Serah's Arts Ratings


Skycraft 2 Primal 1, Naming 1

Primal (1)

The fae are at least as old as the world itself, if not older, and have always shared a powerful affinity for the very elemental substance of the world — a few legends even claim that they spun the primal fundament of reality from the inchoate mist
of dreams at the dawn of time. Regardless, modern changelings can remember a time when they were kindred to the stones and when they plucked whispers from the air, when they seduced the flames and bowed before embarking upon the back of Mother Sea. Even today, they still remember many of the secrets of harnessing the elements, and Primal is one of their most useful and widespread sorcerous Arts. It’s widely accepted that the Kithain learned Primal from their cousins, the inanimae, and that it was once the merest stepping stone toward far grander elemental magic. Those greater Arts were lost in the wake of the Shattering, and today Primal is largely associated with “salt of the earth” changelings, such as boggans, eshu, piskies, and redcaps — though many sidhe nobles quietly dabble in its useful lesser enchantments.

Unleashing Primal
Primal Unleashings place the vast and ancient power of the elemental Arts back into the hands of the Kithain, if only for a moment. Earthquakes, firestorms, trees erupting through pavement and growing to full grandeur in moments — these are the hallmarks of Primal Unleashings, making it one of the most potent and dangerous Arts to loose into the world with little greater direction than “stop them,” “help us,” or “open a path.”

Primal Bunks
Primal bunks incorporate props from nature or primal elemental forces. Examples include: Light a match or wave a lighter around, break a stick, make willow bark tea and drink it, coat your hands in mud, listen to a seashell, douse yourself with water, carve a statuette out of wood, draw your target in the dirt with a fingertip, run full speed against a powerful wind, scatter freshly-fallen leaves over your head, pluck a rose and savor its fragrance, leap into a puddle, mark a tree using a sharp stone, or craft a crown of thorns, and wear it.
  • 1 - Willow Whisper
    In the hours before dawn, a pooka creeps up on cat feet to ask the paving stones of the Duke’s walkway who came to visit him in the night. Investigating a mugging in the park, a boggan private eye interrogates the trees, and discovers plots darker than he’d anticipated. This useful bit of magic allows the changeling to speak to the world, and hear its replies. She may use Willow Whisper to speak to any plant, animal, object, or natural feature — any stone, any jeweled ring, any shining blade, any beast normally incapable of speech. Willow Whisper has two restrictions. First, the changeling must speak in a whisper, and hears all replies as whispers in return — this cantrip is useless at a stock car race or rock concert. Second, no matter how hard she tries, the changeling may never hear the voice of cold iron.

    System: The Realm selected determines what the changeling may speak to the world about. Actor and Fae would allow her to ask a tree if a certain person has passed by, and what they were doing. Prop and Nature allow the changeling to make inquiries about objects or natural phenomena themselves. The changeling can ask one question per success.
    Type: Chimerical

Skycraft (2)

Skycraft is the ancient and rarely-seen Art of command over the wind and the thunder. Once upon a time, or so the eshu say, the lords of the fae rode chariots of the winds and hunted the lightning so they could forge it into fine blades and gleaming finery. They called the North Wind to hand, and spoke with the voice of the tornado. Such sheer power has long been lost to the fae, save in the depths of perilous Unleashings, but they retain even now the rudiments of their mastery over the forces of the sky. Skycraft is a rare Art, favored by its practitioners as a more refined alternative to the common magic of Primal or Wayfare. It is primarily practiced by trolls, and rumored to be much prized by the merfolk and selkies, though some eshu find it a stylish Art that lends them a certain storm-tossed flair.

Unleashing Skycraft
Skycraft Unleashings are unsubtle affairs of sudden storms, gale-force winds, booming thunder, dancing lightning, and ravaged electronics. They might be deployed to run a ship to port (or send it to the bottom of the sea), paralyze the streets of a major city for an hour with torrential rain and punishing wind, to damage or destroy a building, or to fry a major electrical network.

Skycraft Bunks
Skycraft bunks focus on sound, electricity, open air, and the old ways. Examples include: Clap your hands in a silent room, rattle a sheet of tinfoil, carve a rune into your flesh, draw lightning-bolt streaks on the object of your cantrip, short out an electrical device, whirl a bullroarer, paint yourself blue, howl to the open sky, climb onto a roof in the midst of a storm, turn an umbrella inside out, lick a battery’s terminals, pound a drum, smash your hand into a bowl of water, forecast the weather, run with a windsock until it streams behind you, fly a kite, smash a delicate electronic device, or flip the breakers in an old house.
  • 1 - Howling Gale
    An eshu makes a truly dramatic entrance, hair and coat flapping around him. A troll holds the top of a staircase, sending a punishing wind against those trying to climb up and fight him. A pudgy boggan runs like an Olympic sprinter, pushed by the wind itself. The changeling may call forth a powerful wind, using it to speed the movement of herself or her allies, to confound her enemies, or simply to blow as she desires.

