Air – Challenges of the Mind

For those who prize curiosity, knowledge, and rational process. Be you scholar, historian, linguist, or astrologer, embrace the deliberate mind.

Perception

As a cultivator, your senses will expand to superhuman keenness. This section will outline the guidelines for how far and how sharply you can sense stimuli.

These rules are meant to help elaborate when a Challenge of Air would be possible and how strenuous such a Challenge would be for someone of your strength.

Sensitivity

Let’s cover your ability to discern detail. You have control over this sensitivity and may choose any level within this range.

For example, you may dial back to avoid itchiness while wearing wool clothing or to avoid being overpowered by noxious odors.

Changing level of sensitivity does not require an Action and happens automatically as required for defense.

• At Insight 0, you have normal human sense of touch and eyesight
• At Insight 4+, you have refined sensitivity
  • Discern exact fabrics by touch; pick apart the fruit in aromatic wines; and identify shades of colors with high precision
• At Insight 8+, you can pick out obscure patterns and minute variations invisible to a normal person
  • Distinguish sub-vocal accent variations based on individual settlement; determine the purity of a metal by tapping it; catch the scent of flowers or flowing water from Insight kilometers away
• At Insight 10+, you can focus your attention to open your senses to microscopic levels of sensitivity
  • Discern individual grains of sand by touch; read text written into the ink bubbles of other text; identify past wounds on fully healed skin

Control

Your level of control over precise movement grows as well. Given the overlap between Air and Fire for control, use the higher of your Insight or Drive here. When at rest and not under threat:

• Attribute 0: The normal motor control of a human layman
• Attribute 4+: Your motor control is as good as a master surgeon, a sewing machine,
• Attribute 8+: Your motor control meets industrial precision as defined today, with tolerances too small for most folk to even see
• Attribute 10+: Your motor control allows you to operate at a microscopic level

When under threat, exhausted, or pressured, reduce by one step.

Intense stimuli

Particularly intense stimuli can interfere with perception. When you choose to increase your sensitivity, you increase that sensitivity to all stimuli during the window of time. This means that normally inoffensive stimuli might become overwhelming

Examples:

• Offal and rot can become overpowering
• Rough textures can become unbearable

In general, this is mostly a narrative effect. Many cultivators become extremely picky about their clothes, perfumes, and soaps!

However, the storyteller should keep this in mind when assessing whether Challenges are possible and if any Penalties should be assessed.

• For example, the stench of a corpse may be so overpowering that a cultivator cannot make use of their most enhanced senses
• On the other hand, a cultivator used to wording with cadavers may have the tolerance necessary to power through the sensation

In cases where the question is ambiguous, the storyteller may require that you spend an Air Charge to overcome the sensation and Challenge.

Sense Killing Intent

The intent to commit murder marks one’s spirit, even before the deed is committed.

Your spiritual attunement extends beyond your mundane senses. In the moment before an ambush by assassins, malevolent spirits, or other unseen adversaries, you automatically Challenge Air against the higher of the foe’s Stealth.

You do not need any other awareness of danger for this ability. It is always active, even if you are sleeping or otherwise indisposed.

Outcome:

• Disaster, Failure: You remain unaware until disaster strikes
• Success: You sense impending danger and muster your defenses
• Flourish: As Success, but the storyteller describes nature of the threat: the weapon, the general location, and a general identity

Example Flourishes:

• “A dagger in a crowded alley by a masked man”
• “Poison in the kitchen from an imposter among the servants”
• “A curse at midnight by an angry Shade”

If hostile efforts would target more than one target, then all targets Challenge. If one passes, they automatically alert their fellows. This has the effect of making lethal ambush against groups of Cultivators extremely difficult.

Emphasis on lethal

The purpose of this ability is to prevent play from devolving into a long-range of assassin. The most efficient way to take down a target might be a sniper rifle at a thousand yards, but it certainly makes for dull play.

This rule should not invalidate the ability to use Stealth. Rather, the rule is meant to encourage both players and storyteller to avoid the “kill box” gameplay loop.

Mysteries

The Blue Fox struck again?! She’s mocking us now! Tch, joke will be on her…she left a hair on this broken window!

Mysteries are wide-spanning puzzles that pit your Cultivated intellect against the best Seln has to offer. When tackling a mystery, your individual Challenges gradually build the Mystery pool. When you think you have enough clues, you try to solve it.

You have three categories for your Mystery pool

• Evidence (Air or Earth)
• Deductions (Air or Fire)
• Testimony (Air or Water)

Each category can fit C+1 Ki; these are tracked separately and do not reduce your normal Ki totals.

You may accomplish investigation with either element listed above. For example, you can investigate for Testimony using Air or Water as you see fit.

For each Air Challenge related to the Mystery, after you complete your Result, increase the Mystery pool by that Result:

• Disaster: add nothing
• Failure: add d6
• Success: add d8
• Flourish: add d12

When you think you have enough to break the Mystery, you grab all the dice and roll!

