Advancement

From Obscura

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Every 3 weeks, all characters gain a skill.

Term 1 Term 2 Term 3
Week 1 Week 3 Week 6 Week 1 Week 4 Week 7 Week 1 Week 3
7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Skills are not the only way to advance your character.

Elemental Pacts

It will be possible to make personal pacts with elementals, to make a sacrifice to get a benefit. As you can imagine, this will have drawbacks to your character.

Elemental Touches

Surgical grafts, making pacts with elementals, snorting magical fields larger than your own head, and other Good Life Choices can cause you to become Elementally Touched.

Elemental Touch is an extremely new phenomenon that’s only been sighted recently, and is currently extremely rare. Humans have been seen that are touched by the elements, changing their appearance and behaviour, and occasionally giving them unusual abilities.

It’s known that becoming elementally touched is possible through interacting with large magical effects, and some experimentation has been done with deliberate surgical grafts of elementally active material. Legend has it effects similar to this were also sometimes exhibited by those who had made pacts with elementals.

  • All PCs start untouched.
  • Basic grafts are an accessible way to get a chosen basic elemental touch.
  • Elemental touches with a combat benefit will typically take a mortal wound slot.
  • Random elemental touches may happen as a result of contact with large magic and alchemy effects, but only with the player’s OC agreement.
  • Basic elemental touches grant predictable benefits for predictable drawbacks.
  • Advanced grafts and pacts with elementals are ways to get more powerful elemental touches, which will have a dramatic effect on the character.

Elemental touches have strong roleplaying effects and will affect how NPCs interact with the person, particularly elementals. They may also have mechanical advantages and disadvantages. Becoming elementally touched can never happen without the player’s OC consent. Once touched by an element it can’t easily be removed (though it is possible), but a change within the same element is fine (and a way to alleviate OC issues with a physrep). It is possible to become elementally touched from two non-opposing elements. Becoming elementally touched by opposing elements is probably a terrible idea.

There is scope for red, green, blue and grey/white face markings, fey features, iconic animal features (but not full beastkin), demonic features and undead features. More custom features may be available through advanced methods (such as advanced grafting) with discussion with the refs.

Example Elemental Touches

This is not an exhaustive list - the full list is intended to be found in play as more elemental types are seen.

Name Element Physrep Mechanical Effect Roleplaying Effect
Brush with element Any Sparse face markings of your elemental colour. None.

Special: May be gained once per element.

RP effects of your choice in line with your element.
Third Eye Any An extra eye in the colour of your element. You can control an extra power when leading rituals of your element. You cannot lead or participate in rituals of your opposing element. You want to find things out, particularly anything to do with your element.
Horns Creation Horns Once per encounter you can call STUN with a melee weapon. -1 mortal wound capacity. Aggressive towards strangers.
Deathly Resilience Destruction Extensive grey skin colouring. Allows you to CURE 1 yourself within 10s of incapacitation once per encounter. -1 mortal wound capacity. You have great belief in your ability to survive any situation.
Flame Lash Chaos Extensive red skin or veins on the hand and/or arm. Once per encounter you may call ranged MAGIC TRIPLE. -1 mortal wound capacity. You are quick to anger.

=Personal Enchantments

Those who wish to advance on the magical side but who don't want to consort with elementals can put their efforts towards developing advanced enchantments to cast on themselves.

It's also possible to combine an elemental's favour with thaumaturgy, to allow a thaumaturge to perform feats of magic not previously possible.

Political Power

Instead of doing mad science or consorting with elementals, characters can of course go for old fashioned political power. Building links with the political powers in Clare might grant a character power and influence. However, expect them to ask for favours in return.