    System: The Realm selected determines who the wind aids, or from whence it blows. If used to target a person, the changeling may place a powerful wind at their back, doubling their movement speed for every two successes rolled, or she may cut their movement speed by half for every two successes rolled by setting the wind against them. Such winds last for (Glamour) minutes. If an object is targeted, the changeling may push it along at (Glamour) miles per hour for five minutes  per success rolled, directing the wind as she pleases. Alternately, she may make an object or person the source of a powerful wind that roars out in all directions, making it difficult for others to approach the one so enchanted (treat all who approach  as though the changeling were setting the wind against them; lasts for one minute per dot of Glamour). Finally, with proper application of Nature, the changeling may simply cause the wind to blow in a certain direction as she wills,  with each success gaining her 10 miles per hour of wind speed or 10 minutes of sustained wind, distributed as she sees fit.
    Type: Wyrd 

  • 2 - Electric Gremlins
    An office manager curses as the eighth system of the day crashes. With a sigh, he orders everyone home for the afternoon—no work can be done like this. Sitting at a window and looking at the beautiful day outside, a satyr smiles and leaves
    her desk. This cantrip summons a host of gremlins — minor chimerae that play havoc with electrical devices. Gremlins are tiny greenish-yellow creatures blessed with the ability to hide behind anything, no matter how small, when directly observed, whose presence disrupts complex electronics. An individual plagued by a host of gremlins finds complex electronics impossible to manage, as modern technology balks at his presence and refuses to function.

    System: The Realm determines who or what the gremlins stalk and harass. Fae and Actor inflict a host of gremlins that disrupt any complex electronics the one so marked attempts to use, or even spends more than a few minutes in close  proximity to. Nature and Prop can be used to inflict gremlins on objects and phenomena with similar results, ranging from directly destroying a computer by targeting it, to creating “cursed” stones, coats, and so forth, which play merry hell with electronics in their vicinity. Electronics targeted by gremlins experience crippling glitches, hangups, errors, short outs, signal disruptions, and even contract mysterious and confounding viruses for no apparent reason, rendering them unusable. The more successes rolled, the longer the gremlins persist, as outlined below:

    1 success  | The gremlins lurk about for one scene.
    2 successes  | The gremlins plague the target for one day.
    3 successes  | The gremlins persist for the caster’s Glamour in days.
    4 successes  | The gremlins last for twice the caster’s Glamour in days.
    5 successes  | The gremlins harass their target for thrice the caster’s Glamour in days.
    Type: Chimerical 

Naming (1)

Names hold power, and few are so keenly aware of the potency of titles than the Kithain. Discovering a changeling’s True Name grants authority over the faerie, but those who seek a mystic understanding of Naming cantrips can reveal hidden truths, set others on dangerous or heroic paths, and even fundamentally alter someone or something by inscribing a new name into the ledger of the Dreaming.

Unleashing Naming
The study of Naming begins with revealing what is hidden, and graduates to enforcing one’s will through new titles and definition. Unleashed Naming puts awesome power into the voice and eyes of the changeling brave or foolish enough to invoke it with raw Glamour. Unleashed Naming can uncover secrets or something hiding, empower the changeling temporarily, or rework a small piece of reality to her whim.

Naming Bunks
Naming cantrips often involve meticulous ritual, but can also focus more on word play, songs, and writing. Example bunks: Write a novel and then burn the only copy, repeat the full name of the target three times in her presence, inscribe runes of blood onto your skin, name every bone in the body, or yell the names of the seven dwarfs in seven different languages.
  • 1 - Between the Lines
    Discernment is the first lesson of Naming magics. Until the changeling can understand the real message in anything said or written, she cannot understand the intimate knowledge hidden within True Names. Deceptively powerful, Between the Lines empowers the Kithain to understand any language or learn the intended meaning behind anything she can see or hear. An eshu deciphers the ancient warning of a guardian’s curse written outside the cave before journeying inside, a clurichaun understands a request for help in a language he has never heard before, or the sidhe effortlessly constructs a puzzle box containing a clue to his lost king’s whereabouts.