• Add your Insight to the dice to create a Result
• You may not add Boosts or spend Bonus dice on this challenge; neither do Breaks or Penalties apply

Solving the mystery:

• Disaster: You irrevocably taint your investigation. Remove all dice from the category with the strongest value (by number of pips)
• Failure: You encounter a set-back. Remove the single strongest dice from the Mystery pool
• Success: You crack the Mystery, learning its scope, actors, and goal
• Flourish: In addition to Success, you accurately predict the Mystery’s next actions

When you destroy dice already in the Mystery pool, you must complete fresh Challenges to replace those lost dice. Note, however, that there is no guarantee that such evidence exists.

If you run out of viable Challenges and do not have enough Mystery pool to solve, then you are out of luck! Some mysteries remain forever.

False leads and bad evidence

Deceptive foes will leave false leads and misleading evidence to confound investigators.

The storyteller tracks these misleading clues.

When you Challenge to add such false evidence, failures mean that you have fallen for the trick.

• Disaster: Remove the single strongest dice from the Mystery pool
• Failure: Remove the strongest dice in the current category from the Mystery pool
• Success: Instead of adding a d8, add a d6
• Flourish: You see through the deception; instead of a penalty, add a d12 to the Mystery pool in a location of your choosing

Ki reading

Each cultivator has a unique Ki imprint. Like footprints in the sand, this Ki can be read after the fact.

To read Ki, you must have a way to perceive spiritual energy. There are three usual sources:

• Arts of Air to enhance your perceptions
• Equipment such as Imbued crystal glasses
• Blessings by spirits

Ki signatures

You leave a Ki signature in two ways:

• Prolonged, daily exposure
  • Examples: Your clothes, equipment, personal effects, and permanent domicile would each have a signature
• Spending Charge

More powerful Cultivators leave signatures that linger for longer. After this time, the Ki signature fades into the ambient noise of elemental variability.

• C1: 1 hour
• C2: 1 day
• C3: 3 days
• C4: 1 week

Note that you do not generate a Ki Signature while at rest in a scene. In other words, you cannot walk up to a random person and Challenge them to identify their Ki.

Ki and identity

Your Ki is unique, but Ki alone does not prove identity. Think of a Ki imprint like fingerprints; the evidence must still be matched to an individual to prove a case.

Thus, an investigator may recognize a notorious killer’s Ki but not their face. The wise saboteur wears a mask and invests in Ki suppression Arts!

Decoding normal Ki

Most folk do not cloak their Ki. To identify their Ki, Challenge Air against their Defense. Note that you may Challenge against the Ki signature even after the target has left the Scene. They still use their Air Defense.

• Disaster: You gain no insight, and the target senses interference. They may now roll to decode your Ki!
• Failure: You gain no insight
• Success: You identify a unique pattern for future use
• Flourish: You recognize similarities in Ki. Choose two:
  • You identify the person’s Circle
  • You identify the person’s Clan
  • You identify the person’s Lineage (usually obvious, but who knows when it might come up?)
  • You identify the person’s Path (if any)
  • You identify the person’s Grace (if any)
  • Gain insight into the mindset and intent of the target at the time of the signature

Regardless of Result, the Ki Signature is consumed by this Challenge.

Mysterious Ki

Cunning Cultivators obscure their Ki. In this case, use the Mystery pool.

The strength of the Mystery depends on the strength of the Cultivator, and various Arts can act as false leads or bad evidence.

Languages

By default, you know Aloran or Izuno for a spoken language and the symbol script for writing.

If you have formal education or Teacher lessons, you may know additional languages at character creation. These are controlled by your Hearth; if you have no Hearth, you will have to learn languages in play.

Do what’s fun

As a designer, I really like the adventure of having to track down musty old scrolls to slowly piece together a long-dead tongue. However, your group may find it tedious. That’s fine!

If your group doesn’t want to focus on languages, then ignore this subsystem. Your character may learn a language during downtime if you have enough fragments.

What counts as enough? When the storyteller says so!

During play, you may learn additional languages by either finding a suitable teacher or by decoding samples of the existing language.

If you can convince a teacher who already knows the language to instruct you, then you automatically learn the written and verbal form of the language in one season of downtime.

Without a teacher, you must undertake laborious study of samples to reverse engineer the language.

Each time you find a sample of an unfamiliar language, you may Challenge with Air to decipher a fragment.

This requires time:

• 1d6 hours studying written samples
• 1d10 minutes listening to spoken examples

Challenging language

Outcomes:

• Disaster: The sample is ruined
• Failure: You gain no understanding. You may return to this sample next season to try again.
• Success: You understands a fragment of the language
• Flourish: You understands two fragments

Each fragment reveals one element of the language: Air, Water, Earth, or Fire. Once complete, you understand the grammar and vocabulary of the language. Think of this as being a functional speaker at a sixth-grade level.

