always has Intimate Sympathy
to the seats of her Queen, her Nation, and her Embassy within the Dreamlands.)
Dreamers can try to wake themselves as long as they still remember they are dreaming. If a dreamer stands
at the exit from Crawlspace she took to reach the Dreamlands, this is easy. She need only walk back down the
passage; no roll is required. If she’s been traveling for many experienced days, though, that means just as long
a journey back. A dreamer also has the option to move her Crawlspace’s exit to her location. This is similar to
opening Crawlspace and uses the same system, with two changes. First, the impression level for summoning an
exit is excellent, giving one roll each experienced hour, but a failure means the dreamer cannot wake again for a
full experienced day. Second, the obstacle isn’t the dreamer’s reluctance but the Dreamlands’ seductive illusion.
This is easily overcome when the dreamer’s memory of waking life is clear - the default number of Doors is only
2 - but each Galemark the dreamer has gained adds another Door to the total.
Crawlspace entrances are not truly physical passages, though they appear as such; they are in fact mnemon-
ic devices. Thus one dreamer cannot use another’s entrance - in fact, she can’t even see another’s entrance
without help. The Nobility and Shikigami, though, have a special status in the Dreamlands that allows them to
help other dreamers find an entrance where they’ve already opened one. Senior Princesses very often guide
the newly Blossomed into the Dreamlands to acquaint them with their inheritance and their peers. From the
outside this looks much like hypnosis; the guide talks to her companion in low pleasant tones, establishing a
rhythm and describing the entrance and the passage beyond it, until the companion falls into reverie. After a
few minutes of this the guide rolls Presence + Empathy.
Dramatic Failure: The companion snaps out of the reverie. Her impression level for entering the Dream-
lands from this location worsens by one step.
Failure: The companion drops off to sleep, or wakes up. She does not enter Crawlspace.
Success: The companion finds the guide’s Crawlspace entrance and opens it. The number of Doors to
pass is set from the companion’s traits, but the guide’s help opens one Door without a roll. Also, during this
passage only, the companion uses the guide’s impression level.
Exceptional Success: The guide’s help is especially effective. The companion opens two Doors without
rolling.
Modifiers: the companion is sleepy (+1), the companion drinks hot chocolate or warm milk (+1), the com-
panion’s impression level here is average (-1), the companion’s impression level here is hostile (-3)
Exits from the Dreamlands are as personal as entrances, but a Noble or Shikigami can help dreamers leave
the Dreamlands just as they help dreamers enter; the system is the same.

Dream Forms
A character entering the Dreamlands leaves his physical body behind in a trance; his mind and soul acquire
a new “Dream Form” while projected beyond his body. Characters in Dream Form follow different rules for
Attributes and Health. They have the three Attributes of ephemeral beings instead of the nine Attributes of
physical beings. For mundane characters, the Power of the Dream Form equals Intelligence, its Finesse equals
Wits, and its Resistance equals Resolve. The Dream Form’s Health depends on the dreamer’s will and potential;
it equals Resistance + the character’s Attribute cap. Losing Dream Health imposes wound penalties just as losing
standard Health does. A character who’s “killed” in Dream Form wakes in his physical body, and takes the Soul
Shocked Condition.
The relationship between time in the Dreamlands and time in waking life is strangely variable; it seems to
depend much more on the density of one’s experience than on any objective clock. So, for instance, an exciting
fight can consume half an hour in the real world’s time, but appear to last only five minutes or so; but a long

The Dreamlands 369

journey through safe districts might compress a full day’s experience into only an hour of dreaming time. (As a
rule of thumb, an event in the Dreamlands takes as much time in the waking world as it would take the players
to roll the dice and figure out what happened, while the time it takes in the Dreamlands is what it would require
in real life.) There are even cases of Princesses parting in the Dreamlands, and finding on their next meeting
that one has experienced a few hours packed with incident, while the other has been traveling for days …
A Princess can enter the Dreamlands in either a mundane or transformed Dream Form, and change be-
tween them with transformation actions as if awake. In mundane form her Attributes and Health use the same
rules that mundane characters do. While transformed, a Princess’s Power is the highest of her transformed In-
telligence, Strength or Presence; her Finesse is the highest of her transformed Wits, Dexterity or Manipulation;
and her Resistance is the highest of her transformed Resolve, Stamina or Composure. In addition, her Dream
Health equals her Resistance + her transformed Attribute cap. Maintaining one’s Regalia in the Dreamlands is
a good deal easier than it is in waking life. A Princess rolls to remain transformed only once every day, by the
Dreamlands’ clock. A dramatic failure on that roll, however, has a more serious consequence; even after the
Princess recovers her phylactery, she cannot transform within the Dreamlands for a full experienced day after
her failure.

Who can enter the Dreamlands?

Theoretically, any mundane person can find Crawlspace passages and travel to the Dreamlands as they
sleep. In practice it takes both an appropriate Vice and a Condition of mental disturbance for a mundane
character to find his first Door, and appropriate Vices are rare. (A Vice like “nostalgic”, yearning for an unat-
tainable ideal and scorn for the present, would be appropriate.) Nearly every visitor to the Dreamlands who
isn’t Light-touched has been guided there by someone else.
The Dream Travel psychic power and the Dream Travel thaumaturgical ritual (both from Second Sight)
grant the ability to find Crawlspace passages, if it occurs to the psychic or thaumaturge to look for such a
thing. Characters with either ability use the rules above, and start with an average impression level. It is
worth noticing that most psychics and thaumaturges have no greater connection to the Light than mundane
people. The Dreamlands trap is not targeted at them, and they have no subconscious warnings when enter-
ing the Dreamlands. To them the Crawlspace looks very different: it resembles the door to wherever they
strongest associate with feelings of home, safety and security. Stepping through the door they find them-
selves in an idealized memory of that place.
Mages have their own ways to investigate the collective thoughts, dreams and aspirations of humanity,
which they call the Astral Realms, and a fair number of them know how to share or alter the dreams of indi-
viduals. A mage can combine these powers to follow a Princess into the Dreamlands: once he has succeeded
in entering her mind, meditating as if in a demense or Hallow guides the mage through her Crawlspace to
the Dreamlands where she entered it. However, if the Princess returns before the mage does, the closing of
her Crawlspace forces the mage violently back to his body and inflicts the Soul Shocked Condition on him.
Unfortunately the careful mental discipline mages use to explore the Astral Realms is directly contrary
to the drifting reverie that makes Crawlspace passages visible; mages cannot enter Crawlspace on their own.
That doesn’t mean mages can’t enter the Dreamlands; only that if they can, they do it by another route. If
any mages have found such routes, they aren’t telling.
Changelings can walk through and reshape dreams, when they are personal to the dreamers. The
Dreamlands, though, aren’t private, but shared among all those touched by the Light. A changeling can ob-
serve them through a sleeping traveler, and even join the dreamer there, but attempts to shape the Dream-
lands fail abjectly. A changeling treats a Dreamlands traveler as a dreamer in a Bastion with the normal
traits; entering the Bastion takes the changeling to the Dreamlands near the traveler, and he may leave the
Dreamlands as if they were a Bastion as long as the traveler has not left. However, if the traveler wakes be-
fore the changeling leaves, the changeling becomes trapped - he can leave only by finding another traveler
and persuading her to guide him to the entrance she used. Dreamweaving doesn’t work at all.
The Beasts (from Beast: the Primordial) walk between supernatural realms with remarkable ease, and
their nature as embodied nightmares makes the Dreamlands especially amenable to them. If a Beast suc-
cessfully uses Under the Bed on a character in the Dreamlands, he appears next to the character’s Dream
Form and may choose to stay there rather than continue to his Lair. Any Beast who knows of the Dreamlands
may open a Primordial Pathway to a location within them, at the same modifier he uses for places in the

370 The Dreamlands

 Temenos. And Beasts can make Chambers in their Lairs from places in the Dreamlands just as they do in
the waking world.

Topography
The Dreamlands often change quickly as one travels. There’s a feeling that the Foundation is below, and -
below is consistent. Apart from that all bets are off. Despite appearances ranging from bizarre to normal places
within the Dreamlands often seem to reflect places on Earth, or the popular idea of places of earth, or (more
strangely) places found only in novels, or ideas, or concepts. Even odder is that regardless of how normal or
how bizarre the places look, a visitor can (eventually) learn to understand how they work. A city might look like
it was designed by a collaboration between M.C. Escher and Dr Seuss but it still has a government, an economy,
trade with nearby settlements, residents with homes, jobs and families. With lots of time and effort a Princess
can learn how it all works. Just as she can learn what it reflects from Earth, and even discover new things about
what it reflects.
A further oddity of these reflections is that, while they frequently contain things with writing on them, the
writing never looks like the text that would appear in the reflected place. In minor cases, Princesses might find
a discarded fast-food box, but the script on it is flowing and cursive, elaborately decorated in gold leaf. In more
extreme cases, everything is written backwards, or there are never any vowels, or the scripts are from another
part of the world entirely. Less obvious is that these reflections are chock full of houses. Wherever the Princess
travels she will occasionally catch a glimpse of a door, window or a snatch of a wall in the corner of her eye only
to realize it was just a tree and a trick of the light. If the Princess really looks, the dream domains can seem to
be built of nothing but houses folded in on each other in defiance of any sane geometry. Scholars are divided
as to whether these houses are merely a representation of some human’s connection to the place or concept
this Dreamlands domain is reflecting. Or if these houses are physically a person’s soul, visible everywhere in
the Dreamlands they have an emotional connection too. Regardless, the question is academic. There is no way
to open them and people almost never come out, they simply exist. These strange houses are unrelated to the
dwellings used by Dreamlanders, which are much less mysterious and easy to enter.
Sometimes you can stumble across one man’s neuroses writ large across the landscape (while most other
humans never even feature), while in other places you can walk along a stairway made of light, up into the
heavens to walk along the surface of a Mars covered in unknown ruins inscribed in runes which do not resemble
the Royal Tongue. You may stumble across a town which appears almost like the real world, save that none of the
brands match, and the streets are filled with a parade of strange, eternally dancing figures of bronze. A Princess
could be walking down a quiet forest path only to turn a corner and find herself facing an elegant renaissance
city where the buildings all merge together into a solid block that gently curves away from the ground. Or she
might find arriving at a quiet country village where the people are friendly, the sun is shining but the buildings
look like cubist art and the inhabitants seem to have stepped from the scrapbook of a slightly drunk dada artist.
One Nakama found a cursed area, almost overshadowed by the Darkness, where the sharp-fanged folk ritually
consumed their victims. Only one made it out alive, the monsters dragging the others to their altars and eating
them in a way that killed them in the real world, hunks of flesh torn out of their sleeping bodies, in the name
of the “Red Word”.
The wild districts where these things can be found are all, however, many days’ travel from the lands the
Radiant Queens govern - the Dreamlands’ cartographers say that one moves outward to find them, and inward
to return to the Queens’ seats. The most confusing thing about navigating the Dreamlands is that “inward” and
“outward” have no simple relationship with the ordinary three dimensions of space … and there are any number
of districts that lie at the same north/south and east/west position, but further inwards of other districts. Very
often the traveler finds that one pass through a ridge of low hills leads to a pleasant valley, while another pass a
mile to the east opens on a wide plain cut by a great river, which runs just where the valley ought to be, and isn’t.
Dreamlanders say their home is folded on itself; north/south, east/west and up/down they call the traveling
directions, and in/out is a folding direction. There is a second folding direction, called deosil/widdershins, along
which one travels by moving around the Queens’ seats - deosil keeps them on one’s right, widdershins keeps
it on the left.
The distance outward from the Queens’ seats has an importance in the Dreamlands beyond the way it
allows districts to overlie each other. In the lands under their authority, the mysterious, reality-bending Gales
blow with little force, and the geography is not just Earthlike but almost stable. The border marches, where the

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Queens’ subjects travel and trade but do not stay, have Gales of moderate force; new buildings sometimes spring
up overnight, towns and districts might appear or rearrange themselves. In the most distant lands, the Gales
blow wildly, falling still for a moment only to burst anew with immense force. It is here that the traveler may
find herself walking through a man’s nightmare, magnified to a country of dread. It is here, also, that she may
find a space grown strangely thin and tenuous, where objects can sometimes vanish while her back is turned;
or a place jumbled with curios and wonders brought together, though by no obvious means, from every corner
of the world. There are tales of monstrous or alien things to be found in the far outward districts: a redoubt of
Alhambra in a district haunted by Darkness; a waste of ash and cinders where Goalenu mold porcelain figurines
that hunt with burning green eyes; a snow-capped peak, topped by a fortress made of clockwork ticking away
in a slow rotation, from which gray-robed figures gaze through telescopes at the Dreamlands’ stars.

The Gales
The Dreamlands reflect the combined hopes, thoughts, feelings and aspirations of mankind. The risks of
travelling such a place should be obvious: Humanity’s thoughts change on a daily, nay, a second by second basis.
Against such a tide as all of humanity, what can one mind do to remain static? Any Princess who travels too far
from the stable regions of the Dreamlands risks being blown away, transformed as just another fleeting thought
in the vast collective identity.
While a character remains in the Dreamlands, the Gales will try to alter her. This uses the rules for an ex-
tended action: the threshold equals the character’s Willpower dots, and the interval is once each day experi-
enced in the Dreamlands. The dice pool, rolled by the Storyteller, is the character’s base Sensitivity + Shadows
dots (roll a chance die if this pool is 0.) Add +2 if the character is in the border marches, and +5 if he’s in the
wild districts. Unlike a standard extended action, the number of rolls is uncapped.
Dramatic Failure: The character withstands the Gales. All successes are lost, and the Gales cease to
affect her for her Resolve in experienced days.
Failure: The Gales push the Princess off-balance, scattering odd thoughts and scraps of imagined mem-
ories in her mind. If the character doesn’t have the Gale-touched Condition yet, she acquires it now; if she
does have that Condition, resolve as a dramatic failure.
Success: If the accumulated successes reach the threshold, the Gales’ force envelops the character, body,
mind and soul, catches her up in a chaotic whirl, and commingles some of the Dreamlands’ essence with her
spirit and self. The character gains a level of the Galemark Condition, partly adapting from a mere visitor into
a permanent settler in the Dreamlands.
Exceptional Success: The Gales overwhelm the character. Reduce the interval for all following rolls (if
any are needed) by 6 hours.

Galemarks
Galemarks track a character’s progress along a path that ends with her as indistinguishable, even to herself,
from a Dreamlands native who has nightmares of an unhappy world, overshadowed by fear and despair. The
effects of a Galemark are threefold. First, the character’s Dream Form changes - in both mundane and trans-
formed identities, she gains a new, exotic physical feature. The change reflects what the character has seen and
done in the Dreamlands: if she travels much among trickster foxes, she becomes foxlike, with pointed ears or
a pelt. Galemarks don’t always turn characters into fantastical beings - many places in the Dreamlands have
inhabitants who could pass for normal in waking life - but a character with several Galemarks always looks very
unlike her waking self.
Second, the Dreamlands weaves the character into its history and society. As a character gains Galemarks,
the chorus members she meets are likely to “remember” past encounters with her, or “recognize” her as a native
of a particular district in the Dreamlands, or refer in some other way to a history that (before the Gales marked
her) never really took place. Dreamlands locations sometimes change physically to support the false history,
too. The life invented for the character is internally consistent - once a part of it is established further Galemarks
don’t alter it. The invented events bind the character into the Dreamlands and impede her efforts to awaken.
Third, and strangest, the character’s own memories twist, and she finds that she also knows the details of
her imaginary past which the chorus members know. Moreover, as her knowledge of that life grows, her memory

372 The Dreamlands

of waking life becomes disjointed, surreal and incoherent, as if it were the dream. Each Galemark is attached to
one of the character’s Willpower dots, starting with the leftmost and moving right. When the character spends
a point of Willpower from a dot with a Galemark, she temporarily assumes the role the Dreamlands have given
her, abandoning thoughts of the waking world as fictions of no importance. This delusion lasts for the rest of
the current scene.
When a character gains Galemarks equal to her Willpower, marking all her Willpower dots, the last of these
effects becomes permanent - she ceases to believe in the waking world’s reality, just as the actors disbelieve.
The Gales’ work is complete, and the character no longer checks for Galemarks; on the other hand, she also loses
the power to open ways into Crawlspace, and therefore cannot wake up on her own. Only another character can
rescue her, by tracking her down in the Dreamlands and opening Crawlspace for her.
The change to the Dream Form from a Galemark, naturally, does not appear on the character’s physical
body. However, the mental changes persist in waking life, and the Dream Form keeps its change during later
journeys in the Dreamlands.

The Gales and Others

Those supernatural beings who can find the Dreamlands deal with the Gales somewhat differently
than mundane characters and Nobles do. Mages grow fascinated by the Dreamlands in proportion to their
progress towards understanding reality; the Gales’ dice pool against them equals their Gnosis. However, a
mage can raise a personal shield against attacks on identity, such as the Gales, called the Amnion; if a mage
does so in the Dreamlands for one day, reduce the Gales’ pool that day by the Amnion rating.
Changelings already suffer from unstable psyches and problems distinguishing reality from illusion,
which the Gales exacerbate. They don’t track Galemarks as other characters do; instead each bout from the
Gales can inflict an injury to their Clarity. A changeling suffers a Clarity attack once each experienced day in
the Dreamlands, rolling a base pool of 1 die in the Queens’ lands, 3 dice in the border marches, and 5 dice
in the wild districts. Reaching the Comatose Condition in the Dreamlands keeps a changeling from leaving
them until it’s resolved - and the Dreamlands will shift to prevent an escape.
Like mages, Beasts become more vulnerable to the Gales as they rise in potency; the Gales’ dice pool
against a Beast equals his Lair trait. Unlike all other beings, though, Beasts can’t be completely fooled by
the Gales’ effects. While a Beast gains Galemarks just as mundane people do, no delusion they create can
keep him from his Lair. A Beast in the Dreamlands who looks for “home” will, on a successful Wits + Lair
roll, find an exit to the Primordial Dream, no matter where he consciously thinks his home is ... unless he’s
claimed a Chamber in the Dreamlands. In that case his sense for home will always lead him to that Chamber
through the Dreamlands.

The Darkness
The Dreamlands reflects all of humanity, once you leave the Queen’s domains this includes the bad as much
as the good. Whenever the Dreamlands reflects a bad part of Earth, be it a reflection of a city that includes a
reflection of the crime ridden ghetto, or a reflection of a historical period including long past atrocities, visitors
can find Tainted Places, Darkened and even Darkspawn.
This is not the Darkness Princesses remember from Earth. It is a lesser Darkness (or perhaps a greater
Darkness: Is the darkness in the back of every man’s mind worse than the monster of rotting shadows attempting
to eat you?) Regardless of such debates, Dreamland equivalents of Tainted places, Darkened, Darkspawn and all
the rest can be be found in the Dreamlands. Build them as normal Dreamland natives, including whether they
are a Chorus, Actor or Star then add the Darkened, Darkspawn or other template.
Regardless of which Darkness is “worse” the Darkness in the Dreamlands is closer to the Princess’ psyche.
Any Sensitivity roll caused by the Darkness, be it Darkened, Tainted Place, Darkspawn or other has the 9-again
quality.
The only other noteworthy difference is that there is no Dark World within the Dreamlands. So few humans
have ever experienced it (and fewer survive) that it is not a part of the Dreamlands. The Tainted places within

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the Dreamlands do not permit entry to a Dark World. It is still possible for a Darkened to use the Enter Darkness
ability, but it functions more like a slow teleport between two Tainted spots.

The Light
In Dreamlands domains that reflect something strong and positive it is possible for the Princess to come
across a manifestation of the Light itself. This either requires a lot of luck, or an extended action to track it down.
Once the Princess finds a manifestation of the light she may choose to bathe her soul in it, which has one of two
effects: The Princess may regain all her Willpower; or, the Princess gains 1 Luminous Experience.
But there is a danger, the longer the Princess spends in the Light the harder it is to return to the grubby
shadowy mortal world where her duties lie. The Princess’ Sensitivity dice pool increases by 1 die if she regained
Willpower, and by 3 dice if she gained a Luminous Experience. After a number of days equal to her increase in
Sensitivity the Princess’ Sensitivity returns to normal. If the Princess touches the Light again before this time
not only does the timer reset, it stacks with any further benefit she may gain.

White Rabbits
A White Rabbit, in the jargon of the Nobility, refers to any time when the Princess is called to the Dream-
lands. Her subconscious mind detects a change within the Dreamlands and sends a signal a White Rabbit - to
alert the conscious mind. The creaking lures of the Dreamlands trap, and the resulting spontaneous appearances
of Crawlspace passages, are not considered White Rabbits but this is just an arbitrary quirk of the definition
chosen by Enlightened scholars.
Quite a few Princesses really do see white rabbits (sometimes straight out of Alice’s Adventures in Wonder-
land). This appears to be a result of the Princess’ unconscious associations, caused by Enlightened scholars us-
ing the term White Rabbit for the phenomenon.

Prophecy Rabbits
A Prophecy Rabbit calls the Princess into the Dreamlands to witness an event that foretells the future on
Earth. The Princess is fully present in the Dreamlands and may interact with the portentous events she witnesses
in all the normal ways: She might investigate to uncover more clues, or perhaps try to derail the event in the
Dreamlands. This doesn’t actually help, but it can feel very good.
If two or more Princesses are experiencing a prophecy about the same event, they are both are in the same
place within the Dreamlands and can simply start talking to each other, debating the vision or making plans. In
essence, this can be considered another clue both Princesses learn from the dreams; something along the lines
of “This other Princess cares about the same issue, perhaps you could work together?”
How Prophecies work is unknown. It is generally accepted that the Princess is reacting to a pre-existing
event in the Dreamlands but what causes those events is a mystery. The two most popular theories are the
clairvoyant model and the analytical model. The clairvoyant suggests that every human has microscopic traces
of psychic abilities which when combined in some sort of shared unconscious -- like the Dreamlands -- becomes
effective on a practical level. The analytical model also sees the pooling of human talent and knowledge at the
cause, but argues rather than psychically foretelling the future humanity simply predicts it using knowledge
and reasoning.

Memory Rabbits
Unlike most White Rabbits a Memory Rabbit leads a Princess not into the Dreamlands, but deep into her
own Crawlspace. The Princess’ subconscious mind is signalling her conscious that she has forgotten some vital
information and calls her deep into her own mind and soul to fish it out. Most Memory Rabbits lead to memories
from a past life, the ordinary human processes of memory are usually sufficient for most memories gathered
in this incarnation (and even stronger memories from before). In game terms a Memory Rabbit functions as an
alternative result when a player uses the White Rabbits Merit. If the Storyteller believes she can provide clues
in a more interesting way by going to a memory from the Princess’ past life than a prophecy in the collective

374 The Dreamlands

dreamscape of mankind then she is free to do so. Memory Rabbits can also be used to justify buying Skills or
Charms when the Princess knew them in a past life.

Royal Rabbits
Trapped within the Dreamlands the Queens cannot affect Earth, but they can affect the Dreamlands and
a Princess’ subconscious can notice such changes. The Queens have gotten quite good at making the precise
changes needed to create a Royal Rabbit that summons a Princess to wait upon her liege.
Royal Rabbits typically manifest in some way appropriate to the Queen, such as a white rabbit wearing the
royal colors and carrying a letter of summons stamped with the Queen’s seal.

Black Rabbits
Black Rabbits are spoken of in hushed terms, their mere existence makes the Princess question her own
mind and doubt her visions. It goes like this: If the Princess followed a Prophecy Rabbit to the dreamlands and
saw a woman in green and white tearing through her home town she might conclude that she better deal with
any Princesses of Storms before it’s too late.
Now what if this happened in reverse. Someone with access to the Dreamlands (such as a Princess of Tears)
wants the Princess to go after local Furies. She could travel to the Dreamlands, dress in green and white and
attack. The destruction in the Dreamlands would alert the Princess: A fake Prophecy Rabbit, a Black Rabbit.
Now it’s not easy, the Dreamlanders will defend their home and the deception is only as good as the skill
of the one who crafts it. This doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened, it has. Many times.

Empty Rabbits
Empty Rabbits are almost as mythical as Black Rabbits. Sometimes a Princess’ intuition is simply wrong. She
follows a White Rabbit to the Dreamlands and finds nothing more than a mad tea party or a highly symbolic heap
of nonsense. Some Princesses believe Empty Rabbits do not exist, that when a Rabbit looks Empty it actually
means the Princess has overlooked some vital clue pointing to one of the other Rabbits. But how would you tell?
Empty Rabbits rarely have an impact on the story, but sometimes Princesses can confuse a Prophecy Rabbit
for an Empty Rabbit, or an Empty Rabbit for a Prophecy Rabbit.

March Hares
While not as mythical as Black or Empty Rabbits the March Hares are considered to be the most unsettling
of all the Rabbits. A Princess who follows a March Hare travels deep into her own Crawlspace and comes face
to face with a deep division in her own psyche. She may do battle with her own madness or sit down for tea,
scones and high brow debate with both sides of the ethical dilemma that has puzzled her all week.
In game terms March Hares are simply an excuse for more roleplaying. A Princess who wins a battle with her
own derangements is not cured, but she understands what the madness means to her and might be energized to
raise her Belief or seek therapy (or less inclined if she lost the fight). Facing her own dilemmas gives screen time
to the Princess’ thoughts and feelings, and maybe even some character development. March Hares can even be
used when under the effects of hostile magic: If the Princess has had her memories suppressed, then when the
magic wanes going into her own Crawlspace to fight the spell and unlock the memory vaults is a more dramatic
way to reveal the stolen memories than just saying the spell has worn off.
Since March Hares are at heart a way to give screen time to important moments of a character’s internal
conflicts the player is always entitled to forgo the dice and choose the result they prefer.

Places of Note
The Forests of Wen-Mung
Domain of the Queen of Clubs

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 Wen-Mung is the largest of the Queens’ Kingdoms, and the most sparsely inhabited. Yet no matter how far
you are from the nearest inhabitant sings of people are everywhere, colorful paper talismans and wind chimes
adorn every tree. Even the animals show subtle signs of domestication: That rabbit wears a little bow, there’s a
deer with decorated antlers, this wild horse has a braid in her mane.
When the Princess finds the people they are a hardy folk who live in harmony with the forest. They build
their homes between or around the trees natural clearings are rare and reserved for important buildings like
village halls or temples and farm strange plants; as productive as wheat yet growing up the side of trees like
ivy. The villages are simple, designed to be easily built for the people are occasionally nomadic. If the rains fail
to come or disease begins to spread they’ll build again elsewhere. Only important buildings such as temples are
stone, and even these can be abandoned, left to wait patiently until they are needed once again.
Most of the population is employed in agriculture or forestry. Individual communities are usually entire-
ly self sufficient. Though most residents possess only a basic education many have impressive practical intelli-
gences and a versatile array of skills useful to their daily lives. While they don’t show any animalistic behaviors,
they do occasionally show animalistic skills: After being asked for directions, a young farmer sniffs the air before
pointing with confidence. An old woman clicks her tongue as she walks, only by looking closely does one realize
it’s because she’s blind. It would appear that as much as the forest itself has become slightly tame, the people
have taken just a slight touch of the wild into themselves.
Wen-Mung exports food and timber and rarely imports anything. Centuries of a trade surplus have given
the Queen of Clubs an enormous financial reserve, she considers it prudent to let it grow no matter how many
times her accountants try to explain to her what she’d do to the economy if she ever spent more than a fraction of
it. The other Kingdoms consider Wen-Mung a perfect neighbor, it’s quiet, respectful and exports at great prices.

The Danann Archipelago

Domain of the Queen of Diamonds
The Danann Archipelago stretches for over a hundred islands. Most are either densely populated or unin-
habited with the populated islands growing in the only direction they can: Up, in magnificent towers of ivory and
glass. Sleek hydrofoils and flying wing aircraft surround the islands in a never ending dance of motion. Danann
has a subarctic climate, the inhabitants consider central heating among the greatest miracles of technology. Co-
cooned in their artificial climate they prefer sleek future-chic fashions.
The people are a contented lot and welcoming to outsiders, although they tend to posture about their in-
telligence and education in front of foreigners. The observant visitor will quickly notice that everyone is either
engaged in their pet scientific or creative projects, or they are obviously at leisure. The Queen of Diamonds had
pretty much every necessary job replaced by machines long ago freeing the population to focus on the sciences
and the arts. Though not quite the post scarcity society promised by futurists it’s as close as most Princesses
are likely to experience.
With an abundance of free time and ubiquitous communication technology the locals often form social
groups based on common interest. Be it pre industrial music, advanced mathematics or abstract philosophy.
Even though most people belong to several such groups the largest or most dedicated groups often develop
residential clusters to be closer to their friends and any museums, concert halls, bulky equipment or social
spaces they’ve appropriated or built. Though the Queen does not officially take part in this system, the topics
she is most interested in technology and the physical sciences gravitate towards her. A vast academy of science,
technology and academics has formed around the royal palace (Technically beneath, she lives in the penthouse).
Danann is an extroverted nation, the fisheries and hydroponics cannot keep up with the population and so
the economy depends on foreign trade. They export technology, technicians, engineers and offer advanced edu-
cation to citizens of other Kingdoms in return for food and raw materials. Dannan has formed an odd friendship
with the Confederacy of the Four Winds, another leisure filled Kingdom heavily built around foreign trade; they
do dislike admitting that their most advanced aircraft cannot match the Confederacy’s mastery of the winds.

The City-states of Andarta

Domain of the Queen of Hearts
Andarta is a land of flowing fields, peaceful rivers and gentle hills. The people are equally divided between
urban and rural. No matter where you travel the architecture is ornate and beautiful. Even the smallest farming

376 The Dreamlands

community is built of solid stone with masterly carved decorated touches. Following the paved roads or aque-
ducts to the cities reveals unsurpassed architecture splendour, from marble clad defensive walls to streets so
clean they sparkle in the sunlight. The people too are fit looking and healthy who always manage to look sharply
dressed and spotlessly clean, even when coming home covered in mud from a hard days work in the field.
The Queen of Hearts loves everything in its proper place, and she has made her mark on her Kingdom.
Andartan life is an organized one. The government is feudal with cleanly defined hierarchies. The trades and
professions are organized into guilds. Stability is both prized and abundant, it leads to a sense of confidence.
People know what’s expected of them, how to deliver it, and who will help them if they get a little over their
heads.
Social roles in Andarta are well defined, but social mobility is high. A simple farmer would be expected
to obey his superiors but she would also have many opportunities to advance her position, she could become
a skilled artificer, a scholar or a self employed merchant; advancing her position and earning new rights and
responsibilities. Foreigners would quickly notice that while social climbing clearly does grant new rights An-
daratns never use the word, a noble doesnt have the right to give orders, they have the responsibility to govern.
This is the direct influence of the Queen, she only ever uses the word responsibilities, her subjects usually take
the hint.
Andarta is the most introverted of the Kingdoms. While they are not quite xenophobic they are highly re-
sistant to new ideas and find it uncomfortable when foreigners don’t fit their expectations. They possess the
common courtesy to hide it of course, as a people Andartans are socially gifted, to anyone not as talented as the
locals at reading people Andartans come across as trying too hard to be welcoming.

The Confederacy of the Four Winds

Domain of the Queen of Spades
The Queen of Spades calls the Four Winds her home, a vast snow-capped mountain range. Actually four
mountain ranges all smooshed together to the amusement of geologists. The population is predominantly urban
and take great care on the placement of their cities, seeking out sun-facing river valleys with warm prevailing
winds. Transportation is handled almost entirely by a wide variety of airships, balloons and gliders, from a very
young age the inhabitants learn to pilot enormous kites. For a few specialized tasks the giant mountain spiders
are domesticated, favored for their prodigal strength and peerless climbing abilities.
The nation is a mercantile, trade is the backbone of the economy. The Confederacy also has a large amount
of artisans and craftsmen who specialize in delicate hand crafted arts and crafts, for the Confederation lacks the
resources to compete in manufacturing. The Confederates take delight in foreign trade and the exotic wonders
it brings to their homes. Enormous bazaars wind through the city streets. Stalls carry all manner of exotic goods
and services from the five Kingdoms and the wider Dreamlands. The people are colorful and passionate. Any
customer is a beloved friend. Haggling is a social requirement filled with blistering insults against the quality
of the goods and blatantly nonsense stories about starving kids to feed. As soon has money is exchanged they
are once again true friends.
The Confederacy is an anarchy, organized on an ad-hoc basis by its residents. Admittedly the organization
is somewhat haphazard and ramshackle. Along with the weekly general assemblies, anyone simply tells friends
and strangers they are hosting a meeting and if people are interested word will spread. Everyone gets together
then they go home and decide if they agreed with the consensus or if they plan to ignore it. Those who have the
talent to get things done will lead the way and those who disagree, lacking that talent themselves, are unable to
hold the kingdom in an argumentative paralysis. Reputation is supremely important. The unofficially officially
unofficially non-binding congresses which discuss issues of national importance tend to meet wherever the
Queen’s palace has drifted to this month to take advantage of her wisdom. Somehow, everything that needs to
be done gets done in a timely manner.
Of all the Kingdoms, the Confederacy is the most extroverted of them all. As masters of the winds no king-
dom can match their mobility, their love of the foreign and exotic sends a steady stream of merchant airships
beyond the five Kingdoms to trade with the wider Dreamlands.

The Aztallan Alliance

Domain of the Queen of Swords

The Dreamlands 377

 Aztallan is a land of lush rain forest, ever-blue skies and above all an enormous golden sun. The rain forests
are hot, humid and teeming with life. They are also very dangerous to the unprepared traveller and unsuited
for any population beyond small tribal societies. The Aztallani have overcome these limitations in their usual
direct manner, by constructing enormous stepped pyramids and dwelling high above the rain forest. Houses,
commerce and even farming all take place atop massive artificial plateaus. Aqueducts and bridges stretch for
miles above the rain forest.
The people are a rugged independent sort, but loyal unto death to those who’ve won their trust. Self suffi-
ciency is still a respected way of life and the more formal economy is dominated by small businesses and inde-
pendent artisans who provide services to the local community. The cities often look less like a zoned metropolis
than a large collection of individual towns and villages that grew into each other, usually because that’s exactly
what they are. Government is distributed and decentralized with local government at the level of town or city
district being the most relevant to the average citizen’s life.
The larger organizations and the government are best described as a meritocracy with posts decided purely
by a person’s skills. It is considered a sign of untrustworthiness if people know the identity of a candidate they
might hire, it is suspected that they will choose their friends or family and to be fair with the Aztallani ideals of
personal loyalty they probably would. “Not even for the Queen’s consort” is a common way of declaring integrity,
you can guess how the term originated. Since they often work alone or in small groups many Aztallanis have
a wide variety of skills, this attitude is carried on to the larger organizations. It is not uncommon to see one
person with two or more vastly different jobs.
As a society Aztallan shows the same self sufficiency and independence that its people do. While welcoming
to outsiders the kingdom usually waits for foreigners to come to it. One noticeable exception is adventurers:
bright young Aztallani often undertake a mission to develop or prove their merits. All forms of merit are valued
but adventurers dominate the international perception of Aztallan as they are the largest group to wander be-
yond their homeland.

Saint Francis’ City

In the middle of a wide field beneath an eternally sunny blue sky, cooled by gentle breezes travellers may
catch sight of Saint Francis. The saint is dressed in the humble brown robes of a monk and sits unmoving on a
simple wooden chair, at a simple wooden desk, endlessly copying “Bibles” that actually contain a rough mixture
of political speeches, travel guides and local news. All from San Francisco of course. Saint Francis is also three
hundred feet tall.
As he writes Saint Francis supports an enormous bright red kite tied to his right shoulder by a tail that
looks like someone took several golden gate bridges and wrapped them around each other like the threads in a
length of twine. To this enormous kite several more kites are anchored, and to those even more. On and on in an
enormous widening cone of many colored kites, all interconnected by a labyrinthine network of bridges, cable
cars and even subway tunnels hanging from the undersides.
This is Saint Francis’ city, an enormous metropolis built onto the backs of thousands of kites. In many ways
it is an exaggeration of the perception of San Francisco. In other ways it’s as nuanced as the original but places
the popular perception front and center so it cannot help but color a visitor’s impressions. In the more tourist
and commercial areas it seems every other building is a coffee shop where locals debate politics and recite
amateur poetry or music. There is normally at least one parade every day.

The Foundation
The Foundation is a mystery. As far as can be discerned the entire Dreamlands is built upon its surface.
As one approaches the borders of the Dreamlands the Foundation becomes exposed to the eye. It appears dif-
ferently to every traveller but always gives the impression of being some form of stability in contrast to the
wild unknowable places outside the Dreamlands. While a city-dweller might see a mighty concrete tower run
through with pipes, wires and air-conditioning outlets a Princess from a remote desert dwelling tribe might
see The Foundation as the edge of a lush oasis abruptly shifting into endless desert sands. Past The Foundation
is a place usually called Beyond, or Outside. Beyond is a mystery to the Nobility. Like The Foundation Beyond
appears differently to every viewer but it always has a feeling of vastness; of infinite wonder and potential. Yet
Beyond also feels of danger, not hostility or anger but the impersonal danger of a storm wrecked sea or the

378 The Dreamlands

harsh desert sand. Looking Outside is a very personal experience as awe, fear, wonder and desire flow through
the Princess. Each will discover for herself which emotion dominates.

To give you some examples of what the Foundation and Beyond might look like here is how each Queen
perceives it.
The Queen of Clubs sees the Foundation as the edge of a simple grassy clearing surrounded by enor-
mous forests that comprise Outside. The forests are so dense and thick she cannot see more than a finger’s
length Beyond the Dreamlands. The Queen of Clubs is neither awed nor scared of Beyond. She simply ac-
cepts that it is something greater than herself, and so makes peace with it.
The Queen of Diamonds sees the Foundation as the beaches of her youth. Beyond lies a calm sea
at night time. A perfect velvet black that mirrors the enormous stars and planets in the sky Outside the
Dreamlands until you cannot tell where the sea ends and the sky beings.
The Queen of Hearts sees the Foundation as a marble tower. It is carved with a relief of people climbing
to to the top over one another in a mass of humanity. They show nobility with the strong helping the weak,
the old and the infirm. As they crest the top of The Foundation the carved faces show expressions of dignified
triumph over adversity. Beyond The Foundation lies nothing more than simple barren rocky hills. The Queen
claims she can sometimes see movement down there, and that it makes her feel uncertain like nothing else.
The Queen of Spades sees the Foundation as the undercarrage of an enormous airship holding the
entire dreamlands aloft. With a practiced eye she judges and concludes that all is ship-shape and airworthy.
To this Queen Beyond looks like a vast plain of clouds drifting far bellow, if there is a ground further below
she has not seen it.
To The Queen of Swords the Foundation looks much like her homeland. The crest of an enormous
pyramid; beyond which lies vast rain forests. The Queen claims to have spotted signs of ruins and signs of
inhabitation.

No matter the appearance of the Foundation, it is always adorned with strange writing in every imagin-
able language, linguistic subdivision and even every imaginable appearance: From typed to archaic and cursive.
Princesses can read the Foundation, or at least the parts in the languages they know, but they can learn nothing
from it. Like a million voices talking at once the Foundation is just too much to understand. It’s unknown if there
even is something too be understood. Sometimes strange mists are released from the Foundation, a Princess
who inhales them can comprehend any language created by humans (including the Royal Tongue and Alham-
bran) until she next leaves the Dreamlands. If she dedicates the nights sleep to memorization and spends the
exp she may retain a language permanently.

The Lighthouse
The five Queens have been curious about the Foundation and Outside ever since they were first noticed
shortly after the Release. The Lighthouse is a small Danann outpost built in the retro rough stone styles that
pre-dates the Queen of Diamonds’ Coronation. Within is accommodation for a few scholars and some scientific
equipment. It also has some mild fortifications; looking Outside makes a lot of Stars nervous (Actors can’t see
Outside at all). The torch itself is usually only lit if the Queen of Diamonds is present, not everyone sees Beyond
as permanently night time.

Inhabitants
There are at least three different types of beings native to the Dreamlands. They were named by a theatri-
cally minded Princess as the chorus, the actors, and the stars. The chorus, from all appearances, are less inde-
pendent people, than representatives of a concept or archetype; they move about or speak, which distinguishes
them from parts of the landscape, but the things they say and do fall into easily predicted patterns. However,
all chorus members have power over something integral to the archetype they reflect, and there are a few who
can reshape any part of the Dreamlands’ substance into the thing they favor.
Members of the chorus are built as ephemeral beings [CofD 122-140] that regain Essence as spirits do, by
feeding from Resonant Conditions tied to their Influences. Since they are beings of reflected Light, their Essence

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is basically the same as a Princess’ Wisps, and powers which transfer Wisps work just the same way on their
Essence. (Thus either word, Wisps or Essence, may name their fuel.) They lack Integrity, but have a Virtue and
Vice and regain Willpower by acting in accord with them. Chorus members can, however, have decidedly strange
Virtues or Vices, especially when the concept they’re linked to is not human. Finally, because everything in
the Dreamlands is as ephemeral as they, chorus members never have Manifestations - for practical purposes,
anywhere in the Dreamlands they are always Materialized at no cost.
Actors, in contrast, are fully realized people, with minds, memories, desires and aspirations. They differ
from the stars (and the Princesses) in only one way: the Release passed them by. Many of them are unaware that
a waking world exists, and nearly all who are told of it refuse to credit it. The stars, finally, are the souls drawn
into the Dreamlands who have not chosen to follow the Princesses, or (as with the Five Queens) apparently
cannot be reborn. Many actors and stars can wield strange powers, and those who were once living Princesses
and inhabitants of the Kingdom still wield the Charms they knew in life.
Actors and stars are built as playable characters, most often mundane or with the Hopeful template (though
the Storyteller is free to use any supernatural template from other World of Darkness games, if he wants an
atypical NPC. If the players find themselves in a castle containing reflections of every fictional vampire – from
Count Dracula to Count von Count – and you own Vampire: the Requiem Second Edition there is nothing wrong,
and a lot right, with using the rules from it.) However, their bodies are like the Princesses’ projections into
the Dreamlands, formed of dream-stuff, so they have the Attributes and Health of a Dream Form. Moreover,
losing the last box of Health doesn’t kill Dreamlanders permanently; they gain the Soul Shocked Condition, are
incapacitated until it resolves, and then begin to recover their Health. A Dreamlander’s body must be destroyed
completely, reduced to powder or ashes, to kill him for good. (Given the purpose of the Dreamlands, even that
probably doesn’t destroy an actor or star forever; the soul presumably remains, preserved by the Dreamlands’
power, and is eventually reborn in a new body. But since a reborn soul doesn’t remember any prior Dreamlands
lives, just a past life in the Kingdom, there’s no proof that such rebirths happen.)