    System: The Realm dictates the source of the message. The changeling would use Prop to read a book written in code, Actor to understand someone speaking in a foreign language, Nature to understand messages passed by songbirds, or Fae to unravel the riddles spouted by an ancient chimera. Any number of successes allows the changeling to understand a written cypher or foreign language, but each success adds an extra die to any pool for contested actions meant to reveal the truth or see through lies during the current scene.

    Type: Chimerical

Serah's Realms

Actor 3, Fae 1, Nature 1, Prop 2, Scene 0, Time 0

Actor (3)

This Realm grants power over the folk of the Autumn World. Its purview encompasses ordinary people, of course, but also the enchanted, Kinain, mages, and even Prodigals such as vampires and werewolves (though not the Kithain and their
fae brethren).
  • 1 - True Friend
    The most rudimentary initiation into this Realm grants power over a well-known friend or confidante — someone the changeling has spent a great deal of time around, whose interests and hobbies and aspirations she knows, and who trusts and likes her.

    Possible examples:Your friends. Your spouse. Your brother. Your kids. Certain of a therapist’s patients.

  • 2 - Personal Contact
    Basic initiation into the Realm of Actor allows the changeling to work cantrips upon those that she has personally met and had at least a few minutes of interaction with, and whose names she knows. In older times, folk were cautious about giving their names to strangers, for names are things of power in the hands of the fae — but the Autumn World has largely forgotten its fear of faeries, and names are easy to come by.

    Possible examples: Your boss. Your coworkers. Your neighbors. The kid who picked on you at school. The bartender at your favorite bar.

  • 3 - Familiar Face
    Adepts in this Realm can weave their cantrips against anyone they recognize based on some preexisting context — the changeling has moved beyond the need for a name. A person needs to be no more than “the guy who drives the ice cream truck,” “that cop who gave me a ticket last week,” or “Stephi’s mom.”

    Possible examples: The people at a high school reunion. The local news anchor. The regulars at your favorite bar. A criminal you saw a story about on TV. The guy who drives the bus you take to work every morning. Those kids always hanging out on the corner 

 Fae (1)

This Realm grants power over the things and children of the Dreaming — the Kithain themselves and their stranger cousins. Its most rarefied heights also grant dominion over the odd and incomprehensible mysteries of the world, since mysteries are,
in the final estimation, also gifts of the Dreaming.

A note: This Realm is relative, and is presented from the perspective of the Kithain, who generally act as the default protagonists of Changeling: The Dreaming, but these are not the only changelings in the world. When wielded by, for example, the Menehune of Hawaii, the first dot of this Realm affects the “common” hana and kokua kiths, while the second dot grants power over the “noble” ali’i and kahuna kiths. For a Menehune to direct a cantrip at a troll, sidhe, or redcap, she would need to use Fae 4, as the non-Hawaiian Kithain are alien to her place in the Dreaming.
  • 1 - Hearty Commoner
    The first things a changeling initiated into this Realm gains power over are the humble commoners of the fae world.

    Possible examples: Most non-sidhe Kithain, titleless Autumn sidhe.

Nature (1)

This Realm encompasses the raw elements and awesome forces of nature. It is defined by a classical and holistic understanding of natural phenomena and substances, rather than a clinical one.
  • 1 - Base Element
    The changeling may direct a cantrip at discrete manifestations of the four classical elements (air, earth, water, and fire). These manifestations must be fairly straightforward and inorganic. Because it’s difficult to quantify discrete manifestations of air, that element often requires the Scene Realm as well.

    Possible examples: A puddle, a big stone, a campfire, the soil of a grave, all the water in a bathtub.

Prop (2)

Prop is the Realm governing objects of all sorts, from table
knives to telescopes. Props are worked objects not falling into
the parameters of the Nature Realm, including all refined metals, plastics, and compound materials.
Prop can never, under any circumstances, affect objects
made of cold iron.
  • 1 - Ornate Garb
    The changeling may target anything that is commonly worn, or currently being used as clothing or a body decoration.

    Possible examples:A dress, a shirt, jewelry, tattoos, makeup, a small padlock worn as an earring, your boss’s toupee.

  • 2 - Crafted Tool
    The Kithain may now enchant any object that doesn’t use electricity and has no moving parts.

    Possible examples: A club, a knife, a sword, a crowbar, a screwdriver, a hand saw, a glass coffee table, a mug, a mattress, a lucky coin