Continued study reveals Light and Dark; these subtle elements allow for full fluency in all concepts. Full fluency is usually required to use a language to guide your own Cultivation.

Language Difficulty

Here we will outline how to calculate the Difficulty target for a language.

The base Difficulty to learn a language is 10.

Special effects

Mystics say that to learn a language, one must see a new world

Spice up your languages with strange and powerful effects!

When you try to learn a new language:

• You attract the attention of a Shade – you’re haunted!
• You experience visions of the past and the original writer
• The act of decoding a foul language is so harrowing that you suffer a curse!
• The language actively erases itself from your memory, requiring you to learn the language and use it in a narrow window of time
• The language resents your interference and mutates to spite you
• The language can only be spoken or read when the wandering stars align
• The language can only be spoken or read in remote locales, a specific shrine, or even the depths of the Realm where it was written!

Example languages

Pixie

That’s clearly fingerpainting

• 8 + 5 (Unfamiliar character set) – 5 (Many available samples) – 5 (Very simple diction) = 3

Izuno

Did they have to make the text so small, or was it just to annoy me?

• 8 + 5 (Izuno calligraphy) = 13

Ancient Izuno

Did someone sneeze on a bottle of ink?

• 8 + 10 (Ancient Izuno calligraphy) + 5 (Ancient samples) = 23

Centauri thunder-marks

The words of the Centauri shaman language shudder with the power of storms, overwhelming the senses of the uninitiated

• 8 + 10 (Enchanted text) + 5 (Unfamiliar character set) = 23
• Special: Samples are reactive. On a Disaster, suffer a Condition as the samples erupt.

Pixie secret code

Even if you figured it out, who would believe you?

• 8 + 10 (Enchanted text) + 5 (Unfamiliar character set) + 5 (Misleading text) + 5 (Hidden within another form) + 5 (Tiny sample) = 38
• Special: The language utterly reinvents itself on the first dawn of each new year, rendering all prior research null and void.

Astronomy

Navigation

You may navigate by the sky and heavens with Air.

• Disaster: You are led into misfortune
• Failure: Where the heck are you?!
• Success: You learn your approximate location in the Kingdom
  • For example, “Fifty kilometers west of Seln Alora”
  • Think of this as your position on the overworld map
• Flourish: You learn your exact position – Cultivated GPS!

Difficulty

The further one travels from the center of the Kingdom, the more unstable the wandering stars seem. Base Difficulty varies:

• Proximate to Seln Alora: 5
• Inner Wards: 10
• Outer wards: 20
• Far wilds: 30

Other dangerous factors:

• Siren territory: +5
• Approaching elemental storm: +5
• During Equilibrium: +10

The wandering stars can help or hinder your efforts. The storyteller rolls 1d6 in secret

• 1: The wandering stars betray your location to your adversaries!
• 2: The wandering stars mislead you. Roll Cd6 and subtract that value from your Result!
• 3: Nothing
• 4: Nothing
• 5: The wandering stars boost your Result; add
• 6: The wandering stars cloak your presence. You leave no Ki signature for the next day. Attempts to locate or track you take a Penalty 10 for the next day.

Navigate Storms

Well, this is a problem.

In the unfortunate circumstance where you are caught in the open by an elemental storm, you may attempt to use Astronomy to analyze the elemental currents in the sky and identify a safe path.

Difficulty: 10 * Storm rank

• Disaster: The storm imposes an additional 1d12 worth of Penalty!
• Failure: No additional effects. You’re already in a storm!
• Success: Negate Cd6 Penalty that originated from the storm
• Flourish: Negate all Penalties from the storm

Refine

Using the facility “Crystal Refinery” at your Hearth, you may refine large numbers of weaker Crystal Cores into raw elements. Using this technique, you may Shift your Crystal Cores into other forms and refine excess low Circle cores into more potent forms.

Refining to pure element

When you want to convert a Crystal Core into a pure form (such as “EarthFire” -> “Fire”):

• Gather 6 Circle 2 Cores that contain the target element
  • For example, if you want to make a Crystal Core of Fire, you could use the following: 2x EarthFire, 1x AirFire, 3x WaterFire
• Or gather 3 Circle 3 Cores that contain the target element:
  • For example, yo ucould make the Crystal Core of Fire from: LightFire, 2x DarkFire
• Spend a Downtime at your Hearth’s Crystal Refinery
  • Don’t have a Crystal Refinery? Invest in your Hearth! This action is only available with that facility

Restrictions:

• It is not yet possible for cultivators of the Kingdom to synthesize Light or Dark as pure elements
  • Attempts to do so create tantalizing fragments of pure Light or Dark which dissipate instantly, taunting cultivators with what you cannot yet grasp
• You must have a Standard Value threshold in Air of 30+X
  • +5 to the threshold for your Bane element
  • -5 for your Primary element