Dreamlanders on Earth
Any Dreamlander - chorus, actor or star - can go through a fully open Crawlspace passage into the mind
of the dreamer who opened it, if they discover its existence. Normally, though, there’s not much point to
doing so; the Dreamlander can’t wake the dreamer, perceive the physical world around her or leave her
body. Worse, if the dreamer wakes the Dreamlander is trapped inside her mind and wanders through her
subconscious until the dreamer opens Crawlspace again. But there are ways for an actor or star to escape
to the waking world.
Dreamlanders learn the Charm Ivory Gate to speak to dreamers they have met and befriended; they
gain its Distant upgrade for free when they take the Charm, and must apply that upgrade to use it at all.
Privy Counselor, in a Dreamlander’s hands, can be used only within a dreamer’s mind at the entrance to
her Crawlspace, with the dreamer as its target, and the dreamer may contest the Charm with Resolve +
Supernatural Tolerance. The Animal Companion upgrade, if applied, Fetters the Dreamlander to a nearby
suitable animal or object instead (the one with the largest positive modifier.)
Dreamlanders have no innate Manifestations except Twilight Form, and except for Privy Counselor their
Charms are quite limited outside the Dreamlands. Unless the target is another ephemeral entity in the same
phase, they may use only those Charms that influence minds, or Charms they can cast through a sympathetic
connection (the connection to anything she sees is Sensory) and they may not use Charms that require the
target to perceive them. If forced by other Charms or stranger magic to exist outside the Dreamlands, a
dreamer’s mind, a Resonant Condition or a protective Manifestation, Dreamlanders are subject to Essence
bleed, losing 1 Wisp (or other fuel point) each hour.

Tengu Pirate (Chorus)

To mankind the seas have always represented the great unknown. Infinite possibilities lie just beyond the
next horizon, but the seas also carry the danger of the storm, and pirates. Who doesn’t love a good pirate story?
Tengu pirates have congealed out of stray ideas from Japanese mythology, sword and sorcery, and fantasy
tinged pirate stories. They’re not particularly powerful or populous, but despite their small number they always
travel in crews looking for ships full of booty to plunder, preferably shiny objects. When they do find a prize,

380 The Dreamlands

they isolate the ship using their ability to influence wind, then fall from the sky, attacking sailors and stealing
what they can in the confusion. While they can and will kill if necessary, most of the time they are happy with
just stealing whatever they can before retreating.

Rank: 2
Attributes: Power 3, Finesse 7, Resistance 4
Derived Traits: Corpus 9, Willpower 10, Size 5, Defense 4, Initiative 11, Speed 20 (species factor 10)
Influences: Wind 2
Numina: Blast (guns), Firestarter (incendiary bombs), Pathfinder, Speed, Stalwart
Ban: Tengu pirates feel compelled to steal shiny objects.
Bane: Mackerels.

Trickster Kitsune (Actor)

In times long ago foxes and humans lived close together on the islands of Nippon and kitsune became a
staple of Japanese mythology. They were messangers of the Kami, they would adopt human guises to become
guardians, friends or lovers … and of course to play tricks on humans. Kitsune can be found in regions of the
Dreamlands that reflect Japanese mythology, folklore, or pop-culture. Trickster kitsune can of course be found
in all these places, but tend to form a larger proportion of the kitsune population in areas that are also influenced
by Western folklore, where it’s nearly universal for folklore to portray foxes as tricksters.
Trickster kitsune are usually more mischievous than truly dangerous but they can prove a real threat if
they feel threatened. Conversely, they can become precious allies to people they grow fond of. Most are Actors,
but some Princesses among the court of Spades have been able to convince a Trickster that there is a real world
and thus recruit it as a Shikigami.

Rank: 2
Attributes: Power 4, Finesse 6, Resistance 3
Derived Traits: Corpus 5, Willpower 8, Size 2, Defense 6, Initiative 8, Speed 19 (species factor 7)
Influences: Luck 2
Numina: Blast (foxfire), Firestarter, Hallucination, Innocuous, Mortal Mask
Ban: Trickster kitsune must stand still as long as someone grabs their tail.
Bane: The teeth of a hunting hound.

The Jack of Diamonds (Star)

Fools can be important… and knaves and tarts too.
The Jack of Diamonds, Jack to his friends, is something of an enigma among the Courtiers of Diamonds.
He works for his image, rarely mentioning his background except to give vague and slightly contradictory hints
about his dark and troubled past. It is generally accepted that he was once a living Prince who after some trauma
has chosen to remain in the Dreamlands rather than reincarnate.
It is no secret that Jack is loyal to the Queen of Spades, not the Queen of Diamonds. In fact it would be rather
hard to miss it, his official role in the court is the ambassador from Spades. Jack’s unofficial role, and most of his
time, is playing devils advocate or perhaps court jester, the distinction is fluid. While Jack makes no research or
discoveries of his own he can bring theories and philosophies crashing down with a well aimed sentence.
With his friendly nature, sharp mind and quick wit Jack is a popular member of the Court. He is respected
for his mind, his sense of humor and his ability to speak almost entirely in bizarre metaphors or aphorisms
(which is only partly intentional, his mind isn’t all there). They do however wish he wouldn’t use his wit against
them so often. In this Jack is a microcosm of how the Court of Diamonds sees the Court of Spades.

The Dreamlands 381

 For his dress Jack prefers brightly colored tasteless suits, enormous bowties and a straw boater hat. He is
never seen without some sort of staff decorated with a symbol of randomness: An enormous die, an endlessly
spinning coin, a playing card.

Alan Raymond and Mary Radclifee (Stars)

Deer fools of the audience, I and my assistant, who is making that curious gesture with her
face and palm…

Alan Raymond is alternatively the darling and the laughing stock in the court of Diamonds; an unquestion-
able genius and the inventor of the Charming Engine, an enormous programmable computer that is (somewhat)
capable of casting Charms automatically. The whole Court of Diamonds is simultaneously awed by his creation
and put off by his peerless ability to burn bridges, sabotage his own career and rarely complete a project because
he got distracted by a possible change or improvement. Alan’s drive, quirks of personality and inexplicable ha-
tred of music come from autism.
Mary Radclifee is Alan’s partner in science and one of the few people who has figured out how to work
with him; using sardonic quips and her corncob pipe to release her frustration before they can build up. Though
Mary is obviously delighted to work on the Charming Engine many in the Court wonder if being on the cutting
edge is worth Alan’s company. In truth Mary sometimes worries who else would put up with her - though she
controls it far better her mind has far more severe disorders than Alan’s. Mary suffers from medication resistant
bipolar disorder tied to powerful visual-auditory hallucinations. She can usually suppress her disorder through
pure mathematical logic (which only works because of the Dreamlands…) but heightened stress, attempting to
think artistically or just going too long without engaging in complex mathematics may cause a relapse. This has
left her with a lasting love-hate relationship to poetry and occasional regrets that she cannot study music, the
most mathematical of the arts.
Together they attempt to improve the Charming Engine, dive into theoretical mathematics, cause no end of
problems for themselves through their respective issues and occasionally have thrilling adventures researching
the various cities and towns that reflect computer science or mathematics.

The Charming Engine

If a player character manages to get hold of a Charming Engine (which isn’t easy - there’s only one
made, building a second is an extended Intelligence + Crafts action with a threshold of 30 and an interval
of a month) it can be forged into an eight dot Bequest (Acqua must be used when casting Bequeath). The
Duty-Bound upgrade is required for a Charming Engine to function and is included in the price. A Charming
Engine also requires connection to the water mains for coolant; the waste water is drinkable and can be
used with the built in tea maker.
Once a Princess is in possession of a Charming Engine she can create programs for it using a variation
of the Charm Living Image that uses a dice pool of Intelligence + Computer. Again, Acqua must be applied.
These programs have no Size, can’t be removed from the Charming Engine, and cannot be Duty-Bound or
Empowered. Because the Charming Engine is a prototype, several design short-cuts mean that it can only
cast Acqua Charms or general Charms Invoked with Acqua.
A Charming Engine can be instructed to cast a series of Charms in a given order, and use simple if-
else logic based on the success or failure of the previous Charm. (Future versions will be Turing complete).
However they take roughly twenty times longer than a Princess would. Even an instant action takes a whole
minute before anything happens. Generally the Charming Engine is considered merely a proof of concept
and not for practical use.

Duncan Kingdom (Star)

With all the steam at my command!

They say the candle that burns twice as bright burns twice as fast. Duncan Kingdom certainly did both. One
of the earliest Princes to Blossom after the return, Duncan was a founding member of the modern Embassy to

382 The Dreamlands

Machines and a stylistic icon among the hammer men. He reached the rank of Ambassador before dying after
single combat with a Dethroned. After underestimating his opponent Duncan was defeated and temporarily lost
the ability to transform. Undeterred he gathered some of his old gadgets and improvised a few new ones for
round two, fighting his rival to mutual destruction, not bad for a Mender. As he was dying in hospital the Queen
of Diamonds requested that he spend the beginning of his afterlife in her court so he could mentor Emissaries
to Machines.
When he’s not mentoring Machinists Duncan enjoys building aircraft and ships, trying to see just how big
he can make them. He favors big grey iron hulls and large amounts of aesthetic coal smoke. The man himself
wears Victorian suits, a top hat and is permanently chomping a large cigar. On occasion he will venture forth
from the court to rescue a favored student who has gotten in trouble somewhere in the Dreamlands, he prefers
to travel on a vehicle of his own design that looks roughly like the engine of a steam train converted to travel
off road. It makes an entrance.

The Emperor (Actor)

The Emperor is the undisputed monarch of Saint Francis’ City. He is the servant, and master, of Saint Francis
himself. A blue eyed all American boy dressed up in full imperial regalia to match Napoleon at his most fabulous;
ruling from a golden throne backed by an enormous marble eagle. His clothing is a reflection of The Emperor’s
nobility and virtue, not his fashion sense. He is in truth a kind, humble man devoted to the good of his city
who divides his time between the affairs of government and wondering the streets, speaking to his citizens and
helping them with daily issues. He travels alone and unarmed, but all of Saint Francis’ city is his bodyguard.
It is hard to fight in the Emperor’s presence, he softly asks you to put your weapons away. It costs 1 Willpow-
er to enable yourself to fight for the scene. This cost is waved if you or someone you wish to protect is attacked.

Wardens
“Of course I’m your mother Button, it’s not the sort of thing you forget.”
You know this is a dream, but you’re starting to forget what wasn’t. Your quest to find the
holy ace, and your friends Benny the Bear, Herick the Repentant Knight, and Cedric the Priest.
That’s real and this is an illusion woven by the evil Lidia? Or is it your school and your friends
Rachel, Amanda and Lacy. But how can anything so unrealistic as sending kids somewhere they
hate every day be real? It’s starting to get scary, you hope your friends would rescue you soon
(but which friends?)
That’s not right either, you’re a heroine. You should be rescuing yourself. Why are you think-
ing like this? There aren’t any guards here, it should be easy to escape. You just need to get your…
Your what? Why is it so hard to remember things?
When the Dreamlands Trap was formed its builders knew better than to rely on it lasting forever. They
placed powerful guards to watch over their prisoners, endlessly adjusting the illusions and dreams to keep the
souls of the kingdom in a satisfied slumber.
Upon the Release the Radiant Queens saw the Wardens for what they are. They summoned their armies and
rode against them, slaughtering them in countless masses. Yet some Wardens survived, far too many Wardens
survived. Fleeing to the wild regions of the Dreamlands they lie in wait for the opportunity to fulfill their dark
purpose.
Today the Wardens are scattered far and wide upon the face of the Dreamlands, yet they are unbroken.
They remember their purpose and yearn to fulfill it. When they see one carrying the Light walk the realms of
sleep they will stop at nothing to imprison her in a blissful dream for all eternity.
The Wardens are members of the chorus, normally of Rank 2, though they can be of any Rank. They have
Influence over the Gales - a Warden instinctively knows that its purpose is to keep people within the Dreamlands
until they forget whatever life they had beyond them. The effects of this Influence at each level are as follows;
as all of them control thoughts or emotions of sapient beings, every use of the Influence is contested.
• Strengthen: The Warden strengthens the Gales locally. Every dreamer who comes within Rank x 3 yards
of the Warden and loses the contested roll during the Influence’s duration adds the Warden’s activation suc-

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cesses to the Gales’ next roll to inflict a Galemark on them. A dreamer subjected to this effect more than once
in a day adds the highest modifier among the activations.
•• Manipulate: The Gales that blow through the Dreamlands change the memories of visitors, making them
believe they have always been a part of the Dreamlands. From the perspective of the Wardens this is good, but
it does not go far enough. The Gales give the visitors a past within the Dreamlands, the Wardens wish to give
them a future, a reason to stay. The Warden uses its Influence against a Galemarked dreamer to alter the effects
of the Galemarks in small ways.
For the duration, and while the dreamer remains within Rank x 3 yards, the Warden develops a situation out
of the dreamer’s Gale-created history which will, it hopes, tempt the dreamer to stay or keep her from leaving. It
does this by defining new truths about the people and places in that history - with a minute’s full concentration,
the Warden establishes one new fact. At this level the Warden can’t introduce new characters or make radical
changes in any existing characters, and it can’t invalidate any existing facts or events; but it can find plausible
developments from what the Gales have already established, and declare a scenario to its advantage has taken
place.
••• Control: The Warden is able to make drastic changes in a Gale-created history at this level. For the
duration, and while the dreamer remains within Rank x 3 yards, the Warden introduces new people, places or
objects into the dreamer’s imaginary past, or alters the existing people in radical ways.
The Warden still cannot contradict anything in the dreamer’s established Gale-marked history. If a Princess
remembers that she ran away from the palace where she grew up to escape her cruel father then a Warden
cannot add any fact that would make the Princess’ father nice. However, it could declare that her father has
been overthrown by the Princess’ noble brother, who loves her dearly. It could do so with Manipulate only if
the loving brother already exists; with Control, it can invent the brother whole-cloth and sketch a backstory
for him that explains why he did nothing about the father’s cruelties before (say, he’d been sent to a boarding
school for several years.)
•••• Create: The Warden summons the Gales for a psychic assault. It chooses a single dreamer, close enough
for it to attack, to receive the force of the Gales. If the Warden wins the contest, the Gales roll to mark the dreamer
once every minute, until the duration lapses, she gains a Galemark, or she escapes the Warden’s reach. A Gale-
mark created by this level of Influence is controlled wholly by the Warden - it can create any events whatsoever,
limited only by consistency with existing Galemarks.
••••• Mass Create: The Warden becomes the center of a reality-warping vortex. Every dreamer within
Rank x 3 yards of the Warden who loses the contested roll is subjected to the effects of Create for the duration,
unless they escape from the vortex. (Often the Warden combines all the Galemarks made by a Mass Creation
into a single history involving every affected dreamer, so if one of them awakens the others will tend to pull
her back into the illusion.)
The Wardens have no interest in anything outside the Dreamlands, so they never learn Manifestations.
Their favorite Numina are Innocuous and Mortal Mask; for them the latter is a near-perfect disguise, allowing
them to shadow a dreaming traveler without raising suspicion. However, no Numina are barred to the Wardens
except the ones that affect only the material world.

Sample Warden
Prince/Princess Charming
Prince Charming is a Warden who specializes in getting romantically entangled with his targets and making
them choose between his love or their real life, if he can’t sweep them off their feet so fast they forget they
have a real life at all. Prince Charming can appear in any form that his victim finds attractive, animal, mineral
or vegetable, but usually he favors an ordinary man or woman. He has an instinctive knowledge of people’s
romantic inclinations and preferences and prefers to set the mood before his first meeting. Depending on his
victim’s preferences he may arrange for his own rescue, run an inn under a romantic moon or ride up in shining
armor to recruit nobles to his quest.
As a Warden Prince Charming isn’t able to feel genuine romantic affection and so he pushes hard before his
victims see through his shallow mask. If he’s on a quest the danger and post danger adrenaline fueled romance

384 Wardens
come one after another without time to rest. A more traditional royal romance swings from feast to parade to
ball without pause. Even questioning this frantic pace is enough to make Prince Charming fear he is losing his
latest victim, causing him to overcompensate either by creating emergencies or turning to emotional blackmail.

Rank: 2
Attributes: Power 2, Finesse 4, Resistance 2
Derived Traits: Corpus 7, Willpower 6, Size 5 (usually), Defense 2, Initiative 6, Speed 11 (species factor 5)
Influences: The Gales 3, Infatuation 1
Numina: Emotional Aura, Implant Mission, Mortal Mask, Rapture
Ban: Prince Charming cannot allow his current victim to leave him of her own will. He pursues anyone
who does so to the limits of his ability, until he suffers discorporation.
Bane: Butterflies and butterfly wings.

Amanojaku
It was obvious if you knew what to look for, thought the Princess Gwendolin as she watched
the librarian. Nobody was that much of a stereotype: the clothing, the glasses, the hair bun, the
ridiculous over-reaction to the slightest noise. It looked like it was very good at its job too, every
book was exactly in its place, every student got exactly the material they needed. There was only
one problem.
“I hope you enjoyed working in a real library, but you have to give that body back now.”

Once the Radiant believed that the Amanojaku were a unique being, a strange mental parasite that resided
within the Dreamlands seeking the opportunity to possess human bodies. Now they know better, Amanojaku
are just Dreamlanders whose desire for a physical body is stronger than their ethics. Some are ordinary Dream-
landers who became obsessed with getting closer to the real concept that they reflect. Others are inhabitants
of the Kingdom who wish to return to life, but fear the partial loss of self inherent in reincarnation. Rumor has
it there’s even a Brat or two.
Most Dreamlanders consider the Amanojaku to be criminals who dabble in profane magics. Consequently
most can be found in the wild regions of the Dreamlands, far from Dreamlander law and the eyes of the Radiant
Queens. Others can be found among the brightest cities of the Dreamlands, lurking in the shadows as criminals
have always done.

Escape
Since the Release, doorways, windows and cave mouths can be half-seen everywhere in the Dreamlands, in
the corner of one’s eye or half-hidden behind a boulder. For most Dreamlanders these passages vanish if sought
for, turning out to be shadows or optical illusions; for the Hopeful, they become real, and open into Crawlspace.
In truth, though, these mysterious doors are the places where some human’s dreaming soul, yearning for the
Light’s touch without knowing it, drifts against the bars of the Hopeful’s old prison. An Amanojaku can wrench
one of the doors open, enter the dream of the mortal that lies behind it, and search it for his soul.
To open the path to someone’s soul, Amanojaku use magic similar to the Horn Gate variant of the Ivory Gate
Charm, but without that Charm’s requirement for proximity or sympathetic connections; if the magic succeeds,
the Amanojaku works his way down the Crawlspace passage. Amanojaku tactics range from subtle insinuation,
disguising themselves as normal dream figures to reach the dreamer’s self, to brutal pursuit, warping the dream
into a terrifying nightmare (forcing Doors always appears as the latter.) The Amanojaku rolls to open Doors by
the Dreamlands’ time, which makes the impression level mostly irrelevant - though reaching a hostile impres-
sion forces the Amanojaku out of the dreamer’s mind and closes the gate.
At the end of the path the Amanojaku finds the dreamer’s consciousness. Here the dreamer has a chance to
resist the invading entity; he assumes Dream Form and confronts the Amanojaku within a dreamed landscape.

Amanojaku 385
Play this out as a normal scene - many Amanojaku prefer violent assaults, but some employ deception or seduc-
tive promises. If the Amanojaku loses he must retreat to the Dreamlands and the passage closes; if he wins, he
forces the dreamer up through Crawlspace to the Dreamlands. Occasionally Amanojaku have the luck to find a
Crawlspace passage that’s standing open, because the owner has come into the Dreamlands already. When this
happens there’s no need for magic to open the way - the Amanojaku just walks down the passage to its end.
Whether the Amanojaku finds the path to it or makes one, he needs one further magic to take possession
of a vacant body: the Dreaming Exile version of Privy Counselor. Success with that Charm gives it the Usurping
Condition, below.
Amanojaku cannot possess anyone but mundane characters and the Light-touched. They can take over
people with supernatural Merits, but may use only powers that are open to the Nobility. The Amanojaku cannot
gain supernatural Merits while bound to a host, either.
It’s quite possible for an Amanojaku to use Dreaming Exile to bind other Dreamlanders into vacant bodies;
in fact, Amanojaku almost always work in gangs where only the leader knows both the necessary Charms. Hence
the majority of Amanojaku found in human bodies are chorus members, put there by someone else’s magic.

Usurping Manifestation Condition

The Amanojaku with this Condition has ejected someone’s mind into the Dreamlands and is possessing the
vacated body. The Amanojaku has access to the host’s memories and abilities. Initially, however, he has some
trouble using them properly. Use the host’s non-supernatural traits - Attributes, Skills, Merits and advantages
- except for Willpower; the Amanojaku keeps his own Willpower. At first, the Amanojaku takes a -3 penalty on
Physical Skill rolls and a -4 penalty on Mental and Social Skill rolls.
To the host’s traits, though penalized, an actor Amanojaku adds some of his powers: Inner Light, Wisps,
and Practical Magic. Most Amanojaku follow no Queen and are limited to the Practical Magic of the courtless …
but some of them follow Mirrors and have her Practical Magic instead. Actor Amanojaku also have the ability
to spend Willpower when in danger to gain Wisps, like the Princesses’ Inner Strength. Chorus Amanojaku may
not use Influences or Numina, but are protected from Essence bleed.
Finally, the Amanojaku can transform his host. The Amanojaku’s transformation lasts for one scene and
changes the host into a physical duplicate of the Amanojaku’s Dreamlands form, with the same Attributes, Skills,
Merits and advantages, except for Health - the transformed host retains his original Health track, and any dam-
age suffered. The Amanojaku also gains full access to his Charms by transforming. In effect, when the Amano-
jaku transforms, switch from one character sheet to the other; the two have nothing in common but Willpower
and Health.
As time passes, and the displaced mortal has the Dreamlands’ Gales blowing through him, the Amanojaku
settles in. Each time the host acquires a Galemark, his appearance shifts, taking on some feature of his possessor.
And each time this happens, the penalties the Amanojaku take while enacting his part are reduced by 1, to a
minimum of -0; and the Amanojaku’s appearance shifts, taking on a feature of his host. Eventually, the Amano-
jaku and his host look, not identical, but like close relatives.
While in possession, the Amanojaku functions as the host’s soul, and supernatural powers that apply to
the soul apply to it.
Causing the Condition: The Dreaming Exile upgrade to Privy Counselor.
Ending the Condition: The Amanojaku abandons the host body, and the host’s soul returns to it.

Banishing Amanojaku
Amanojaku return to the Dreamlands at the death of their hosts, though they take the Soul Shocked Condi-
tion from the death throes. Short of that, they can be forced out by a successful abjuration. Unfortunately this
does not restore the host’s soul to his body; the host falls into a state akin to coma. The Amanojaku reappears
in the Dreamlands near the host’s location there, but as long as the host’s soul is in the Dreamlands, the door
into his mind and body stands open there, and any Dreamlander may enter it and possess the host again after
a day’s passing. Indeed, the original Amanojaku may do so, if he waits long enough. On the other hand, if the
host is free in the Dreamlands, and is still aware of his waking life, and if he finds the door to it, his entering
the door will restore him completely.

386 Amanojaku
 Many Princesses, having more skill in navigating the Dreamlands than in exorcism, prefer to banish Amano-
jaku from the Dreamlands side; they search out the door into the host’s dreamscape, then enter it to do battle
with the possessor there. If a Princess opens a Crawlspace entrance next to an Amanojaku’s host, she can find
her way through Crawlspace to the host’s Dreamlands exit as if she had Intimate Sympathy to the place. Past
the door, the Princess appears next to the Amanojaku, ready to negotiate or fight for the host’s freedom. Once
the Amanojaku has been forced out (or left on its own), guiding the host’s soul back to his body is then a simple
matter of Dreamlands travel - though finding him might not be, if the Gales have been at work for long.
Finally, an Amanojaku can return to the Dreamlands voluntarily whenever the host sleeps, and end the
possession by guiding the host’s soul back through the door himself. Few Amanojaku will do this, however,
unless threatened with the death of their vessel - and killing a vessel is murder, as long as the host’s soul still
exists.

Gates of Polished Horn

Once upon a time, a band of Amanojaku found, or made, an object of power to help them in their hunts.
The nakama who finally tracked them down named the thing the Gate of Polished Horn, and made sure it was
destroyed. Unfortunately the Amanojaku who used it had learned how to duplicate it elsewhere, and other Gates
have been built since.
A Gate of Polished Horn does not look like a gate, though it is made of a substance very like horn, with
the color of aged ivory, maybe. It is shaped as an obelisk, roughly twice as tall as a man, and carved with eye-
twisting designs. When an Amanojaku has successfully bound himself to a person’s body, and the host’s soul is
reasonably close to the Gate, everyone in the waking world who sleeps when the Amanojaku is nearby dreams
of the Gate; anyone using Ivory Gate from the Gate’s vicinity has perfect impressions to reach them. Bands of
Amanojaku that acquire a Gate of Polished Horn exploit this property ruthlessly. Once one of their number
has taken over a body, his companions seize the host, carry him to the Gate, and imprison him. Meanwhile the
possessing Amanojaku lives in the waking world impersonating him, and all who sleep near him - most likely,
his family and intimate friends - dream of lands near the Gate, where the other Amanojaku in the band can hunt
and possess them in turn. The first band of Amanojaku with a Gate had captured nearly fifty mortals before it
was destroyed.
Overuse of a Gate of Polished Horn can lead to what is tentatively referred to as a Gatecrash. An entire region
of the Dreamlands collapses, sending its inhabitants falling into Twilight. The Dreamlands usually repairs itself
soon enough, but this is little comfort for the Dreamlanders trapped outside their native realm or for the people
scared and panicked Dreamlanders end up possessing. The most recent (and therefore well known) Gatecrash
was in 1992 when the Dreamland city of Crystal Tokyo fell into the actual city of Tokyo. Even today there are still
Beacons with harmonious human and Dreamlander gestalt personalities fighting for the Light with Bequests
forged from the wreckage.

Sample Amanojaku
Officer Doe
In the Dreamlands there is a city where lost things go. The residents’ hearts ache for homes that never
existed. It is a sad and lonely place, few of the residents bother to make a home, fewer still ever leave. Officer
Doe was once a resident of this city. He was not lost himself but was an emanation of a closely related concept:
detectives who find missing people. In a long career Doe did not close a single case for that is the nature of The
Lost City, nor did he find this unusual until the day he met an Amanojaku. When the Officer learned of Earth he
saw it as an escape from a life suddenly revealed to be meaningless.
Like most Amanojaku Doe tends to favor people with a connection to the concepts they represent. Partly
that’s a reason of practicality, many Amanojaku prefer to do their deeds in secret at home rather than brave
the dangerous wilds of the Dreamlands. Partly it’s because most of them want to do something related to their
concept when they get to Earth. For Officer Doe it’s the practical advantages. He is part of a band of Amanojaku
in possession of a Gate of Polished Horn and Officer Doe is the pointman. As a missing persons detective in the
Dreamlands he is as suitable as an Amanojaku can be to take over a missing persons detective in the real world.

Amanojaku 387
Currently he is in the body of one Samantha O’Reilly, a respected detective from a long line of police officers.
With her position on the force Officer Doe has been able to deflect investigations, keeping the missing missing
and providing bodies for his cohort.
As for Samantha, she’s making a reasonable go of her predicament, all things considered. She escaped her
captors and is applying her detective skills to her new surroundings. Samantha is actually somewhat glad this
happened to her, she considers it a second awakening that revealed the hidden truths of the world. Sadly her
optimism is misplaced for the Gales are slowly blowing her mind away.

Rank: 2
Attributes: Power 3, Finesse 3, Resistance 4
Derived Traits: Corpus 9, Willpower 7, Size 5, Defense 4, Initiative 7, Speed 11 (species factor 5)
Influences: Loss (the emotion) 2, Clues 1
Numina: Innocuous, Pathfinder, Seek, Stalwart
Ban: Officer Doe must stop and make detailed notes every time somebody starts talking about evidence
in a missing person case.
Bane: Family homes. Not any home will do but a home that has been lived in by the same family for at
least three generations. Something so profoundly tied to being a home is alien and painful to Officer Doe’s
nature as a being who is fundamentally a reflection of being lost. Prying up a floorboard or unscrewing a
pipe makes an effective weapon until it loses its symbolic connection, which usually takes months. Luckily
for Doe, Samantha is the first of her family to live in her apartment.

Shining Hearts: Beacons

Dear Diary
I had the dream again. The one with me and Sir Rufus on a quest for the Heart of Earth that
I always used to have when Alison bullied me. It made me feel much better, just like it always
used to do.
Maybe I had the dream because everyone's being so mean and shunning Jane. I should just
talk to her, if I can make it through the Swamp of Sadness I can talk to one girl no matter what
anyone else tells me!
The Light of hope is far from unique to the Radiant; it belongs to all mankind. In the millennia of the
Long Night mankind built civilisations and made wonders in the arts and sciences. It was regular humans who
achieved the impossible and walked upon the moon, bringing a new dawn to end the Long Night. The Beacons
are people whom the Light illuminates somewhat more brightly than most. Some Princesses say that in a better
world everyone would be a Beacon. Some (usually the same people) say that in the Kingdom everyone was a
Beacon.
A Beacon has a strong sense of hope, morality and idealism that radiates outwards. That’s all it takes - there
are no astrological portents during their birth or inexplicable transformative events, only a person with a heart
full of hope, empathy and kindness. Their presence encourages people to make the best of themselves. The effect
is subtle enough that it could be taken as nothing more than the force of personality, if a Princess’ magical sight
did not show that Beacons carry a tiny spark of the Light.
Most Beacons don’t ever discover their supernatural potential. They live ordinary lives, and if they tend to
be popular people surrounded by loyal friends or unusually sensitive to acts of cruelty that’s only what you'd
expect to happen when someone is extraordinarily kind and emphatic. But Beacons do have their magic and
their curses. Given the chance the Outer Darkness will go out of its way to kill a Beacon, and a Beacon carrying
Shadows becomes vulnerable to the trap within the Dreamlands. Fortunately, as they entered the Dreamlands
far from the Radiant Courts where the Wardens were strongest, many Beacons escaped the Wardens’ notice
and instead discovered the strength to face problems in the waking world through their nocturnal experiences.
Princesses usually keep an eye out for Beacons. If they seem in trouble they’ll offer help before the Beacon’s
light is crushed. There is a pragmatic reason to keep an eye on Beacons: they are disproportionately likely to

388 Shining Hearts: Beacons

Blossom and being ready to ease a new Princess into her role can make a world of difference. Even if that weren’t
so, though, the Hopeful would seek out Beacons anyway, just for the pleasure of their company.

Beacon Traits
Because of their optimism and Inner Light, Beacons find it easier to keep their balance when confronted
with horror; they gain a +1 bonus on breaking point rolls, except when their own action was the breaking point.
Like the Hopeful, Beacons are vulnerable to Sensitivity, with a base pool of 1 die. This makes it possible for
them travel to the Dreamlands, though they may not be aware of that before gaining dots of Shadows.
Beacons create a quiet Echo similar to the one a Princess creates just after Blossoming, affecting everyone
in their immediate presence. Alas, the Echo also draws attention from the Darkness much as a Princess does
just after Blossoming.
Beacons can recognize Bequests. As they have no Wisps, they cannot use a Bequest, unless its power re-
quires no Wisps, or it is Duty-Bound. If a Bequest’s effect varies by Inner Light, treat a Beacon as having 1 dot
in that trait.

Beacon Character Creation

Beacons follow the standard rules for mortal character creation in the Chronicles of Darkness. In addition
they start with a few extra character traits.
• Beacons begin play with the Virtuous Merit [CofD 46] for free.
• Like the Nobility, a Beacon is naturally guided by the Light to help his neighbors and improve the world.
Like the Nobility, therefore, Beacons begin play with a personal Vocation, on top of Vocations from the sources
available to mundane characters. There are no restrictions on the Vocation’s goal, except that it must be suit-
able for an Aspiration, and that the benefit of completing it goes to someone else. A Beacon may take a new
Vocation whenever he resolves his current one.
• Beacons begin play with three Luminous Experiences (from previous work towards Vocations) which
should be spent immediately on traits.

Loyal Knights: the Sworn

Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone was a Princess? If nobody could commit cruelty without suffering from
Sensitivity? If encroachment of the Darkness could be beaten back by the magic of billions? If wishes were
Blossomings then everyone would be a Princess already, but the Nobility know it’s no good wishing for a better
world. You have to roll up your sleeves and get to work. Even if there is no way to force a Blossoming, a Princess
with the Accept Fealty Charm can create a Sworn.
The Sworn fill many roles. Sometimes a Princess is impressed by a Mortal (or a Beacon) and offers them
magic. This is an significant investment: not only must the Princess invest a portion of her power to create a
Sworn, but she must make Bequests to provide the Sworn with Wisps and any Charms she wishes to offer. Other
Sworn work closely with the Nobility. A team of Princesses who notice a gap in their skills could seek out a new
member who has the mundane abilities. The powers of a Sworn and a few Bequests can provide the magical
skills.
Some Princesses create Sworn for special tasks. Consider if you will a Princess who creates Bequests that
grant intuitive insights into the working of legal codes and hands them out to a think tank drafting a complex
new social justice law. If it works a simple investment could have an enormous long term payoff but such plans
are risky. The Princess usually ends up running against one or more of the vested power groups within the
World of Darkness.
Other Princesses just like to share their magic with people. Granting the powers of a Sworn to a beloved
friend or family member can help another understand the Princess’ new life and preserve the bond between
them. It is unfortunately not that uncommon for a friend or family member to be jealous and giving them some

Loyal Knights: the Sworn 389

power can help smooth things over. A Princess who worries for her loved one’s safety can do worse than giving
them the power to run away at superhuman speeds, or to work the magical defenses around their shared home.
In Alhambra Sworn have served as a vital and prestigious pillar of society. The kingdom of Tears possesses
vaults filled with Bequests, some dating back to the Kingdom itself. As they reuse old Bequests it requires a far
smaller investment to equip a new Sworn and so Alhambra depends on Sworn, Bequests and magic much as
we depend on technology.
The armies of Storms also make much use of Sworn, who seem to form spontaneously from ordinary people
who hold Tempesta’s fury in their hearts. These Sworn seem to be self sufficent, but lacking Bequests their
powers are limited.
The rarest kind of Sworn is an deliberate attempt to redeem someone by using Sensitivity to show them
the truth of their actions. This is rare not only because creating a Sworn is a significant effort, but also because
no one can become a Sworn without giving full and informed consent. Still people who believe their actions to
be just may well consent to Sensitivity.

Sworn Traits
Every Sworn follows one of the eight Queens. They draw upon their Queen’s magic, the power of the Queen’s
Invocation granting them their abilities. Sworn invariably have one dot in their Queen’s Invocation, and may
purchase more dots in that Invocation with experience at the out-of-affinity rate. They can apply the Invocation
when they use Bequests and invoke it for Willpower. Sworn may also use their Queen’s version of Practical
Magic.
Sworn can recognize and use Bequests. If a Bequest’s effect varies by Inner Light, treat a Sworn as having 1
dot in that trait. Sworn have a weak connection to the Light, which gives them a pool of Wisps, holding a number
of Wisps equal to their Resolve + Presence. They may spend these Wisps on Practical Magic or to activate a
Bequest. Like Beacons, Sworn create a quiet Echo similar to the one a Princess creates just after Blossoming,
affecting everyone in their immediate presence.
Sworn do not, however, gain Wisps as the Hopeful do, by carrying out tasks important to a Calling, nor can
they spend Willpower while in danger to regain Wisps. Any Princess of the same court can give Wisps to a Sworn
from her own pool in a ritual confirmation of the oath, up to her Wisp/turn limit; that ritual requires a minute
to perform, and the full concentration of both parties. The Charge Charm will also give Wisps to the Sworn, and
an Accepted Charge Bequest can transfer Wisps to its user. (Such Bequests are highly prized among followers
of Tears and Storms, who lacked Hopeful allies until recently, but have ways to gather Wisps without them.)
Finally, a Sworn can gain Wisps if he has a Princess (of any court) as a close friend, by spending time in
mundane activities with her; that is, Sworn are allowed to take the Circle Merit for relationships with the Hope-
ful. They roll Empathy + Circle (- Shadows) to check if they regain Wisps from an encounter with Circle members.
(Sworn are valid targets for a Princess’ Circle, though not for another Sworn; indeed, Sworn tend to be among
the most treasured of a Princess' Circle, for they share the duty towards the Light and are all-too empathetic
to the troubles of Sensitivity.)
Their connection to the Light also makes Sworn vulnerable to Sensitivity, with a base pool of 1 die. This
makes it possible for them to travel to the Dreamlands.

Sworn Character Creation

Sworn follow the rules for mortal character creation, though they are forbidden to take the Vice-Ridden
[CofD 46] Merit. They begin play with 1 dot in their Queen’s Invocation, and a total of 4 dots in Bequests, for free.

Leaving Court
Like a Noble, Sworn are allowed to return their oaths, if they discover another Queen is closer to their
ideals, or wish to withdraw from the Nobility’s fight. This is as psychologically difficult for the Sworn as it is
for the Hopeful; a Sworn who returns his oath reaches a breaking point, with a penalty equal to his dots in the
Queen’s Invocation. Once he’s left, he loses his Invocation dots and is refunded all Experiences he spent to buy
them (that is, 3 Experiences for each dot after the first.)

390 Loyal Knights: the Sworn

 Leaving the Queen’s service returns the former Sworn to the status of a mundane character. His pool of
Wisps and quiet Echo vanish, he can’t recognize, transform or use Bequests, and his Circle Merit ceases to work.
A faint flicker of the Light remains in his soul for a short time, which a Princess can re-ignite: if it’s used on him
before the end of the current session, Accept Fealty costs a Willpower point and a Wisp for each roll.

Small Advisors: Shikigami

In the years since the Release, when the Nobility Blossom often enough that a small high school may easily
have a nakama of three or four attending at once, it’s a common thing for the first Princess of a future nakama
to meet an unusual creature in the days before they Blossom - commonly an animal that’s clearly tame but
not obviously owned, and is more intelligent than other beasts of its kind. The creature will follow or lead the
Noble-to-be to a private place, where he speaks, introduces himself, warns her of the new world she is soon
to enter, and offers himself as a guide. In the loose network of the Hopeful community these magical teachers
and companions are named Shikigami. Once a Shikigami has arrived and befriended his first Noble, he usually
becomes something between a boon companion and a mentor to her, and to several other Hopeful in the area
who Blossom at about the same time; experienced Hopeful, indeed, have come to expect that, where a new
Shikigami appears, multiple Blossomings will soon follow.
As no one has heard of Shikigami appearing during the Long Night, the Nobility have every reason to be-
lieve that all Shikigami come from the Dreamlands. Many of them, indeed, were explicitly sent from the Dream-
lands, with a mission from a Radiant court to convene a new nakama and teach them what the Light’s servants
most need to know. Other Shikigami lived normally, for Dreamlanders, until they saw visions and portents that
showed them people in a distant land who needed them; when they followed the visions they found themselves
in the waking world, near the Hopeful the visions showed them. And there are some Shikigami who were made
that way by magic - a Princess in her full power journeyed to the Dreamlands, made a friend there, and used
a Charm to bring that friend into her waking life. All of these Dreamlanders, once they arrive in waking life,
anchor themselves to the animal or doll which they thenceforth animate, and vow themselves to one or several
Hopeful. There are a few Shikigami who say nothing of their origins, but no one seriously believes that they’re
anything but Dreamlanders.
All Shikigami can speak intelligibly, move about, and manipulate objects as dexterously as a human, even
if their vessels could not. (Stealth rolls may be required to do so in public without drawing attention.) They all
possess to some degree an oracular gift that grants flashes of insight relevant to their companions’ problems;
the ones who followed visions of their nakama are strongest in that gift. But the most significant ability of the
Shikigami is a subtle thing: merely by existing, he creates a strong mystical link among all of his nakama, through
which a Noble’s magic can travel.

Shikigami Traits
Shikigami are supernatural beings tied to the Light, and perceive the supernatural terrors in the World of
Darkness in the same way the Nobility do. They have Belief, not Integrity as a mundane character does. They
are also vulnerable to Sensitivity, with a base pool of 1 die, and have a full Echo like a Noble’s, with an effective
Inner Light of 1. Their quiet Echo reaches out to Sensory and Intimate sympathies.
A Shikigami’s bond with Nobles not only links him profoundly to them, but also draws them together. Every
person who has bonded with the Shikigami has an Intimate sympathetic link to him, and to every other person
to whom he is bound. This web of sympathy makes the Shikigami and his Hopeful a Dedicated organization.
As natives of the Dreamlands, Shikigami can return there whenever they wish, and serve as a guide for oth-
ers as well. They begin with a good impression for entering and navigating Crawlspace, like a Princess. More-
over, Shikigami can guide others into the Dreamlands as a Princess can, and if they do so for a Princess they’re
bound to, they can help her pick out a path. A Shikigami’s help makes the rolls to open Doors in Crawlspace
teamwork actions, with the Shikigami as a secondary actor.
Shikigami cannot remain on Earth for long unless they are bound to at least one Noble, or to a Nation. When
a Shikigami is not bound to anyone, he must roll Resolve + Composure each time he goes to sleep, with a -1
penalty for each time he’s made that roll before. If he fails that roll the Shikigami returns to the Dreamlands,
never to wake again; his vessel returns to the ordinary creature or object it used to be.

Small Advisors: Shikigami 391

 It’s possible for a Shikigami to become Sworn. If he is, a Shikigami has an additional option when buying a
Bequest: he may define the Bequest as an intrinsic ability. A “Bequest” of this type is part of the Shikigami; if it’s
permanent its effect always applies, and if it’s activated the Shikigami can use it at will.

Shikigami Character Creation

Shikigami follow the rules for mortal character creation. Not being human, they have a number of additional
traits and limitations.
• Shikigami begin play with Belief 7.
• Shikigami are normally quite small - small enough for a girl to carry in her arms - and thus physically
weak and frail. A Shikigami’s default Size is 2; unless he buys the Large Merit, Physical Attributes may not be
his primary category, and his Strength score cannot be more than 1. He also has the modifiers applying to
characters that have shrunk to Size 2 from the table in Size Changes, except those for Attributes.
• Shikigami are aware of the Light and the Darkness, and wherever either one has a strong presence they
will take notice. A Shikigami begins play with Unseen Sense (Light) and Unseen Sense (Darkness), generally
manifesting as a sensitive nose. (A Shikigami’s ability to sniff out Bequests does not let them use one - becom-
ing Sworn is required for that.) In addition, Shikigami begin play with 1 free dot in White Rabbits to represent
their oracular talents.
• Shikigami may spend their starting Merit dots on almost any Merit open to mundane characters, and a
few special Merits reserved for them. Shikigami are forbidden to take Vice-Ridden, Giant, Small-Framed and
any supernatural Merit except some which come from the Light. At present these are Royal Tongue, Taint
Awareness and White Rabbits. (A Sworn Shikigami may take Circle as human Sworn do.) Social Merits are
highly unusual for Shikigami, and Storytellers should require special justification to allow them at character
creation - after all, people in the World of Darkness tend to be suspicious and wary when they meet a talking
animal.
• Some Shikigami have a second, larger and stronger form for those occasions when physical violence
is necessary to protect their friends. Shikigami may buy transformed Attribute and Skill dots as Nobles do,
though they get none for free, and may take any of their Merits as form-limited, including the Merits reserved
to them. They may not break their trait caps. A Shikigami with a second form uses a transformation action to
reach it. He lacks a phylactery, so a dramatic failure instead inflicts the Stunned [CofD 286] Tilt.

Shikigami Merits
Shikigami use these Merits to define the advantages they gain from their small, nonhuman forms.

Claws and Teeth (• or ••)

Requires Shikigami; for ••, Size 3 or more
The Shikigami has claws, sharp teeth, or other innate weapons that can draw blood. His unarmed attacks
and Damage moves during a grapple do lethal damage. At 1 dot, the damage rating of these attacks is 0; at 2
dots it rises to 1.

Doll (•)
Requires Shikigami
The Shikigami is very small indeed - his Size is 1, and he has the non-Attribute modifiers of characters who
have shrunk to that Size. Doll and Large are not compatible.

Innocous (•)
Requires Shikigami

392 Small Advisors: Shikigami

 The Shikigami is very good at fading into the background, or passing as a normal animal. Perception rolls
to notice him take a -2 penalty.

Keen Sight, Hearing or Smell (•-•••)

Requires Shikigami
The Shikigami can perceive with one major sense significantly better than a normal human. Add the dots in
the Merit to all Perception rolls based on the relevant sense. The Merit also allows at least one feat of perception
impossible for humans, such as an ability to track by scent, pick out one conversation in a crowded room, or
recognize a face from the next city block.

Large (•-•••••)
Requires Shikigami
The Shikigami is larger than usual. Each dot in this Merit adds 1 to his Size, and applies the non-Attribute
modifiers of characters who have shrunk or grown to that Size. With any dots in the Merit, Physical Attributes
may be the primary category. At Size 3, Strength is capped at 3 dots; at Size 4 and 5 the cap rises to 5; at Size
6 and 7 the cap rises to 7.

Wings (•• or ••••)

Requires Shikigami
The Shikigami can fly. At 2 dots his Speed in the air is the same as it is on the ground; at 4 dots, he has +5
Speed when flying. While flying the Shikigami can’t get the leverage to exert his full strength; his Strength is
halved when rolled in a dice pool or for lifting and pushing objects.

The Gift of Unison

Some Shikigami are capable of becoming a symbiotic partner with a Light-touched human, temporarily
combining into a single being with powers that neither they nor their partners can reach alone. Shikigami with
this ability normally seek out Beacons to protect them from the Darkness, or rather to give them enough power
to protect themselves. Some have allied with Sworn, having met their partners through a strong Camaraderie.
And there are a few whose partners Blossomed under their care.
A Shikigami can take a version of the Unison Merit for humans called Gift of Unison, altered by the change of
viewpoint. When the partners fuse, the Shikigami’s player controls the human character, who is designed as a
Light-touched human with the same number of Experiences as the Shikigami, plus free transformed dots based
on the Merit dots and a pool of Wisps. If both partners happen to be PCs, the fused character uses the human’s
traits, and gains transformed dots worth twice the sum in Experiences of both the human’s Unison dots and
the Shikigami’s Gift of Unison dots. Charms and Invocation dots that depend on the fusion are capped by the
larger of the two Merits.
Shikigami can form bonds with more than one person at a time. The Storyteller may permit a Shikigami PC
to take Gift of Unison multiple times; each instance represents a different human partner.

Blessed Places
HERE MEN FROM THE PLANET EARTH FIRST SET FOOT UPON THE MOON
JULY 1969, A.D.
WE CAME IN PEACE FOR ALL MANKIND
The classroom of an inspirational teacher. A humble yet gifted artist’s studio. The best, hardest working
hospital in town and the underfunded free clinic opening against the odds in the most deprived area. A truly

Blessed Places 393

welcoming and tolerant church. The laboratory tirelessly working on the latest disease to evolve and the library
that preserves wisdom of ages gone by. These are the Blessed places, they stand on a legacy of the very best
of humanity.
Anyone touched by the Light - any Beacon, Sworn, Shikigami or Noble - feels her heart lift when she arrives
in a Blessed area, though she may not realize why. The Storyteller rolls a dice pool of her base Sensitivity + the
Beauty of the place; if the roll succeeds the character notices the Light-touched quality of the place she enters.
If something is close to diminishing its Beauty, the same sense tells the character that there are Shadows on the
place (on which, see below.)

Creating a Blessed Place

Blessed places are formed when attempts to improve the world are performed with true passion and great
skill. This can be as general as making something beautiful simply for the sake of beauty or as specific as helping
one single person. A single but extraordinary act can create a Blessed place all by itself while others are formed
by gradual accumulation. A Blessed Place has the following traits:

Size
The Size of a Blessed place is measured on the Sanctuary scale. It’s determined by the scale of the acts that
created it - roughly, the number of people directly affected by them. Blessed areas can grow larger, if deeds
inspired by those that made it are done close by.

Beauty
Rated from 1 to 5, and determined by the level of excellence demonstrated by the acts that created the
Blessed place. Their excellence may be aesthetic, intellectual or moral. The fame of the acts also influences Beau-
ty; spreading the tale of a great deed far and wide often makes the Blessed place formed by it stronger.
To determine a Blessed Place’s Beauty, find the class of the deed that made it in the table below. To deter-
mine its Size, estimate the number of people affected by it and consult the table.

Class of deed Beauty People or area affected Size

Minor: Creating beautiful art, original and useful research, successful hu- 0 One person 0
manitarian works
Significant: Creating a masterpiece, a discovery that shapes a discipline, 1 Neighborhood 1
risking death to save others
Multiple deeds accomplished over a long period +1 Small town 2
Deeds required overcoming personal demons +1 City 3
Deeds are accomplished at a great risk of ostracisation or social censure +1 State, small country 4
Deeds are accomplished at great risk of injury or death +1 Continent or world 5

Aspirations
A Blessed place has from one to three Aspirations, the types of deeds it inspires people to imitate. These
should be generally phrased, and reflect the people responsible for the place’s creation - an artist motivated by
his love of art? A scientist dedicated to discovery? A good Samaritan? It’s unusual for a Blessed place to have
more than one Aspiration, however great its Beauty; when it happens, it’s generally thanks to a complicated
history in which several people were doing very different things, which were nonetheless connected. A Blessed
place must have at least 3 Beauty to support two Aspirations, and 5 Beauty to support three.
While they remain within a Blessed area, any mundane characters treat its Aspirations as their own - they
gain a Beat if they fulfill one, their presence may add or open Doors in social maneuvers, and so on. Light-touched

394 Blessed Places

characters can do the same, while Dark creatures can’t benefit at all; other supernatural beings may be swayed,
at the Storyteller’s discretion. Since the Aspirations belong to the place, they don’t disappear when fulfilled - the
place never loses its power to inspire - though each character may fulfill each Aspiration only once a session.
Furthermore, any action taken within the bounds of a Blessed place that directly opposes the fulfilling of any
of its Aspirations takes a penalty equal to the place’s Beauty rating. Conversely, any action that directly furthers
one of the place’s Aspirations takes a bonus equal to its Beauty. This effect applies to all characters: mundane,
Dark, Light-touched, or other. Students feel inspired in the great artist’s workshop, while bratty children feel
guilty and hesitate in their boasts of one-upmanship within the tomb of past heroes.

Blessings
Some Blessed places go beyond inspiring their visitors; they actually create subtle supernatural effects. A
Blessed place may forgo one of its Aspirations to confer a Blessing on people of good will who enter it. Each
Blessing is a permanent environmental Tilt that affects all characters in the area, except creatures of Darkness
and the Tainted. These are a few Blessings that the Nobility have discovered:
Calm: Characters with good intentions feel calm, alert and confident in the Blessed area. Any character who
meditates in the Blessed area gains the Steadfast Condition [CofD 291], if they didn’t have it.
Defense: The Blessing turns aside violence. All characters gain +2 to their Defense.
Health: The Blessing aids recovery from wounds. All characters heal damage in half the usual time, if they
remain in the Blessed area.
Integrity: The Blessing protects from psychic stress. All characters gain +1 to breaking point rolls not
caused by their own actions.
Resistance: The Blessing suppresses hostile magic. When a character resists a supernatural power, add
+1 to the Attribute he uses.
Willpower: The Blessing bolsters the will to act. All characters gain one temporary Willpower dot while
in the Blessed area. Characters who have lost their souls [CofD 290] and Princesses who have fallen to Belief 0
have the Enervated and Thrall Conditions suppressed while they remain in the Blessed area; both Conditions
return in full when a soulless character leaves.

Moments of Grace
Beauty Time Needed Those who spend time in a Blessed place often find their thoughts turning to
things they could do to spread Light in the world. Any character (mundane or su-
1 3 sessions pernatural, it makes no odds) who remains in a Blessed place long enough may
2 2 sessions take a Vocation; a Princess may take one on top of the Vocation she already has.
Such a Vocation, once accepted, remains until the character fulfills it, or either gains
3 1 session
or loses a dot of Integrity (or the equivalent, for a supernatural being.) Vocations
4 3 scenes from Blessed places aren’t replaced when fulfilled or lost. The Vocations given by
5 1 scene a Blessed place match its Aspirations, or come as close as the character’s nature
allows.
The time a character must remain in a Blessed place until he may claim a Vocation from it depends on the
Beauty the place has. Leaving the Blessed area for a little while is fine, but if a character leaves the area for longer
than he’s spent in it, the clock resets and he has to start over.

Corrupting a Blessed Place

Every Blessed place is a treasure, and any nakama with knowledge of one is sure to do their best to protect
it. So what do they need to protect it from?
Taintings: Whenever an act generates Taint within a Blessed Place, the Blessed Place gains Shadows equal
to the Severity of the act. If the evil that has been done can be mended in some way (the murderer found and
brought to justice, for instance) before the end of the current story, then the Shadows dissipate; however, each

Blessed Places 395

Shadow left on a Blessed Place when a story ends reduces its Beauty by 1. If a Blessed place drops to 0 Beauty in
this way, it is immediately destroyed. Any excess Shadows are lost, the last remnants of Light at least preventing
a Tainted area from forming in its stead right away.
Symbolic Opposition: Every Blessed place has a cause, some beautiful thing people did that has left its
mark on the area. Actions which directly oppose this cause can make the beauty decay. Actions opposed to a
Blessed place’s Aspirations that nonetheless succeed may leave a Shadow on it, though only one Shadow can
form in this way during a story. Like Shadows from taintings, this Shadow will reduce the area’s Beauty unless
removed by the current story’s end.
Example: Harriet is a true artist whose only motivation is to make the world a better place
by creating things of beauty. Her dedication turns her studio into a small Blessed place. If her
studio passed on to another artist who saw art merely as a way to get money and prestige - going
against everything Harriet believed in then this could degrade and ultimately destroy the Beauty
of her studio.

Physical Destruction: The power of a Blessed place is held in its physical form. It is in the ancient
stonework of a university whose scholars have added to mankind as a whole. It is in the trees of a forest where
generations have found peace and strength. Destroying such things will damage a Blessed place. Every time the
physical form of a Blessed place undergoes massive changes, enough that it is no longer recognizable as the
same place, roll its Beauty. The number of successes on that roll becomes the new Beauty rating.

The Mystery of the Queens

One of the more difficult questions for any student of the Light is, quite simply, “What is a Queen?” and
“How does one become (or create) a Queen?”
The reason this is such a difficult question is, in part, because none of the Queens are reliable on this, by
their own admissions. Officially, the Radiant Queens died, and have spent millennia in the Dreamlands (and
thus their memories are unreliable), the Queen of Tears really doesn’t like talking about it (she doesn’t want
the competition, and she claims the memories are too painful, even for her), the Queen of Storms has just plain
forgotten almost all the details, and the Queen of Mirrors claims to be barred from speaking about it (talking
about whom or what is barring it is also forbidden, according to her). Unofficially, Mirrors has something strange
going on with her memories anyway, Storms is basically a living natural disaster, and Tears is ancient beyond
belief and probably at least half-mad from grief.
Some points are worth mentioning:
There appears to be no systematic way of becoming a Queen. Just as, other than certain trappings, there
is no one way to become a Hopeful, there probably is no one way to become a Queen; the stories of the Radiant
Queens’ Second Blossomings all differ (Clubs’ story, in particular, is notable in that she claims she didn’t realize
what she had become until is was pointed out to her by one of her followers). As mentioned above, none of the
Twilight Queens discuss their Second Blossomings in any detail, but what details are known all differ from each
other, and all of the Radiant Queens’ stories.
It is not entirely clear that all Queens are the same order of being. This is important when comparing
any of the Twilight Queens to each other or the Radiant Queens; even if they were once all like the Queen of
Tears claims to be, humans with extraordinary power, they may well not be that order of being now.
A Queen is tied into an Invocation. This is the clearest piece of information known, as there exists only
one Queen for each Invocation and one Invocation for each Queen, along with certain other evidence. But this
leaves a large number of questions: is a Queen the embodiment of the Invocation, or is she the most powerful
user of the Invocation, or "merely" the creator of a new Invocation? And those are just the obvious theories; the
Court of Diamonds has a least a dozen others, some of them blends of the above.
How powerful a Queen is is an open question. Throughout history, there has been speculation on the
strength of the Queens and what it might take to kill one. Much of it has been from young hotheaded Seraphim
who would have liked to have seen the head of the Queen of Tears on a stick, but the failure of anything to come
of such enthusiastic braggartry sets at least a minimum boundary upon the difficulty of such things. Since the

396 The Mystery of the Queens

Release, such speculation has only intensified as the Radiant ponder upon how to remove the terrible threat of
the Twilight Queens, but information is thin on the ground. The Radiant Queens do not respond well to questions
about “So, how powerful are you really?” at best providing an answer so cryptic it might as well be useless,
and rather more frequently taking it as a breach of protocol or - in the case of the Queen of Swords - an open
challenge for some sparring on the training courts. If any have been so foolish as to ask that of the Queens of
Tears or Storms, their bodies have never been found, and getting a straight answer out of Mirrors is about as
likely as getting one out of the Cat.
“A Queen lives her Invocation.” A subtle, important bit of lore, found across both all available Radiant and
Twilight sources. It means, in essence, that a Queen is constrained to act according to her Invocation; not doing
so appears to weaken either the Invocation or the Queen.
There might exist a possibility to take over the mantle of an existing Queenship. This is mainly im-
portant to the Radiant, since one possible goal is to free their Queens from the Dreamlands using such a method.
There are, theoretically, two versions of this possibility; one version holds that it is possible to become
one in some way with one of the Queens; the other (usually called the “Usurping Theory”) is that it is possible
to replace a Queen. It should be noted that the Usurping Theory does not necessarily require the Hopeful in
question to actually usurp the Throne (abdication is covered by it as well); it is only known as such due to the
influence of Alhambra, who have a significant degree of scholarship on the idea, mainly in order to dismiss it.
This scholarship exists primarily because of a persistent dark rumor about the Queen of Tears: It is claimed
by some of her detractors that once a century (or more), a powerful follower of the Queen vanishes without a
trace after being invited to see the Queen; but afterward the Queen looks younger, and her words and gestures
sometimes echo the vanished Noble. Needless to say, not only is this rumor Heresy in Alhambra, the people
spreading it are making claims well in excess of any actual evidence, and there are several obvious logical prob-
lems inherent in the rumors (for one, how would anybody be around long enough to notice?). Even if it were
true, the Queen of Tears might be using them for something else (a secret suicide mission, say) and the echoes
are merely the Queen’s way of honoring the sacrifice.
Note that these possibilities are largely theoretical, as there exists no reliable evidence that anything of
the sort has ever happened. The Radiant Queens in the Dreamlands have never entertained the idea of abdica-
tion, chiefly because during the Long Night no member of their courts ever rose to the point where they could
plausibly succeed to royal honors. The Queen of Mirrors seeks an heir to the Kingdom’s crown, not to her own.
There exists no proof that the rumors about Tears are anything other than just that. And the Seraphic General’s
dedicated followers claim to hear the voices of their predecessors crying in the winds of her Storm, or booming
in the thunders of her perpetual war; it’s a common belief among the Furies that if they die fighting the Dark-
ness they join the Storm, become the Storm, live forever as the Storm. However, the Seraphic General is a living
natural disaster, so any normal rules may not apply to her, and the extent to which she actually absorbs her
followers, rather than just echoes of their sacrifices, is ambiguous.

Queens in Play
So much for what a Princess could be expected to know about Queens in character; this section covers out-
of-character considerations.
What does it mean to be a Queen? How powerful is a Queen? These are questions that keep Hopeful philoso-
phers up at night, wondering about the War against the Darkness and if, perhaps, actually getting the Queens to
be more than just advisors and figureheads would allow the Nobility to strike a telling blow against the Darkness
and start the slow reclamation of this World of Darkness and turn it into a World of Light.
The problem is that getting the level of power of the Queens right is hard, as it needs to be able to fit in
all campaigns, which means that we as authors cannot make them too powerful, as that would make players
and Storytellers both wonder why they aren’t taking a more direct interest; but we can’t make them too weak
either, as then the question becomes “why do we even follow them?” And on top of that, we want to make a Royal
Coronation at least plausible as a worthy end goal of a campaign, which adds another level to the balancing act
of making sure that an active Queen walking upon the Earth does not break the setting, but she should also not
be less able to make a difference than a Princess.
As such, one should take what follows with a pinch of salt. Or a truckload.

The Mystery of the Queens 397

Royal Lifespan
Ah, the Queens, how great and powerful they are. However, given the rather long time between the Fall of
the Kingdom and the Release, what, exactly, is the life expectancy of the Queens themselves? There are a few
options.
1. Queens are Eternal, that is, after their Coronation they cannot die of natural causes and even severe or
fatal injuries won’t bother them long. At worst they need to reincarnate so that they can retake their throne
after they Blossom.
2. Queens are Ageless, they can die, but it won’t be of old age.
3. The Office and the Throne are Eternal, but the Queen is not, and as such all the Queens have been re-
placed, possibly multiple times throughout the years. Whether replacement happened after the death of the
current Queen or she abdicated is left as an exercise for the ST to determine, as is how old a Queen can get.
4. Something really weird is going on in this Darkened World and however Queens are supposed to work
under normal circumstances does not apply. This is the default assumption of the game, with a sidenote of
“and it doesn’t matter really.”
Given that 5 of the current known Queens are Dreamland entities of some kind, Storms is a self aware storm
system/thing, Tears has from all appearances been the same woman since the Fall of the Kingdom however long
ago and not left her palace and no one has a clue as to what is up with the Queen of Mirrors, this point of view
is easy enough to work with. Unless you want to have the Queens take center stage, but that is not really what
the game is about; they are there to provide advice or act as mission control, not as fire support.

Royal Relations
The Queens: Great, Powerful, Endless and Ageless. Makes you wonder how they remain sane and in touch
with (their) humanity under such pressure with the Darkness ever further encroaching upon the world. Well,
the answer is different for every Queen really, with the Radiant Queens often leaning upon the Nobility them-
selves even as the Nobility calls upon their knowledge, their wisdom and their experience in the fight against
the Darkness. How the Twilight Queens do it is unknown, although the question is most likely merely academic
with the Queen of Storms.

Crown Lands
Alhambra, Danann, Wen-Mung, Andarta; all places strongly associated with the Queens, yet, what defines
a Queen’s lands, where is it that their authority reaches?
Well, one could say that a Queen is her Lands, certainly, and with the Queen of Storms this is very literal,
while the Queen of Tears is very much part of the fabric of Alhambra, or at least Alhambran society. Likewise
do the Radiant Queens hold great power over their own realms in the Dreamlands; but when the Queen of
Diamonds gestures and a floating palace of clockwork ice rises above her lands, is that her Light-born magic, her
mastery over the territory she controls, or the inherent tendency of the Dreamlands to adapt to its residents?
Even she doesn’t know for sure.
In the end, one might say that a Queen is her Nation, and that a Nation rises and grows more powerful as the
Queen does, and grows more able to attend the Nation properly. In what way this feeds back into more, direct
power for the Queen is unknown. Most likely, it’s nothing at all. It just means that she has a lot of people to back
her up in her quest to make a better tomorrow.

The Power of a Queen

Well, that is all nicely put, but that still doesn’t answer your question of “how powerful is a Queen?”
Honestly, that’s deliberate. Giving direct stats of a Queen turns them from plot points into objectives. Of
the “and then we killed the Queen of (*)” kind, which we want to avoid. And yet people want to know how a
Queen relates to her Invocation, and what powers she may call upon when defending herself and her subjects,
as it becomes kind of important if you want to end the game with one of the PCs having become a Queen, or not
have the player of the new Queen have to make a new character as there is no way to play a Queen.

398 The Mystery of the Queens

 We’re simply not going to give you more than a few guidelines. Even if you decide Queens can die, a Queen
is very powerful, and anything short of a highly experienced Nakama is only going to make her laugh, rather
than be a credible threat. A Queen’s power is also strongly related to her Invocation, and building her powerset
to fit the philosophy of the Invocation itself would be a good idea. The setting breaking powers shown in the
back stories of some of the Queens are probably best handled as major pieces of the plot instead of Charms.
After all, there is nothing that says that all Princess magic needs to be Charms-based, and the Nobility is very
young besides, with much knowledge lost.
Finally, there are a few things that the Queens themselves are definitely unable to do. They cannot raise
anyone long dead, they cannot reverse the Kingdom’s fall (Tears and Mirrors would’ve done both if they could),
and none of them can fight the Darkness on their own. If they want to fight the Darkness and win in a way that
will stick, they have to work through others, chiefly their Princesses. Perhaps that’s the greatest tragedy of the
Queens, as none of them, not even the Queen of Tears, can any longer make a personal impact upon the world
and mend its ills, inspire its people and defend it from that which would harm it.

The Mystery of the Queens 399

400
 Appendix A: Embassies
There are many strange things in the World of Darkness that, as they are now, pose threats to the human
race, and yet are not, by their own natures, tools of the Darkness. For the sake of peace, some of the Nobility
constitute themselves as diplomats to one of these foreigners, bending their magic into a nonhuman form in
hopes they will bend in turn. Those who do this have joined an Embassy.
Embassies are essentially efforts to humanize or redeem a concept, or at least make it less hostile to hu-
manity. Some of them permit easy access to other realms, as with Death, Ephemera and Ocean; others make it
easy to deal with unusual creatures as peers, as with Arcane and Machine. Then there are Embassies like For-
tune, that open relations with a preternatural power …
When a Princess first joins an Embassy, she becomes a Secretary. She must have an Inner Light of 2, and
usually must also have a specific dice pool (Attribute + Skill) of 5 or more while transformed. A Secretary typ-
ically gains three powers:
• A personal power related to the Embassy’s domain, that the Secretary can use at any time, even in mun-
dane form;
• A change in her transformed state, or access to a new transformation, that permits interaction with the
Embassy’s domain;
• The ability to spend Wisps to give other people a part of the Secretary’s freedom in the Embassy’s domain.
Reaching Inner Light 4, and 7 in the Embassy’s dice pool, qualifies a Secretary to advance to the rank of
Consul. This usually grants two powers:
• A new, greater personal power related to the Embassy’s domain, or a further change in the transformed
state;
• An extension of the freedom the Consul could extend to others as a Secretary, or a second such freedom.
Finally, a Consul with Inner Light 6, and 9 in the Embassy’s dice pool, rises to the rank of Ambassador.
Becoming a full Ambassador invariably reshapes a Princess’ magic in a significant way - a great change in her
transformed state, the power to command the Embassy’s domain, and a beneficial alteration to her Charms are
all possible. However this is a fundamental change to her magic and always comes with some sort of drawback.
A Princess joins an Embassy by accepting a fragment of its domain into her magic. Every Embassy, there-
fore, marks its members’ transformations in some way. For most Embassies, as already noted, the marks are
linked to one of the powers the Embassy gives; but even when a link is absent, the Princess’ transformed state
will always reveal her status. (When designing a new Embassy, note how the transformations of a Secretary,
Consul and Ambassador alter to reflect their offices and privileges.) An Embassy also marks its members’ psy-
ches, which are expressed in new habits, attitudes and tastes; attraction to the Embassy’s domain, or a resem-
blance to examples of it, are typical.

Embassies in the Dreamlands

One advantage to joining an Embassy is swift travel in the Dreamlands. In all domains that have a strong
connection to an Embassy, an actual embassy building appears. Fully staffed with Dreamlanders - though usually
only a Chorus - who attend diplomatic conferences, socialize with high society and try to persuade political
figures.
Any Princess who belongs to an Embassy is welcome at any of its embassy buildings. The staff treat her as
appropriate for her position; only for the Chorus to forget her when she heads on her way. The staff will gladly
provide her with information, office space and things of that nature. Depending on if she’s a Secretary, Consul
or an Ambassador they might give her orders or obey her orders. Most of this is quite pointless; the real benefit
is that a Princess can look up the details of every embassy building run by her Embassy in the files, and can use
a Crawlspace to travel to any of them as easily as she does to her Queen.
Princesses cannot go further than the public parts of an embassy building unless they are a member of that
Embassy. The Dreamlanders will make an exception if a Princesses who is a member of the Embassy vouches

401
for her, however this is not without drawbacks. The embassy buildings are not just part of the Dreamlands;
joining an Embassy is a change to a Princess’ magic and something of this seeps into the structure of an embassy
building. Upon entering an unrelated Embassy a Princess must roll Stamina + Resolve, on a failure she gets
a headache that lasts for around an hour, and inflicts a -1 to all Mental actions. If Princess is a member of an
Embassy with a particularly incompatible concept this rises to -2.

Protectorates
The Queen of Tears claims absolute sovereignty over all but this is rather a big task for one woman, no
matter how mighty. To facilitate her dominion she has divided her claim into numerous protectorates and ap-
pointed Regents and Governors to execute her will. All Protectorates are named after a mineral, not after the
concept they govern.
Protectorates are the Alhambran equivalent of an Embassy, though the culture of a Protectorate is very dif-
ferent. The Privileges are either based around achieving dominion, or assume the Protector already has domin-
ion. The three ranks – Secretary, Governor, Regent – are just that: ranks in the protectorate’s chain of command.
Culture aside the difference between a Protectorate and an Embassy is simple: there is no difference. Once you
peel away the superficial cultural differences Protectorates and Embassies are entirely the same thing.
By policy each Protectorate forms one hierarchy per location where it is active. Each hierarchy has one
supreme leader, either a Governor or a Regent, and only one member of that rank may be stationed within that
region. In Alhambra the Queen serves as the de-facto Regent for all Protectorates, though there’s usually at least
one actual Regent around under a legal fiction that she’s merely a Governor (with the appropriate position in
the hierarchy) or spending most of her time on leave but “willing to lend a hand”. Secretaries are forbidden to
operate outside an established region though if their job is temporary they may be permitted to do so under the
governance of another region, usually Alhambra itself.
The Court of Tears has a unique advantage in its Protectorates. In the many centuries Alhambra spent short
of Enlightened manpower they developed a powerful Charm that can promote a Sworn to the rank of Secretary.
The Sworn must meet all the usual requirements for the Protectorate except for Inner Light; instead they must
possess three dots in Lacrima. Most Secretaries are Sworn, in fact it’s rare for a Princess to be invited until she
qualifies to become a Governor. Sworn spend a point of Willpower to unlock Secretary Privileges that normally
apply to the Transformed state for a scene. In theory this Charm could be used by the Radiant, but it is rightly
considered an invaluable strategic asset and the court of Tears goes to great lengths to protect their advantage
from their foes. The Charm was intentionally created to require Lacrima. Even understanding of the Charm is
strictly limited, instead each Protectorate typically has one Bequest capable of admitting Sworn to its ranks that
is kept under the tightest security available.

402 Protectorates
 Embassy to the Arcane
Alternative Titles: The Sorcerer’s Embassy, the Order of the Witch-Finders
Informal Name: Spooks, Sparkles, Magi (usually only by those who haven’t met a real Mage)
Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, because they are subtle and quick to anger … Of
course, I’m very, very good at not being caught.

The power of the Light, with its Charms and its Transformations, and the corrupting power of the Darkness
which degrades all that it touches, are not the only unseen forces on the Earth. The arcane and the sorcerous are
all around you, if only you know where, and, perhaps more importantly, how to look. A middle-aged housewife
carries out small rituals on her kitchen table, her manipulations of luck allowing her children to get scholarships
for the fancy private school down the street. A coven meets out in the woods round the back of town, and when
they do so, pets from all around the place go missing. The gang round the back isn’t harassing the locals anymore;
no, someone new has taken them over, and they’re being trained in service to the Army of the Dragon, militant
sorcerers and sorceresses who believe that Existence is War. And in the high-rise skyscraper in the middle of
town, rich, intelligent and prosperous men and women meet, and have a pleasant dinner together. Over coffee,
they discuss the will of the immortal, once-human sorcerer-kings who they claim rule the world, and, through
dreams and portents, make their will known to their servants upon the Earth.
Yes, magic is indeed everywhere.
But it isn’t right, many Princesses say. It is far too easily used for control, for abuse of others, to subjugate
another’s will in pursuit of some distant goal, such as rebuilding an ancient tyrannical city which should best
remain forgotten. And yet it has such potential. Much as they are loathe to admit it, there are things that sorcerers
can do that the Hopeful cannot, thought it varies for witch to witch, and many (perhaps the majority) are not
capable of anything more than cantrips. And, among the things that haunt the shadows of the World of Darkness,
the mages and witches are the most human, and the most akin to the Hopeful and the Sworn. They’re all humans,
able to touch forces that others cannot, after all. Some of the more optimistic among the Embassy predict that the
Arcane shall be the first of the Embassies to complete its task and bring the sorcerers and ritualists into contact
with the Light, redeeming them to their original purpose. Of course, pessimists might point out the worrying
attrition rate among the Spooks, where more active members have a worryingly high “accident” rate, let alone
the fact that Ambassadors have been used by witches before to gain access to the Dreamlands.
But that’s one of the assets of the Embassy. If there’s one thing that unites all the men and women and
creatures that come under the auspices of the Arcane, it’s that they know things. Often things that they should-
n’t, true, but when the paucity of Princesses, pre-Release is taken into account, the fact that Ambassadors have
managed to obtain information about the hidden world prior to the Release has aided the cause of the Light.
And many mages have good intentions, even if they’re flawed by their hubris. When an Ambassador truly suc-
ceeds in her job, and the sorcerer-folk join with the Hopeful to cleanse an area of the Darkness, or ward off the
abominations of the Nothingness they call the Abyss, the results can be truly glorious.

Marks and Requirements

It is very hard indeed to predict what the individual effects on a Princess’ Regalia from her membership of
the Embassy of the Arcane will be. Of all the Embassies, Spooks vary the most; perhaps natural, given how much
their subject matter differs, from one witch to another. There are, however, themes. The Regalia shifts, to become
more complex, and often more layered; where once there was a simple skirt, now a complex array of fabric
obscures her legs. Veils often make a major component, obscuring the features of the Ambassador and wafting
around them, making them appear as if surrounded by fog. Sometimes, on the higher-ranking Ambassadors,
complex script appears on their clothes, in woven gold and silver and flowing mercury. This isn’t the cheap
symbolism of a party wizard’s costume; it is rich, and elaborate, and (for the Ambassador) hovers right at the
edge of understanding, like the script that covers the Wall in the Dreamlands.
Secret knowledge and deep understanding lead Princesses to the Arcane. The required Attribute for the
Embassy is Intelligence, and the required Skill is Occult.

Embassy to the Arcane 403

Secretary Privileges
Sight of the Sorcerer
The Secretary gains an Unseen Sense [CofD 60] that reacts to the use of Arcane magic, and to any being
capable of using such magic. For these purposes, Arcane is defined as magic that is or may be activated by
rituals, regardless of source. (E.g. vampiric blood sorceries, the Benedictions taught by the Malleus Maleficarum,
thaumaturgy, most spells of Awakened mages.) It does not include powers which are normally activated in a
single turn or less, and it responds only while the ritual is in progress. The sense manifests in a way unique to the
Secretary (it may be cold shivers down her spine, or all the hair on her arms standing up.) She is sensitive to the
proximity of Arcane magicians even if they don’t cast a spell in her presence, and even if they aren’t supernatural
beings but gained their power through study alone.
As with the Merit, the Secretary can identify or locate the magician that triggered her Unseen Sense, as long
as that magician is not currently under a form of supernatural concealment. She can do so either by accepting
the Spooked Condition or by spending a Wisp. Unlike the Merit, she can pinpoint ritual magicians whenever
she detects them, though she can’t take Spooked if she already has it. Moreover, the first time the Secretary
pinpoints a character as an Arcane magician in this way, she may roll Wits + Occult to get a general idea of the
rituals the magician normally performs. If the roll succeeds, the Storyteller should supply information on the
source of the magician’s power, the price he pays to use it, or the effects he most often creates with it; and if the
Secretary has met other magicians of the same tradition she identifies his tradition as the same as theirs.

Arcane Shield
Those who inquire into secrets often find that they can bite, so a Secretary must be able to protect herself …
from anything. When she is transformed, the Secretary knows immediately when she is the target of an Arcane
ritual, and all such rituals take a penalty to their dice pool equal to her Sensitivity. This penalty stacks with the
penalty for resisted actions and with any other modifiers to the magician’s roll.

Gift of Knowledge
By spending a Wisp when transformed, the Secretary can give to another person an Unseen Sense identical
to her own, lasting for the rest of the scene.

Consul Privileges
Like Attracts Like
The sorceries of the magi and the witches are not from the Light, but they can still be useful. The Consul’s
Unseen Sense now reacts to the lingering influence of Arcane rites; as long as the effects of an Arcane power
persist, the Consul will know they exist, and can locate their source or extent. (Supernatural concealment is an
exception; the Consul’s Unseen Sense does not respond to such powers.)
This includes objects that have been magically empowered; moreover, once the Consul has found such an
item, she may study it to divine the magic’s intended function, and the method of activating it. She makes an
extended Inner Light + Occult roll, using 30 minutes per roll and a threshold of 3 times the cost of the object
in Merit dots (the ST sets a threshold for items without a known Merit rating.) On reaching the threshold, the
Consul learns how to activate the object’s power, and what it will do if she does so.

Arcane Bastion
While she is transformed, the Consul may spend 1 Wisp to give another person whom she can touch the
protection of her Arcane Shield. Any Arcane power aimed at that person takes a penalty to the dice pool equal
to the Consul’s Sensitivity, just as it would if aimed at her.

404 Embassy to the Arcane

Ambassador Privilege
The Magic Within Man
The secrets and techniques of the sorcerers and magi are laid bare before the Ambassador to the Arcane, for
there is magic within humanity beyond the Transformation, and it is now within the reach of the Ambassador.
When she is a witness to an Arcane ritual, the Ambassador may learn to adapt that ritual into a form that she
can use herself. Studying an Arcane effect for this purpose is an extended Intelligence + Occult action with a
threshold equal to the one the ritualist must reach to successfully complete the rite. The Ambassador rolls once
for each roll the ritualist makes while she watches a ritual in process, but learns nothing if the ritual fails. She
must be personally present at a ritual to learn from watching it.
After successfully learning a ritual, the Ambassador can duplicate it herself at any time with an extended
Inner Light roll with the same threshold as the original. She rolls once every 30 minutes (even if the original
ritualist worked more quickly than that.) If the ritual called for specific equipment, sacrificial items, Willpower
points or lost dots from the ritualist’s traits, the Ambassador must use the same equipment and pay the same
price. She may, however, substitute Wisps in equal numbers for a supernatural being’s fuel points. The Ambas-
sador may learn a number of rituals up to half her Inner Light, rounded down; if she has reached that limit and
wishes to study another ritual, she must forget a ritual she learned before.
Drawback: Keeping the structure of an Arcane ritual in her head in enough detail to replicate it with her
own powers impairs the Ambassador’s ability to concentrate on other matters. For each ritual she has studied
and can duplicate, the Ambassador takes a -1 penalty to her Intelligence and Wits dice pools. She may deliber-
ately forget rituals and reduce this penalty at any time.

Embassy to the Arcane 405

 Embassy to Death
Informal Name: Reapers
Death is an end. But it is not the end.

Long ago, the nature of death was different. Before the Cataclysm, death was merely another step on a
greater journey. The grief of losing a loved one was leavened with the knowledge that they were in a good hands,
safe hands. And when death took you suddenly, you could always linger for a little while to say goodbye. This is
no longer the case. Death is common, sudden, and often painful. Death’s old air of solemn, bittersweet tranquility
has been replaced with bereaved grief and fury at an unjust or senseless death. Ghosthood, once a way for the
departed to set their affairs and say goodbye, has become a torturous trap for wounded souls.
The Reapers try to ease the transition from life to death. Ambassadors to Death and the dead, they comfort
both the dying and those who survive them. They both honor the souls of the departed and appease the ghosts
that linger. When Death is wrongfully called down, denied, or shunted onto another, the Reapers approach to
reconcile the imbalance. All Reapers hope that one day, humanity looks upon death not in fear or desperate
denial, but with peaceful, solemn acceptance.

Marks and Requirements

Reapers have a connection to death. Many of them have felt the pain of losing a friend or loved one, and
even those who haven’t lost anyone personally have suffered vicariously through the loss of a patient. They often
seem old or unusually mature for their age. Reapers tend to be calm and tranquil types, often comforting others
with a soft, quiet kindness. However, some are energetic and rambunctious, living life to the fullest while the
Kindly Boatman waits in the background. Either way, the key Attribute for the Reapers is Resolve, and the key
Skill is Empathy.
The Regalia of the Reapers often bears the trappings of death. Many dress in colors associated with death
such as dark grey or black in the west, or white in the east. Many take on a mythical symbolism. Some appear as
kindly reapers in long black robes, others resemble compassionate angels of death with grey-feathered wings.
(Despite his inhuman nature, the kind, solemn manner of DEATH from the Discworld is a good example of how
a Reaper might act.)

Secretary Privileges
Still Masque
Few things ever seem to faze one who entreats beyond the mortal coil. In situations where she is being
directly threatened with violence or death, or in any scene where a mortal dies, the Secretary gains a “phantom”
dot of Composure. It counts as a normal dot for dice pools, resistance, and all derived Attributes, including
Initiative and Willpower dots, though she does not gain a point of Willpower in these circumstances.
Further, she can draw strength from facing her own demise; if she takes at least 3 points of lethal damage in
a single attack, that counts as having fulfilled her Vice. If she begins to bleed out from lethal damage, that counts
as having fulfilled her Virtue. Note that the usual rules for how frequently Vices and Virtues can be fulfilled still
apply.

Envoy to the Departed

While transformed, a Secretary can see and speak with ghosts (even if they don’t share a language), and
interact with them as if they were solid. Being solid to ghosts allows the Secretary to attack or use Charms on
them (and them to attack her;) all of her regalia, including weapons and armor, is as solid to ghosts as she is. She
can also recognize Manifestation Conditions related to a ghost, a ghost’s Anchor or an Avernian Gate [CofD 136].

406 Embassy to Death

 The Secretary can also see, touch and manipulate objects made of ghostly ephemera and anything that was
originally material that is changed to that state by a supernatural power. She cannot, however, see or touch
other ephemeral beings currently in Twilight.

Clothing the Dead

Once per scene, the Secretary can spill ectoplasm out of her nose and mouth. Ectoplasm is a white, some-
what sticky film in which ghosts can manifest easily, and it can be shaped into a glossy surface that reflects
images of nearby ghosts in Twilight that anyone can see. She spends 1 Wisp and rolls Empathy + Inner Light.
With 1 success she produces enough ectoplasm to form 1 handheld mirror; 5 successes is enough for a full-
length mirror. Coating an object or structure in ectoplasm gives it the Open Condition for all ghosts [CofD 134],
allowing them to manifest through it. The ectoplasm and the Open Condition last for 1 scene.

Consul Privileges
Avernian Key
The Consul’s bond with death allows her to walk into the Underworld freely. She can open an Avernian
gateway [CofD 136] without using its key, creating the Underworld Gate Condition; she need only touch the
gateway and spend 2 Wisps. The gateway remains open for minutes equal to her Belief, and anyone may pass
through it … in either direction.

Euthanasia
Pain is felt only by the living. By touching a person (herself or another) and spending 1 Wisp, a Consul can
bring down a tiny touch of death onto that person, enough to utterly wipe away all pain; this gives the target
the Numbed Tilt. While this power is often used to soothe the suffering of the dying, it is just as often used to
allow an ally or oneself to ignore the pain of grievous wounds.

Ambassador Privilege
Flesh without Substance
An Ambassador to Death may throw off the bounds of solidity that hold her body in the world of flesh,
and walk, as immaterial as a shadow, in the grey world that exists just beyond the visible. As a reflexive action,
the Ambassador may spend 2 Wisps, or 1 lethal damage (the damage manifests in a form appropriate to her
Threshold, if Geist: the Sin-Eaters is being used), and enter the state of Twilight. To leave the state of Twilight,
and return to the material, she performs the same reflexive action. To those who see this change in state happen,
the Princess either falls apart in a shower of grave-dust and fog, or pulls herself together from the thin air, dust-
motes building a new body from the air in a sudden blur of motion. While in the state of Twilight, the Ambassador
counts as a ghost, for the purposes of magic which detect, harm, ward against, or permit interaction with ghosts,
though explicitly not ones which would bind or summon them. She can also be abjured as ghosts are [CofD 140];
successful abjuration forces her to avoid the exorcist or materialize.
Note that, as the ability is reflexive, it may potentially be activated multiple times in a single turn, permitting
the character to “phase in”, attack, and return to Twilight, without giving an enemy a chance to attack.
Drawback: The Privilege drains the solidity and vitality of the Ambassador in a less concrete sense. Each
time the ability is used, whether to enter or leave Twilight, the Ambassador suffers a cumulative -1 to all physical
and social actions for the rest of the scene. Moreover, Twilight is often not a happy place; some might say that
being solid to the denizens of that state of existence is flaw enough in its own right.

Embassy to Death 407

 Embassy to the Dreamlands
Alternative Name: The Lords and Ladies of Sleep
Informal Names: Daydreamers, Somninauts, Terriers,
The Resistance (defunct), Heralds of the Rooster (defunct)
We live two lives, in two worlds. Each is missing something we dearly need. Our task is to
bring them together, to build something new, something whole and complete.

For centuries the Dreamlands has kept the souls of the Kingdom imprisoned but not all souls touched by
the Light were from the Kingdom. A rare few souls Blossomed without any help from a past life during the Long
Night. Most were alone and without guidance but a rare few found a tradition left to them by their forebears:
the Embassy to the Dreamlands. It was recorded in books Charmed to find their way into the hands of another
Princess. Within was a simple mission: Learn about the Dreamlands, find a way to free the souls trapped within.
The efforts of the Embassy amounted to naught when the moon landing beat them to the Release but
the story only begins. The Dreamlands remains a source of hope, power and danger to the Enlightened. New
Princesses flock to the Banner of the Daydreamers, eager to explore the new world that waits for them in their
dreams. Though the Release was not a silver bullet for all the world’s ills the Daydreamers still see it as a chance
to heal the world. To hear them say it, Earth has reality but is short on hope. The Dreamlands is full of hope
but lacks reality. By becoming a bridge between dream and reality the Daydreamers hope to forge something
shining and new, the best of both worlds.

Marks and Requirements

The Embassy to the Dreamlands has one of the odder styles of Regalia. They are sleepers and dreamers but
they are also explorers searching for new horizons in the Dreamlands. Their Regalia draws from both, adorning
the Daydreamer in a clashing contrast of exploration gear and pyjamas. As though they were woken up in the
middle of the night and told they had five minutes to grab what they needed for an expedition and get out. Thick
hiking boots are worn below a nightdress. Torches and climbing gear hang from a dressing gown belt. A pith
helmet and sturdy backpack are combined with flannel pyjamas. Even their bodies shift becoming rugged and
built for tough outdoor conditions yet also soft and dreamy in movement with a faraway look in half closed or
entirely shut eyes, no matter how awake and perceptive the Princess really is.
Most Somninauts are Seekers. Many follow the Queen of Diamonds. They seek to study and understand the
Dreamlands itself or they believe that the Dreamlands offers a fresh perspective that can lead to new discoveries
in other fields such as sociology or the history of the Enlightened. Followers of the Queen of Clubs are also well
represented. The Wilds are often drawn to experience the world and no one – certainly not their Queen – said
the world ends at the physical. Yet the most common court of all is the followers of the Queen of Mirrors. Before
the release Onceborn Lightbringers often felt that freeing the Enlightened souls from the Dreamlands was a
simple one step solution to fixing the world (and being crowned True Heir and savior of course). Even now that
it has been proven that things are not that simple many Brats still find that they prefer life in the Dreamlands,
where their greatness is fully appreciated and honored.
The Attribute and Skill of the Daydreamers are those used to navigate the Dreamlands: Wits and Empathy.

Secretary Privileges
The long history of the Embassy has left records of several heroes and heroines. To pay tribute to their
forebears’ memories the Lords and Ladies of Sleep have named the Embassy’s Privileges in their honor.

Alice’s Daydream
The Secretary can instantly find a Crawlspace entrance anywhere she wishes. She need only spend 1 Wisp
to give herself a perfect impression for the maneuver to reach the Dreamlands. If some magical barrier blocks

408 Embassy to the Dreamlands

access to the Dreamlands by making the impression level worse, the Secretary’s impression starts at perfect
before the barrier’s effect applies, and any Conditions which improve the impression level also take effect. Sim-
ilarly, when in the Dreamlands she may spend 1 Wisp for a perfect impression to summon her exit.
As a consequence of this, the Secretary can go to sleep at any time, and trying to keep her awake with loud
music, uncomfortable conditions or even physical pain is futile. Supernatural powers can force her to remain
awake, but the Secretary’s attempt to open her Crawlspace triggers a Clash of Wills, in which her dice pool is
Resolve + Inner Light.

Christopher’s Lives
Most people must sleep to reach the Dreamlands, but a Lady of Sleep need only daydream, allowing her
to act in both worlds. When she stands at her Crawlspace exit, on the edge between dream and waking, the
Secretary may spend a point of Willpower to divide herself in two, sending her transformed identity into the
Dreamlands while the mundane awakens. The identity in the Dreamlands is in Dream Form, and the identity in
waking life uses her normal traits, but both identities share one pool of Wisps and one of Willpower points.
As the Secretary’s mind is split between the worlds, she can act independently and simultaneously in both,
but can’t concentrate fully on either. She takes a -1 penalty on all Wits- or Composure-based dice pools, and a -2
penalty to her Initiative during combat. Also, she looks like she’s daydreaming or half-asleep, which can cause
social difficulties.
While the two identities are separated, neither one can transform into the other. As a result using this
Privilege will sustain the Secretary’s transformation in Dream Form indefinitely, with no need to roll - though at
the moment her physical body does sleep, the two identities come together again, ending the Privilege’s effect.
Her awareness travels instantly to the dreaming identity, bypassing Crawlspace entirely. The Privilege also ends
if the dreaming identity returns through her Crawlspace exit. However, the Secretary must end the Privilege by
one of these means if she needs to transform in the waking world.

Lucy’s Wardrobe
By touching another person and spending a Wisp, a Secretary can show them a Crawlspace entrance; it is
up to the target if they wish to go through. The effect is the same as getting one success on a roll to guide the
target to an entrance; one Door opens for him automatically, and his impression is the same as the Secretary’s.
The Secretary may use Alice’s Daydream at the same time as Lucy’s Wardrobe to give herself and the target a
perfect impression, if she didn’t have one already.
If a target chooses not to enter the Dreamlands they remain awake, so this Privilege cannot be used to send
enemies to sleep in the middle of a fight.
The Privilege doesn’t give the target any ability to find Crawlspaces without help, so unless the target natu-
rally has that ability or finds a Princess in the Dreamlands willing to lead them back they could easily be trapped.
Crawlspaces leading to the Dreamlands function as normal. Crawlspaces leading to Earth return the target to
their sleeping body; when the target is a Dreamlander it will lead to the vicinity of the Secretary’s sleeping body.
For people lacking the power to enter the Dreamlands, Crawlspaces created by Lucy’s Wardrobe remain for
the remainder of the scene. Those who have that power treat the Privilege’s entrances as they do the entrances
they find for themselves.

Consul Privileges
Dorothy’s Farmhouse
As the Daydreamer’s connection between both worlds grows, she can use her connection to her sleeping
body and the walking world as an anchor to protect herself from being blown away by the Gales. The Gales’ dice
pool to mark her is penalized by her Resolve.

Embassy to the Dreamlands 409

Calvin’s Tiger
With her growing connection to the Dreamlands a Consul can call nearly anything from beyond the wall
of sleep, bring it to the real world and turn it into something real and tangible. When a Consul is transformed,
needs a special tool and doesn’t have it or anything like it, she may roll Inner Light + Wits. Success draws upon
her connection to the raw stuff of the Dreamlands to create a piece of equipment well-suited for the task she
currently faces. She may then hold or touch a real object of roughly the right size and shape, concentrate for a
full turn (losing her Defense, if in combat), and spend 2 Wisps to transform the object into a useful tool. The
transformed tool has an equipment bonus equal to her successes - 1 and must function identically to a piece
of mundane equipment, though it may have an odd appearances or unusual operating principles. The transfor-
mation lasts for the rest of the scene, after which the object returns to its original shape. The Consul may use
this Privilege a number of times per day up to her Intelligence.
Though the Daydreamer can bring Dreamlanders to Earth with Lucy’s Wardrobe she still requires the Charm
Privy Counselor to ease one into a new body. If she knows that Charm she can use Calvin’s Tiger to aid their
Invocation. If she activates the Privilege just before beginning the Charm, the threshold that the Charm requires
drops to 2x the target’s Inner Light; on an exceptional success with the Privilege, the threshold for the Charm
becomes just the target’s Inner Light.

Ambassador Privilege
Wendy’s Boys
An Ambassador becomes a living bridge between both worlds pulling the impossible idealism of the Dream-
lands and the hard reality of Earth into a happy medium. When she uses Christopher’s Lives the Ambassador
may reflexively mix the qualities of the two worlds in zones around her identities, which extend Inner Light *
10 yards from her person. Both zones last until the Ambassador’s identities reunite.
On Earth the Princess creates what the Embassy has termed a daydreaming zone. In this zone the world
begins to take subtle cues from the fantastic aspect of the Dreamlands: colors seem brighter and livelier, sounds
seem to spontaneously harmonize, the rustling of leaves seems to be hiding something you can’t quite believe is
an animal, but may just be. Mundane characters bask in the optimism of the Dreamlands; they gain a +1 bonus on
all breaking point rolls. For Dreamlanders, a daydreaming zone has the Open Condition [CofD 134] and grants
the Materialize Manifestation at a cost of 3 Wisps per activation. In the Dreamlands the Princess bestows what
the Embassy calls a lucid zone. The Dreamlands does not lose its fantastic nature but it seems more solid, more
stable. In this place of sanctuary the Gales do not blow at all.
Finally, when she generates the zones the Ambassador can choose to send her mundane identity into the
Dreamlands, remaining transformed in waking life. This sustains her transformation, and locks her mundane
form away, until Christopher’s Lives ends.
Drawback: To blend the two worlds, the Ambassador has to blend herself, body and soul, with the Dream-
lands’ substance. To use this Privilege she must have Galemarks; if she has none she may reflexively accept one
level of the Condition to activate the Privilege. In addition the Gale-inflicted changes to her Dream Form also
change her physically - the new features from her Galemarks appear on both her living body and her Dream
Form.

410 Embassy to the Dreamlands

 Embassy to the Economy
Alternative Names: The Accountant’s Embassy, The Auditors, The Smith Institute
Informal Names: Suits (formally pejorative), Taxmen (pejorative), Lamars (pejorative)
That is a common misunderstanding, the actual quote is "the love of money is the root of
all evil."

Go back to the beginning of modern economics; to Adam Smith himself and you will find very different
ideas to some free market ideals endorsed today. Adam Smith wrote as much on the subject of morality as he
did upon economics and he tied his two fields together. Writing at length upon the need for a moral dimension
to economics. Even one governed by, well, the government.
According to the Suits there is nothing wrong with the theory of capitalism, some go so far as to say there
is nothing wrong with our current implementation of capitalism. The problem they say is people twisting the
system for their own greed. You can’t defeat greed by adjusting the rules any more than you can defeat thieves
with a stroke of the legislator’s pen. No, the only solution is to call a policeman.

Marks and Requirements

Hopeful who join the Auditors tend to be well above the average age for a Princess. Most have had signifi-
cant experience working in the corporate world, or the financial sector specifically. Seekers are predominant
among the members, fighting white collar crime calls for a keen intellect and a deductive mind, not a good right
hook. Graces have also begun to show greater interest in membership, turning from the Embassy’s traditional
focus towards building sustainable ethical businesses. Diamonds are unsurprisingly the most common Queen
but surprisingly Swords comes in at second place with a strong showing among financial lawyers but also turn-
around consultants and corporate brokers who can fix or fund a good company with a sharp mind and a blazing
presence that burns through red tape. A minority of corporate executives in stable companies follow the Queen
of Hearts.
Members of the Smith Institute favor formal and mundane attire appropriate to the culture. In Europe and
America this means suits, with ties for the Princes. Princes often favor executive style hair while the Princesses
often possess power hair. Many members have slightly idiosyncratic tastes, one might prefer the finest hand
tailored Italian suits while another dresses in the sharpest of 1950’s suits, always with a matching hat.
Regardless of their job title, all members of the Accountant’s Embassy are very good at economics. The
required Attribute is Intelligence and the required skill is Academics.

Secretary Privileges
Cutting the Red Tape
In both her perfected and mundane state a Secretary to the Economy finds it very easy to understand fi-
nance. They can hold vast tables in their head and fit them together like jigsaw puzzles. By spending a Wisp
the Secretary may add her Sensitivity to all rolls to understand a financial system, including: Academics, Inves-
tigation and even Subterfuge to see through the person sitting across the desk trying to trip you up with lots
of meaningless numbers. If the Secretary spends a Wisp during an extended action she applies Sensitivity to
every roll for that action.

Following the Money

While transformed, the Secretary can divine basic facts about an organization, and clues to its recent activ-
ities, by following the flow of money through it. To use this Privilege the Secretary must have access to a portion
of the organization’s funds (actual cash, checking account numbers, credit card numbers). If no other opportu-

Embassy to the Economy 411

nity offers the Secretary can establish a link by buying something from the organization, and using Follow the
Money on her payment. The Secretary tags the money by spending a Wisp; over the next 24 hours the Wisp
touches all the organization’s assets and sends data back to her subconscious. After a full day has passed, the
Secretary rolls Intelligence + Investigation + the Availability level of the assets she tagged - the organization’s
Commonalty penalty.
Dramatic Failure: The Secretary gets a radically false idea of the organization’s nature, purpose or re-
cent activities.
Failure: The data does not form a coherent picture; the Secretary learns nothing.
Success: The Secretary establishes, to her own satisfaction, one of the following sets of facts:
• One of the organization’s Aspirations (or, for a Nation, its Vocation)
• The organization’s Virtue or Vice
• One of the organization’s Attributes
• The organization’s Standing
• The organization’s Morale and the current level of damage to it
• One of the organization’s Merits
• The goal of one of the organization’s current projects, and how close it is to completion
• One of the Conditions currently on the organization
Exceptional Success: The Secretary learns two of the sets of facts in the above list.

It’s Not What you Know, It’s Who You Know

It doesn’t matter what you know about finance, if you know a Secretary to the Economy you’ll be fine.
By spending a Willpower point the Secretary may lend another her dots in Academics, Investigation, Politics,
Persuasion or Empathy for use in financial matters alone. The recipient may hold the dots for up to a day and
activate them at any point, gaining the Secretary’s dots for the rest of the scene. If their own Academics are
greater they gain a +1 bonus. Lending another her dots does not deny a Secretary access to them.

Consul Privileges
Money Talks
The Consul can trace the flow of money in fine detail. When she uses Following the Money, the Consul may
ask for the answer to a specific question about the organization - one that can be answered “yes” or “no”, or that
has an answer from a small set of alternatives, as far as the Consul knows.
Dramatic Failure: The Consul is convinced of a false answer.
Failure: The Consul learns nothing.
Success: The Consul learns the true answer to her question among the choices she had considered. If
the correct answer is not one the Consul considered when she framed the question, she can learn only that
the truth is something she didn’t think of.
Exceptional Success: In addition, the Consul gets an idea of the reason why the answer is true.

King Midas Has Asses’ Ears

There’s often a big gap between knowing something is true and being able to prove it; a Consul can, how-
ever, bridge that gap, if she’s willing to take risks. Whenever the Consul has learned a fact about an organization
by examining its finances (either mundanely or magically) she may, by spending 2 Wisps, discover clues to a
course of action which will end in that fact becoming public knowledge.

412 Embassy to the Economy

 When she activates the Privilege, the Storyteller rolls her Wits + Academics in secret; for each success, the
Storyteller gives the player one clue to the location of relevant evidence, the means of obtaining it, or the best
person to receive it. The Privilege does not consider the Consul’s safety or social position - it gives the surest
and quickest path to the fact’s exposure, no matter how high the cost of following it might be. The Consul cannot
use the Privilege more than once on any given fact.

Ambassador Privilege
Shaking Hands with the Invisible Hand
The Ambassador’s understanding of money is so deep that she can predict what organizations will do, even
before they know themselves. As with Following the Money, the Ambassador must tag a portion of an organiza-
tion’s funds with a Wisp and wait for a day while the Wisp finds the organization’s assets.
The Ambassador then spends 1 Willpower and rolls Intelligence + Politics + the Availability level of the
tagged assets - the organization’s Rank, and asks a question about a future action of the organization. If the roll
succeeds, the Ambassador knows the true answer to her question; for each success past the first, she learns the
answer to one further question about the same action, expanding on the details.
Drawback: Submerging her mind into the flows of money removes the Ambassador from the normal hu-
man perspective, and hinders her ability to relate to people in other than financial terms. After activating this
Privilege, for a number of days equal to her successes the Ambassador takes a -2 penalty to all her Empathy
and Socialize rolls.

Edward Merchant / Matthew Sheppard

I’ve got this covered, just let me make a few calls.

Background
Edward was always plagued by crippling anxieties and a genius at numbers. He had long held ambitions to
become an accountant out of a belief that nervous people were supposed to be accountants and hide safely away
in the back office. To everyone else it was obvious that wasn’t going to happen, Edward had to be homeschooled
and even took distance learning classes instead of university. To his family’s surprise when he graduated he did
manage to attend interviews but failed to impress.
Returning to Plan A Edward’s mother played her trump card, giving his name to several of her friends who
had mentioned they could use help managing their finances at some point, from them his reputation spread. So
began Edward’s unremarkable career as a quiet accountant who specialised in managing the estate of old ladies
who didn’t know, or want to know, the first thing about accounting.
There things would have remained had one of his clients not been taken for everything she owned by the
international conman Batroc L’Etranger. Strictly speaking, trying to recover what he could was Edward’s job.
It was also the only part of his job that required more than casual effort, roughly six hours of every day were
dedicated to the task. Edward only realized what he had gotten into and how he had left the nice safe world
of numbers when he got a threatening phone call, if he didn’t back off Batroc threatened to use his skills to
eviscerate Edward in the media, and the courts. After several days of sweating Edward forced himself not to
back down, he Blossomed there and then. Batroc never saw him coming.

It’s The Law

To legally be a financial auditor requires two dots of Status in a major accounting firm or government
agency. Most investigators in this Embassy have the necessary Status. Matthew Sheppard does not. He is an
illegal vigilante who relies on breaking and entering, social engineering and Allies in the police and media
who’ll look the other way when he turns over evidence.

Embassy to the Economy 413

Appearance
In his Mundane form Edward is a small diminutive man with a receding hairline and wispy moustache who
seems rather easy to overlook. When he Transforms Matthew gains a foot and a bit of bulk. He wears smart
modern suits and executive hair like he owns the room and everybody in it. Matthew has two pieces of Regalia,
a set of eight gemstones on rings that allow him to use magical blasts and a briefcase whose capacity far exceeds
its size.

Storytelling Hints
Among certain circles Matthew Sheppard is the legendary boogeyman. A ghost never seen until he’s coming
for his next target. You can’t bribe him, you can’t threaten him, no crooked accountant can beat him (although
if they could, who’d know?), you can’t even sue him since he legally does not exist. There are even rumors that
he has magical powers and they’re a little too consistent to dismiss entirely. In his time he’s exposed CEOs,
politicians and cracked open the economics of organized crime rings. Several hit men have all failed to track him
down and some even became the next case he cracked open. His relationship with the police is strained, they
appreciate his help yet face significant pressure from above about his legal non-existence. Not all the politicians
he exposed lost their office.
Ever since he first heard there was a price on his head Matthew has made sure he can vanish on a moment’s
notice. His increasingly stuffed briefcase now contains: Another briefcase full of money (US Dollars, Euros, and
British Sterling), some gold, a bag of gemstones, a brick of cocaine (for emergency bribes, he’s not a user), emer-
gency rations, a computer, a smart phone, a satellite dish, spare false IDs for both his selves, a large solar panel
and a compact tent. It normally also contains papers from his latest case.

Calling: Seeker Queen: Diamonds Embassy: Economy (Consul)

Virtue: Just
Vice: Arrogant
Attributes: Intelligence 4+1, Wits 2+1, Resolve 3, Strength 2, Dexterity 3, Stamina 2, Presence 1+3,
Manipulation 2, Composure 3
Skills: Academics 4+1 (economics), Computer 1, Investigation 4+2 (finance), Politics 2, Science 2, Ath-
letics 2, Drive 1, Firearms 1+1, Larceny 2, Stealth 3, Survival 2, Empathy 2, Intimidation 1+1, Persuasion 2,
Streetwise 2+1, Subterfuge 2 (spotting lies)
Derived Traits: Health 7, Willpower 6, Size 5, Defense 4+1, Initiative 5, Speed 10
Merits: Library 1 (Academics), Professional Training (Academics, Investigation) 2 (Contacts: accoun-
tants, police), Allies 4 (Treasury), Allies 2 (BBC), Allies 2 (Bloggers), Allies 1 (Interpol), Contacts 1 (personal
secretaries), Fame 1 (British finance), Resources 3, Safe Place 1, Mandate 2, Onceborn 2, Palace 3, Royal
Tongue 1, Veiling 2 - all Allies, Contacts and Fame are for transformed ID

Inner Light: 5 Belief: 6 Wisps: 14

Invocations: Acqua 4, Fuoco 2, Terra 1

Charms:
• Appear: Twenty Faces (Beautiful, Quality), Wallflower (Traceless)
• Fight: Levinbolt (Multiple, Burning), You Might Hurt Yourself
• Learn: Keen Observation (Specialized), Scent Falsehood (Collective, Unwitting), Questing Mind
(Watchful), Pierian Spring (Personal), No Man is an Island, Moving Finger (Significant), Books in Running
Brooks
• Shape: Bubble Shield, Miss Poppins’ Bottomless Bag (Ordered, Enlarged x4)
• Practical: Twenty Faces (Quality), Keen Observation, Scent Falsehood (Collective), Pierian Spring

414 Embassy to the Economy

 Persistent Condition: Embarrassing Phylactery - Edward’s Phylactery is a business card in the name
of Matthew Sheppard and so it threatens his secret identity. Fortunately it’s easy to keep a business card
hidden.

Embassy to the Economy 415

 Embassy to Ephemera
Alternative Names: The Animist’s Embassy, Speakers to the World, Guardians of the Silent Hillside
Informal Names: Shamans, Jumpers, Wyrds (usually only used be-
fore they help you track down a magath with a fondness for Claiming)
Listen, you idiot. I know you mean well, but you’re creating fear-spirits like you wouldn’t
believe it with your anti-mugger campaign. We’re going to have to find a better way to do this
than just appearing and attacking anyone who looks suspect.

There is a world beyond the one we know. And, frankly, it isn’t very nice. As in, it’s pretty nasty even com-
pared to the real world. Oh, sure, an animistic universe may sound like a nice idea, and theoretically, the spirit
world could be used to get Hope spirits to spread their emotion, and help the world; but once you’ve seen a
spirit of Love steal the body of a person, then build an orgiastic cult around it with no limits and no safe words…
well, the idea doesn’t seem like such a nice one. Add that to the fact that, really, the Hopeful don’t have much of
a grasp on the spirit world (and so are prone to making rather nasty mistakes, as they misinterpret it in ways
that are only prevented by hard experience and/or natural talent), and there’s no wonder that many Princesses
try their best to keep away from spirits, driving them away as best they can when they cause trouble, and not
even noticing them the rest of the time.
Ah, but some among the Hopeful … well, others might say that they can’t leave well enough alone, but the
Ambassadors to Ephemera argue that they will not turn a blind eye any longer. They hunt down spirits which
steal the bodies of men and women (in a way different to the Amanojaku; physically and much harder to get
rid of), and force them out. They study the changes in the spirit world, and use it to locate problems in the
real world; in one famous case, a Hopeful in Rome located a serial killer before anyone had even reported their
victims missing, by following the upsurge in murder spirits in the locale. They talk to the werewolf-folk, who
are natives to that strange place in a way that the Hopeful are not, and try to dissuade them from hurting people
(the record there … has not been good, compared to other tasks in the Embassy. It’s like those things don’t find
hideous amounts of violence morally wrong.).
Because that’s one of the things that the Ambassadors to Ephemera warn those interested in their duties.
The spirit world isn’t nice. It isn’t safe. Unlike even the most degenerate bloodsucker or hubristic sorcerer, spirits
were never human, and so don’t think like people. And the hounds of the moon which claim domain over the
spirit world don’t appreciate anyone fleshy wandering around in that place. Some have strange rituals which
can force a Princess back through the barrier between worlds. Others … prefer a more terminal solution.
After all that risks, one might wonder why any Princess might take up the duties of an Ambassador to
Ephemera. Why not just focus on that which isn’t from a hellish spirit world which has more in common with
Silent Hill than with the Dreamlands? The answer is, so they say, that the spirit is a reflection of the real world
in a much more immediate and real sense than the Dreamlands. Destroy the spirit of an object, and the thing
weakens and breaks down; smash the object, and the spirit dies. If the spirit world, the hisil is bad, then that’s
only because the world is bad. If you can change the real world, you can change the spirit. And, perhaps more
interestingly, if you can change the hisil, you can change the real world. Moreover, spirits don’t go away if you
don’t believe in them (though research from the Embassy to Stories seems to suggest that faeries don’t, either).
Yes, it’s often unpleasant to deal with spirits, to be forced to kill a host to get the spirit of rape out of the world.
But the Light doesn’t need nice. It needs necessary.

Marks and Requirements

The Regalia of the Shaman begins to take on the strange properties of the unseen world which she deals
with constantly. Firstly, it begins to reflect the ambient Essence and Resonance, shifting and flowing to take
on the nature of the surrounding. A sudden burst of anger in a bar across the street, and the colors deepen
and become more vibrant, as the emotional intensity shifts the local Resonance. The bottom of her skirt might
begin to drip blood at a murder scene, sometimes long after the death if the manner of it was especially violent.
In the city, it greys and becomes regimented; in the country, it hugs close to her body and twines around her.
Moreover, especially if the Princess spends a lot of time in the strangeness of the spirit world, the garments

416 Embassy to Ephemera

become somewhat decoherent and… well, ephemeral, starting to resemble something more like a very thick fog
(still patterned, just slightly… fuzzy) rather than fabric.
Personal force and persuasiveness are essential traits when dealing with inhabitants of the hisil. The re-
quired Attribute for a Shaman is Presence, and the required Skill is Persuasion.

Secretary Privileges
Essential Feelings
First comes a sense for the illusive, invisible, yet omnipresent patterns of Resonance that surround the
world. The invisible world is laid bare to the Princess, and she can understand it when it talks to her. As an
instant action, the Secretary can study an object or area, and roll Wits + Empathy. Success tells her the Reso-
nant Conditions [CofD 135] that apply to the target, with one Condition being revealed per success, the most
important first. Particularly strong resonances (like the hate on a murder weapon, hidden in the knife draw),
grant a bonus to the roll.
The Secretary can also recognize when a person, object or place has been influenced by the spirits. Using
Essential Feelings also reveals Manifestation Conditions, when these exist on the target and are related to a spirit.
As a side effect of this, the character also becomes fully fluent in the First Tongue when speaking to spirits
and Shadow-linked shapeshifters. This ability cannot be used to communicate with other members of the Em-
bassy, nor with any other character who may have learned it for some reason. It can only be used on natural
denizens of the Shadow. Moreover, the Secretary automatically feels if they are in a Locus, Barren, Glade, or
Verge, and can reflexively enter a Clash of Wills against any supernatural power that would obstruct this, with
a dice pool of Wits + Inner Light.

See the Unseeable

The invisible is laid bare to a Secretary to Ephemera. While transformed, she can see and speak with spirits
in Twilight Form, and interact with them as if they were solid. Note that this does not give her any special ability
to detect them; a spirit hiding behind the sofa is as hard to see as a person hiding behind the sofa. Being solid to
spirits allows the Secretary to attack or use Charms on them (and them to attack her;) all of her regalia, including
weapons and armor, is as solid to the spirits as she is. The Secretary also recognizes a locus [CofD 126] for what
it is, if she sees it while transformed.

Open Wide the Doors

To minister to the Ephemeral, one must be able to go to the Ephemeral. The Secretary has the ability to
create the Shadow Gate Condition [CofD 136], although she must do so in a locus (which poses its own prob-
lems). The Secretary spends a Wisp, and rolls Resolve + Occult as an extended action, one roll per turn, to open
the gateway. It stays open for a number of turns equal to the successes rolled, and then closes. The portal is of
Size 6, so only one person may pass through it per turn. It is usually not best to linger around such places; not
only do the lupine theriomorphs tend to object to people around the areas where you can open such gates, but
things can come through the other way.

Consul Privileges
Spiritual Harmonic
A Consul to Ephemera may grant hospitality to the spirits, or banish a spirit that has outstayed its welcome.
The Consul may spend 2 Wisps as an instant unrolled action to create a Resonant Condition. This Condition
may be tailored to a specific spirit, or apply to any spirit with an appropriate Influence, as the Consul wishes; it
remains for one day. The Consul can also suppress one of the Resonant Conditions that exist at her location, or
on an object or person she can touch, for one day; the cost and action are the same. If a spirit has applied any
Conditions that depend on a Resonant Condition, suppressing it starts a Clash of Wills.

Embassy to Ephemera 417

 In addition, the abilities of Essential Feelings expand. The Consul may, as an instant action, roll Wits + Em-
pathy while studying a target. Success reveals if they have spiritual Essence (Essence from the spirit world or
loci; ghostly Essence, for example, does not count) in their bodies; this includes the Uratha, the Changing Breeds,
Skinthieves, and the Claimed. It also gives a hint to the nature, in the form of Resonance traits equal to success-
es. (E.g. success against a Uratha won’t tell you that they’re a werewolf, but will tell you “Moon”, “Wolf”, “Rage”,
or an appropriate link to their tribe, for example). An exceptional success tells their nature, if the Consul has
encountered and studied that type before.

The Sight Unveiled

At this higher level of competency, the Consul may grant the effects of See the Unseeable to another person,
by touching them on both eyelids and spending a Wisp. This gift lasts for a scene, and may be extended by
reflexively spending a Wisp at the end of its duration.
In addition, as per Essential Feelings, anyone granted this ability also understands the First Tongue when
spoken by spiritual entities.

Ambassador Privilege
Queen of the Spirit World
So long has the character interacted with the unseen, that she has acquired status among them, as they
accept her as one of their own. The character gains Honorary spirit Rank [CofD 128] of 3, rising to 4 at Inner
Light 9. Spirits of lesser Rank will typically treat her with respect, while ones of equal Rank will not (barring
them just disliking her) go out of their way to aggravate her. Even spirits of higher rank may at least grant a little
courtesy, though the Princess remains vulnerable to their displeasure. Moreover, the character may spend a
Wisp as an instant action, accompanied by a proud declaration of their self, to subtract their nominal Rank from
any dicepool used by a spirit-based entity (including spirits, Claimed, and Uratha) which would affect them. This
benefit lasts for a scene.
Drawback: Every time the character declares their Rank, a little of the spirit world seeps into them, chang-
ing their appearance. The body reasserts itself, but it is disconcerting to see the flames flickering in the pupils
of a Princess who declared her Rank in the spirit world reflection of a burned-out tenement… especially when
they spread to her tear-ducts. For the scene after the declaration of Rank, the character subtracts their nominal
Rank from all Social rolls for dealing with people who are not spirits or spirit-based (the spirits find it perfectly
normal).

Anabel Heartsford / Joyful Song

Look, I don’t care if the disease spirits are just hanging around the pharmacy because that’s
where sick people go. I don’t want them in my territory; they’re not nice!

Background
Anabel Heartsford loved music ever since she was a child. While other kids balked at their piano lessons, she
embraced them with enthusiasm. Growing up in a poorer and less safe neighborhood, she found art an excellent
escape from her life’s problems. Later on she started to express her feelings in her own music; crude at first,
but by the time she was in high school she was writing original songs. Around the same time she managed to
save up enough money to buy an electric keyboard and started playing in the local park. Unlike many musicians
who were busking, she didn’t ask for money but instead played for the sheer joy of it. She was rather good at it
and lifted the spirits of those around her. Unfortunately she was a bit too good, and a local gang decided that a
musician that talented must be raking in the money. One evening they cornered her and asked for her money.
Refusing on the grounds that she didn’t have any, she was going to be beaten or even killed when she offered to
play a few songs for them instead. It was then that she Blossomed and played a song so moving that the gang
couldn’t bear to hurt her and let her go. They still come around to hear her, and have given up their criminal
careers (most of them, anyway) because of her obvious disapproval.

418 Embassy to Ephemera

 It was later in her career that she learned about the spirits of the world, when she got involved in taking
down a spirit of despair that was plaguing an area. After learning that changes in the material world caused
changes in the spiritual world, she started wondering: does that mean changes in the spiritual side would affect
the material world? It might be more effective to get rid of hate, cruelty, and other such things that generate
Taint if their reflections were purged from an area and positive emotions cultivated. Well, it couldn’t hurt to at
least try right?

Appearance
In her mundane form Anabel is somewhat lanky, with loose casual cloths typically consisting of a t-shirt,
jeans, and a hoodie. She has brown hair and green eyes, and has one of those faces that just blends into a crowd.
When she Transforms Joyful Song gains a foot and a cup size. Her outfit is a simple but high quality red silk
evening gown with a somewhat low cut neck line. Her Regalia includes a decorative ruby comb that enhances
her presence, and a keyboard made out of a rainbow of gems for the keys. This not only serves as a musical
instrument, but also as her Levinbolt, firing off giant technicolor notes in combat.

Storytelling Hints
Anabel is full of life, joy, and a surprising amount of wisdom. Her out of the box idea is a long term project
that she’s pinning a lot of her hopes and dreams on. While she tries her best to be independent to prove that
her concept can work, she’s not too stubborn to ask for help if she needs it. Since her plan not only calls for the
removal of "negative spirits" but also the cultivation of "good spirits" she’s actually quite knowledgeable about
the immaterial world and a lot of other things on the supernatural side beyond what a Princess usually knows,
as they usually focus on the Darkness.
Anabel is eclectic in nature, and is a bit flighty as well. As such she can do a lot of things well, but doesn’t
really excel in any one area. She is as a member of the Sword court very emotionally driven and may join other
Nobles on a whim if she feels it’s what she should do. She’s very enthusiastic and tries her best to be helpful,
but she’ll often highjack a situation without realizing it, her natural charm and persuasion serving to make her
a strong leading presence.
Finally, she spends a lot of time messing with the spiritual plane without regards to how it will resonate
with the larger world. She doesn’t have a proper understanding that not all “positive” spirits are actually good
and can lead to problems. As such, she’s just one blow up away not only from a potential crisis of conscience,
but from an encounter with pissed off Uratha.

Calling: Troubadour Queen: Swords Embassy: Ephemera (Secretary)

Virtue: Joyous - Anabel seeks to spread joy to those that lack it and feel despair.
Vice: Impulsive - She doesn’t always think things through, and this can lead to problems.
Attributes: Intelligence 2, Wits 3, Resolve 2, Strength 2, Dexterity 2+1, Stamina 2, Presence 3+1, Ma-
nipulation 2, Composure 3
Skills: Academics 1, Computer 2, Investigation 3, Occult 2 (spirits), Athletics 2, Drive 1, Firearms 1+3,
Larceny 1, Stealth 1, Survival 1, Empathy 3 (reading crowds), Expression 3+2 (keyboards), Persuasion 3+2,
Streetwise 2 (gangs)
Derived Traits: Health 7, Willpower 5, Size 5, Defense 4+1, Initiative 5+1, Speed 9+1
Merits: Allies 2 (ex-gangers), Circle 3 (parents), Palace 3 (family home), Royal Tongue 1, Veiling 1

Inner Light: 3 Belief: 7 Wisps: 12

Invocations: Fuoco 3, Legno 1

Charms:
• Fight: Levinbolt (Multiple)

Embassy to Ephemera 419

 • Govern: Forgotten Lore (Spiritual), Light Over All
• Inspire: Hear Me, O Muse, Fire on the Mountain (Inspirational), Peace on Earth (Collective)
• Learn: Passion’s Light (Revealing)
• Practical: Forgotten Lore, Hear Me, O Muse, Passion’s Light

420 Embassy to Ephemera

 Embassy to Fortune
Alternative Names: Embassy to the Cat, Those who Walk by Themselves
Informal Names: Dancers, Stalkers, the Cat’s Girls (only used by the Cat himself)
You should realize by now, Your Highness. A cat has no duty but to do exactly as he pleases.

It is oft-times boasted or bemoaned by the Princesses that they are the luckiest or unluckiest people of
all, for on a whim fortune chose for them among all the world’s brightest to Blossom in this life or another.
They were given power and a purpose in life, but also duty and a Sensitivity to the suffering of others. Lucky
or Unlucky? Some of the Hopeful take this further. When an entire nation can stand or fall to a single roll of the
dice, well lady luck is a fickle lover, if we want a fair and just world someone’s going to have to load the dice.
Some of the Embassy want to rig the game so the moral get the luck. Others are content if good and bad fortune
would be spread a little more evenly or if the stakes were lowered. The Embassy may well change Fortune some
day, but if they get what they hope for? Kiss the dice for luck.
The Embassy to Fortune is a rarity; its members have opened relations with a creature who claims to be the
concept of Fortune incarnate, the opposite and foe of ineluctable destiny. He most often appears as a handsome
ginger tom, with piercing green eyes and a perpetual grin that reminds most Hopeful of the Cheshire Cat (and
to anyone who mentions the resemblance, he insists that Lewis Carroll based the Cheshire Cat on him); since he
never names himself, the Embassy just calls him the Cat. He has appeared in many other forms - a white Persian
queen-cat with a diamond collar, a tall thin lazy-eyed man in an elegant and expensive power suit, a gamine girl
in a catsuit hanging off a building cornice - but even the ones who aren’t cats have a feline character, and all of
them have the brilliant green eyes and the slightly mocking smile.
Why this living representative of luck chose to work with the Hopeful (for the Embassy seems to have been
his idea) is still a mystery. The Cat himself always answers to his girls, but rarely does he give the same answer
twice. Sometimes he says the world’s fate has grown so tangled and heavy that the world is doomed to sink
under it and be destroyed; that it is his particular task to untangle the thick knotted ball of destiny (and maybe
play with it, just a little), and the release of the Hopeful offers him the best opportunity he can remember to carry
out his mission. (And when the Hopeful speak of restoring the Kingdom, the Cat nods and says "What has fallen
should rise.") Sometimes he explains how a Blossoming is such a stroke of fortune for an entire community that
it uses up everyone’s luck; the good deeds a Princess’ does is supposed to balance it out but with the Nobility
trapped in the Dreamlands the whole system fell out of balance and now they’re back he’s got to fix things up.
Sometimes he explains that the Fall itself was nothing more than a stroke of bad luck; since good and bad luck
must always balance out the Radiant are owed so much good luck only his personal assistance can repay the
debt. And sometimes he explains it’s simply because the Embassy is full of so many beautiful women, for he is
a tom cat; if he gets too amorous a plate of fish or a ball of yarn will make him forget all about you.

Patronage
One of the nice things about being on speaking terms with your Patron is that you can ask him for favors.
The Cat can do just about anything he wants with fortune or luck; and as he can indirectly affect other things
through fortune his powers are essentially godlike. He can grant good luck to endeavors, and less intuitively
break destinies and curses by throwing enough random chance at them. The inevitable drawback is that The
Cat asks for something in return, the more you ask for the more you have to do. Sadly this means there’s no easy
path to restoring the Kingdom, becoming a Queen, or any other large scale accomplishment worth fighting for.
The most common request is to send the Princess on what seems like a simple quest, but a whole host of
improbable events will soon turn it into a convoluted mess with the Princess bouncing from one highly embar-
rassing (for her or for those around her) situation for another. The pervading theory is that The Cat does this
for the lulz. Smaller favors can be as cheap as a plate of fish, scratching behind the ears, or sleeping with him
(which is not recommended, even in a human form he is a tom cat).
On the positive side, if the Princess does pay The Cat’s price she doesn’t seem to face luck turning sour, as
she would after using her Privileges. Some of the debt was probably paid up front, as for the rest … The Cat just
dumps it where it won’t do any harm.

Embassy to Fortune 421

Marks and Requirements
The marks of the Embassy to Fortune are of two separate kinds. The Stalker invariably acquires a mask;
it can be as small as a thin half-mask around her eyes, or as elaborate as a full helm that covers her hair and
face completely. The rest of her Regalia shifts to clothing that combines elegant beauty with freedom to move;
somehow, it suggests the Dancer would be equally at home in a formal ballroom or leaping between rooftops.
In that they imitate their patron, who likes to quote from the Just-So Stories: “I am the Cat who walks by myself,
and all places are alike to me.” Accessories often come in the form of a small tasteful lucky charm or two, it’s not
that rare for these charms to be bribes for the Embassies’ feline patron.
The Cat’s Girls also imitate their patron bodily - their eyes become green even in mundane form, and when
transformed many of them develop pointed ears, vertically slit pupils that gleam in low light, and teeth that all
come to points. The lazy, mocking smile that the Cat always wears appears more and more often on the Stalkers’
faces as they rise in their Embassy. The senior Ambassadors might easily pass for sisters of the Cat’s most human
forms - and there’s even a tale of a new Secretary who met a woman she took for an Ambassador, and learned
much later that she had really been the Cat herself.
The Cat looks for Princesses that already have a touch of the feline nature, in the form of social aplomb and
physical grace. The prerequisite Attribute for his Embassy is Composure, and the prerequisite Skill is Athletics.

Secretary Privileges
It Might Be
The world is full of unseen things, and one of the Cat’s Girls wanders through it, the invisible bestowing
fortune upon her. By spending a Wisp, and making a statement out loud like “This sucks. I never win at anything
like this,” the Secretary can enjoy a sudden bestowal of good fortune. These small manipulations are always
within the realms of possibility (she finds a high value note lodged in a drain, the waiter knocks over the drink
that her rival had spiked), but often come about in rather surprising ways. If used to generate wealth or obtain
objects, any thing so obtained cannot have an Availability above 1, if she wants it to be permanent. It can be
used to obtain an object of higher value, but fortune conspires to remove the object from her possession at the
end of the scene. Nevertheless, lesser purchases can be multiplied up; the £50 found in a bin, if invested wisely,
can become many times more, while the good one-night stand can, if bought breakfast in bed, possibly become
a stable relationship.
Drawback: Luck always balances out, and for every use of It Might Be the Secretary suffers some small
misfortune. For a small blessing this misfortune is nothing more than a minor inconvenience, but a Princess
who asks for too much will surely lose whatever they gained when bad luck conspires against her at the end
of the scene. If the Princess really over does it, such as trying to obtain things with Availability 4 or more, her
reversal of fortune will come with negative consequences (such as the Secretary’s face appearing on a wanted
list, after the car she found to be fortunately unlocked turned out to have a boot full of crack cocaine).

Hunter’s Eyes
To find and seize the fleeting moments when destiny can be turned against itself, a Secretary to Fortune
needs sharp eyes and ears, and swift reflexes. While she is transformed, the Secretary adds her Athletics to all her
Perception rolls, including her rolls to avoid being surprised, and her eyes have the light-amplifying membranes
of a cat’s eyes; she can see shapes, though not colors, in any lighting conditions short of total darkness.
Moreover, she gains an occult sense for the flow of Fortune around her. It doesn’t tell her what is about to
happen, or even likely to happen; instead, the Secretary knows whether an improbable event is natural luck, or
that luck has been magically tampered with. This is an Unseen Sense for powers that twist luck to someone’s
benefit (like the Charm Touch of Fortune) or which override it to force an outcome (such as imposing a geas) that
registers at the moment the power influences someone’s actions. When such a power first affects the Secretary
herself, if her consent was not sought, she twists away from the undesired bond; she adds her Athletics to the
relevant Attribute to resist or contest the power. She even resists powers which normally can’t be resisted - for

422 Embassy to Fortune

these, she rolls Composure + Athletics - the attacker’s Supernatural Tolerance. Success means that the power
does not take effect; an exceptional success means that the target is unaware that she was not affected.

Bless the Child

It doesn’t matter how lucky you are, a little luck at just the right time is better than a lot of luck at the wrong
time. A Secretary to Fortune has an instinctive knack for knowing when it’s the right time. While transformed,
she gains the ability, as a reflexive action, to spend a Wisp to grant a +2 bonus to an ally’s action. The dice lands
on lucky seven, a wild sweep of the blade blocks a bullet, the book falls open on the page with the answer. Such
manipulations of luck can be felt with the Unseen Sense of Hunter’s Eyes if the ally is also a Dancer, and will also
trigger the senses of any other creature sensitive to manipulations of fortune. This ability may be invoked an
number of times equal to the Secretary’s Presence every turn, but may not be used on the same target twice
in one scene.
Drawback: Characters who benefit from this tend to suffer minor misfortunes over the next week or so.
It’s never life threatening (inflicting at most 3 points of bashing, as they spill hot coffee over themselves), but
the friends of a Secretary to Fortune might just have to get used to getting splashed by a car or panhandled by
the smelliest tramp on the street.

Consul Privileges
Feline Grace
The hand of the Cat rests upon the Consul to Fortune. Her teeth become long and pointed (yet elegant, in
the same way as his are), and she now inflicts +1 lethal damage in a grapple if she chooses to bite. Perhaps more
noteworthy, is that her reactions are now akin to those of… well, a cat on a hot tin roof. Her Initiative modifier is
doubled from its base value (the doubling is applied before any other modifiers, and does not stack with other
multipliers), and she always lands on her feet, meaning that she never takes lethal damage from falling. Finally,
the Consul gains a social aplomb and charisma that attracts everyone who sees her. If she did not have Striking
Looks already, she gains 1 dot of that Merit.

It Will Be
It’s truly said that Fortune favors the brave. At the cost of 1 Wisp, a Consul can roll Inner Light + Composure.
Successes on this roll become a dice pool which is attached to a target character within sight. The next time the
target spends a Willpower point, these dice are liberated, and added to the +3 that the Willpower point grants.
Only one such pool may be extant at once, but if the target succeeds on the boosted roll, the Consul who aided
him regains 1 Willpower, as if she had fulfilled her Vice. If the roll is an exceptional success, in addition to the
previous benefit, she also gains 2 Wisps.
This Privilege trips the Unseen Sense of Hunter’s Eyes when the target spends the Willpower.
Drawback: After using their bonus dice the target suffers -1 to all rolls until they pay back their debt: a
number of rolls equal to their bonus dice.

Ambassador Privilege
It Must Be
The Ambassador to Fortune manipulates luck so cleverly, that she may ensure that her actions will succeed,
no matter the obstacles. The character spends 2 Wisps, and, for the rest of the scene, all her actions, whether
magical or non-magical, have the Rote quality.
This Privilege trips the Unseen Sense of Hunter’s Eyes every time the Ambassador acts during the current
scene.

Embassy to Fortune 423

 Drawback: Destiny demands its price, even from an Ambassador to its foe. That which has fallen will rise,
but that which has risen must also fall. Each roll the Ambassador makes which succeeds, but would have failed
without the Rote quality, causes one action in a later scene, chosen by the ST before the action is rolled or any
Wisps or Willpower spent, to fail automatically. This effect is cumulative; if the Ambassador succeeds three
times where she should have failed, then three of her actions in the future will automatically fail, without rolling
or expenditure of resources. Moreover, each exceptional success rolled while It Must Be is in effect, which would
not be exceptional without the Rote quality, results in one action in a later scene, chosen by the ST, becoming an
automatic dramatic failure. The Ambassador can protect herself from these automatic failures only by activating
It Must Be again - the ST cannot force failures on her while the power is active. She can ward off an automatic
failure reflexively by spending a Willpower point and activating the power.

424 Embassy to Fortune

 Embassy to Machines
Informal Names: Machinists, Techies
Now that is a beautiful piece of work!

We live in an ordered universe, one defined by coherent laws and systems. Since Newton’s time, people
have viewed the universe as the machine, a perfect and precise clockwork, predictable and orderly. Some people
find this a cause for despair, feeling that they are doomed to be crushed beneath the gears of the universe.
The Ambassadors to the Machine know better. The universe is a beautiful and wondrous thing, awe-inspir-
ing in its vastness and fascinating in its complexity. How can someone look up at the stars and not feel awe at
the vastness of space? How can someone not look upon a rainbow and admire not just its beauty, but also the
dance of light and water that brought it into being? How can someone look upon the incredible complexity of
the miracle that is life and not be amazed? The universe is a wondrous place, and knowing how it works just
makes it even more beautiful.
And that is perhaps the greatest miracle; the universe can be known. Mankind can comprehend the uni-
verse in all its subtleties, and with this knowledge they can work wonders that can improve the lives of millions.
Of course, those same tools and machines can destroy cities as well as feed them, but the Hopeful have never
been pessimists. The Techies know that the machines and tools are an extension of man’s will, and strive to make
sure those tools are used for noble ends. The Ambassadors to the Machine take a little bit of the universe into
their souls and thus take upon them the mantle of machines; extensions of human will built upon the system
of the universe.

Marks and Requirements

One would assume that the Enlightened who join this Embassy are extreme technophiles, obsessed with the
new, the sleek, and the shiny. One would mostly be right. The aesthetics of this Embassy have changed multiple
times, even over the short time since the Release, and, typically, the best way to judge what they were was to
look at the sci-fi at the time. The current dominant is very much the sleek, post-cyberpunk, white look which
is probably best described as iPrincess. Regalia is tight without being gratuitous, rounded, and often hard, not
deforming to the touch, like an outer carapace. Unusual eye colors are the norm for Machinists; greyish white,
purple, and just-having-the-entire-eye-be-a-metal-globe are all common. Purple hair, too, is not uncommon. The
skin itself is different from the untransformed form; it is slightly cool to the touch, and often has tattoo-like
lights shining through the skin, usually in blue or green.
There is, however, another school, which has remained since the Release. These ones are less about the
rampant technophilia of the more common ones, and more about machine as function. These self-described
Wrench Wenches and Hammer Men take pride in their apron-like armor, oil-covered Regalia, and often bouncy
demeanour.
Every Machinist is an excellent craftsman, and treats her tools with loving care. The required Attribute for
the Embassy is Dexterity, and its required Skill is Crafts.

Secretary Privileges
The Privileges refer several times to the concept of a machine. For the purposes of this Embassy, a
machine is a tool or object with multiple moving parts integral to their function, specifically designed to
fulfill a purpose by human or otherwise sapient beings. Moreover, for any dice bonuses or special effects
granted by these powers to apply, the primary function of such a machine must be derived from mundane,
mechanical principles, or from the Light. An engine with parts made from a magically created frictionless
material is acceptable; a device which spins to collect ambient heat and converts it into some unnatural
source of energy is not.

Embassy to Machines 425

Calling, Calling
The Secretary has a natural intuition for systems and technology. She never takes a penalty on unfamiliar
applications of a skill when using, repairing, or analyzing a complex piece of technology (this includes electron-
ics and any mechanical device that has more than one moving part). While an ordinary person may take a penal-
ty for using Computer for both Linux and Windows, or have a hard time applying Drive to handling a motorcycle,
driving a big rig, flying a helicopter, or landing a space shuttle the Princess does not. In addition, once per scene
the Princess can add her Sensitivity (minimum bonus of +1) to any single roll involving repairing, building, or
using a complex technological device.
An interesting side effect of this ability is that when a Secretary watches a machine in use, or tries to use it
herself, she will instantly notice if the machine functions on something other than natural principles, such as a
Werewolf’s fetish or a Genius’ Wonders. The blind spot in the Princess’ intuitive understanding stands out like
neon pink dreadlocks at a lawyer convention.

Rise and Falling

The rise and fall of a piston as it converts heat and energy into productive work is something that is truly
wonderful to watch. The Machinist can emulate this. When Transformed, and spending a point of Willpower to
add to a dicepool involving machines, she can instead choose to convert it into a single automatic success. This
counts before the dice are rolled; as a result, in an uncontested roll, she can always ensure that she succeeds.
Such predictability comes at a cost, though. Dicepools where this ability are used don’t count the automatic
success towards the total needed for an exceptional success, as the spark of brilliance is directed towards not
failing rather than exceeding.

Depths of Longing
Machines long to be used, and, moreover, they long to be used correctly. The Machinist can aid in this. With
the expenditure of a Willpower point, she can “lend” another individual her dots in Crafts, Computer, Science,
Medicine or Drive. For the rest of the scene, when using a machine in a skill-check the person she lends to may
use her skills, instead of their own; if their own are higher, they simply get a +1 bonus. The Princess does not
lose access to the skills; one of the wonderful things about machinery is how it saves labor, and allows division
of tasks, after all.

Consul Privileges
Facing the Fire
The Consul’s intuitive grasp of technology lets her hone a tool to perfection. She spends a turn working
on a machine (forgoing Defense, if in combat), then spends 1 Wisp and rolls Intelligence + Inner Light. If she
succeeds, she adds her Sensitivity to the machine’s equipment bonus for anyone who uses it, for the rest of the
scene. On an exceptional success, the bonus remains for a full hour.

Watch in Awe
With the expenditure of a Wisp, the Machinist can grant another person the power of Rise and Falling to
ensure success with machines. For the rest of the scene, the beneficiary can choose to add 1 automatic success,
instead of 3 dice, when spending Willpower on a roll involving machines. As with Rise and Falling, the automatic
success does not count towards the total needed for an exceptional success.

426 Embassy to Machines

Ambassador Privilege
Aeria Gloris
The most beautiful thing you can do with a machine is to build one, to encode your understanding of the
world into a device that anyone can use to enhance their lives. An Ambassador can create machines that draw on
the Light directly, without the touch of one illuminated. Aeria Gloris nearly duplicates the Charm Living Image
with the upgrades Instructive, Bequeathed, and Duty-Bound. It differs in two respects: Firstly the dicepool be-
comes Dexterity + Crafts, Invocations may be applied as usual. Secondly, a Techie’s creations can be used by
anyone, even those who aren’t Light-touched. They are undeniably magical Bequests powered by the Light, but
their magic responds to anyone who presses the buttons.
The final form of these Bequests depends both on the Ambassador’s personal style and the Charm with-
in. A simple Charm might require nothing more than an on/off switch, but a complicated Charm might be cov-
ered in toggles or have a complicated computer interface and come with a thick user manual. As a general rule
any Charm in which the user has options for how to invoke it (such as Phantom where the user may choose
which image they wish to create) or is highly dependent on external factors (such as Balm, which depends on
which injuries one wishes to heal) will require a complicated interface. Anyone but other Techies (and other
people with a power like Calling, Calling that allows the use of unfamiliar technology) suffers a -3 penalty to
use Bequests with a complicated interface unless they have a specialty along the lines of “Ambassador Eriko’s
Medicine Engines”.
Drawback: Aside from the activation cost of 1 Wisp/roll and a dot of Willpower, as normal for the creation
of a Bequest, all the Ambassador’s machines have an Intimate sympathetic connection to her in both her forms;
such is the bond between the craftsman and her creations. The sympathetic connection is not vital to the func-
tioning of the device, it’s actually irrelevant, but it is exceptionally hard to remove. Most magic which dampens
sympathetic connections will not make a dent, and anything powerful enough to remove the connection would
probably destroy the Bequest and hurt the Ambassador.

Embassy to Machines 427

 Embassy to Night
Alternative Names: Lords/Ladies of the Night, Moon Knights
Informal Name: Night Witches

How beautiful is night!

A dewy freshness fills the silent air,
No mist obscures, no little cloud
Breaks the whole serene of heaven:
In full-orbed glory the majestic moon
Rolls thro the dark blue depths.
Beneath her steady ray
The desert circle spreads,
Like the round ocean, girdled with the sky.
How beautiful is night!

—Thalaba the Destroyer by Robert Southey

The night is a time of peace and rest. It is a time of beauty, when the world is recast in grey and silver.
So why then, do people fear the night? Why do people hide from it behind closed doors and electric lights?
It is because the night cloaks thieves and monsters in darkness, its beauty is hidden away behind walls of fear
and danger. Walls that the Embassy has sworn to break down.
Champions fighting evil by moonlight still form the bulk of the Embassy to the Night, and while linguistic
drift is inevitable most Princesses still consider the name “Night Witch” to refer exclusively to the Embassy’s
Champions. After Champions, Seekers and Troubadours are drawn to the Embassy. Seekers use the cover of
night to go where they shouldn’t and uncover the secrets therein while Troubadours express the beauty of the
world after sunset.
Swords form the most common Court, because that Court has a large supply of Champions and because its
rugged independence is well suited to action when the rest of the world is sleeping. The Court of Clubs is over-
represented among the Embassy’s Troubadours for the Wilds are the Court most likely to appreciate natural
beauty. The Graces in the Embassy are most likely to be Spades and hold court among urban nightlife.

Marks and Requirements

A Night Witch’s regalia blends with the night. Dark colors predominate; black or brown, olive or teal, navy or
purple. Ornaments and weapons sparkle from folds of cloth, which can close over and conceal them. Frequently
the Witch is masked as well.
In addition the Night seeps into the Night Witch’s magic. Her Charms never create light as a secondary
effect. (For example, if the Princess invokes Towering Inferno it will burn with the ethereal blues and silvers of
the night sky and shed almost no light.) Charms that are intended to create light are unaffected, though their
appearance may change appropriately.
The Embassy considers the night to be peaceful and secretive, and they embrace that within themselves.
Its required Attribute is Composure, and its required Skill is Stealth.

Secretary Privileges
The Embassy’s Privileges work only under the night sky. They have no effect between sunrise and sunset,
or if the Night Witch is illuminated enough for a mundane character to act without a penalty, or if she cannot
see the sky directly from her current location.

428 Embassy to Night

Wearing Midnight
Under the cover of night the Princesses becomes exceptionally hard to find. By spending a Wisp the Sec-
retary veils herself; for the rest of the scene, all attempts to locate or notice her through mundane or magical
means take a penalty equal to her Composure.

Daughter of the Moon

While she is transformed the Princess can see perfectly in the darkest nights. She takes no penalty to her
dice pools from lack of light, unless cut off entirely from the sky. In addition she acquires vitamin D from moon-
light and starlight as though she was out during daytime and never suffers adverse psychological effects such
as Seasonal Affective Disorder from going too long without seeing sunlight.

Guide on the Moon’s Roads

By spending a Wisp the Secretary may grant the benefits of Daughter of the Moon to another person. The
effect lasts until they next see sunlight; videos and remote viewing charms do not count though a telescope
would.

Consul Privileges
Left Eye of Horus
As a guardian of the night the Consul’s gaze sees all miscreants and misdeeds that hide within her domain.
When rolling to penetrate or contest stealth or subterfuge (both the Skills and the concepts) the transformed
Consul adds her Stealth dots to her dice pool. The Consul needs to be able to make a roll to benefit from this
privilege.

Sister to the Sunset

By spending a Wisp while transformed and touching another person, the transformed Consul may grant
them the benefits of Wearing Midnight for the rest of the scene.

Ambassador Privilege
Witchlight Dawn
At the apex of the Embassy’s power night and day are hers to command. By spending 3 Wisps and a point of
Willpower the Ambassador sheds witchlight around herself for the rest of the scene (though it fails prematurely
if she steps away from the night sky.) This light is invisible to mundane eyes - instead it turns magics of the day
or night to her benefit.
Any supernatural being within the Ambassador’s line of sight that is affected by daytime, nighttime, sun-
light, moonlight or starlight (but not a more specific time like noon or the witching hour) and any supernatural
ability affected by one of these conditions acts as though it were under whatever condition works to the Am-
bassador’s best advantage, even if she is unaware of it. A changeling defending innocents may find his contracts
with the Sun blazing to full power at midnight, while a vampire looking for food may discover that starlight
burns like the sun.
Drawback: The Princess becomes a true creature of the night, and shuns the daystar. During daytime she
takes a -1 penalty to Wits- and Composure-based dice pools, becoming cranky and slow as though she was sleep
deprived. In the presence of direct sunlight this penalty increases to -3. Unsurprisingly most Night Witches sleep
through the day in a darkened room.

Embassy to Night 429

 Embassy to the Ocean
Alternative Names: Explorers, Vanguards of the Depths
Informal Names: Mermaids, Magellans, Divers
Look down there. It goes for nearly a mile down here; much further in other places. Dark,
cold; no air, and many creatures we don’t fully understand yet.
But that doesn’t mean we should fear it. It’s a lovely place, really.

Even in the modern world, mankind only touches on a small portion of existence. Even the larger part of
the physical planet is located underwater, beyond our reach. The Ocean Embassy is comprised of explorers
and trailblazers - those who seek to explore places not yet touched by the Light, and make them friends to the
Princesses and mankind. The oceans themselves, being easily accessible, are an obvious place to start … though
many Explorers also display an interest in the Spirit World, outer space, and areas of the Dreamlands outside
the Princesses’ control. And more.
The Vanguards of the Depths appear to many as a rather fearless lot, willing to dive head-on into the un-
known, and able to make themselves feel at home in any environment. The Embassy, for its own part, holds that
any place humans can thrive in was unknown and frightening before it was explored; the Ambassadors seek to
shine the Light on the places where mankind will, one day, prosper.

Marks and Requirements

When members of this Embassy transform, symbols of the sea tend to mingle with their forms: Seashells
appear in their hair, while the latter seems to be blowing in a salty breeze; patterns reminiscent of designs in
sand form on their skin, their eyes go deep green-blue, and if one listens, one may hear the sound of waves
lapping on a far-off shore following them in their wake.
The prerequisite Attribute of the Embassy is Wits, and its prerequisite Skill is Survival.

Secretary Privileges
Mermaid’s Knowledge
The Explorers cannot become lost, physically or socially. The Secretary gains the Direction Sense Merit
[CofD 44] if she didn’t have it already; she always knows which way is north, no matter how she’s been spun
around, and even when blindfolded or in total darkness. She can retrace any journey she’s made once before,
if she was conscious while travelling; falling asleep in a vehicle driven by someone else puts a break in her
memory, but she will remember any motions the vehicle made while she was awake.
Socially, a Secretary can learn to converse with anyone she meets with amazing speed. While listening to
someone speak in a language she isn’t fluent in, and trying to speak to that person, the Secretary rolls her Inner
Light + Intelligence as an extended action; each roll represents five minutes of attempted conversation. When
the Secretary has accumulated 4 successes, she gains the benefits of the Multilingual Merit [CofD 46] for the
language the other person is speaking. She may use the ability again to upgrade the benefits to the Language
Merit [CofD 45] gaining the same fluency in the language as the other person. The new language fades after 1
hour; if the Secretary has the XP, though, she may spend it to acquire either Multilingual or Language instantly
before the magic fades.

Mermaid’s Form
As a transformation action, the Secretary’s legs can merge together into a tail, either delphine or fishlike,
and her body adapts in other ways to the rigors of swimming in deep water. On land she suffers from the Crippled
Condition [CofD 288] but she swims at her Speed in yards per turn (see Athletic Feats.) She can breathe water as

430 Embassy to the Ocean

easily as air, and never suffers from nitrogen narcosis. Finally, she gains a form of echolocation, which gives her
a reflexive knowledge of all her surroundings like that from the Charm Read the Wind, out to a range of Inner
Light + Wits yards in the air and twice that under water. She can sense either in air or in water, but not both,
depending on whether her head is submerged.
The Secretary can switch between the mermaid form and her original transformed state with a transfor-
mation action. She has all the benefits of her transformed state as a mermaid, and all Charms that alter her
transformed state stack with the mermaid form.

Mermaid’s Kiss
While transformed as a mermaid, the Secretary can pass on part of her resilience to another. She kisses the
other person on the lips and spends a Wisp. Until the next sunset, the target can breathe water as easily as air,
exactly as the Secretary can, and is also immune to nitrogen narcosis.

Consul Privileges
Mermaid’s Song
The Consul’s voice, like a siren’s, becomes fascinating, turning the heads of those who hear it. The Consul
spends a Wisp and rolls her Inner Light + the higher of Presence and Manipulation to charm another person;
the target contests the roll with his Composure + Supernatural Tolerance. If the Consul wins the contest, the
target is entranced; for the rest of the scene, he gains the Swooning Condition [CofD 291] for the Consul.

Mermaid’s Love
When the Consul uses Mermaid’s Kiss, she may spend an extra Wisp (2 total) to transform her target fully
into a merman or mermaid like herself, with all the abilities and drawbacks of that form. The target may return
to his human form at will at any time, and must do so at the next sunset.

Ambassador Privilege
Mermaid’s Crown
The Ambassador to the Ocean reads her surroundings constantly, and adapts to anything she meets. First,
she gains the echolocation sense of the mermaid form at all times, even when untransformed. When she becomes
a mermaid, the range of her echolocation triples, and she can create a focused pulse of sound that lets her read
the hidden structure of solid objects. To use this, the Ambassador touches the object, and rolls Wits + Composure
or Wits + an appropriate Skill as an instant action - Crafts works for inanimate objects, Medicine for living beings.
Success on this roll tells her something of the object’s density and composition, finding any holes, cracks or
imbedded bits of different materials.
Second, the Ambassador can transform her body to deal with nearly any environment. Once a scene, while
transformed (as either human or mermaid) she spends a Wisp and rolls Inner Light + Survival. Each success
gives her 1 Merit dot, allocated among Hardy, Iron Stomach, Striking Looks, Sympathetic and Biokinesis. Suc-
cesses may also be allocated to give her resistance to extreme environments [CofD 97]; one success allows her
to reduce the effective level of one environment by 1. Merit dots gained this way last until the end of the scene.
Drawback: The Ambassador’s mood varies with the tides. During the hour of low tide (30 minutes before
to 30 minutes after the ebb) she suffers from the Broken Condition [CofD 288], and during the hour of high tide
(30 minutes before to 30 minutes after the flood) she suffers from the Manic Condition.

Embassy to the Ocean 431

 Embassy to Stories
Alternative Names: The Storytellers Embassy, The Authors
Informal Names: Godmothers/Godfathers, Bards, Editors
I know how this story goes, and it doesn’t end well. So I’ll just have to write an amendment.
It is a truth not commonly acknowledged that the world runs on stories. Reoccurring patterns and symbols
are woven into the narrative of our lives. But nothing, claim the Storytellers Embassy, says that these stories
must be tragedies. Pain might make for better art but happy ever after makes for better lives.
The Ambassadors to Stories make this their mission. They seek to unravel the great tapestry of stories and
weave in their own amendments. They enter a tale and throw the narrative off it’s tracks, hopefully to something
better: Tragedy comes comedy, the hero defeats the villain, the lovers ride off into the sunset and yes the little
dog lives till the end of the story. It’s not easy, it’s certainly not safe but you can do it.

Marks and Requirements

If a Princess joined the Editors it’s because she understood the power of stories, some studied literature
while others simply read everything they could but books alone are not enough. She must also have seen how
reoccurring patterns from the stories also reoccur in life, this requires a perceptive individual who has the
detachment to look at her own life with a critical eye.
Upon joining the Embassy her regalia becomes as much a part of the story she is. It takes on aspects that
foreshadow her role in the story and reflect her character traits. When rushing to save innocents from a Dark-
spawn attack she is recognizable as The Hero. When teaching a younger Princesses a critical eye will notice
marks of The Wise Mentor. The only constant are hints of the Storyteller, a thick leather bound book, a pair of
reading glasses perched on the nose, an ink stained quill or some other mark.
Before changing a story a Godmother must first be able to tell a story. The required Attribute is Manipula-
tion and the skill is Expression.

Secretary Privileges
What’s the Story?
The first skill an Editor learns is to feel the flow of the narratives around her. She gains the Merit Unseen
Sense (Wyrd) [CofD 60]. The Wyrd is omnipresent, it is the connection between all things and a Secretary soon
learns to block out all but the largest manifestations of this power, including changelings, True Fae, Tokens,
Hedge Gates and active effects of faerie magic such as Pledges or Contracts. Talecrafting is especially noticeable.
The Secretary can even try to see through the Mask with a roll of Wits + Composure – 3 vs. Wyrd + Composure.
Resistance is reflexive and automatic.

Entering the Tale

The easiest way to change a story is to become a character within it. By entering another person’s story the
Secretary is in a privileged position to guide it the way she wishes to, or just make a complete pigs breakfast of
the whole thing. To enter a story it must have one or more unfulfilled positions: If a sword can only be drawn from
a stone by the rightful king, then the position of rightful king is open until someone successfully pulls the sword.
Entering a story about corporate corruption would require an open position in the management hierarchy, or
perhaps a well placed secretary job. To enter a story the Secretary rolls Inner Light + Manipulation + Subterfuge
– Commonalty vs the highest Composure + Supernatural Advantage. The Storyteller will have to use his own
judgement when measuring the dice pool of things like the Sword in the Stone; using Merlin’s attributes would
be appropriate as he was the person who put it there.
This power does not change the Secretary herself, nor does it force reality to conform to her new role. It
merely makes characters in the story perceive her as appropriate. The sword perceives her as the rightful king

432 Embassy to Stories

or the executives perceive her as ideal for the job. This limitation means that a badly chosen role can cause the
Secretary no end of trouble. While the Privilege may make the Knights of the Round Table perceive her as a man
(because the open position in the story was for a king, not a queen) people outside the story are unaffected and
would certainly notice a female king or a sixteen year old corporate executive with no qualifications. Making
Guinevere not notice the Secretary’s sex is too much for the Privilege. A more modern telling of the long lost
heir might include a paternity test. Because of this smart Godmothers carefully choose roles appropriate to
themselves and to how they wish to twist the story. (In fact this is where the name Godmother came from. The
drop-in mentor is lightly bound by the narrative and has a powerful influence over the main character making
it an ideal position.)
One very fortunate effect of this power is that it helps the Secretary act according to her new role. She gets
a bonus of half Inner Light when attempting to act appropriately for her character. She cannot use this bonus
for entering her own or her Nakama’s story. As a basic yardstick, if entering the story asks her to do what she’d
be doing anyway she gets no bonus.
For the purposes of the Privilege opening a Hedge Gate is considered to be a very short story with two
characters, the Hedge Gate and “the one who fulfills the Gate’s Key”. Using Entering the Tale tricks the Hedge
Gate into thinking the Godmother has fulfilled its Key, just like Entering the Tale tricks everyone in a story into
thinking the Godmother fills a particular role. Only Hedge Gates with a key can be opened in this fashion.
Leaving the story requires the Secretary to spend twenty four hours isolated from any of her fellow char-
acters before spending a point of Willpower to break the connection. A Godmother automatically leaves the
story at its natural conclusion.
Drawback: Just as she gets a bonus to acting in character the Secretary takes a penalty of half Inner Light
when attempting to act outside the bounds of the narrative. If she takes the role of a corrupt executive she has
a penalty to resist the temptation of greed. If she takes the role of King Arthur she takes a penalty to not throw
away Excalibur’s scabbard. If she takes a role who is supposed to die at the end of act two … well she really
shouldn’t have done that.
Since the Editor is almost certainly entering a story to change it she’s more likely to face penalties than
she is to get a bonus.

About That Frog

When the Embassy of Stories is in play you might end up with one of those stories where only a princess
or the kiss of a princess can break the curse, open the door, marry Prince Charming, or advance the plot.
Are Princesses princesses?
The answer depends on the story and which body she is in at the time. Sometimes any public role
called a Princess will do: Homecoming princess, Mardi Gras princess. Sometimes it’s so loosely defined that
“daddy’s little princess” can break the curse. Other times, the definitions are stricter.
A member of a noble caste by birthright: Princesses usually qualify for this one, except Onceborn.
The Nobility probably were the noble classes in the Kingdom, and they certainly are in the Dreamlands king-
dom and Alhambra. Unless “birthright” is specifically defined by parentage, reincarnating ready to Blossom
counts as a birthright.
A son/daughter of royalty: Surprisingly Princesses of Hearts actually do qualify. Princesses of Hearts
are adopted by the Queen, a mere traditional formality left over from the days when Andarta was a confed-
eration of hereditary feudal states; at least that’s how they remember it. Other Princesses generally don’t.
The ruler of a principality: This one varies, to qualify does the principality have to be a sovereign country
or does “ruling” the school debating society and calling yourself a Princess count?
In general fate is complex and unpredictable; if a Princess sees a talking frog she might as well give
kissing it a shot.

Literary Criticism
By spending a Wisp the Secretary can grant another all the benefits of What’s the Story? for one scene.

Embassy to Stories 433

 Drawback: Because of the omnipresent nature of the Wyrd this Unseen Sense is distracting and imposes a
-(4 – Composure) penalty to Perception rolls. Repeated use of Literary Criticism on the same person will allow
them to acclimatize and removes this penalty.

Consul Privileges
Becoming the Tale
As a Consul the Editor isn’t limited to assuming a role, she can become the role. When she Transforms the
Consul creates a new self from threads of narrative to create a form appropriate to her role. While she still cannot
create an appropriate history or documentation for her role she can fool DNA tests, looks appropriate for her
position to people outside the story, gets a +Inner Light bonus on appropriate Subterfuge rolls and generally
fits in much better.
Because this new form is built from scraps of narrative it triggers the Unseen Sense (Wyrd). Any role in a
narrative that includes entering the Hedge (and since every Hedge journey is a story an Editor may use Becoming
the Tale just for this purpose) has peculiar effects. So long as the Consul is in this form her Regalia armors her
against the Thorns. Rather than losing Belief she loses Wisps as a Changeling would lose Glamour. Losing her
last Wisp will cause her transformation to end, though being lost in the Thorns is definitely a good justification
for regaining Wisps through Inner Strength. She can navigate the Hedge rolling Belief instead of Clarity. Finally
she may be affected by goblin fruits in ways both positive and negative, however she cannot gain either Wisps
or Glamour from them.
Drawback: Assuming a form built out of faerie magic is very dangerous to one’s sense of reality. After
using this power the Consul gains the Madness Condition [CofD 289]; fortunately the Condition expires (without
resolving) after a full day spent without using any Privilege of the Embassy.
In addition a Consul’s perceptions start to become warped by Stories. While she has assumed a form, when
rolling Perception roll her Wits and Composure separately.
Composure succeeds: As per a normal Perception Success.
Wits succeeds and Composure fails: The Consul gets the full accurate information but sees it through a
lens of the story. The player hears the result of a normal Perception success but the Consul is given a metaphor.
A drug dealer might look like some sort of humanoid mosquito representing how he sucks the life out of people.
If possible theme this hallucination on the Consul’s current role.
Both fail: If under normal circumstances the Consul would simply not see something treat the results as
normal, if however she would get distracted then she is likely to have been distracted by a hallucination.

A Story About You

The Consul can now extend her power of Entering the Tale to other people. This requires an open role
as always and she rolls Inner Light + Manipulation + Expression – Commonalty vs. the highest Composure +
Supernatural Tolerance. In this case Commonalty only applies to the people in the narrative, not the person she’s
trying to add to it. The highest Composure + Supernatural Tolerance includes both the narrative and (unless
he is willing) the character-to-be.
When a Godmother forces someone into a tale it’s harder for them to leave. They must isolate themselves
and spend a point of Willpower like a Godmother but they must also roll Composure + Supernatural Tolerance
vs the Godmother’s original dicepool. As an instant action the Godmother may spend a Wisp to let a person she
forced into a story escape it; only the Godmother who pushed someone into a story may unpick their own magic
in this way, but any Godmother can offer some assistance by serving as secondary Actors in the escape roll.

434 Embassy to Stories

Ambassador Privilege
Weaving the Tale
The Ambassador can bend the power of stories to her will. Like a needle she dips in and out of the narrative
tapestry bringing in elements to suit her purpose. Once per game session she can twist events and fortune as
she wishes. A power as dangerous as it is useful.
The first step is The Pattern. Simply put she must identify, or create, the potential for a narrative pattern
in her current situation. Lets say she and her Nakama are fighting a very powerful foe, ordinarily this foe would
be able to take down the entire Nakama single handedly. However the Princesses of Hearts in the Nakama has
just started making a speech about how their foe has no chance because the Nakama have friendship on their
side. In the stories the power of friendship can defeat impossible odds, this is something a Godmother can use.
The second step is The Hook. Having seen a potential narrative thread an editor must weave it into the story.
She pays two Wisps and rolls the lowest of her Inner Light, Manipulation and Expression as an Instant Action.
Dramatic Failure: Not only does the action fail the Editor also suffers a Cruel Twist of Fate.
Failure: The desired effect does not happen.
Success: The effect occurs, however the results come with a Cruel Twist of Fate.
Exceptional Success: The effect occurs with no Cruel Twist of Fate.
Suggested Modifiers:
+3 The outcome of The Hook helps confirm a story the Editor has become a part of through Entering the Tale
+2 The outcome of The Hook helps confirm a story she has made another part of through A Story About You
+1 The Editor is a Troubadour
+1 The Editor follows the Queen of Spades
+1 The Editor has any Charms in Connect
+1 The Editor has a Belief of 4 to 7
-1 The Editor has a Belief of 8 or more
-1 The Editor has a Belief of 3 or less
-1 The Editor has no dots in Academics
-2 The Editor has a persistent Condition that ends when her Belief changes (e.g. Addicted, Broken, Fugue
or Madness)
-2 The Editor has the Amnesia or False Memory Conditions
-2 The Editor is attempting to go against a story she has made another part of through A Story About You
-3 The Editor is attempting to go against a story she has become a part of through Entering the Tale
So continuing our example thanks to the Godmother’s nudge the fight is now going to play out according
to the power of friendship. This of course does not mean they’re untouchable; their foe might give them a huge
battering before a last moment surge of team spirit. In short while they will win this power won’t necessarily
grant a perfect victory. At worst they might just drive their foe off for a short while, that’s a “win”. Still, it is better
than getting soundly defeated by a stronger foe.
The final step is a Cruel Twist of Fate. Unless the Godmother scored an exceptional success the Storyteller
should introduce a complication to the plot. The Wyrd does not like being tampered with. This Twist will never
undo the effect of The Hook. The battle will be won, but maybe the Nakama only think they killed the villain and
he’s set to reappear when they least expect it. Their enemy might have some devious plan that required their
victory, or the entire battle was a distraction.
Drawback: It’s addictive. Bending the world to your whim is very very addictive. A Godmother may use
Weaving the Tale once safely; every time after that she must roll Resolve + Composure with an cumulative -1
penalty, up to a maximum of -5. A failure means that she’s addicted. The effects vary according to each individual
but a common theme is being unable to see the world as anything but a collection of reoccurring narrative
threads. “She’s got a cruel stepmother and two ugly stepsisters. Of course she wants to marry the charming
prince. What is a lesbian?”
Getting clean requires going cold turkey. She must spend a number of days equal to her Manipulation +
Expression in an isolated place. Somewhere serene is best but in the end isolation is isolation. During this time

Embassy to Stories 435

she may not use any Privilege of the Embassy, or any Charms that manipulate other people. It is best to avoid
Charms entirely. Finally she spends one Willpower a day and rolls Resolve + Composure. Once she has successes
equal to her Manipulation + Expression her system is clean and she can start again as though she had never
used this power before. Careful Godmothers flush their system before getting addicted.
And yes, this power is Talecrafting (so are Entering the Tale, A Story About You and Becoming the Tale in a
much more limited and safer fashion), more details along with plenty of example threads and Cruel Twists of
Fate can be found in Swords at Dawn starting at page 60. Editors cannot Force the Pattern or inflict a Reversal
of Fate, though they can certainly be targeted by one.

436 Embassy to Stories

 Protectorate of Amethyst
Alternative Names: The Grave Tenders, The Keepers of the Necropolis, The Keepers of Memory
Informal Names: Funeral Priests, Corpse-Brides (derogatory)
Attached to Order: Parrot
They say all are equal before death, but the people of Alhambra know this is not true. Death is a transition,
but something of the individual remains. Even when you’re dead, life, as it were, goes on. The dead still owe
loyalty to the Last Empress. They are still expected to serve for the survival of Alhambra if their Queen requests
it. In turn the Last Empress has her royal duties to keep her dead subjects safe and protected.
The Protectorate of Amethyst represent the Queen in her role as Lady Protector of the Dead. In Alhambra
they they are responsible for taking care of the ghosts and performing the funeral services. In the rebellious
provinces they are sent to rule and safeguard the dead in the Queen’s name. Though officially all forms of undead
fall under the Protectorate’s jurisdiction they have little experience with forms of the dead other than ghosts,
and to a lesser extent dead Princesses.

Marks and Requirements

Corpse-Brides don’t have a connection to Death itself, they have a connection to the dead. Their role is
closer to that of a caretaker than a psychopomp. They are expected to ensure that the honored dead are kept
comfortable and provided for; much in the way that that a government employed caretaker might be responsible
for providing aid to the elderly or the disabled. The bread and butter of ghosts, and thus of the Grave Tenders’
trade is performing funeral services. The required Attribute is Presence and the required skill is Expression.
The Grave Tenders are expected to mostly cut ties with the living in favor of living as one of the dead. In
doing so something of a ghost’s unsubstantial nature sinks into their Transformed identity. Their skin becomes
pale, but not unhealthy. Their regalia acquires funerary shrouds and turns snow white. Colours themselves
seem muted and distant. The official hair style is long and swept back in white or silver.

Secretary Privileges
Is something missing?
The Keepers of Memory are Alhambran through and through; their Privileges reflect the realities of
ghosts in Alhambra and lack some obvious powers that would be useful when they travel beyond their
borders, such as the ability to see ghosts in Twilight.
This doesn’t stop them from carrying out their duties; it simply means that they use more Lacrima
Charms than, say, the Embassy to Death.

Sharing Life with Death

The Keepers of the Necropolis are expected to live in as though in death, and so bring the comforts of life to
the death. No method they have is more direct than by inviting a ghost into their own body to share the comforts
of the flesh themselves. In recent nights this Privilege is most commonly used to transport ghosts between
Alhambra and various Enclaves in the rebellious provinces.
To invite a ghost into her body a Secretary must touch it and spend a Wisp. If the ghost wishes it may freely
enter the Secretary’s body; the effect of this is exactly as if it had used the Fetter Manifestation [CofD 131] on the
Secretary (that is, the ghost is Fettered and the Secretary is Urged.) The possession lasts for one day, unless the
Secretary and the ghost agree to break it earlier, or someone is impolite enough to exorcise the ghost. Moreover,
by spending 1 Willpower the Secretary can temporarily release the ghost from her body, allowing it to use its
powers freely; the effect of this is identical to the Unfetter Manifestation. The Privilege requires nothing from

Protectorate of Amethyst 437

the ghost but its agreement - it need not spend Essence or know either Manifestation. If a ghost does know
Unfetter, it can use that Manifestation without ending the possession.

Honoring the Ancestors

Ghosts gain Essence when remembered by the living, and the primary duty of the Protectorate of Amethyst
is to provide them with Essence by leading funerals and rituals of remembrance. While Transformed, a Funeral
Priestess may perform a special funerary ritual. The ritual takes half an hour of hymn-singing and slow dance,
reassuring any ghosts who see and hear it that they are not forgotten. Normally the Priestess leads several
assistants in the ritual, as having more people makes it more effective, but the rite can be performed alone.
At the end of the service the Secretary rolls Presence + Expression.
Dramatic Failure: The Secretary’s ritual is so poorly done that she offends the local ghosts. She gains
the Shaken Condition [CofD 290] with respect to ghosts or the place she did the ritual.
Failure: The local ghosts are not impressed, and get no benefit.
Success: Every ghost in Twilight who watches the whole ritual regains 1 Essence per success. Each ghost
may regain Essence this way once a day.
Exceptional Success: On top of the immediate regained Essence, the place the Secretary stands becomes
an Anchor for all the affected ghosts. If a ghost already had it as an Anchor, it becomes Open as well. The
Condition made by the ritual lasts for one day.
Modifiers: the Secretary does not know the ghosts she is performing for (-4), the Secretary has a ghost’s
Anchor (+1), the Secretary has no assistants (-2), the Secretary has at least three assistants (+1 for 3, multiply
by 2 for another +1 - 6 gives +2, 12 gives +3, and so on), the Secretary has appropriate grave offerings for the
targeted ghosts (+1 to +3)

Blessing the Union of Life and Death

By touching both a person and a ghost while Transformed, a Secretary can ease them into a harmonious
possession as per Sharing Life with Death. She spends a Wisp and rolls Presence + Occult; the person may contest
with Resolve + Composure + Supernatural Tolerance, and the ghost may contest with Resistance + Rank. If either
the person or the ghost wins the contest the possession fails. While the possession lasts the person may spend
Willpower to Unfetter the ghost, as the Secretary could if she were harboring it.
If a ghost knows Fetter, the Secretary may help it use the Manifestation. Again, she spends a Wisp and rolls
Presence + Occult; her successes become bonus dice on the ghost’s Manifestation roll.

Governor Privileges
Hallowing the Necropolis
Ghosts suffer; they suffer because they have unfinished business among the living and they suffer because
their nature separates them from the living. In Alhambra the departed have no such restriction and the Keepers
of the Necropolis can bring this peace to the provinces. To do this she spends 2 Wisps and begins an extended
Presence + Expression roll to consecrate the ground; the threshold is the area’s Sanctuary.
When sufficient successes are accumulated the target area becomes a Necropolis. Ghosts within a Necrop-
olis gain two benefits: First, the Necropolis is an Anchor for all of them, keeping them from the Underworld and
saving them from Essence bleed even if their last personal Anchors are destroyed. Second, all of them can use
the Image Manifestation whether or not they know it; a ghost that does know Image can use it without spending
any Essence, while other ghosts spend 1 Essence to activate it.
Under ordinary circumstances a Necropolis lasts for Inner Light days. If cast upon Consecrated ground it
will last as long as the Consecrated Condition does, though to benefit from Consecrated a Necropolis must be
cast on all and only the Consecrated ground.

438 Protectorate of Amethyst

Bequeathing Funerary Gifts
In Alhambra all are expected to do their part for the survival of the city, and the departed are no exception.
Yet beyond Alhambra’s borders most ghosts can do little but watch or spy. The Corpse-Brides are occasionally
asked to help prepare a ghost for more involved tasks.
This Privilege allows a Governor to turn a Bequest into a ghost’s Numen. This requires preparing the Be-
quest with an Extended Inner Light + Occult roll with a target of the Bequest’s dots as a Merit. Once this is done
the Governor hands the Bequest to the ghost, the physical objects rots and crumbles and the ghost has a new
ability, spending Essence in place of Wisps where required. There is no way to recover the Bequest after it has
been changed into a Numen, or for anyone but the ghost to use it.
If the ghost is given a Bequest that is able to create Wisps, such as Capitation, the ghost regains Essence by
using it. If the ghost is given a Bequest that can transfer Wisps, such as Charge, the ghost can transfer Essence.
The one absolute limit is that ghosts cannot benefit from the Living Image upgrades Duty-Bound and Empow-
ered. If Bequeathing Funerary Gifts is used on a Bequest with either upgrade, the effects of that upgrade are
lost in the transition.

Regent Privilege
Bearing the Burdens of the Dead
By touching the ghost of a Princess a Regent can draw the ghost’s Shadows into her own soul, protecting
the dead Princess from its greatest threat. Through this privilege the oldest ghost Princesses have been kept
active for thousands of years. Using this Privilege requires touching the royal ghost and spending a Wisp as an
instant action. The Regent peels off the darkness and decay from the ghost and hides it deep within herself. Each
activation of this Privilege transfers one dot of Shadows, but the Regent may use it as many times as she wishes.
The player should track the number of ghost Shadows separately from her regular Shadows. This is because
they have a second use. Emotions are somewhat more physical to ghosts, and so are their Shadows. As a reflexive
action the Regent may expel angry wraiths from her body, removing one ghost Shadow per wraith. These wraiths
are a form of Darkspawn, not ghosts, though they are immaterial and usually exist in Twilight. They are similar
enough to the Darkspawn known as Shadow-wraiths that the Storyteller may use the traits for those creatures. If
the Regent spends a Willpower point when releasing ghost Shadows she may roll Resolve + Composure. Success
allows her to direct the released Darkspawn to attack targets of her choice, though they always put their own
survival first.
It is a secret known only to the Regents of Amethyst that this Privilege can be used on the living, though at a
greater cost. Alas, creatures of the Darkness are immune. Transferring a dot of Shadows from a living character
costs 3 Wisps, and inflicts the Haunted Condition on the Regent; resolving the Condition removes the transferred
dot. If the Regent is currently Haunted, she may use the Privilege only on ghosts. Shadows taken from the living
can’t be released as wraiths.
Drawback: Working with Shadows always has its downsides. Shadows taken from a ghost Princess have all
the same disadvantages as regular Shadows. The Regent may remove them as per normal Shadows; the player
decides what kind of Shadows to remove first.
Releasing ghost Shadows into the wild risks a compromise with a -3 penalty to the roll. Directing ghost
Shadows to attack someone risks a compromise with a -5 penalty to the roll.

Protectorate of Amethyst 439

 Protectorate of Blue Topaz
Alternative Names: Respectful Guild of Actors and Writers, Curators of Inferior Rites (Par-
rot), Oneiromantic Research Council (Raccoon), Her Eminence’s Messengers (Ghost Owl)
Informal Names: Playwrights, Ornithologic Conjurors, Mind Knights (respect-
ful, among those authorized to know their true nature), Schemers (insulting),
Heretics (very insulting), Alhambran Ministry of Love (Radiant followers only)
Attached to Order: Ambiguous - has charters from Ghost Owl, Parrot and Raccoon under different names
Surprised? You shouldn’t be; for one, the third act’s always the one with the big reveal. Second
- you’re the one who told me about this place.

Alhambra is a city that despises frivolity - which is to say, they hate anything that reeks of taking too much
joy in life, barring service to the Last Empress. The Queen of Tears has decreed that, until such time it is reborn,
the Kingdom must be mourned. Whoever does not properly grieve, by Her decree, is not appreciating what was
lost, and by extension is not appreciating the sacrifices that went into creating the City Within The Dark. Thus,
Alhambrans have been trained to see anything that speaks of a purely artistic endeavour is wasting energy on
a frankly blasphemous display, energy that could be better devoted to service of the city and its mistress. In
principle, the Queen of Tears dissolved the Order of the Peacock because there is no art, apart from dramatized
history and the bleak commentary of the Fools of the Summit, that respects the memory of her lost home.
In practice, expecting the inventor of Lacrima, of all Invocations, to not have more nuance in her principles
than she publicly states is an idiot’s theory. While she does not buy the theory that art is always political, she
recognizes that much of it is, touching the soul in ways that go beyond thought, beyond consciousness. So while
critical art is not something she wishes to muddy the minds of her people with thoughts of nonconformity and
rebellion, propaganda is something entirely different. Thus, when representatives from the Raccoons, Tortoises,
and Ghost Owls simultaneously approached her with the accidental discovery that the Rebellious Provinces
could give dreams awareness and use those aware dreams to shape the minds of humans, she realized perhaps
there was a purpose for the Blessed Merrymakers after all.
The Protectorate of Blue Topaz is one of the youngest, by Alhambran standards - barely past its thousandth
year. By all rights, they should have long been made a public Protectorate by sheer accident, but the protection of
the Queen combined with the well-practiced selective obliviousness Alhambrans have towards her own actions
(by definition, if Her Everflowing Majesty is okay with it, that must mean it is within tradition, so they don’t
question it) means they have, if anything, developed an even better set of cover stories to ensure their anonymity
in their hidden duty of ensuring Alhambra dreams the right things, and thinks the right thoughts. While all the
Orders are aware the Protectorate exists, those who even bother just assume they are dumping grounds for the
unacceptably independent and airheaded amongst them, not a proper royal commission at all.
The genius of this is that it’s slightly true - the Respectful Guild actually does look for the people in the guild
who have found joy in their work and have an urge to create something, but critically, their recruits are chosen
from those who wish to create for Alhambra. Taxmen of the Vulture who puzzle out ways to banish the Taint
they create and restore the fields even as they are drained, Ghost Owls who wish they were allowed to inspire
as well as critique, Tortoises enthralled with the idea of a glorious past becoming a blueprint for the future, and
genius Pelicans who have grown weary of the old techniques holding back their potential all find a ready friend
in the hidden handlers of the Playwrights. For many, a friend is all they ever have, but for those with the proper
balance of empathy and fanaticism to ignore their conscience, Her Eminence’s Messengers quietly expose the
prospect to new ideas from the Rebellious Provinces, artistic movements, translated novels, political treatises -
and see if the prospect, rather than destroying the heretical creed or becoming corrupted by it, starts to wonder
if there’s any way to turn those ideas to Alhambra’s betterment. Those who do are introduced to the true face of
the Playwrights, and told of the glorious destiny they all share - to make of the entire world a stage, and upon it
bring the production Alhambra’s Victory Over All to a glorious conclusion. And more importantly, how to turn
the world into method actors with the proper stimulus and response.
Frequently, followers of the Radiant Queens see the Mind Knights as a rebellion in the making - once outside
of the watchful gaze of their neighbors, the Schemers let themselves reveal their joi de vivre, dressing in actual
color and playing idle games with each other, easy with laughter and smiles. This is a mistake - the Playwrights
are just as loyal as the rest of Alhambra, and in fact their lightness of heart comes from utter zealotry equal

440 Protectorate of Blue Topaz

to any one of the Stormwracked. The Schemers are completely assured of the rightness and inevitability of
their cause, and part of what makes them so effective is not direct mind control or blackmail, although they
can do both; rather, each and every one of them truly and earnestly believes their messages about the nobility
of the Last Empress and the superiority of their way, and that passion drives everything they do; while most
Alhambrans serve out of inertia, the ironically-nicknamed Heretics serve because they are patriots. The only
real disagreement they have with Her Ever-Flowing Majesty is her traditionalism; the Protectorate of Blue Topaz
is constantly trying to find new and better ways of serving the Queen of Tears, in particular dream manipulation
and the shaping of new artistic movements that glorify the virtues of Alhambra: utter dedication to the group
above all else, the willingness to do what is necessary without regret or hesitation, and contempt for all who
do not accept the previous two precepts.
When it is finally time for Alhambra to return and reclaim its place as capital of the Earth, the Playwrights
plan, there will be no true resistance, for the barbarians’ hearts will already belong to the Last Empress. Until
then, making their enemies the unknowing actors in the grand production - and sources of intel to ensure the
script isn’t changed - is a worthy objective.

Marks and Requirements

The Protectorate of Blue Topaz deliberately selects for people who already have an inherent link to the
Dreamlands - even besides the natural talent this gives them with their Irim (see below), most of those tend
to be creative exiles from society already, especially stodgy, Trap-wary Alhambra. This includes the White Rab-
bits Merit, obviously, but a non-Hopeful with Dream Travel fits the bill. Her Eminence’s Messengers need the
capacity to make long-term plans and to understand people on at least academic level; their required Attribute
is Intelligence and their required Skill is Empathy.
A Princess who joins the Conjurers finds that their core philosophy - that all human motivations can ulti-
mately be reduced to a spectrum between Love and Fear - is now written large over her Transformation; Play-
wrights always have a trace of duality about their Regalia. One resembles Hel, the Norse goddess of the dead,
with a vivacious girl covered with plant growth on one side and an immaculate corpse dressed in mournful black
on the other. Another has an angelic halo and wings that are attached to a snarling beastwoman that looks un-
comfortably akin to a well-groomed Darkspawn. One of the most subtle belongs to a male Seeker who appears
to be dressed as a Renaissance nobleman with distinctly modern scientific instruments attached to a nylon belt.
As fitting a clandestine and highly secretive Protectorate, this duality has no particular commonality among it,
and seems to be almost deliberately unique for the sake of ensuing that nobody figures out a link. To show their
true allegiance, the members summon their Irim familiars - while these are not altogether different from bird
shikigami, the members are briefed on the secret signs that make disguising yourself as one nearly impossible,
such as the fact that the Irim appear out of thin air (the minds of their masters, technically, but anyone observing
Twilight can tell they weren’t there a second ago).

Secretary Privileges
A Secretary of Blue Topaz shapes dreamstuff and a bit of her soul into her personal Irim as part of her
initiation to the Protectorate. The Irim takes the form of a bird that can perch on its mistress’ shoulder or arm
(Size 2 at most.) However, being immaterial an Irim has the traits of a Dreamlander - in fact, as a detached
portion of the Secretary’s soul, it has the same traits as her Dream Form. Irim may use any non-supernatural
Merits of their mistress that make sense for a bird, but cannot use any of her supernatural powers. However,
an Irim can fly (equivalent to the Wings •••• Merit for shikigami) and its natural attacks do lethal damage. (All
this becomes relevant when a Mind Knight’s Privileges are active.)
If an Irim is “killed” its mistress instantly loses a point of Willpower and cannot use any of her Privileges
until she has regained all her Willpower; the Irim returns to her soul and sleeps there while its dream-body
heals.

A Little Bird Told Me

The Secretary may send her ephemeral bird into the dreams of other people she has recently met, to glean
information about their emotions and ambitions. Once per night, she may send her Irim to observe the dreams

Protectorate of Blue Topaz 441

of a person she encountered after the last time she slept. The Irim will return during her next sleep and show
her a series of visions, which she rolls Wits + Empathy + White Rabbits to interpret. Each success rolled allows
her to discover one of the following: the target’s Virtue, his Vice, one Aspiration or Vocation, or one Condition
affecting his mental state.

Aviary
When she is transformed, the Secretary can spend one Wisp to pull her Irim out of Twilight and grant it ma-
terial form. While materialized the Irim becomes an NPC that obeys its mistress’ orders but acts independently
of her; it also knows everything about her situation and intentions that the Secretary does. Lacking instructions,
the Irim will usually pose, preen or fly about to inspect various objects. It dematerializes as the end of the scene,
unless the Secretary recalls it before then.
The Secretary can also tell her Irim to examine a person’s thoughts while it’s materialized, if the person is
present and capable of dreaming. The Irim must perch on, peck at, preen at or otherwise have physical contact
with the target for an instant action, then return to its mistress; it will display visions to her on the surface
of its spread wings. The Secretary interprets these visions with a roll of Wits + Empathy, learning the same
information as she would from A Little Bird Told Me.

Nest Egg
The Secretary can spend 1 Wisp while her Irim is materialized and in contact with her to make it lay a
phantasmal egg, roughly an inch in length and with a polychromatic shell. The Irim’s eggs have an Intimate
sympathetic connection to the Secretary, last indefinitely until hatched, and can’t be destroyed by any external
force. The Secretary can make a number of eggs equal to the higher of her Intelligence and White Rabbits dots;
once she has, she must wait until one hatches before making another.
Any character can pick up and carry an egg. A mundane or Light-touched character - but not the Secretary
herself - can hatch an egg by holding it in his bare hands and concentrating for a full turn (losing his Defense if
in combat); what comes out of the egg is a dream-bird, formed from the Secretary’s dreams and the hatcher’s.
The dream-bird has the traits of its hatcher’s Dream Form. It shares the Irim’s ability to read dreams, giving the
hatcher one use of A Little Bird Told Me. It dissolves when the hatcher next awakens from sleep; if he hasn’t sent
it to observe someone before he sleeps he loses his opportunity.

Governor Privileges
Cuckoo’s Egg
Sometimes, an actor just isn’t cooperating. A Governor of Blue Topaz can force the issue and give a certain
amount of…incentive. The Governor can send her Irim to make a nest and lay one of its eggs within a person’s
dreams. The person must be a valid target for A Little Bird Told Me. The Governor spends 1 Wisp and makes a
contested roll of Intelligence + Empathy against the target’s Resolve + Supernatural Tolerance.
Dramatic Failure: The egg incubates in the Governor indefinitely, although the Governor believes that
it is incubating in the target. When the Governor hatches the egg, the chosen Condition is inflicted on them
towards the target.
Failure: The Irim fails to lay an egg. The Governor may try again if the target is still sleeping.
Success: The egg incubates in the target indefinitely. The Governor chooses Swooning [CofD 291] or
Fearful, a person to be the chosen Condition’s object, and a trigger (often a bird call, occasionally the call of
the Irim themselves). When next exposed to the trigger, the egg hatches, inflicting the chosen Condition on
the target.
Exceptional Success: The first time the chosen Condition’s resolution occurs, the target gains a Beat but
does not shed the Condition; it must be resolved a second time.
Modifiers: The target has eggs from the Privilege in his dreams (-1 per egg)

442 Protectorate of Blue Topaz

 Only one egg can be hatched during a single scene; if multiple eggs are set to the same trigger, the egg that’s
been incubated the longest hatches. Eggs from Cuckoo’s Egg count against the Governor’s limit for Nest Egg.

Birds of a Feather
By spending a second Wisp when using Nest Egg, the Governor can cause the bird hatched from the laid
egg to emerge in material form. The dream-bird then has the same abilities as an Irim materialized by Aviary
does. It dematerializes when the scene ends. The hatcher may still use A Little Bird Told Me after the dream-
bird has dematerialized.

Regent Privilege
Birdhouse in Your Soul
If you want something done right, sometimes you have to do it yourself. The Regent’s Irim can be empow-
ered to take over another person for a short time and force him to act according to the Regent’s script. The per-
son to be possessed must be a valid target for A Little Bird Told Me. The Regent spends 3 Wisps and 1 Willpower,
and makes a contested roll of Intelligence + Empathy against the target’s Composure + Supernatural Tolerance.
Dramatic Failure: The Regent’s Irim gets caught by the target’s psychic defenses and is destroyed.
Failure: The Irim can’t get a grip on its target.
Success: The Irim inflicts the Possessed Condition [CofD 134] on the target. Unlike most ephemeral en-
tities, the Irim always uses its own Attributes and Skills, but it can roll its Finesse + Empathy - the target’s
Resolve to read the target’s memories. The Condition expires when the scene ends, and the Irim may not
possess the target again until he has regained Willpower from sleep.
Exceptional Success: The Irim has a +2 bonus when it tries to read the target’s mind.
Drawback: Naturally, while the Irim is possessing someone it isn’t available for other purposes, so the
Regent can’t use any other Privilege until Birdhouse in Your Soul expires. Also, possessing people inflicts a deep
blow to their psyches, even if they don’t remember it; each use of the Privilege is a compromise at a -3 penalty.

Lady Maria
Oh dear. ’Tis a shame you cannot lift this cloud of Dark over yonder cathedral, no matter how
hard ye try. But oh, do not curse thy shadow - for mine own self is here to help thy friends. All I
require of thou is a small oath, favor for favor.

Background
Alyssa Halliwell’s first memory is her parents enacting the opening seen to Macbeth, her mother one of
the witches and her father Banquo. She doesn’t remember any nightmares from that time; as part of a troupe
that specialized in Shakespeare’s tragedies, her baseline for what was frightening and not was…a bit different.
Her life, infancy to teenager-dom, was filled with the Bard. Post teenager-dom, it was filled with her duties as a
Troubadour, too. Briefly, it was also filled with the All-Consuming Dark, a fight with her parents leading her to
camp out under a Tainted stage that had been used to hide the body of a suicide for the sake of protecting an
acting company’s reputation too long, but her sense of ethics won out over both her corruption and her personal
ambitions of becoming a Hollywood starlet, expelling her inner Shadows and Blossoming in one fell swoop.
It was really too bad the first Hopeful she met were Furies who even the other Seraphic Legion exiled for
their fanaticism; to them, anything that had been touched by the Dark at all was irredeemably corrupt; to them,
a Princess that had once been a Darkened was obviously a Cataphract of some kind, no matter how little the
flames of Tempestra took. Many survived the fire. Mr. Halliwell and her younger brother were not among them.
This shaped her views on the Nobility forever - to her, the Light has always been an amoral thing, good in
principle, but fundamentally used by a flawed species that must be guided with a firm hand - occasionally with
barbed wire, if they are especially recalcitrant. She never was a good fit for the court of Hearts; she had the best of

Protectorate of Blue Topaz 443

intentions when it came to spinning politics to the benefit of all, but she quickly revealed a rather manipulative
attitude towards “encouraging” people to follow her teachings. Eventually, it was discovered that her talent for
Purifying Taint relied on blackmail and outright emotional manipulation, leading to a crack between her and
her nakama.
That's when the Protectorate of Blue Topaz, which had quietly been watching her dreams, approached her
with sympathy.
One of the few Tears Troubadours who cleaves to her Calling’s normal purpose, the rechristened Lady
Maria (named after the cunning maid in Twelfth Night who masterminds the utter humiliation of her prickly
superior Malvolio) is emblematic of the Vultures among the Playwrights, one concerned less with the size of the
harvest and more the sustainability. She specializes in removing the very Taint her fellows draining the Light
causes, having discovered that (at least as it pertains to her Enclave) the foci so formed by draining Light is not
so much random as an exacerbation of dormant evil; Taint, it seems, needs a form to define it, and so it draws
on old and forgotten acts of evil to stabilize itself if called by a vacuum of Light. Besides an easy first stop in
any plan to revitalize the fields, she’s long realized this is something she can use - her Irim, Macduff, is very
skilled in scouring the Dreamlands for historical information, and the Taint’s memories are usually not so long
ago that entering the Dreams of Sin becomes a necessity. Which, of course, means that her Governorship in the
Protectorate makes her superbly skilled at both the research and application of Purification, as she can force
the issue of finding recruits to negate the curses of an area (assuming she can’t pull it off herself - she's one of
the more talented Handmaidens living today).
In particular, she’s skilled at repairing (with extreme prejudice) the Taint caused by child abuse - but her
pragmatism taints this as well, for many of the children she saves are either shipped off to Alhambra (willingly -
she earnestly believes they will have a better life there if they’re unhappy enough to buy her sales pitch) or her
personal Sworn; the Mooncalves, so called because the children who willingly turn on Earth and are fine with
being her agents in draining hope and setting up her dramas are usually the ones who want the planet to suffer
for what it did to them. They are, as far as the world is concerned, aborted fetuses, only fit for the trash heap
- so like Caliban (who is also called that title) they’ve become angry little monsters who crave love, something
Maria grants them (she is tacitly oblivious to the irony of naming them after a resentful slave).
And so, the Lady Maria has become quite the like the Wyrd Sisters herself, for what she offers to her Radiant
counterparts is an easier way to purify, and to purify safely. All she needs is one little favor…

Appearance
Maria would prefer not to be seen in her mundane state at all, minus her family, her Sworn, and her imme-
diate co-workers; she remains Transformed when attending court in the belief it’s more polite, and she is almost
pathologically afraid of anyone being able to connect her face to her former life or schemes. Thus, normally she is
disguised via normal stagecraft or Charms, something ironically made easier by the fact that she’s actually quite
beautiful. Much like a living Barbie, her auburn hair, slim build, and nearly flawless skin is almost built to be
modified as she desires (she likes to say she was bred for the stage); a little layered powder with a hint of green,
and she’s a sickly waif; hair pulled back and nose held up, she’s a young elite straight out of business school. She
can even imitate a boy for a while if she cuts her hair short (actually why her alias is from Twelfth Night).
She’s a lot less shy in her Transformed state. She appears significantly less morbid than most other Hand-
maidens, appearing to be nothing more or less than a maidservant (though not a French maid - she is completely
lacking in lace), the only oddity being that she’s dressed in blue and red. Nothing about her seems to reek of the
paradox that defines most Playwrights - by sight alone. It’s impossible to not notice from touch that it seems to
be made of the finest silks; on the occasions her cap slips, one can see a thin tiara of silver, and her phylactery is a
royal scepter (her paranoia strikes again though; she makes sure to cover it in feathers when she has a chance in
order to make damn sure people think she’s just the cleaning lady). When outside, Macduff completes the subtle
contradiction between servant and master; the Irim is nothing less than a golden eagle, that radiates dignity
and power - but it’s a cold dignity, the heartless charisma of tyrants.

Storytelling Hints
Perhaps once, Alyssa had some degree of doubt, but no more; a combination of peer pressure and in truth,
her own order practicing their own Cuckoo’s Eggs on her mind (willingly; she didn't want any ounce of indeci-

444 Protectorate of Blue Topaz

sion to hold her back) has removed any mental barriers to she had to being one of the most manipulative and
cold Ravens in a group of manipulative and cold Ravens. What obligation she felt to the planet of her birth is gone;
her immediate family and friends, the only innocents she cares about, live in an Alhambran manor, and due to
her having exposed herself to some of the darkest elements of humanity through the Mooncalves, her previous
cynicism has deepened into outright misanthropy; the Rebellious Provinces are a kingdom of demons to her, fit
only to have what little light remains stripped out for safekeeping and damn the rest. This is why she tries to
recruit Princesses for Tears, however little success she’s had yet; it’s just the sensible option, according to her.
Not that she lets this show, of course. When met directly by Princesses she wants to manipulate, Lady Maria
does everything in her power to come off as somewhat fanciful, even a bit ditzy. She speaks in Elizabethan Eng-
lish (though not perfectly; she sometimes screws up with “thee” and “thine”, and she's not trying for accura-
cy anyway), acts like a fussy maid who hates any degree of uncleanliness in her vicinity, and generally makes
herself seem spaced and harmless, but highly competent within her purification schemes and very motherly
towards the Mooncalves. Even when people figure out she’s loyal to Tears, they still trust her - how can the
sweet, possibly nutty woman who cares for orphans be a threat? But it’s a mask - one she can’t help but let slip
sometimes, revealing the true depths of rage that drive her; she plays nakamas off against one another, quietly
inserts doubt that the world is worth saving, and masks scathing criticism of the Nobility’s ability and beliefs in
flowery language and “caring” advice (she always did like playing Iago). Even her favorite way of referring to
Radiants, “thou”, is generally a way of referring to intimates or social inferiors. She’s not heartless, not complete-
ly; she genuinely loves the Mooncalves, and they love her back, like an aunt or maybe an older sister. But it’s a
warped love, founded in mutual hate of everything that has ever hurt them; most of the children are downright
codependent and possess an outright cultish devotion, and although she’s not entirely aware of it, she loves
them at least partially for being so slavishly loyal; she is capable of some truly cruel manipulation, and she has
no idea she’s doing it. This shows in her fighting style; she is primarily defensive, while the Mooncalves, Macduff
and whatever ghosts she’s requisitioned from her masters serve as a wolfpack, hiding behind her Bubble Shield
between bouts of assaulting her enemies with their (usually rented) Bequests and Numina.

Calling: Troubadour Queen: Tears Protectorate: Blue Topaz (Governor)

Vocation: Found a Nation based around Alhambran theater

Aspirations: Convince my superiors that an Alhambran orphanage is not a waste of resources; Erase
what’s left of my life on Earth; Shake my old colleagues in Hearts off my back
Virtues: Ambitious (Maria is a creature of many dreams, great and small - many of them are even
selfless); Motherly (She just plain likes children, and likes protecting them.)
Vice: Spiteful (She disguises it well, but she’s never truly forgiven the world that hurt her and took away
half her family. She is a deeply angry person, and that anger manifests itself in cruel games, big and small.)
Attributes: Intelligence 3+1, Wits 2+1, Resolve 3, Strength 1, Dexterity 3+1, Stamina 2+2, Presence 4+1,
Manipulation 3+1, Composure 3
Skills: Academics 3 (theater), Computer 1, Crafts 3 (stagecraft), Investigation 2+2 (child abuse), Occult 2
(Alhambra), Athletics 0+2, Larceny 2, Stealth 3+1 (beneath notice), Weaponry 2, Animal Ken 1 (therapy dogs),
Empathy 3, Expression 4 (acting), Persuasion 3, Socialize 2, Streetwise 1, Subterfuge 2+2 (I’m so ridiculous
I have to be harmless)
Derived Traits: Health 7+2, Willpower 6, Size 5, Defense 2+3, Initiative 6+1, Speed 9+1
Merits: Allies 4 (Mooncalves), Circle 2 (rescued children), Contacts 2 (child support agencies, theaters),
Pusher, Resources 2, Status (Order of the Raccoon) 2, Striking Looks 2, Virtuous

Inner Light: 5 Belief: 3 Wisps: 14

Invocations: Lacrima 4, Terra 3

Charms:
• Appear: Twenty Faces (Masked), Mantle of Authority, Goccia Astrale, Road Crew

Protectorate of Blue Topaz 445

 • Inspire: All Together Now, Hear Me, O Muse (Cooperative), Razzle Dazzle (Bargaining), Carry On, My
Wayward Son (Collective), Queen’s Sorrow, Look Into the Future, Jumping Jack Flash
• Shape: Bubble Shield (Adamant, Unbroken), Painting Roses, Darkling’s Treasure (Trapped)
• Practical: Twenty Faces (Masked), Hear Me, O Muse (Cooperative), Razzle Dazzle (Bargaining), Paint-
ing Roses

446 Protectorate of Blue Topaz

 Protectorate of Fused Quartz
Alternative Names: Heralds of the Ineluctable, The Students of Nappilu
Informal Names: Mannequins, Sibyls
Attached to Order: Raccoon
No matter where you go, everyone is connected.

The remit of the Order of the Raccoon is to face the threats to Alhambra that no one else foresees, and seize
opportunities for Her Majesty that no one else anticipates, and that’s a hard and thankless task in a realm that
distrusts anything not of the fallen Kingdom. The Raccoons can, however, point to a long record of warnings
given that (when heeded) saved an outpost from disaster, or (when ignored) consigned loyal subjects of the
Empress to awful fates, whenever suspicion leads another Order to suggest they be disbanded. For over 4,000
years many of these warnings have been raised by the Protectorate of Fused Quartz, a small sect who watch
with impassive faces as time and history pass, and divert its flow with the proper flick of a finger.
The Protectorate has a curious history. The man Nappilu, whose students they are, was not native to Al-
hambra, nor was he one of the Nobility; he came to an outpost of the City somewhere in Babylonia, offering his
fealty in exchange for refuge. He demonstrated a number of strange powers, bending time and fate in ways no
Alhambran understood, to prove his value, and so the Ever-Flowing took him in. He was willing both to use those
powers for Alhambra and to teach a few Princesses to emulate them; but when asked how he had learned them,
he said only that he had been one agent among many of a great and powerful god, who was far beyond the ability
of mere mortals, or even its own agents, to understand. He had been outcast, and was pursued, for refusing a
divine order, and he warned his students strictly against drawing attention from the god he had abandoned, for
the least of its servants was greater than he, and had no concept of mercy.
Few members of the Protectorate are seen outside Alhambra today, but thanks to their Privileges they are
maddeningly effective when they do take the field, constantly anticipating the plans of their opponents. They
are most likely to be sent when an outpost reports encountering beings similar to Nappilu or the servants of
the deity he described, but almost any confrontation with unusually subtle enemies might lead an Alhambran
to call for a Sibyl’s help.

Marks and Requirements

The Protectorate does not mark its members by any change in their regalia - they wear the normal colors
and styles of a Princess or Prince of Tears. They are distinguished, instead, by a change in manner. A Herald is,
almost invariably, devoid of expression, and makes no motion that does not serve a conscious purpose. This is
the source of their nickname “mannequins”; they can stand or sit, immobile as an idol, for so long that others
forget they are alive until they speak. The required Attribute for the Protectorate is Composure, reflecting this
impassivity. The Protectorate’s required Skill is Occult, reflecting their role in Alhambra’s defense; they are
students of the esoteric like all Raccoons, with a special interest in temporal anomalies.

Secretary Privileges
Stare Into Infinity
A Secretary of Fused Quartz is prone to fall into a trance at any moment, in which she sees omens and
signs warning her, in symbolic fashion, of dangers soon to come. Sometimes the trance comes unexpectedly;
at others the Secretary may induce it in herself by self-hypnosis. Once per session, a Secretary can drop into
trance voluntarily as an instant action, and try to interpret the signs that appear to her. She rolls Composure +
Wits; for each success, her player may ask one yes/no question about any topic of importance to her, which the
Storyteller must answer truthfully. However, after doing this the Secretary takes the Spooked Condition [CofD
291] related to the topics her player asked about.

Protectorate of Fused Quartz 447

 The Secretary may drop into involuntary trances at any time, at the Storyteller’s discretion, though not
more often than once a session. When these occur the Storyteller describes the omens the Secretary is seeing or
suggests a topic of inquiry; the Secretary’s player may roll the same dice pool as above, with the same effects on
success, or decline the chance to ask questions. In either case the Secretary takes the Stunned Tilt [CofD 286]
at the moment the trance hits; she becomes Spooked only if she studies the omens. Voluntary and involuntary
trances can both happen in the same session, but neither can occur while the Secretary keeps the Spooked
Condition.

Butterfly’s Wing
When she is transformed, the Secretary can foresee highly improbable consequences of apparently ordi-
nary actions. On uncommon occasions she may take advantage of this foresight. Once per scene, while the Sec-
retary is transformed, her player may declare a task she will attempt and another task she hopes to accomplish.
Both tasks must be things the Secretary could in theory complete with a mundane instant action at the moment
she uses the Privilege, but they need not be related in any way. The Secretary rolls for the first task, but applies
all the successes gained to the second instead - by some improbable chain of events, the normal result of her
actual action fails to happen and is replaced by the result she desired.

Dread Omens
The Protectorate of Fused Quartz has the power to lift the veils that hide their dooms from those who
consult them - or, sometimes, who cause them annoyance. By spending 1 Wisp while transformed, a Secretary
may inflict the trance of Stare Into Infinity on a person she touches. The target rolls his Composure + Wits, and
the target’s player asks one yes/no question for each success, which the Storyteller must answer truthfully.
However, for those not of the Protectorate the signs and omens are much more disturbing; the target takes the
Stunned Tilt for one turn, plus one turn per question his player asks, and after recovering from the Tilt he gains
the Shaken Condition [CofD 290] related either to the Secretary or to the things he asked about. (A PC need not
ask all the questions she is entitled to, and forgoing a question does shorten the duration of the Stunned Tilt.)
Members of the Protectorate, including the Secretary herself, are immune to this Privilege, and no target may
have it used on them more than once a session.

Governor Privileges
Accelerando
A Governor of Fused Quartz learns how to deepen and lighten her trance state, so that the omens will
guide her hands and speech to achieve her urgent need. Once per scene, the Governor may spend 2 Wisps when
carrying out a mundane instant action. To her, the world suddenly slows down, the immediate future becomes
clear, and what she must do to succeed in her present task is obvious. Her action becomes an advanced action
- she rolls her pool twice and takes the better result.
The Governor may use Accelerando in either of her forms. When she is transformed, she may use both
Accelerando and Butterfly’s Wing on the same action.

Forewarned is Forearmed
When she is transformed, the Governor may rearrange her past to take advantage of an unexpected oppor-
tunity. Once a scene, the Governor may spend 1 Wisp to declare that she is carrying, or has previously cached
in her current location, a single piece of equipment which will help her in her current activities. The equipment
thus brought into play must be something the Governor might have taken at some time in the past 24 hours,
placed where she now “finds” it, and let pass unnoticed by anyone else in the current scene - this is simplest
with equipment small enough for the Governor to carry on her person. However, the Governor need not actually
have taken and cached the equipment; all that’s required is that, as far as anyone present can tell, she might
have done so.

448 Protectorate of Fused Quartz

Regent Privilege
So Let It Be Written
A Regent of Fused Quartz may plant a seed of inevitable disaster in the soul of another; by activating this
Privilege she finds a dire future and blocks the roads that avoid it. The Privilege is used on a single person whom
the Regent touches; she spends 3 Wisps and 1 Willpower, and rolls Intelligence + Occult. The Privilege may not
be used on any member of the Protectorate, or on anyone who has the Doomed Condition.
Dramatic Failure: The Regent inadvertently foresees a Doom for herself; she gains the Doomed Condi-
tion at a level equal to her Composure, and may not use the Privilege again until it is resolved. The Regent’s
Doom is never directly lethal to her, but the Storyteller is free to choose a fate worse than death.
Failure: The Regent foresees nothing.
Success: The Regent pronounces Doom for the target - a dire yet inevitable event. The precise nature
of the Doom is chosen by the Regent’s player, with the Storyteller’s approval, though it must be something
the target strongly desires not to experience. The target gains the Doomed Condition at a level equal to twice
the activation successes.
Exceptional Success: The target’s Doom is especially hard to avoid.
Drawback: Every Regent has foreseen her own destruction in the moment she rose to the position. The
Regent has a Doom, as with the Destiny Merit’s drawback. Unlike the Dooms she pronounces on others, a Re-
gent’s own Doom is inescapable by any magic of the Light. A Doomed Condition overrides the Regent’s Doom
until it resolves, but the original Doom returns at that time.

Protectorate of Fused Quartz 449

 Protectorate of Heliotrope
Alternative Name: The Night Audit
Informal Name: Night Vultures
Attached to Order: Vulture
A good Wisp harvest is not quick. It takes at least a full week to break even, and the largest bounties come
at the end of the harvest. The agents of Tears cannot emerge from Alhambra, cast their Charms and escape to
safety within their fortress city with the loot. An Alhambran enclave may not be a permanent outpost, eventually
it will dissolve in the face of the Taint it creates, but for a while it needs a permanent presence to watch over
and protect the Wisp farms.
All that requires infrastructure. They need a place for agents to sleep, a regular source of food and water,
transportation to and from the Wisp farms, and they need to do it all without attracting the hostility from of
Radiant, Stormwracked, hunters, or even mundane mortal authorities. Over the years Alhambra’s agents have
become quite competent at setting up their Enclaves, but they’ve also learned that often the fastest and cheapest
way to get a working infrastructure is to find someone who already has one and steal theirs. If it eliminates a
rival power who’d object to Taint in their territory, well that’s even better.
The Protectorate of Heliotrope specializes in killing vampires and taking their stuff. Vampires can be found
all over the world, stealing life from humanity to preserve an unnatural existence, protecting themselves from
justice with an elaborate masquerade, and binding innocents into servitude with supernatural powers. Obvi-
ously this sort of thing has to be stopped. And it’s only fair that the people rescued from blood-drinking ma-
nipulators in the shadows should gratefully help the Queen of Tears preserve her city and people. The Night
Audit is sent to enclaves in large cities, where vampires find it easiest to hide their depredations and build their
power bases - their mission is to turn a serious obstacle to the Wisp harvest into assets, and (with luck) leave
the harvested settlement better off, in one respect, than they found it.

Marks and Requirements

The Protectorate of Heliotrope consider themselves to be saviors, sent to deliver a vampire’s minions from
slavery and into a life of meaningful productivity in service of Alhambra. Their appearance thus defines itself in
contrast to the vampire. Their skin is darkened as if by the sun, and their temperature runs a few degrees hotter
than average. In Alhambra, where the sun is never seen, that’s unusual enough, but one other detail marks them:
their eyes shine yellow when light reflects from them, rather like a cat’s.
The duties of a Night Auditor require an iron will, to resist the dominating influence vampires wield over
mortal minds, and a deep understanding of human social structures and the techniques for manipulating them.
The required Attribute is Resolve, and the required Skill is Politics.

Secretary Privileges
Bloodhound
A Secretary of Heliotrope can track her prey by scent, both in person and by the traces it leaves when it
feeds. She has a variant of the Unseen Sense Merit that reacts to Vitae, the blood-like fluid that runs in vampires’
veins. She can smell the stuff in the open, of course, but also inside a vampire’s system or a ghoul’s, or any other
container. Moreover, if she touches a character whom a vampire has recently fed on (who currently has either
the Scarred [VtR2 305] or Swooning [CofD 291] Condition for that reason) or one under a blood bond [VtR2
99-100] her Unseen Sense reacts.

Life is Sacred
When she transforms, the Secretary’s flesh and blood become antithetical to a vampire’s body, dangerous
even to touch, and lethal if consumed. Any Vitae she drinks turns to smoke and ash in her mouth, affecting her

450 Protectorate of Heliotrope

not at all. If a vampire feeds from her, the stolen blood burns away the Vitae already in its system - it loses a point
of Vitae for each point drained from the Secretary, instead of gaining any. Further, if the Secretary and a vampire
are touching, it can’t conceal its nature as a dead thing; its Blush of Life [VtR2 90] if active, ends immediately.
The Secretary can apply a coating of her blood to weapons to make them, temporarily, toxic to vampiric
flesh. She must bleed onto the weapon, taking points of resistant bashing damage equal to its Size, and let the
blood dry for a few minutes. The first time a weapon so prepared damages a vampire, it inflicts lethal damage,
as her blood reacts with the vampire’s flesh. That stroke removes the coating, so later blows with the same
weapon gain no special benefit.

Let Them Go
The Secretary can hijack the mental manipulations Vampires use and redirect a vampire’s minions to the
service of Alhambra. When she is transformed and touching a character who has the Scarred or Swooning Con-
dition from a vampire’s feeding, or is under a blood bond, she may spend a Wisp and roll Resolve + Intimidation
vs the vampire’s Blood Potency + Composure. If the Secretary wins the roll:
1. A Scarred or Swooning Condition is replaced with the Leveraged Condition [CofD 289] to the Secretary
(without resolving.)
2. A blood bond is redirected: the target is bound to the Secretary, not the vampire.

Governor Privileges
My New People
A Governor of Heliotrope can train her nose for Vitae to recognize the spoor of individual vampires. By
smelling and tasting a sample (one point) of a vampire’s Vitae, the Governor tunes her Unseen Sense from Blood-
hound. In future, she will recognize Vitae from that vampire, characters whom that vampire has fed on, and
characters under a blood bond to that vampire when her Unseen Sense responds to them.
Moreover, with such a sample the Governor can divine the identities of others who have drunk the vam-
pire’s blood. She spends a Wisp and rolls Intelligence + Politics. Doing so destroys the sample.
Dramatic Failure: The Governor identifies the wrong person as blood-bound, taking the Misled Condi-
tion. Bloodhound will treat the character she identifies as if he had a blood bond while the Condition lasts.
Failure: The Governor learns nothing.
Success: For each success rolled, the Governor either sees the face of someone with a blood bond to the
vampire, or learns the rough location (within a mile or so) of such a person. She finds the strongest bonds
first - third stage, then second, then first. The face and location of one person are learned separately.
Exceptional Success: No extra benefit.
Finally, the Governor can partly suppress Life is Sacred, allowing vampires to touch her without losing their
Blush of Life. In this state she can ingest Vitae while transformed and hold it in her stomach, unburnt and inert,
and later vomit the Vitae up at will. If she detransforms with Vitae in her system, it will affect her normally.

Break the Chains

The Governor can destroy the chains that vampiric power rivets onto mortal minds. If a character is cur-
rently subject to a mental Condition imposed by a vampire’s supernatural power (innate abilities, Disciplines,
Devotions and blood sorcery all qualify) then while transformed she may touch him, spend a Wisp and roll
Resolve + Intimidation vs. the vampire’s Clash of Wills pool for the power it used. If she wins the contest the
Condition is replaced with the Leveraged Condition to the Governor (without resolving.)

Protectorate of Heliotrope 451

Regent Privilege
Queen of the Night
A Regent of Heliotrope can save the most devoted of a vampire’s slaves from themselves. The Regent’s blood
will preserve a ghoul from Vitae withdrawal: by taking one resistant lethal damage, she produces concentrated
blood that a ghoul can drink, enough to stave off withdrawal and aging for one month. This blood is not Vitae
and a ghoul cannot use it for anything but preventing age and the Deprived Condition. However, if the Regent
has used Let Them Go to take over a ghoul’s blood bond, her blood will sustain the bond at its current stage. The
concentrated blood doesn’t react with Vitae, as the Regent’s other blood does from Life is Sacred, so a ghoul may
store it and real Vitae at the same time, but it takes up one point in his Vitae pool.
Moreover, if the Regent uses the Accept Fealty Charm on a ghoul with her blood in his system, it costs her
just a Willpower point and one Wisp per roll, as if he had been Sworn before, and he can spend a Wisp instead
of her blood or Vitae to prevent withdrawal. This last is a gift of the Last Empress - if the ghoul repudiates his
vow of fealty, and is no longer Sworn to Tears, he must resume drinking Vitae. Being Sworn to another Queen
doesn’t satisfy the addiction.
Incidentally, nothing prevents a Sworn ghoul from joining the Protectorate as a Secretary, and while the
dangers inherent to hunting powerful vampires catch up to them all eventually, Heliotrope ghouls tend to live
for centuries, valued advisors to the Governors and Regents.
Drawback: The Regent grows distant from normal humanity, set apart by her commission. With people
she hasn’t rescued from servitude to vampires, she is awkward and maladroit. She takes a -2 penalty on all
Social rolls relating to mundane characters, unless they have the Leveraged Condition to her or have a blood
bond to her.

452 Protectorate of Heliotrope

 Protectorate of Malachite
Alternative Names: Bearers of Mercy, Redemptionists
Informal Names: Hypnotists, Reallocators, Wardens (derogatory)
Attached to Order: Pelican
Life within Alhambra, as everyone who serves the Last Empress knows, is fraught with peril and stained
by grief. Only the dedication of the citizenry to the end of restoring the true Kingdom on Earth allows them to
carry on. To lose that dedication, to turn aside from the goal and pursue a personal desire, is dangerous to the
City, and also to oneself. And so the Protectorate of Malachite was founded, to save those who would otherwise
be lost to despair, fear or rebellion, and restore them to their true loyalties. They are counselors and confessors,
doctors of the mind; their duty is to relieve the mentally distressed of emotions and memories that keep them
from serving the Queen and the Orders as they are supposed to.
The Protectorate is truly ancient, having been founded only two generations after the Kingdom’s fall, and
broadly respected; its senior Regents have often served as Premiers in Craft. It’s well known that the secrets of
its Privileges were first unearthed by the Nobles of Tears who discovered the Dreamlands’ existence, and who
tried to comprehend the manner by which Light-touched souls were drawn into that grand illusion. While the
plans to rescue Nobles from the Dreamlands to be properly reborn never bore fruit (the Release was as startling
to the Redemptionists as anyone else) the techniques for releasing people from lesser illusions have sustained
Alhambra through the Long Night, and the Last Empress has often expressed her gratitude for them.
In the modern day a Bearer of Mercy may be found in many Alhambran enclaves, serving multiple roles.
First, of course, is keeping the staff from being tempted by the strange and novel experiences available on Earth,
and ensuring that they stick to their assigned duties. Second is examining people who wish to join Alhambra,
to establish both their capabilities and any conflicting loyalties which might lead to trouble later on. And third
(the most likely to bring them into conflicts) is taking people who could be useful to an enclave, but choose not
to contribute, and compelling them to do what Alhambra requires of them.

Marks and Requirements

The outward sign of a Redemptionist is a glittering object, worn on the forehead, chest or hand, that invari-
ably catches whatever light exists and draws attention from everyone who sees it. Unless the Hypnotist specif-
ically conceals it, anyone who notices her will see and remember this gleaming badge, because it’s designed to
draw and hold the eye. Most members, in fact, use it with their Privileges as a tool.
The Embassy requires a forceful personality and the skill to influence people into a desired course; its
favored Attribute is Presence, and its favored Skill is Persuasion.

Secretary Privileges
Finding Faults
A Secretary of Malachite can read the signs of psychic distress in someone’s face and posture. Whenever
a person in the Secretary’s sight has a Condition gained by passing through a breaking point (or the analog
for supernatural characters), or one imposed by supernatural powers that alter the mind, or a Galemark, the
Secretary need only succeed on a Perception check to recognize that his mental state is not normal. Once per
session, the Secretary may examine a person she has noticed in this way to identify which of those Conditions
he has, the effects they are having on him, and the ways they might be resolved.

Confessional
It is the duty of the Bearers of Mercy to relieve people of all cares that prevent them from being of service
to Her Ever-Flowing Majesty. When she is transformed the Secretary gains an aura that makes people willing to

Protectorate of Malachite 453

confide in her and accept advice from her. In a social maneuver the Secretary starts with a good first impression
on any target she hasn’t yet met.
However, if she has scrutinized her target with Finding Faults, and the target’s mental Conditions haven’t
changed since then, the full power of the Privilege applies. The Secretary may begin a social maneuver on such
a target with a perfect impression. Provided her goal doesn’t force the target to a breaking point (if it would
the Privilege fails), when he does as she asked the target sheds one temporary Condition that the Secretary
identified, or is unaffected by one persistent Condition for at least one day afterward. The Secretary chooses
which Condition is removed or suppressed, but must remove a temporary Condition if the target has one.

Weight of Censure
So few in the Rebellious Provinces are aware of their obligations; sometimes those of Alhambra are forget-
ful, too. On due occasion a Warden has to bring people to a proper sense of shame at their failures. The Secre-
tary may spend 1 Wisp while transformed when she is conversing with a person; she then rolls Manipulation
+ Persuasion - her target’s Composure.
Dramatic Failure: The Secretary repels her target; in future social maneuvers her impression with him
starts at hostile.
Failure: The target perceives nothing, and the conversation proceeds.
Success: The Secretary makes her target feel his shortcomings; he immediately acquires the Guilty Con-
dition [CofD 289]. Finding Faults will spot the Condition, and the Secretary may use Confessional on him im-
mediately.
Exceptional Success: The target cannot resolve or shed the Guilty Condition for a full day, without su-
pernatural help.

Governor Privileges
Free to Serve
The Queen of Tears teaches that sometimes you must lie to make people realize the truth. That’s especially
true with people taken from the Rebellious Provinces who insist on placing some loyalty from their past above
Alhambra’s needs. In such cases the Reallocators are called on to free them from their past.
The Governor can spend 2 Wisps to displace a memory from her target’s mind, replacing it with another
more fit for the purpose the target ought to serve. The task is an extended action with a dice pool of Presence
+ Expression; the interval is one hour, and the threshold is the target’s Willpower dots. The Governor and her
target must be together and conscious throughout. If the Governor has scrutinized the target with Finding Faults
she gains a +2 bonus to her dice pool. If she reaches the threshold, the Governor inflicts the False Memory
Condition on the target, with a penalty equal to her Presence.

Proper Instruction
Often in Alhambra’s service it’s necessary to learn a great mass of facts quickly, and it lies within the Hyp-
notists’ skills to convey great masses of facts in very little time. A Governor of Malachite may spend 1 Wisp to
place one person into a receptive trance, and allow another person touching the first to commune with him,
speaking without words. After five minutes in trance the first person gains the Informed Condition [CofD 289]
on one subject in which the second is an expert (the Storyteller judges if a character has the knowledge needed.)
The Governor may be student, teacher or neither.
Proper Instruction may be combined with Free to Serve to let the false memories created by the latter to
contain true information. If this is done, each False Memory Condition exchanges the ratings of two Skills within
a single category; removing the Condition will switch the ratings back.

454 Protectorate of Malachite

Regent Privilege
Conversion
The final mercy the Redemptionist can show is to bring the recalcitrant to realize that they want to serve,
if only they let themselves see it. A Regent of Malachite can spend 3 Wisps and 1 Willpower to replace one of
a person’s Aspirations. The task is an extended action with a dice pool of Presence + Persuasion; the interval
is one hour, and the threshold is the target’s Willpower dots. The Regent and her target must be together and
conscious throughout. If the Regent has scrutinized the target with Finding Faults she gains a +2 bonus to her
dice pool. If the Regent reaches the threshold, the target must abandon one of his Aspirations and take a new
one of the Regent’s choice. The Privilege cannot replace a Vocation or supply one; only mundane Aspirations
are vulnerable.
Drawback: The goals that the Regent most treasures turn to dust when she uses magic to convert another
to her cause. Each time she uses the Privilege, the Regent must choose one of her own Aspirations. For days
equal to her Presence, all attempts to work toward that Aspiration become automatic dramatic failures. No
Aspiration can be cursed in this way twice, and if all the Regent’s Aspirations have been so cursed she cannot
use Conversion.

Protectorate of Malachite 455

 Protectorate of Novaculite
Alternative Names: Her Majesty’s Cadre, Instructors in War
Informal Name: Drafters
Attached to Order: Spotted Hyena
It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it.

The Spotted Hyenas are the Last Empress’ good right hand; whenever some threat arises to the Wisp gath-
ering outposts that sustain Alhambra against the Darkness, the Hyenas spend their sweat and blood to defeat it.
However, it does the City little good when its subjects die in battle - far better to make the enemy die. Honor and
glory are lovely in their way, but survival and victory are what matter in the end. To make sure they understand
this, the Order places its new conscripts in the hands of its professional trainers, the Protectorate of Novaculite.
Naturally the Drafters spend much of their time teaching actual fighting skills. But the core of their teaching
is Alhambra’s idea of the military virtues: strict discipline, obedience to orders, and ruthless pursuit of victory
by any means that lie to hand. War is terrible and monstrous, the Cadre say, but it cannot be evaded; the soldiers
of Alhambra must fight everywhere they are stationed, against shadow-beasts in the City and insolent rebels
beyond it. Often the only course to victory over the monsters is to become monstrous, and a proper soldier must
take that course and sacrifice his conscience for the Queen. The Regents of Novaculite have sometimes spoken
of War as a goddess who is most pleased by that sacrifice, and it isn’t clear if they mean Her Majesty by that,
or some other deity.
Instructors in War are frequent visitors to the Rebellious Provinces. Sometimes an outpost has hired mer-
cenaries, in hopes that some or all would subject themselves to the Queen of Tears, or just to supply a shortage of
trained soldiers, and in such cases a Drafter is usually sent to command them - a task for which their Privileges
are suitable. In other times an outpost needs a crack squad to carry out a dangerous or unsavory mission, and
when the squad is led by one of the Cadre, her powers will stiffen their spines and harden their hearts, ensuring
their success.

Marks and Requirements

To become a Drafter is to accept a duty to do terrible things if it will save the City. The Drafter’s Regalia
symbolizes this with stains and tatters. No matter what a Cadre member does, her clothes invariably bear some
traces of dirt or sweat, visible from every angle. When they gain a few Shadows dots, the Drafter’s Regalia grows
dirtier and develops rips and tears; with many Shadows, her clothes become ragged, and her hands and face
may be stained with dried blood. For some reason, this never impairs a Drafter socially - the stains and tatters
give the impression of great endurance in the face of danger.
An Instructor in War must be expert in personal combat, and possess charisma for many reasons: to direct
troops in battle, to train new recruits, and to convince foreigners to enlist. The Protectorate’s required Attribute
is Presence, and its required Skill is Weaponry.

Secretary Privileges
Tools of Duty
The Protectorate of Novaculite are responsible for preparing their recruits for their service to Alhambra,
and this includes providing them with appropriate tools to perform their duties. Anyone Sworn to the same
Queen as the Secretary gains one phantom dot of the Circle Merit, linked to her; after one hour of fighting drill
with her, the Sworn gains a Wisp. The phantom Circle dot stacks with any real Circle Merit a Sworn may have.
Moreover, if the Secretary is Sworn herself she becomes a valid target for the Circle Merits of other Sworn in
her court.

456 Protectorate of Novaculite

Trail of Tears
The service of Alhambra is fraught with perils and compromises, and it is the duty of the Drafters to help
raw recruits come to terms with their obligations. While Transformed the Secretary may protect a mundane
character in her presence from moral or mental stress. When a mundane character in her line of sight reaches
a breaking point, the Secretary may reflexively spend 1 Wisp to turn the breaking point roll into a teamwork
action: she rolls her normal dice pool for a breaking point, applying the same penalty her target faces, and the
result of her roll affects his as a secondary actor’s roll affects the primary actor’s.
Drawback: Using the Privilege makes the Secretary complicit in her target’s actions. If the target reached
the breaking point by acting in a way that triggers Sensitivity, the Secretary’s Sensitivity check proceeds as if
she had committed the tainting herself.

Drill Manual
A Drafter may give her recruits the basic knowledge necessary for their service. While Transformed, she
touches the forehead of her target and spends 1 Willpower. For one full day afterward, the target gains either
one Skill dot in Brawl, Weaponry or Firearms, or gains the Language Merit [CofD 45] for the Secretary’s native
language or one she has the Language Merit for and the Encyclopedic Knowledge Merit [CofD 44] for an organi-
zation which has her loyalty. (Normally the latter option is used on foreign recruits, so the language is modern
Alhambran and the organization is the Order of the Spotted Hyena or the City as a whole.) The Secretary cannot
raise anyone’s Skill to a level higher than her own.

Governor Privileges
The Queen’s Shilling
The Governors of Novaculite can create Sworn with an amazing efficiency. The Privilege uses the same
rules as the Charm Accept Fealty, except that it must be used on a group of at least five people who are bound
to each other or a common cause, sufficient for a Commonalty Charm to work on them all, and the Governor’s
dice pool takes the Commonalty modifier appropriate for the targeted group.

Binding Service
The chosen of Alhambra must work together for the good of the Last City. The Governor may spend 1 Wisp
while transformed to bolster the members of an organization and give them unity. She rolls Presence + Expres-
sion - the Commonalty modifier for the organization as an instant action.
Dramatic Failure: The Governor breaks the bonds among her targets. For a full day, none of the targets
count as members of any organization if a supernatural power that exploits Commonalty is used on them.
Failure: The members’ cohesion is not affected.
Success: Members of the organization who are present are drawn into a mystical unity. The Commonalty
modifier for affecting them improves by one step, to a maximum of Dedicated. The increased Commonalty
lasts for a full day.
Exceptional Success: The members take fire from the Governor’s words; they gain the Inspired Condi-
tion [CofD 289].

Regent Privilege
Favor of the Last Empress
A Regent of Novaculite sends troops into battle with the favor of Her Everflowing Majesty to support them.
Once per session, the Regent may pronounce a blessing in the name of her Queen on a group of people whose

Protectorate of Novaculite 457

Commonalty modifier is currently Dedicated (either naturally or with the benefit of Binding Service) as an in-
stant action, and spends 3 Wisps and 1 Willpower. Everyone in the group immediately gains the Blessed Con-
dition, related to a mission of the Regent’s choice, with a pool of banked dice equal to the Regent’s Weaponry
dots. All the Conditions end without resolving when the session ends.
Drawback: The group’s shared mission binds them all in shared responsibility. If anyone with the Destined
Condition from the Privilege fails a breaking point roll, everyone else with the Condition also reaches a breaking
point, taking the same penalty as the character who failed. Failing these rolls doesn’t cause another round of
breaking points; no character reaches a breaking point twice from the same event.

458 Protectorate of Novaculite

 Protectorate of Pyrite
Alternative Names: The Voices of the City, The Beacons Among Barbarians
Informal Names: Attaché/e, Liaisons, Natives (derogatory), Cuckoos (derogatory)
Attached to Order: Ghost Owl
Hello. I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help you.

The Jewel of the Kingdom, Alhambra, is always open to allow those from the barbaric Provinces to learn
from its majesty, and Alhambran agents perform this duty as much as their obligations allow. The Protectorate
of Pyrite was founded out of this desire to revolutionize the outside world - what better way to teach, it’s been
said, than to lead and show them?
The Voices of the City are its professional diplomats and negotiators, with the mission of persuading those
living outside the city to serve the Last Empress’ needs. The tasks of purchasing or renting the site of a new
Enclave, of arranging for local food (and for power, in recent centuries) and of soothing any alarm the locals
feel as the Enclave takes their hope away, almost always fall on a Liaison. The Liaisons are also by tradition
responsible for finding those in the Provinces who are willing to abandon rebellion, and either come to Alhambra
or support its Enclaves’ work. The Protectorate is popular with “immigrant” Alhambrans, who have parents or
grandparents born outside the city: by the very nature of their work members of the Pyrite have to spend lots
of time away from their beloved city, entering places and organizations that lack the touch of Her Everflowing
Majesty.
Alas, joining the Protectorate of Pyrite carries something of a stigma in Alhambra. To the ordinary citizens,
why, its services are necessary as the connections they make greatly service the needs of the hope-gatherers,
but no Pyrite is to be seen as too eager to perform their duties lest they appear as fancying those outsider
barbarian ways. And while the Fools of the Summit watch the Liaisons carefully, and can usually be confident
of the loyalties of them all, they know that this Protectorate, like all others, draws its powers from something
outside humanity. Yet when asked, the Regents of Pyrite can give no other names for this thing than “unity” and
“obligation” - and what is inhuman about those?

Marks And Requirements

The Liaisons are effectively what Alhambra allows the world to see of its public face; as such, they must act
with grace and dignity in their duty for they are the representative of the Kingdom’s majesty. They are expected
to deal with many different people in the Provinces, regardless of their feelings on the matter, and always appear
at their best in their presence. The required attribute is Manipulation, and the required skill is Socialize.
Attachée Regalia show their nature as links between Alhambra and the Provinces. It always looks digni-
fied and refined - or as close as what the Princess thinks qualifies - with multiple crests with stylized symbols
appearing on it: one to show their belonging to Alhambra, one for their Order, and one for the place they are
connected to.

Secretary Privileges
Seek and You Shall Find
Etiquette is a second nature to a Liaison, to be followed so as not allow any shame to befall Alhambra. And
as everybody will tell you, asking for information is simply polite.
On becoming a Secretary, an Attaché gains a floating dot of Contacts, usable in either mundane or trans-
formed state. Once per story, she may assign this dot to a field, as broad as what a dot in Contacts normally
offers; people in that field will answer questions for her as if they were normal contacts, using the rules for
the Merit. When the Secretary changes her floating Contact, anyone she asked questions of in the prior field
becomes slightly confused, taking a -1 penalty to remember who they were speaking to. If the Secretary has the
Contacts Merit, the floating dot stacks with the Merit for anyone trying to block her use of it.

Protectorate of Pyrite 459

Nowhere Unwelcome
The Light of the Kingdom may be waning in the wretched Provinces, but the authority of the Last Empress
still holds sway on this world. You need only present yourself in uniform, and all will defer to you.
The Secretary’s transformed state gains an aura of inscrutable, yet unquestioned authority. Anyone within
the field of her floating Contact from Seek and You Shall Find perceives her as one with influence in the field,
who offers opportunity if pleased, and ill consequences if offended. In social maneuvering with these people, the
Secretary determines her starting impression normally, then improves it by one step; in other social encounters,
the Secretary gains a +2 bonus on the first Social roll to influence them in a scene.
Moreover, the Secretary’s aura makes her anonymous. While people covered by the floating Contact rec-
ognize her in person if they have met her before, and will remember anything they agreed to do for her, if she
spends a Wisp just after leaving them any attempt they make to describe her to others or identify her from pho-
tographs takes a penalty equal to her Socialize dots. (Their descriptions tend to sound like what they imagine
the ideal person in the field to be.) This effect persists after the Secretary changes her floating Contact, and can
be removed only by supernatural powers which enhance memory.

Come, Follow Me
A Liaison seldom works alone, so she may extend a part of her authority to her staff. If the Secretary touches
a person and spends a Wisp, as long as the target visibly acts under her direction attempts to describe or identify
him take a penalty equal to the Secretary’s Socialize. The protection works only against people who know that
the target works for the Liaison - if she has told them so, or told him to do something while they watched, they
cannot describe or identify him except as one of her people, but those who see him only when separated from
her have no difficulty remembering his appearance. The illusion fades at the end of the current session, but as
with Nowhere Unwelcome its effects on memories last indefinitely.

Governor Privileges
Knock and It is Opened
When a Liaison rises to Governor, her authority becomes weightier, and her requests are difficult to refuse.
While the aura of Nowhere Unwelcome is active, the Governor may spend 2 Wisps for certain success in her
negotiations when those susceptible to it. In social maneuvering with people covered by her floating Contact,
this Privilege opens one Door without a roll, and may be used once during a maneuver after the Governor has
opened at least one Door by other means. In other contexts, the Privilege converts a Social roll meant to persuade
a person covered by her floating Contact to do something into a single success, and may be used once a scene.

Go Forth in My Name
The Governor’s command of etiquette is such that she may confer it to those who take direction from her.
If she touches a person and spends a Wisp, the target has the benefits of Seek and You Shall Find with respect to
her floating Contact for the rest of the session. The Privilege has no further effect on anyone who has benefitted
from it in the current session (so one person cannot gather information from the floating Contact more often
than the Merit would allow by having the Privilege used on him twice.) The Governor may use Come, Follow Me
and Go Forth in My Name simultaneously on a single target.

Regent Privilege
Ask And You Shall Receive
The Regent of the Protectorate of Pyrite carries so much authority that the benighted living in the Rebel-
lious Provinces will do whatever she requests … within reason. When a Regent wants something done that

460 Protectorate of Pyrite

someone covered by her floating Contact can supply, she approaches her chosen target, spends 3 Wisps and
1 Willpower, and rolls Manipulation + Socialize - the target’s Composure. Each success on this roll becomes a
phantom Allies Merit dot, applying to the target. For the rest of the session, the Regent may call on the target
for favors using the rules for the Allies Merit.
Drawback: Drawing too much on her magically created credit might push the target to repudiate the Re-
gent forever. If the Regent must roll to get a favor from her new ally, and fails on the roll, the Privilege expires
immediately, and she can never use any Privilege of the Protectorate on the target again. Furthermore, in social
maneuvering the Regent’s impression with the target now begins at hostile, and in other contexts she takes a
-2 penalty on all Social rolls dealing with the target, for at least the rest of the current story.

Protectorate of Pyrite 461

462
 Appendix B: Conditions and Tilts
Conditions
The following Conditions may easily appear in a campaign of Princess: the Hopeful. They are created by the
Nobility, or by one of their enemies; or the Nobility are likely to experience them.

Abdicated
The Princess has abandoned her duties to the Light. On any action related to her Calling, she takes a penalty
equal to her Shadows. She must spend a point of Willpower each time she wants to attack a creature of Darkness;
she can apply her Defense, Dodge or run from the fight, but not take an aggressive action.
Causes: Choosing catharsis during a Haunting.
Resolution: The Princess achieves an exceptional success on an action related to her Calling, or when at-
tacking a creature of Darkness.

Bargain
The character can find a piece of equipment or a service for a bargain price. He might have a coupon, or
get a promotional discount, or just have an amazing stroke of luck. When he wants to make a purchase, he may
resolve the Condition to reduce the Availability of the equipment or service he’s buying by 1 dot.
Causes: The Charm Small Providence.
Resolution: The character purchases something at a reduced price. The Condition does not grant a Beat
when resolved.

Blackmailed (persistent)
Someone who absolutely does not have the Noble’s interests at heart has discovered her double life and
intends to exploit his knowledge. Often this takes the form of extorting favors - only the least imaginative black-
mailers demand money. A Noble’s blackmailer is more likely to ask her to use her unique powers on his behalf.
While his motives can range from the criminal to the altruistic, his demands will badly complicate her affairs.
Causes: Resolving the Indiscreet Condition.
Resolution: The blackmailer makes his knowledge public; the Noble finds a counter-threat against him;
the blackmailer dies or is discredited.
Beat: The blackmailer’s demand blocks the Noble from doing an important task, or complicates her situ-
ation.

Blessed
The character has a mission, and at crucial moments he receives magical help to accomplish it. He has a
bank of bonus dice which he can apply to any dice pool, so long as the action in question serves the mission.
Each die applies to only 1 roll of a dice pool, but the character may apply any number of dice to a roll. Using up
all the dice ends the Condition without resolving it.
Causes: The Charms We Rely on You, Love Conquers All and Jumping Jack Flash; a Regent of Novaculite’s
Privilege.
Resolution: None; the Condition ends when all the dice are used up.

463
Blighted
The character’s raw faculties and talents have been magically degraded; dots have been taken from one or
more of his Attributes. Any traits derived from the reduced Attribute(s) are recalculated.
It is possible for a character to have two or more instances of the Blighted Condition, but different instances
cannot reduce the same Attribute.
Causes: The Charm Tendril of Nothing; dramatic failures with the Charms of Enhancement.
Resolution: The expiration of the magic that created the Condition ends it, without granting a Beat.

Broken Circle (persistent)

Someone important to the Noble’s mundane life has discovered her secret life’s existence, and reacted …
poorly. He may be worried or frightened by the threats the Noble faces; he may think the Noble is deluded, or
covering up reprehensible deeds with lies; he may even want to help her, but in ways that put him in greater peril,
and be offended that the Noble doesn’t want his help. Whatever the reaction, it’s strained their relationship. The
Noble takes a -2 penalty on Social rolls related to the person in question, and social maneuvers with him start
with an impression one step worse than normal.
Causes: Resolving the Indiscreet Condition.
Resolution: The Noble cuts her ties with the other person (losing any Merits connected to him), or reaches
a better understanding with him.
Beat: The other person blocks the Noble from doing an important task, or complicates her situation, due
to the coolness between them.

Cherishing
The Princess holds the memory of another person as a precious treasure. She may use that memory as
a sympathetic connection to the person, at a level set when she gained the Condition; doing so resolves the
Condition. However, if the other person has a power that exploits sympathetic connections, he can use that
power on the Princess through the connection, which also resolves the Condition.
A stronger version of the Condition weakens the level of Sympathy created by the memory by one step each
time one of the parties uses it for magic. In this case the Condition resolves when the strength of the connection
drops to the level the Princess naturally has for the other person.
Causes: The Charm Cherish.
Resolution: The Princess or the other person breaks the link as described.

Cowed
The character is convinced that another person is too dangerous to meddle with. He suffers a –2 penalty on
any Physical and Social rolls to oppose the character who inflicted the Condition, if he does not spend Willpower.
Causes: Anyone with the Intimidation Skill can try to inflict Cowed on a target with a contested roll; dra-
matic failure with the Charm Giggle at the Ghostie.
Resolution: The character successfully intimidates or injures the Condition’s source; the character regains
Willpower from his Virtue.

Cynical (persistent)
The character loses belief in her guiding principle, and abandons herself to self-indulgent comforts. She
actively avoids taking actions which reflect her Virtue, even when they don’t involve personal risk; she may not

464 Conditions
spend Willpower on such actions, and does not regain Willpower from them. If forced to act according to her
Virtue, the character suffers a -2 penalty to her rolls.
Causes: Dramatic failure on a compromise roll.
Resolution: The character regains a dot of Integrity, loses another dot of Integrity, or achieves an excep-
tional success on a breaking point roll.
Beat: The character fails to fulfill an obligation she incurred because of her Virtue.

Darkened (persistent)
Long exposure to Tainted areas has infected the character. He has become a creature of the Darkness, with
the abilities and drawbacks thereof, but hasn’t lost his Integrity yet.
Remaining in touch with human emotions and morals can protect the character from banes of the Darkness
for a while. The first time in a scene that jade touches him, he rolls his Integrity as a dice pool. If he fails this roll,
jade damages him as stated for the rest of the scene; if he succeeds, his flesh just breaks out in a lurid rash where
the jade touches it, and the itching inflammation gives him a -2 penalty on all Physical actions until the contact is
withdrawn. (Many Darkened first realized something was badly wrong with them when their jewellery burned
their fingers.)
Causes: Fulfilling an Aspiration from a Tainted area; the Charms Empty Heart and Shadowmask.
Resolution: The character makes a great sacrifice, either as restitution for his sins, or to save someone
from death or grave injury; the character raises his Integrity to 8 or more. (Just having Integrity above 7 won’t
resolve Darkened - the character must buy at least one dot in the trait.)
Beat: The character expands the Size or deepens the Severity of a Tainted area.

Demoralized (persistent)
The Princess’ morale has faltered in the face of the Darkness in the world. Spending Willpower adds only
+2 to her dice pool, or +1 to a static value. In any confrontation with a creature of Darkness, such as combat or
a contested action, the Princess takes a penalty equal to her Shadows.
Causes: A Haunting.
Resolution: The Princess defeats a creature of Darkness in a confrontation lasting for at least a scene.
Beat: The Princess concedes a conflict with a Dark creature and suffers serious loss by doing so.

Depression (persistent)
The character suffers from deep depression. He can’t put full effort into anything he does; spending
Willpower adds only 1 die to a dice pool, not the usual 3. Concentrating on a lengthy task tires him out; in any
extended action, his maximum number of rolls drops by two.
Causes: The Capitation Charm; the Lasting upgrade to the Queen’s Sorrow Charm.
Resolution: The character regains a dot of Integrity, loses another dot of Integrity, or achieves an excep-
tional success on a breaking point roll.
Beat: The character passes up a significant opportunity that would require him to break his routine or
make a sustained effort.

Dethroned Follower (persistent)

The character has fallen into the power of a Dethroned. He is compelled to help her reenact her fall from
Nobility and humanity, either by taking the role of another person involved in the events, or by bringing other
people to her Fortress to play the needed parts. If the character still has Integrity, refusing to participate in the
Dethroned’s personal tragedy is a breaking point at a -5 penalty, and if he fails the roll he must fall into line and

Conditions 465
play out his part. The Condition ends without resolving if the character leaves the Dethroned’s presence and
her Fortress for a number of days equal to her Inner Night.
Causes: The Chain Companions in Misery (Inner Night ••).
Resolution: The character takes serious harm (lethal damage exceeding his Stamina) while serving the
Dethroned, or succeeds at a breaking point roll caused by the condition.
Beat: The character puts himself in harm’s way to serve the Dethroned.

Doubting
The character’s higher calling or guiding principle has been put in question, and she is beset by doubts.
While the character is affected by this Condition, she cannot spend Willpower on any action that reflects her
Virtue.
Causes: Failing a compromise roll; dramatically failing with Comfortably Numb.
Resolution: The character gains an exceptional success on an action that reflects her Virtue, or regains
Willpower for performing such an action at personal risk.

Doomed (persistent)
The character is almost certain to suffer a dire fate. The Storyteller has a pool of dice equal to the level of
this Condition, which refills at the start of each session; he may apply those dice as a modifier to any roll made
for the character, if that roll is relevant to the character’s Doom. Actions which, if successful, would help to bring
the Doom about may be given a positive modifier, while actions which would help prevent the Doom may be
given a negative modifier.
Causes: A Regent of Fused Quartz uses her Privilege.
Resolution: The Doom comes to pass; or, the character does something which makes the Doom impossible.
Beat: The character succeeds in a task that contributes to his Doom - any roll that gained bonus dice from
this Condition qualifies, and the Storyteller may give Beats for other rolls as well.

Drama Queen
The character desperately wants attention - needs it - and doesn’t much care how she gets it. In any scene
where she isn’t the center of attention, she’s tempted to extreme behavior just to grab the spotlight.
Causes: Failing a compromise roll, especially when Unbalanced; dramatically failing with She’s So Fine.
Resolution: The character embarrasses or humiliates herself while trying to make people notice her.

Dream-Hounded
The character has dreams every night of being mercilessly hunted. The point of Willpower he would nor-
mally recover when he sleeps is taken from him by the person who set the Condition on him, and is wasted if
that person’s Willpower is fully refreshed.
Causes: The Caligo Call the Black Dog.
Resolution: Immediately after waking, roll Resolve + Composure. When the character has made successful
rolls equal to the Shadows of the person who gave him the dreams, resolve the Condition.

Easy Way
A Noble has offered the character a fair and balanced way to settle their differences. Her smile certainly
seems sincere, but somehow the hairs at the back of his neck are standing up, as if warning him away from po-

466 Conditions
tential danger... Any Social roll the character or the Noble make to negotiate the offer’s terms and reach agree-
ment reach an exceptional success with three successes instead of five.
The Condition ends without resolving if the character refuses to deal. If the character attacks the Noble or
an ally of hers, or bargains in bad faith, the Condition ends without resolving and the character takes the Hard
Way Tilt. The Noble does not automatically notice when the Hard Way Tilt replaces the Condition; treachery is
still possible, if more perilous.
Causes: The Charm Charm Offensive.
Resolution: The character and the Noble come to an agreement, that both intend to keep.

Enervated (persistent)
The character is in the second stage of soul loss. Her instinctive efforts to shore up her Willpower by giving
into her urges have failed, her Integrity has gone and her Willpower is now fading. In addition to the effects
of Soulless, she can no longer regain Willpower through her Virtue, only her Vice. Indulging herself brings di-
minishing returns — whenever she does so, her permanent Willpower drops by one dot before she regains
Willpower points to the new maximum.
Causes: Falling to Integrity 1 while Soulless [CofD 290]; falling to Belief 0.
Resolution: Regaining a lost soul; returning to Belief 1.
Beat: Lose a dot of permanent Willpower.

Enhanced
The character’s raw faculties and talents have been magically improved; dots have been added to one or
more of his Attributes. Any traits derived from the enhanced Attribute(s) are recalculated.
It is possible for a character to have two or more instances of the Enhanced Condition, but different in-
stances cannot enhance the same Attribute.
Causes: The Charms of Enhancement.
Resolution: The expiration of the magic that created the Condition ends it, without granting a Beat.

Enraged (persistent)
The Princess is obsessed with punishing whoever is responsible for a tainting. Any roll not related to at-
tacking him, finding him or compelling him to make restitution to his victim is penalized by her Shadows.
If the Princess is the one responsible, she is driven to self-hatred, which immediately disguises itself as an
unshakable belief that her victim hates her and means her harm. She is obsessed with punishing the sufferer,
as above.
Causes: A Haunting.
Resolution: The object of the Princess’ anger admits guilt and makes amends, or is incapacitated; or, the
Princess achieves an exceptional success on a breaking point roll.
Beat: The Princess neglects another obligation to pursue the object of her anger.

False Memory (persistent)

The character’s memories have been magically altered. This may modify some Mental or Social dice pools,
depending on what was changed. The magic that changed his memories imposed a barrier against recalling the
truth; if the character is shown compelling evidence of the falsification he reaches a breaking point, at a penalty
equal to the level of the Condition.
Causes: The Charm Their Blood Cries Out; the Caligo Everyone Dies Alone; a Governor of Malachite’s Free
to Serve Privilege.

Conditions 467
 Resolution: The character is confronted with proof that his memories are false, and succeeds on the re-
sulting breaking point roll.
Beat: The character trusts someone or takes a risky action based on his false memories alone.

Fearful
Something has inspired a nearly paralyzing fear in the character. He cannot willingly approach within his
Speed in yards of the fear’s source. All his interactions with the source of his fear take a -5 penalty.
Causes: The Charms Gold Abhors Ebon, Ofuda, I am Become Light; the Terrifying upgrade to Valiant Mind;
dramatic failure on the Charm Rally Round the Flag; the Caligo Bogeyman; the Reprisal Taken Revelation; a
Governor of Blue Topaz’s Cuckoo’s Egg Privilege.
Resolution: The character escapes from the source of his fear, and does not return during the current scene.

Flashbacks (persistent)
The Noble went through terrible suffering once, and now associates some stimulus (regarded by others
as innocuous) with that past pain, so strongly that experiencing it again can overwhelm her. Each time she
encounters the stimulus, she must check her Sensitivity, using her unmodified pool.
This Condition should be taken only for stimuli that have no obvious connection with suffering - for in-
stance, a Noble grieving for her dead mother may flash back on smelling her mother’s favorite perfume.
Causes: A horrible experience, such as (but not limited to) an especially severe Haunting.
Resolution: Time or therapy wears down the Noble’s old trauma.
Beat: The Noble undergoes a Haunting because she encountered the stimulus.

Forgettable (persistent)
The character’s face and voice are bland and unmemorable; he doesn’t stand out in a crowd or attract much
notice when alone. All his Social rolls that would be influenced by his appearance take a -1 penalty. On the other
hand, any rolls by others to spot, notice or remember the character take a -1 penalty.
Causes: The Charm Enduring Beauty.
Resolution: The character gets plastic surgery, or some other treatment that alters his appearance.
Beat: The character is overlooked or ignored, when he doesn’t want to be.

Gale-touched
The character has been brushed lightly by the Dreamlands’ Gales, and memories of the land beyond the
wall of sleep sustain her in the face of fear or horror. When the character reaches a breaking point, she may
resolve this Condition to add +1 to her roll.
While a character has this Condition, small fragments of beauty that remind her of the Dreamlands appear
as she goes about her daily life, in places she can’t reach quickly, and vanish if she approaches them closely; they
are not visible to anyone else. This has no mechanical effect but might be unsettling to the inexperienced.
Causes: Spending time in the Dreamlands.
Resolution: The character draws on memories of the Dreamlands to preserve herself from a breaking
point.

Galemark (persistent)
The Dreamlands’ Gales have marked the character’s mind, giving her an intermittent delusion that she is
a Dreamlander. Each level in the Condition represents one Galemark. Each Galemark is attached to one of the

468 Conditions
character’s Willpower dots, starting with the leftmost and moving right. When the character spends a point
of Willpower from a dot with a Galemark, she temporarily assumes the role the Dreamlands have given her,
abandoning thoughts of the waking world as fictions of no importance. This delusion lasts for the rest of the
current scene.
When the character is summoning Crawlspace to leave the Dreamlands, add one Door to the total for each
Galemark she currently has.
Causes: Spending time in the Dreamlands.
Resolution: After the character has had one full night’s sleep without entering the Dreamlands for each
level of the Condition, she loses one level, recovering from its baneful effect on her mind. The effects of the lost
Galemark on the character’s Dreamlands appearance, and on the Dreamlands, may remain or fade away at the
player’s discretion - if they remain, the character can enact the role the Dreamlands wish her to play, and not
become lost in it.
Beat: The character abandons an obligation to play her Galemark-created role, or an event or person linked
to that role complicates the current situation. The character’s player may invent such an event to claim the Beat.

Haunted
Witnessing an example of human cruelty has hurt the Princess’ connection to the Light. The Princess adds
1 dot to her Shadows when she gains the Condition; if she resolves it, she loses that dot. The Condition ends
without resolving at the end of the current scene; the Princess does not take a Beat and doesn’t remove the
Shadows dot in that case.
Causes: A Sensitivity check.
Resolution: The Princess relieves the pain that inflicted this Condition, or punishes the one responsible
for it.

Heartfire
The character’s affections for another person are being sustained by a magical fire. The flame created is
candle-sized (base damage of 0) and dances on the tip of the Princess’ finger; its color and Intensity depend on
the nature and strength of the affection. The flame will last indefinitely if transferred to a flammable substance
such as a candle wick. It will continue to burn without consuming its source until it is deliberately extinguished
(which is as easy as snuffing out a non-supernatural flame of the same size) or the character dies. Extinguishing
a flame manually (to let the Princess start a new flame, for example) ends the Condition without resolving it.

Heartfire Flames
Nature Color Strength Intensity
Love for an “idea” of a person not intimately known Translucent Acquaintance 1st degree (+0)
Patience, loyalty, respect Dark red/orange Good friends 2nd degree (+1)
Contentment, pride, deep concern Blue Lover, close family 3rd degree (+2)
Dedication, purpose, joy White Total devotion White hot (+3)
Obsession Shifting, unnatural
"As you wish" Rainbow

Anyone can use the flame to set something else on fire. However, its proper use is to preserve the relation-
ship that inspired it. If either the character or the subject of his affections concentrates on the flame, cupping
it in their hands or staring into it, that person gains the Swooning Condition [CofD 291] for the other, and the
Heartfire Condition resolves.
While the Condition lasts, the Princess who lit the fire has at least a Known sympathetic connection with
the character, and an Acquainted connection with the person he feels affection for.

Conditions 469
 Causes: The Charm Flame in the Heart.
Resolution: The flame is used to ignite something material; or someone uses the flame to gain the Swoon-
ing Condition. Either way, the flame extinguishes itself.

Hypersensitive (persistent)
For the Hopeful, courage in the face of Darkness is basic to their powers; if it falters, so might their magic.
All Princesses suffer from Sensitivity, but a few are unnerved by displays of cruelty. The Princess’ Shadows
hamper nearly all of her magic; every roll she makes to activate a Charm, and every roll to which she applies an
Invocation, takes a penalty equal to her current Shadows dots. Transformation actions and regaining Wisps are
penalized too, as with normal Sensitivity. Charms which work without an activation roll, and Practical Magic,
aren’t penalized.
Causes: A Haunting; dramatically failing with Unweaving or a Performative Living Image.
Resolution: The Princess checks her Sensitivity, and the roll fails.
Beat: The Princess suffers serious inconvenience because her magic fails her.

Indiscreet
The Noble has been careless; evidence of her secret identity exists, which she can’t retrieve or deny, waiting
for a savvy investigator to discover. Levels in this condition add to the Storyteller’s dice pool when the Noble
risks exposure, as explained in The Need for Discretion. Removing the last level ends the Condition without
resolving it.
Causes: The Noble risks exposing her secret identity, and loses or declines the contested roll.
Resolution: Someone puts the evidence together, and realizes what the Noble is. Replace Indiscreet with
Blackmailed, Broken Circle, Nemesis or another persistent Condition approved by the Storyteller.

Insightful
The character has picked up a key bit of knowledge that will unlock a problem for him, and make one of
his tasks a great deal easier. He may resolve the Condition to reroll his dice pool for an action related to a single
topic after seeing the results; he must accept the second roll. The roll affected may be any relevant Skill roll,
except for combat actions.
Causes: The Charm Sea-Foam’s Touch.
Resolution: The character takes advantage of the information he gleaned, altering his roll as described
above.

Legal Minor (persistent)

The character is not considered to be a responsible adult, generally because she hasn’t reached the age of
majority. She has parents, other relatives or guardians who are responsible for her, pay her expenses, and hold
her to a standard of behavior. In addition, there are a number of things adults may legally do which she may not -
in most US jurisdictions, for instance, minors may not buy liquor, drive or sign contracts, and must attend school.
If you take this Condition for your character, you and the Storyteller should work out what your character’s
guardians expect from her before play begins. Parents will, as a rule, set rules designed to keep their children
away from danger, and help them grow into responsible adults; but parents’ judgments on what is dangerous,
what constitutes responsibility, and how far their child has grown vary widely.
Storytellers should not allow characters to take this Condition if all the PCs are underage (as can easily
happen in a Princess chronicle) as in such games the legal problems of minors are part of the campaign back-
ground. It’s mainly appropriate when some characters are underage and others aren’t. (Of course Storytellers
are free to award Beats as if all the PCs have this Condition in a chronicle set in high school!)

470 Conditions
 Causes: Being born recently; being judged incompetent by a court.
Resolution: The character attains the age of legal adulthood.
Beat: The character does something prohibited to minors, or violates the standard laid down by her
guardians, and her transgression becomes known to the relevant authority. (A breach the character gets away
with doesn’t give her a Beat; a Beat is awarded only if her guardians learn of it and respond, or the police do,
when the action breaks the law.) Alternately, an adult stops the character from doing an important task because
of her youth.

Loathing
The character is filled with hatred for someone or something; he wants to see them destroyed or dead.
Any Composure or Resolve rolls to resist the temptation to do the hated object harm take a -2 penalty. A hated
person has a -2 penalty on any Social rolls against the character. Also, any rolls to induce the character to harm
the hated object achieve an exceptional success on three successes instead of five.
Causes: The Charm Freed By Burning Hate.
Resolution: The character reaches a breaking point because of an attempt to harm the object of his hatred.

Maddened
Provoked by a tainting, the Princess falls into a berserk fury and thinks of nothing but the death of the one
responsible. When facing that person, she must make all-out attacks each turn; to do otherwise she must spend
a Willpower point. The Princess is also prone to lashing out when in danger or under stress; she must spend a
Willpower point to take a nonviolent action in such situations.
Causes: Choosing catharsis during a Haunting; the Terrifying upgrade to Valiant Mind.
Resolution: The Princess reaches a breaking point because she resorted to violence; or she achieves an
exceptional success against the object of her fury.

Magicless
The Princess is so profoundly shocked by a tainting that she cannot reach the Light at all. She must return
to mundane form when she first gains the Condition, and may not transform, spend Wisps or use Charms or
Practical Magic until the Condition resolves.
Causes: Choosing catharsis during a Haunting.
Resolution: The Princess gains a new Shadows dot from a Haunting.

Manic
The character is awash with energy and cannot sit still. He takes a -2 penalty to all rolls to resist impulsive
behavior or temptation; the penalty increases to -5 when the impulse aligns with his Vice. His attention to a task
is easily diverted; in any extended action, his maximum number of rolls drops by two.
Causes: Failing a compromise roll while Unbalanced; Ambassadors to the Ocean suffer from this Condition
daily.
Resolution: The character suffers a significant drawback because he couldn’t resist acting.

Misled
The character has been persuaded to believe something that isn’t actually true. When he is taking an action
where the false belief could be relevant, you may choose to fail the roll and resolve this Condition. If the character
discovers clear evidence that his belief is false, you may choose to shed the Condition without resolving it.
Causes: Dramatic failures on several Learn Charms.

Conditions 471
 Resolution: The character acts on his false belief and fails a roll as described.

Narcissist (persistent)
The character is so strongly convinced of her superiority to her fellows that she regards them with scorn,
or insists on being at the focus of every social event she participates in. As a result she creates unpleasant scenes
everywhere she goes, or offends those she meets by unconscious arrogance. (Just how the social problems man-
ifest is up to the player.) The Storyteller has a pool of dice equal to 10 – (character’s Integrity). Once per chapter,
the Storyteller can apply those dice as a negative modifier to any Social roll made for the character.
Causes: Dramatically failing a compromise roll, especially when Unbalanced.
Resolution: The character regains a dot of Integrity, loses another dot of Integrity, or achieves an excep-
tional success on a breaking point roll.
Beat: The character fails a roll because of this Condition.

Nemesis (persistent)
The Noble has a personal enemy - probably, though not necessarily, a creature of Darkness - who knows
enough about her social connections to assault them. This doesn’t mean the enemy knows who she is (though he
may) but that he knows certain places or people are important for her, and if they suffer she will be weakened.
Fortunately, he hasn’t shared his knowledge with anyone else, wanting to keep the hunt to himself.
Causes: Resolving the Indiscreet Condition.
Resolution: The Noble brings down her nemesis, stripping him of any power to harm.
Beat: The nemesis finds and attacks the Noble; he mounts an attack on someone or something precious
to her, and she acts to defend them.

Nervous
Something is watching the character, something that does not approve of what he’s up to … or at least
he thinks so. He has a hard time concentrating, and loses his cool with little provocation. He subtracts 1 die
from Wits and Composure dice pools (but not from derived traits based on the Attributes) and when taking an
extended action his maximum number of rolls is reduced by 1.
Causes: The Charm Hallowed Hearth; dramatically failing with Bejewelled Visage or Read the Wind.
Resolution: The character abandons the course of action that led to his gaining the Condition.

Nightmare Come Alive

The character has been assimilated into the fake reality of an Echo Nightscape. He no longer has access to
him own memories, believing instead that he is whomever the Echo has cast him as. He believes the environment
around him is real, disbelieving anyone claiming otherwise. He can’t use any supernatural abilities, and neither
can he spend Willpower points.
Should the character leave the Nightscape, or should the Tainted place be cleansed, purged or purified, this
Condition disappears without resolving.
Causes: Being captured by an Echo Nightscape.
Resolution: Suffer harm or greatly imperil yourself by acting in line with your new fake persona, rather
than your true self.

Overconfident
The character rushes in where angels fear to tread. She has complete confidence in her ability to overcome
any challenge fate puts in her way, and is ready to take on near-impossible tasks without the least hesitation.

472 Conditions
 Causes: Failing a compromise roll, especially when Unbalanced; dramatically failing with For the First
Time.
Resolution: The character’s blithe self-confidence leads her into a situation she can’t deal with, and some-
one else has to rescue her or bail her out. The character must receive help from another person, who sacrifices
significant time or resources to provide it, to resolve the Condition.

Reckless
The Princess throws herself into danger with little regard for her safety. Her Defense is halved.
Causes: The Charm Their Blood Cries Out.
Resolution: The Princess takes enough bashing damage to suffer wound penalties, lethal damage exceed-
ing her Stamina, or any aggravated damage.

Sealed Vow
The character has made a promise, which has been charged with the Light. To break his word would be
shameful; to honor it, an inspiration. If at any time he refuses to do as he promised, or becomes incapable of
doing so, the Condition ends without resolving and is replaced with the Guilty Condition [CofD 289].
Causes: The Charm Notary Private.
Resolution: The character fulfills his promise.

Shield of Innocence
The character has an assurance that even the worst pains and terrors of the World of Darkness will pass;
that good, not evil, is the first principle of the world. Therefore, when he confronts such pains or terrors, he is
steadfast. While this Condition lasts the character adds a bonus to all breaking point rolls not caused by his own
actions. In addition, if he has a Condition that resolves when he loses Integrity, the effects of that Condition are
suppressed until this Condition ends.
If the character takes an action that is a breaking point for him, the Condition ends immediately without
resolving.
Causes: The Charm Don’t Stop Believing.
Resolution: The character may resolve the Condition to get an automatic exceptional success on a breaking
point roll, if the breaking point is not caused by his own actions.

Soul Shocked
The character has “died” while on a journey outside his physical body. On gaining this Condition, roll the
character’s current Willpower points (not dots), unless he has none left; don’t apply 10-again to the roll. He
keeps 1 Willpower per success and loses all the rest.
Until the Condition resolves, the character does not regain Willpower from Virtue, Vice, or equivalent traits.
He still regains Willpower from rest, and any other sources of Willpower.
Causes: “Dying” while in the Dreamlands.
Resolution: Regaining full Willpower.

Stolen Sight
The character can see through the eyes of another person. As an instant action (which resolves the Condi-
tion) he closes one or both eyes, and through the closed eye(s) sees what the Condition’s target does at that
moment, until he next opens his eye(s) or the end of the scene (whichever comes first.) The character gains the
Blinded Tilt [CofD 281] while he looks through another’s eyes.

Conditions 473
 Causes: The Caligo Such Pretty Eyes, I Think I’ll Keep Them.
Resolution: The character looks through the target’s eyes.

Stumbling (persistent)
The character has lost confidence in his abilities and talents. Choose a Skill the character knows; all actions
he takes based on that Skill take a -3 penalty. The Condition can be taken multiple times, once for each Skill.
Causes: The Caligo Handful of Dust; dramatically failing with Sea-Foam’s Touch, Mercury’s Blessing or Liv-
ing Index.
Resolution: When a supernatural power created the Condition, the power’s expiration resolves it. Other-
wise, the character regains a dot of Integrity, loses another dot of Integrity, or achieves an exceptional success
on a breaking point roll.
Beat: The character fails a roll because of this Condition.

Tainted
The character has been partly corrupted by a Tainted place. One of the place’s Aspirations is rooted into
his mind, felt as a nagging desire or a twisted fantasy he doesn’t fully understand. He may fulfil that Aspiration
at any time. If doing so causes a breaking point (which it very likely will) the results of the roll play out as
if the character were still in the Tainted place, except that it cannot reapply this Condition. (E.g. it can inflict
Darkened.)
The seed of corruption within the character’s soul inflicts nightmares. He cannot regain Willpower from
sleep. Also, the touch of jade is mildly irritating to the character. This has no mechanical effect, and the character
may not even notice it consciously, but an attentive observer might take note of his aversion to handling the
gemstone.
Causes: Exposure to a Tainted area; the Capitation Charm.
Resolution: Fulfill the Tainted Aspiration; regain all spent Willpower from one’s Virtue.

Terrified
The character is frightened by something to the point of losing rational thought. He must flee the source
of his fear as quickly as possible when it is present, ignoring all other considerations (including the safety of
their belongings, friends, and allies). If something blocks his way he must attempt to bypass it, even resorting
to violence. If the source of the fear itself stands in his way he may not act against it, or approach in any way,
collapsing in terror if cornered.
This Condition may be repressed for one turn by spending a point of Willpower.
Causes: The Charms The Finest Hour, the Last Hour, Gold Abhors Ebon, Ofuda, I am Become Light; the
Umbra Scuttling Spider’s Sense; the Caligo Bogeyman; the Reprisal Taken Revelation.
Resolution: The character escapes from the source of his fear, and does not return during the current scene.

Tranced (persistent)
The character falls into a deep trance whenever exposed to a specific trigger event, in which anything said
in his hearing that he can plausibly interpret as an order or a request becomes an overriding imperative. The
character remains primed for orders for a number of turns equal to 10 - his Resolve; if he receives no orders
in that time the trance ends, otherwise it continues as long as it takes for him to carry out the order. If obeying
the order or request would be a breaking point for the character, he makes the roll; failing the roll means he
carries out the order, while success breaks the trance. The character does not lose Integrity or suffer any other
consequences from the breaking point. The character forgets his own actions after he has finished; only super-
natural powers can restore his memory.

474 Conditions
 Each time the character enters a trance, he rolls Resolve + Composure - the Condition’s level.
Dramatic Failure: The Condition’s level increases by 1.
Failure: The Condition’s level is unchanged.
Success: The Condition’s level decreases by 1.
Exceptional Success: The Condition’s level decreases by 2.
Causes: The Charm No Choice, No Hope; the Caligo Oblivion’s Sign.
Resolution: The Condition’s level reaches or passes 0.
Beat: The character hears and obeys an order while in a trance.

Unbalanced
The Princess’ psyche is in a fragile state, and the slightest stress placed on it may well break her. Her effective
Belief is reduced by her dots in the Specchio Invocation (to a minimum of 1) for the purpose of modifying her
breaking point rolls. The Conditions gained from compromises met in this state of mind are generally not the
usual ones for the Hopeful - Drama Queen, Manic, Overconfident and Narcissist are more likely.
Causes: Applying the Specchio Invocation.
Resolution: The Princess loses or regains a dot of Belief, or achieves an exceptional success on a breaking
point roll. If she gets a full night’s rest, the Condition ends without resolving.

Vice-Ridden (persistent)
The character is tempted to commit a new category of sins. He gains a second Vice, as if he had the Vice-
Ridden Merit [CofD 46]. If the character does not lose Integrity before the next sunrise, the Condition expires
then; however, if he does lose Integrity before then the Condition becomes permanent until resolved.
Causes: The Umbra Tainted Allure of Vice; the Caligo Drink Pain Like Wine.
Resolution: The character regains Willpower from his Virtue; this restores him to his true character. Al-
ternately, the character loses or gains a dot of Integrity, or gets an exceptional success on a breaking point roll.
Beat: The character creates a problem for himself or his group by acting according to the Condition’s Vice.

Waiting Charm
The subject (a character or object) has a Charm on it, waiting to be activated. The suspended Charm takes
effect when the Condition is resolved. If the Condition ends without resolving the suspended Charm dissipates.
Resolving the Condition does not grant a Beat to the subject.
Until the Condition resolves, the subject’s presence will trigger Unseen Sense (Light).
Causes: The Charms Living Image and Questing Mind.
Resolution: The Princess using the Charms defines a situation in which the Condition resolves.

Walking Stain (persistent)

The character's mystical abilities have been stained by exposure to the Darkness. All supernatural abilities
she may exhibit, including Practical Magic, Echoes, Charms, Transformation, etc. as well as Disciplines, spells,
Gifts and any non-Radiant powers, become disgusting parodies of themselves. The character suffers a penalty
on Social rolls with anyone who witnesses or is affected by her powers equal to her Supernatural Tolerance, and
during social maneuvers she sets her impression level with all such people to Hostile. This effect stacks with all
reactions that the character’s powers would normally create in witnesses.
Causes: The Caligo One of Us.

Conditions 475
 Resolution: The character loses a dot in his trait equivalent to Integrity, or exhausts all his supernatural
fuel (Wisps, Vitae, Essence, Mana, etc.) The Condition ends without resolving after a week has passed.
Beat: Someone with whom the character has an existing relationship suspects or turns on him due to his
stained state.

Phylactery Conditions
Some of the Nobility suffer from unusual limits on their transformations, presumably because of quirks in
their Blossoming. All of the following Conditions are persistent and may be taken at character creation, with the
Storyteller’s agreement. Like other persistent Conditions, they are resolved only with specific, impressive effort.

Assertive Past (persistent)

The Princess’s character has been shaped by her previous life, during the Kingdom or Long Night, as much
as or more than her experiences in the present - to the point where she sometimes forgets who she is now. She
might be desperately seeking the reincarnations of people she knew in the past, driven to complete a task left
unfinished at her death, or prone to claim a status she once held that she lacks in the present. Princesses with
this Condition are normally precocious, gaining transformed dots and Charms at a fast clip, but detached from
mundane society and obsessed with goals alien to the people she meets.
When she reaches a breaking point, regardless of its result, the Princess regresses mentally, forgetting the
present and pursuing what her past self desires. Her mundane Aspirations (but not her Vocations) are suspend-
ed, replaced by goals related to her previous life. When one of her Aspirations from the past has been fulfilled,
the Princess recalls her present life and Aspirations.
A Princess with the Onceborn Merit cannot have this Condition - she has no past life to regress to.
Causes: A Princess’s previous life.
Resolution: The Princess reconciles her present and her past, attaining a stable personality.
Beat: The Princess alienates someone, faces serious hardship or neglects an obligation while pursuing an
Aspiration from her previous life.

Blatant Transformation (persistent)

The Princess creates a spectacle when she changes from her mundane form. Any other character within
sight will notice the process of her transformation, even if she transforms reflexively; flashes of light, loud mar-
tial music, and swirls of clothing and jewelry materializing around her make it obvious to all around her that
she is a magical being. Going from one transformed state to another, switching pieces of Regalia or returning to
mundane form don’t have this problem - only the shift from mundane to transformed does.
Causes: A Princess’s Blossoming.
Resolution: The Princess reshapes her phylactery to tone down her transformation sequence.
Beat: Her transformation alerts an enemy to the Princess’s presence or true capabilities.

Body Dysmorphia (persistent)

For whatever reason the Princess does not feel comfortable in her mundane identity. To the Princess trans-
formation is an escape, her perfected self is naturally free from whatever flaws she feels in her mundane body.
The price of this freedom is how her mundane form feels even worse by comparison. The Princess has some
form of trigger; it could be hearing an insult about her appearance, being obliged to act in a gender appropri-
ate manner or failing a roll with a Skill she has Transformed dots in. When she encounters it she immediately
seeks to escape the situation and go to a safe place to transform, remaining transformed for the remainder of
the scene. The Princess may spend a point of Willpower to control herself; if she physically cannot leave she
must spend the point of Willpower.

476 Phylactery Conditions

 Princesses with this Condition often have trouble keeping their two identities apart. Many try to transfer
their friendships and obligations to their Transformed self. They are also known to take risks to enjoy any alone
time in their Transformed identity.
Causes: Social causes are common, usually in the teenage years. Other Princesses are transgender or oth-
erwise born in the wrong body. A few developed the Condition from feelings of inadequacy without their Trans-
formed Attributes and Skills.
Resolution: The Princess makes peace with the flaws of her mundane form, has them altered by surgery,
or swears fealty to the Queen of Mirrors. Mirrors’ Practical Magic doesn’t fix the Condition, but it relieves the
Princess of the need to endure her mundane form.
Beat: The Princess walks away from an obligation to transform herself.

Embarrassing Phylactery (persistent)

The Princess has a Phylactery which has an uplifting, even moral meaning to her personally but if presented
in public causes nothing but trouble. This may be because the Princess is from an oppressed minority group and
her Phylactery is a symbol of her people. It could be because her Phylactery has a different meaning to different
cultures or because her Phylactery isn’t appropriate for her age, social standing or gender.
Causes: A Princess’s Blossoming.
Resolution: The Princess moves to a different cultural area where its troublesome meaning is unknown,
or reshapes her Phylactery into something less embarrassing.
Beat: Misconceptions about her Phylactery or an attempt to conceal it cause the Princess a significant hard-
ship.

Heartfelt Vow (persistent)

The Princess’ Belief and magic rest on a great vow, which demands that she follow a specific code of conduct
while acting as a champion of the Light. Her Charms fail to activate, or give no help to mundane actions, if the
result of a success would break her vow. Moreover, if the Princess does break the vow, she must immediately
return to her mundane form and cannot transform for the rest of the scene.
Causes: A Princess’s Blossoming.
Resolution: The Princess undergoes a moral crisis, resolves it by abandoning her vow, and reshapes her
Phylactery to match her new perspective.
Beat: The Princess suffers a significant setback due to keeping her vow.

Slow Transformation (persistent)

For whatever reason, the Princess needs time to transform, roughly about five minutes. Her Phylactery
might be a small bag that somehow contains her entire regalia, which she must change into as with any other
clothes. She may simply hover and sparkle for five minutes before the transformation is complete.
Causes: A Princess’s Blossoming.
Resolution: The Princess reshapes her Phylactery to make it transform her quickly.
Beat: The Princess’ slower Transformation causes her a significant hardship.

Truly Mundane (persistent)

The Princess’s connection to the Light is hampered while untransformed; in her mundane form she is no
more than an ordinary human. A Princess with this Condition has no Practical Charms, and while in her mundane
form she has no Echo; she cannot raise an Echo, call on Practical Magic, use her Inner Light as Supernatural
Tolerance, or spend Wisps for any reason other than to transform reflexively. On the other hand, powers that

Phylactery Conditions 477

distinguish mundane from supernatural beings treat her as mundane when she’s in her mundane form - for
instance, Magical Eyes will not mark her as supernatural.
Causes: A Princess’s Blossoming.
Resolution: The Princess reshapes her Phylactery to have a looser hold on her powers. When resolving
the Condition, she immediately selects as many Practical Charms as she qualifies for based on her Inner Light.
Beat: The Princess risks discovery to use her powers, or falls prey to a hostile supernatural effect while
in her mundane form.

Two Hearts, One Soul (persistent)

There is nothing the Light cherishes more than a true bond between people, but sometimes the Light itself
Blossoms through such a bond. In rare cases two Princesses are connected at the most fundamental level. They
Blossom side by side and they share a bond closer than sisters, closer than lovers.
A Princess with this Condition needs another Princess to transform. She and her partner must invoke their
transformations together while standing within a few feet of each other. She has no problem using other abilities,
such as Practical Magic and Charms, without her partner; only transformations need the partner’s presence.
(In every known example of a Princess with this Condition, the partner has it as well, and the pair transform
together.)
Causes: A Princess’s Blossoming.
Resolution: The Princess reshapes her Phylactery to weaken the bond it has with the other Princess.
Beat: The Princess is separated from her partner and needs to transform.

Unstable Transformation (persistent)

The Princess doesn’t have full control over her transformations. Meeting with a specific trigger while trans-
formed makes her lose control, and she reverts to mundane form. The trigger must be an event not under the
Princess’ control, though it shouldn’t be frequent. (A few examples: being splashed with hot water, hearing a
specific nonsense phrase.) After losing control the Princess can’t transform again during the current scene.
Causes: A Princess’s Blossoming.
Resolution: The Princess reshapes her Phylactery to make her transformations controllable.
Beat: The Princess gets into difficulties due to involuntarily returning to her mundane form.

Tilts and Environmental Conditions

Broken Ground
The ground in the area is cluttered with heavy or sharp objects (large rocks, empty crates, glass shards, etc.)
that force anyone moving through it to take care where they step. Those in the area must move at half Speed
or less; anyone going faster than that takes 1 point of bashing damage each turn from tripping over something,
barking a shin, or similar misadventure.
Causing the Tilt: The Earthquake Charm creates the Tilt in its area of effect. So does a straightforward
jumble of stuff scattered on the floor.
Ending the Tilt: Natural occurrences of the Tilt can be removed by cleaning up the mess.

Burning
The character is on fire. He takes automatic damage each turn equal to the fire’s Intensity + 1 [CofD 98] and
also suffers the effects of the Blinded Tilt [CofD 280].

478 Tilts
 Causing the Tilt: Spending more than a turn unprotected in a blaze; being caught in an incendiary explo-
sive’s blast.
Ending the Tilt: Fires can be smothered by dousing oneself in water, using a fire extinguisher, rolling on the
ground or beating with rugs; each turn smothering a fire reduces its Intensity by 1, and the fire is extinguished
when its Intensity reaches 0.

Consecrated
The subject of this Condition - normally a location - has been blessed by one of the Hopeful and dedicated
to the Light. In itself this does nothing, but several Charms benefit from being tied to the Condition.
Causing the Condition: The Consecrate Charm creates this Condition on a location. Upgrades to that
Charm change the Condition’s effects; note which were applied.
Ending the Condition: When the Charm expires the Condition ends with it. This can happen naturally,
because someone Tainted the location, or because the last symbol of the consecrator was removed.

Depressed
To the character the world has become gray and miserable, and effort seems pointless. He may not spend
Willpower to add dice to his dice pools.
Causing the Tilt: The Charm Queen’s Sorrow.
Ending the Tilt: The character fulfills his Vice, or the current scene ends.

Drowning
The character’s breath has run out while he’s swimming, and his lungs are filling with water. He takes one
point of bashing damage each turn as loss of oxygen takes its toll.
Causing the Tilt: Prolonged immersion in water, or being deprived of air in general.
Ending the Tilt: Reaching a source of air and removing any liquid present in the lungs.

Earworm
A song is running through the character’s head, driving him to distraction. He cannot take extended actions
(if he is in progress with one, it automatically fails) and takes a -1 penalty to all actions that involve perception,
concentration and precision. This penalty rises by -1 for each turn the character attempts such an action, to a
maximum of -5.
Once a character has reached the maximum penalty, failing an action that the Tilt penalizes replaces it with
Insensate [CofD 285]; the character does nothing but hum the tune in his head.
Causing the Tilt: Goosedown Lullaby can impose this Tilt.
Ending the Tilt: If not replaced by Insensate, the Tilt wears off at the end of the scene, bringing the char-
acter back to alertness.

Enervating Hex
The object with this Condition drains Willpower from those who approach it. A character unfortunate
enough to remain within five yards of the object for 10 minutes rolls Resolve + Supernatural Tolerance vs. the
Shadows of the person who prepared the Hex. If he loses the contest, the Hex steals a point of Willpower from
him. The stolen Willpower is trapped within the Hex, and any character with Enervation (or another power
that steals Willpower) may use that power on the Hexed object to remove the stolen points. The Hex can store

Tilts 479
Willpower points up to a level specified when the Condition was imposed; it goes dormant when filled, but re-
activates if Willpower is removed.
Touching the object triggers Sensitivity in characters who have it.
Causing the Condition: The Enervating Hex Caligo creates the Hex on an object.
Ending the Condition: The object is destroyed, or touches a piece of jade. If the Hex is Fragile, resolving
Fragile also removes the Hex.

Extreme Taint
The area has been blighted by the life-draining quality of the Dark World. Normal characters can’t heal
bashing damage — the extreme temperature deals damage at the same rate they heal it. Supernatural beings and
characters who heal faster than normal instead halve their normal healing rate. For every hour that a character is
continuously affected by this Tilt, he accrues a -1 penalty to all rolls. When that penalty hits -5, he instead suffers
a point of lethal damage per hour, until his Health track fills. The Tilt does not upgrade damage to aggravated;
instead, a character whose last Health box has lethal damage falls into permanent coma, and remains in that
state until removed from the area.
Causing the Tilt: The Hope’s Eclipse Caligo; the whole Dark World has the Tilt, save for images of Tainted
areas.
Ending the Tilt: Leaving the blighted area is the only way to escape the Tilt’s effects.

Fog
The area is filled with dense vapor - usually fog or smoke - that obscures vision. Unless the target of the
action is within arm’s reach, all rolls based on vision take a -3 penalty.
Causing the Tilt: Except for supernatural powers (such as Mist’s Protection) the Tilt is a result of normal
weather conditions.
Ending the Tilt: Without supernatural powers, characters cannot disperse a fog.

Fortunate, Greatly Fortunate, Perfected

The subject of these Tilts (which may be a person or a piece of equipment) has been enchanted with a
dollop of good fortune. A number of rolls made by the person, or the one using the equipment, gain a quality:
• Fortunate: 9-again
• Greatly Fortunate: 8-again
• Perfected: rote
No person or object can have two of these three Tilts at the same time.
Causing the Tilt: Touch of Fortune gives the Tilts to a person; Friendly Gremlin gives them to machinery.
Ending the Tilt: The Tilts fade at the end of the scene. Any chances to roll not used by then are lost. The
Tilts also end if the full count of enhanced rolls have been made.

Hard Way
You’ve gone and done it now, haven’t you? For the rest of the scene, the Noble with whom the character
broke faith adds half her dots in Terra (rounded up) to her Damage on every attack she inflicts on him.
Causing the Tilt: While under the Easy Way Condition, the character resorted to violence against the Noble
who imposed it, or bargained with her in bad faith.
Ending the Tilt: The Tilt fades at the end of the scene.

480 Tilts
Jury-Rigged
The piece of equipment with this Condition has been temporarily repaired by magic. It is fully functional
and works without penalty for its intended purpose, but the repairs are held together by spit, tape and enchant-
ment and that stuff won’t last. When the Condition ends, the equipment returns to the state of disrepair it was
in before the magic touched it.
Causing the Condition: Jury Rigger creates this Condition.
Ending the Condition: The repairs will last indefinitely until someone uses the equipment, or damages it
again. Even one point of structural damage ends the Condition. One scene or one hour of using the equipment
also ends the Condition.

Listless
The character has been hit by a draining attack that leaves him clumsy and slow-witted. All his rolls in
combat take a penalty equal to the Tilt’s level, and his Speed and static Defense are reduced by half the level,
rounding down.
Causing the Tilt: Dark Thoughts Consume and being hit by a Shadowblade or a Voidblast can impose this
Tilt.
Ending the Tilt: The Tilt wears off at the end of the scene. The character may spend 1 point of Willpower
to ignore the penalties for 1 turn.

Lullaby
A song is running through the character’s head, making him drowsy and ready to sleep. Each turn counts as
a six-hour period for the purpose of fatigue; the character must roll to stay awake and takes cumulative penalties
as if he had been awake and active for six hours per turn under the Tilt, plus the time since he really slept.
The Tilt does not produce true sleep; instead characters who fail to stay awake replace it with Insensate
[CofD 285], sitting or lying down with closed eyes.
Causing the Tilt: Goosedown Lullaby imposes this Tilt.
Ending the Tilt: If not replaced by Insensate, the Tilt wears off at the end of the scene, bringing the char-
acter back to alertness.

Numbed
The character’s ability to feel pain has been removed. While under this Tilt he ignores all wound penalties,
and doesn’t fall unconscious when all his boxes are filled with bashing damage. In addition, powers that function
solely by causing pain automatically fail against the character, and any interrogation rolls that use torture not
only lose the bonus that it would apply, but instead take a penalty equal to his Composure. (A person who
blithely ignores physical torture is freaky enough to put even the best interrogator off balance).
However, the character is likely not to notice when he’s injured, either by accident or in battle. If he takes
bashing damage, he rolls the amount of damage done as a dice pool reflexively to notice the cause; if he takes
lethal damage, he rolls double the amount of damage to notice its cause. Aggravated damage is serious enough
that the character can’t fail to notice it.
Causing the Tilt: The Charm Only a Flesh Wound; a Consul to Death’s Euthanasia Privilege.
Ending the Tilt: When supernaturally imposed, the Tilt wears off at the end of the scene.

Phantom Damage
The character is suffering frightful pain from an illusionary wound. Each level in the Tilt fills one box in
the character’s Health track with an illusion of damage (we suggest marking it as a dot.) The character suffers

Tilts 481
wound penalties from this “damage” if it goes into the last three boxes, and must check their Stamina to remain
conscious if it fills the last box.
However, when the Tilt ends all phantom damage “heals” instantly. Further, phantom damage does not
upgrade any damage type, including itself, and if the character takes real damage when his track is full, that
damage replaces phantom damage first.
Causing the Tilt: The Charms Know My Pain, Strike False and Goosedown Lullaby; dramatic failure with
Only a Flesh Wound.
Ending the Tilt: The Tilt wears off at the end of the scene. Phantom damage can also be healed magically,
or mitigated as it’s inflicted by targets who have that ability.

Poor Light
Dim illumination, strobes, or flickering lights make it difficult to track movement and see clearly. Affected
characters suffer a –2 penalty to vision-based Perception rolls, including ranged combat; this stacks with range
penalties.
Causing the Tilt: The Hope’s Eclipse Caligo; inadequate light sources.
Ending the Tilt: When natural, bringing better lights into the area. When supernaturally caused, the effect
must expire.

Reflected
The area under this Tilt confuses the sense of direction. People go left when they mean to go right; which
way is “up” is skewed, inverted, or impossible to tell. Being here feels like standing within a painting by Escher.
All characters in the affected area take a -2 penalty to Physical actions and to their Defense, due to the unex-
pected directions of their movements.
Causing the Condition: The Reverse Ideology Charm.
Ending the Condition: Expiration of the Charm that created the Tilt.

Salted Wound
The character has been subjected to a curse that blocks healing magic. Any supernatural power that nor-
mally heals damage cannot do more for him than downgrade lethal or aggravated damage to bashing damage;
any bashing damage he has must be healed naturally, by the passage of time and medical attention. For the pur-
poses of this Tilt, any innate self-healing ability of a supernatural being (e.g. vampires burning Vitae, werewolf
regeneration) counts as natural healing and is not blocked.
Causing the Tilt: Salted Wounds imposes the Tilt on its target.
Ending the Tilt: The Charm’s effect is linked to one of the character’s Health boxes. When that Health box
is completely clear of damage, the Tilt expires.

Shadow-Worked
Each level of this Condition gives one of the following benefits to an object.
• Remove the penalty for using the object as an improvised weapon (if it isn’t designed as a weapon.)
• Add 1 to the object’s Damage (maximum of the character’s Shadows.)
• Decrease the object’s Initiative penalty and the minimum Strength to wield it by 1, to a minimum of -0.
• Add 1 point of Armor Piercing to the object (maximum of 3.)
• Give attacks with the object the 9-again quality.

482 Tilts
• Give the object the Concealed or Stun quality [CofD 269]
• Anyone damaged by the object gains the Listless Tilt, at a level equal to half the character’s Shadows
(rounding up.)
Causing the Condition: Shadowblade creates this Condition.
Ending the Condition: The object is destroyed, or touches a piece of jade. A weapon made of Taint and
shadow dissolves when the Condition ends.

Silenced
The character or object cannot speak or make any other sound; she can walk over ground littered with
twigs and leaves or open a squeaky door without being heard. Things the character touches remain silent only
while she is touching them, so she can still make noise indirectly. For example, if she bumps into a table with
a vase on it, her impact makes no noise but the table’s scrape against the floor might, and if the vase falls over
it will make noise.
Causing the Tilt: Voice-Eating Hunger and the Quiet upgrade to Unseen Traveller impose this Tilt.
Ending the Tilt: The power that created the Tilt expires.

Strip-Mined
Someone touched by the Darkness is stealing the virtue out of the area for his own profit. Each time the
character who imposed this Condition causes the area to gain Taint - either by his own hands, or getting others
to taint it for him - he acquires a valuable object that can be easily sold; the object is effectively cash [CofD 277]
with an Availability rating equal to the area’s Size. The Storyteller should connect the object in some way to the
damage the character did: metal fittings ripped from an old house, toxic runoff from a secret industrial process,
drug precursors in a tortured animal’s organs, are all appropriate.
Causing the Condition: The Caligo Blood Diamonds.
Ending the Condition: The character doesn’t collect any valuables from the area for a full month.

Studied Fighting
The Princess understands her current opponent’s fighting style well enough to predict, and eventually in-
fluence, what he will do in the field. For each turn in which she attacks the character she has studied, or in which
he attacks her, her attack gains a cumulative +1 bonus die - that is, +1 on the first turn, +2 on the second, +3 on
the third, and so on. The bonus rises by at most +1 in one turn, and is unchanged if neither attacks the other.
The Princess also adds the bonus to her Defense (or her Dodge pool after doubling) against attacks from the
studied character.
Causing the Tilt: Refutation in Arms creates this Tilt.
Ending the Tilt: The Tilt ends when the Charm activation expires, at the scene’s end or when the Princess
activates it on another target.

Swarm
Animals of Size 1 are generally best represented by swarms, flocks and other groupings of the animals.
Swarms are measured by their radius in yards. A swarm inflicts one point of bashing damage to anyone within
its radius. A swarm can inflict more damage by condensing. Every time the swarm condenses to cover half of its
full area, it inflicts one additional point of damage per turn. Therefore, a swarm of eight yards in radius inflicts
two bashing damage per turn if it constricts down to a four-yard radius, three bashing if it halves that again to
a two-yard radius, and four bashing damage per turn it if condensed itself down to a one-yard radius. Though
condensing doesn’t usually happen all that often in nature (save in the case of creatures such as killer bees), it
is an easy enough thing for a being with supernatural powers to command them to do so.

Tilts 483
 Armor is effective against a swarm only if it covers one’s full body, but even then it provides only half its
rating. In addition, targets are distracted by the swarm, suffering – 2 dice on all rolls while they are within the
radius, even if they’re not specifically attacked.
Causing the Tilt: Soothe the Savage Breast can cause this Tilt with an upgrade, and Spray of Embers causes
a variation of it. The Tilt can occur naturally if someone disturbs a nest of bees.
Ending the Tilt: The swarm cannot be attacked with fists, clubs, swords or guns. Only area-affect attacks
such as a torch affect it. Each point of damage inflicted by a flame or other applicable attack halves the swarm’s
size. Once the swarm is reduced below a one-yard radius, either all insects are dead or the few remaining dis-
perse.

Tangled
The character has been caught in a net or tangle of strands that restricts his movements. While he can still
move, his Speed and Defense are both halved, and he takes -2 on all Physical actions.
Causing the Tilt: Having limbs wrapped up (but not tied) with ropes will inflict this Tilt. The thicket created
by Hedge Magic also inflicts it.
Ending the Tilt: Unwrapping or cutting the strands will remove the Tilt, though that takes an instant action.

Tax-Farmed
A Princess (usually from the court of Tears) is levying a tax of Wisps on the area with this Condition. After
spending a scene or hour in the area, the Noble who made the Condition may extract Wisps from it as an instant
action. The dice pool for this action is Inner Light + Politics; if the area is Tainted, subtract its Severity from the
pool, and if it’s Blessed add its Beauty to the pool. The Princess may do this at most once a session, or once a
day, whichever is longer. The Princess can also force the area to yield a bounty of Wisps, getting an automatic
exceptional success on the extraction roll; doing so ends the Condition.
Dramatic Failure: The Princess’ extraction digs too deeply. She gains no Wisps and triggers her Sensi-
tivity, adding +2 to the pool.
Failure: The Princess gets no Wisps out of the area.
Success: The Princess extracts a number of Wisps from the area equal to its rating as a Sanctuary, or
enough to fill her pool, whichever is less.
Exceptional Success: The Princess extracts Wisps equal to the area’s rating plus her Lacrima.
Taking the beauty and hope of an area away gives the Darkness a chance to claim it. The Storyteller rolls a
dice pool equal to the Wisps extracted; the extraction generates Taint of Severity equal to the number of success-
es. If this occurs the Princess reaches a breaking point with a penalty equal to the Severity of Taint she created.
Causing the Condition: Publican imposes this Condition on an area.
Ending the Condition: The Princess who created the Condition forces an exceptional success when ex-
tracting Wisps.

Trusting
The character feels a bond of fellowship with everybody; he accepts friendly overtures without suspicion.
Anyone beginning a social maneuver on the character can accept a Condition to open two Doors without rolling,
as if they had the Sympathetic Merit [CofD 55]; a character who actually has that Merit also raises their impres-
sion by one step when using it.
Causing the Tilt: The Charm Sweet Fragrance.
Ending the Tilt: The perfume from the Charm, and its influence, fade when the current scene ends.

484 Tilts
 Appendix C: Additional Rules
The rules in this section are not specific to Princess: the Hopeful. They apply to mundane characters in
situations the Chronicles of Darkness book doesn’t cover. Certain powers of the Hopeful use, and modify, these
rules, so we have collected them here for ease of reference.

Athletic Feats
Climbing: Strength + Athletics. The character climbs 10 feet (3 meters) on success, or 20 feet on an ex-
ceptional success; on a dramatic failure he falls. Characters can climb carefully as an extended action, taking 1
minute/roll; the threshold is 1 success for each 10 feet of distance to climb.
Jumping: Strength + Athletics. The character jumps one foot upward or one yard horizontally for each
success rolled. A running start gives an equipment bonus of +1 for each yard available. Characters can roll Wits
+ Athletics reflexively to measure the distance needed for a successful broad jump.
Lifting/Pushing: Characters can carry 25 pounds (~10 kg) per Strength dot without being encumbered;
each increment of 25 pounds over that limit decreases Speed by 1 and imposes a penalty of -1 to Physical actions.
A character can push twice the weight he can carry, or 10 times that when friction is minimal. To shift heavier
weights, a character rolls Strength + Stamina; successes are added to his effective Strength.
Swimming: Dexterity + Athletics, for difficult maneuvers. Characters move at their Speed in feet, not yards,
each turn when swimming (one-third their normal Speed) if they know how - anyone with Athletics • does.
Going underwater requires holding one’s breath, a reflexive Stamina + Composure roll; each success gives the
character 1 turn during combat or 30 seconds elsewhere. After that the character takes the Drowning Tilt.

Deprivation
A character can survive a number of days equal to his Stamina without water. At that point, and each day
thereafter, he takes one point of bashing damage. A character can survive a number of days equal to his Stamina
+ Resolve without food. At that point, and each day thereafter, he takes one point of bashing damage. These
effects stack. Damage from deprivation does not heal until the character has continuous access to the food or
water he lacked.

Explosives
Explosives inflict damage over an area. They are not normally used to attack a single person, but to destroy
groups of people or large objects. Thus they have special traits.
Blast Area: The diameter of the main explosion. Explosives inflict damage in three bands: ground zero, the
primary blast and the secondary blast. Ground zero is the explosive itself and anyone on top of it. The primary
blast area is a circle with the listed diameter in yards. The secondary blast area is a circle with twice the listed
diameter.
Damage: The basic amount of damage done. Everything caught in the explosion takes this amount of auto-
matic damage, of the type appropriate for the band they’re in: aggravated at ground zero, lethal in the primary
blast, bashing in the secondary blast.
Force: Explosions inflict additional damage based on their Force. Roll Force as a dice pool; add the successes
to the damage done to those caught in the blast. In addition, if any successes appear, add the Damage rating
again to the damage done. (Yes, if the Force roll succeeds, the explosion’s damage is at least doubled.)
All explosions inflict the Deafened Tilt [CofD 281] in both ears on characters caught in the blast. An incen-
diary explosion inflicts the Burning Tilt on characters or objects that take damage.
Mundane ballistic armor protects the wearer from explosions; it applies half its ballistic Armor rating,
rounding down, to the damage, but none of its general rating. Supernatural armor applies in full. If a character

485
is in cover [CofD 92] the cover’s Durability reduces the explosive damage as it does to damage from firearms. A
character who is at least partially concealed or has dropped prone reduces the explosive damage by 1. Defense
is useless against an explosion, and characters can’t run for cover or drop prone to avoid one unless they can
apply Defense against firearms.

Fatigue
Characters can remain awake for up to 24 hours without too much trouble, but fatigue sets in past that
point. At 24 hours, and each 6 hours after that, a character trying to stay awake must roll Stamina + Resolve. If
he fails that roll he goes to sleep. If he succeeds, he stays awake, but he takes a cumulative -1 penalty to all his
actions, including the roll to stay awake. Physically demanding actions can increase a fatigue penalty by -1 to -3.
The longest anyone can go without sleep is a number of days equal to the lower of Stamina or Resolve.

Size Changes
Characters of unusual size, or who can drastically alter their size, modify several other traits from the hu-
man baseline. Modified Attributes are never reduced below 1, but they may exceed the Attribute cap. All changes
here apply on top of the recalculated values from derived traits - Health is always current Size + Stamina, and
changes when Size changes.

Size Strength Other Modifiers

1 -3 +3 Dexterity, -3 Speed, +4 when hiding or avoiding notice, +2 when jumping or climbing
2 -2 +2 Dexterity, -2 Speed, +3 when hiding or avoiding notice, +2 when jumping or climbing
3 -1 +1 Dexterity, -1 Speed, +2 when hiding or avoiding notice, +2 when jumping or climbing
4 +0 +2 when hiding or avoiding notice
5 +0 none
6 +0 none
7 +1 Iron Skin ••
8-9 +2 Iron Skin ••
10-12 +3 Iron Skin ••, Armor +1/+1
13-16 +4 Iron Skin ••••, Armor +2/+2
17-21 +5 Iron Skin ••••, Armor +3/+3

In addition, a significantly smaller character can more easily evade larger foes, and place attacks on them.
In a combat between characters of different Size, subtract the smaller Size from the larger, then divide the result
by 3, rounding down (0-2 = 0, 3-5 = 1, etc.) The smaller character raises his Defense against the larger, and
the larger character reduces his Defense against the smaller, by that amount. (E.g. a Size 5 character gains +1
Defense against a Size 8 character, while the Size 8 character takes -1 to Defense.)

486 Fatigue
 Alphabetical List of Charms
A Dire Warning, 217 Ice Sculptures, 253
Disenchant, 240 Illuminatus, 135
Accept Fealty, 181 Don’t Stop Believing, 191 Imaginary Friend, 121
Adaptation, 228 Drawn by the Moon, 130 Introductions, 212
All the World’s a Stage, 150 Dreaming Vision, 165 Intuitive Flash, 127
All Together Now, 134 Dryad’s Favor, 255 Ivory Gate, 143
Always Prepared, 242 I’m the Best!, 126
Animal Fair, 183
Avenger’s Might, 131 E
Earthquake, 255
J
B Earth Shall Bloom, The, 241 Journey in Reverie, 216
Empty Hands, 151 Joy Buzzer, 245
Balm, 233
Empty Heart, 225 Jumping Jack Flash, 196
Barricade, 252
Enduring Beauty, 261 Jury Rigger, 235
Barrier Jacket, 218
Bath of Souls, 234
Beast Speaker, 142 F K
Beauty is Talented, 222 Face of Lover’s Alarm, 109 Keen Observation, 199
Befriending, 159 Fair Welcome, 134 Kensai, 152
Beginner’s Luck, 123 Feel the Burn, 227 Know My Pain, 119
Bejewelled Visage, 125 Ferryman’s Shroud, 145
Best Defense, 225 Fighting Evil by Moonlight, 187 L
Better Living Through Education, 147 Fight Song, 189 Laying Down The Line, 135
Better Together, 127 The Finest Hour, the Last Hour, 164 Levinbolt, 153
Blessings Be Upon This House, 132 Fire on the Mountain, 184 Liberal Artist, 199
Books in Running Brooks, 218 Fire’s Warm Kiss, 245 Life of the Party, 136
Breath of Boreas, 259 Fists of Jade, 130 Lightning Charge, 157
Bubble Shield, 242 Flame in the Heart, 235 Light Over All, 172
Bubble Wrap, 244 Flash of Brilliance, 114 Light the Way, 106
Flash Step, 161 Light’s Aegis, 129
C Forced Vows are No Vows, 179 Light’s Riposte, 174
Call Back Yesterday, 232 Forest Sanctuary, 130 Little Deuce Coupe, 257
Call Down the Thunder, 260 Forgotten Lore, 166 Living Image, 166
Capitation, 177 For the First Time, 187 Living Index, 213
Carry On, My Wayward Son, 186 For Want of a Nail, 207 Load Cartridge, 160
Caryatid’s Kiss, 229 Freed By Burning Hate, 238 Long May She Reign, 241
Celestial Dance, 219 Friendly Gremlin, 231 Look Into the Future, 192
Certain Shot, 160 Love Conquers All, 141
Charge, 169 G Love’s Beacon, 207
Chariot of Fire, 193 Garden of Bright Images, 122
Charm Offensive, 142 Genius Loci, 214 M
Cherish, 139 Giggle at the Ghostie, 188 Magical Eyes, 174
Choke It Down, 238 Goccia Astrale, 115 Manic Pixie Dust, 147
Closed Space, 121 Gold Abhors Ebon, 171 Mantle of Authority, 109
Comfortably Numb, 195 Goosedown Lullaby, 116 Masquerade, 114
Composed Come What May, 224 Great Expectations, 147 Master Mason, 262
Consecrate, 164 Grey Masque, 171 Mastermind, 129
Consumed With Hate, 197
Memento Mori, 236
Corrosive Grasp, 247
Count No Cost, 126
H Mercury’s Blessing, 137
Mesmerize, 235
Courteous Parry, 158 Hallowed Hearth, 117
Minding Madoka, 138
Crown Jewels, 130 Hang By a Thread, 223
Ministering Angel, 232
Crucible, 252 Hear Me, O Muse, 185
Mirror Mirror, 211
Hedge Magic, 251
Mirror Walk, 146
D A Host of Furious Fancies, 119
Miss Poppins’ Bottomless Bag, 247
Hymn to Orpheus, 144
Danmaku Dance, 158 Mist’s Protection, 254
Darkling’s Treasure, 252 Monument to Me, 179
Data Wizard, 198 I Moving Finger, 212
Diamonds are Forever, 256 I am Become Light, 182 My Home is My Castle, 256

487
N Royal Stature, 228 Unweaving, 180
Up in Smoke, 144
Naiad’s Paths, 226
The Naked City, 136
S
Natural Philosopher, 200 Safety in Stillness, 159 V
Nature’s Harvest, 246 Salamander, 255 Valiant Mind, 223
Nick of Time, The, 146 Salted Wounds, 162 Virtue’s Ban, 176
No Choice, No Hope, 196 Scent Falsehood, 201
No Man is an Island, 209 Scent of Irises, 208 W
Notary Private, 139 Sea-Foam’s Touch, 124
Second Glance Wrongness, 203 Wallflower, 112
Nova Strike, 163
Seed of Light, 173 Warmed by Hate Alone, 233
Now I’m a Believer, 191
Seraphic Fury, 159 Wearing a Heavy Crown, 197
Seven at a Blow, 162 Weight of Memory, 205
O Shadowmask, 230 Wellspring, 244
Ofuda, 175 Sheltered by Her Hand, 133 We Rely on You, 124
The Old Allegiance, 148 She’s So Fine, 195 Whispers from Afar, 143
One Perfect Woman, 230 Skinchange, 228 Willow’s Wisdom, 157
One Woman Warband, 160 Small Providence, 123 Wind-Borne Grace, 130
Only a Flesh Wound, 119 Somebody Else’s Problem, 239 Wings of Air, 227
On With the Motley, 193 Some Enchanted Evening, 190 Woodland’s Bounty, 221
Open Heart, 137 Soothe the Savage Breast, 194 Words on Water Writ, 118
Outrace the Sun, 226 Speaking Eyes, 113 Wreathed in Flame, 224
Speed Racer, 220
P Spirit’s Friend, 177 Y
Spite Strike, 159 You Might Hurt Yourself, 158
Painting Roses, 247
Spray of Embers, 251 You Must Remember This, 188
Palladion, 155
Stain Removal, 238 You’re Only in Trouble if you Get
Passion’s Light, 200
Standing on a Pedestal, 149 Caught, 141
Peaceable Kingdom, 133
Stare Master, 186 You’re So Vain, 128
Peace on Earth, 189
Steady Resolve, 125
Penetrating Eye, 221
Stitch, 237 Z
Perfect Sight, 213
Stoke the Furnace, 130
Persistently Peachy Pretty Perfect, 225 Zephyr’s Track, 108
Stop, Children, What’s That Sound, 124
Phantom, 110 Zone of Truth, 217
Strength of Ten, 163
Pierian Spring, 206
Strength of the Tides, 254
Privy Counselor, 175
Strike False, 120
Publican, 181
Such a Lonely Word, 192
Purgation, 179
Sure Hands, 234
Purify, 236
Sweet Fragrance, 108

Q T
Queen’s Sorrow, 190 Take the Blow, 157
Questing Mind, 204 Tangling Vine, 161
Quicker Than the Eye, 201 Tendril of Nothing, 131
Quid pro Quo, 210 Their Blood Cries Out, 237
Through the Looking Glass, 262
R Thurifer, 180
Tisiphone’s Call, 210
Rally Round the Flag, 194
Tool Whispering, 249
Razzle Dazzle, 185
Touch of Fortune, 128
Read the Wind, 222
Touch of Frost, 250
Reclaim, 240
Touch of Grief, 126
Red String of Fate, 147
Travel in Style, 260
Reflected Light, 169
True Names, 202
Reflected Portents, 215
Twenty Faces, 106
Refutation in Arms, 161
Regenerate, 240
Resting Place, 178 U
Resuscitate, 241 Ultimate Fidelity, 148
Retorsion, 163 Under Ursa’s Star, 147
Reverse Ideology, 121 Unearth the Foundations, 214
Right Word, The, 140 Unlimited Object Works, 112
Road Crew, 117 Unseen Traveller, 107

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