Abilities

There are no stats here. A character is their writing plus a short list of abilities. An ability is a whole category of skill, never a single trick: Fire is an ability, "a wall of flame" is something you do with it. Every ability sits in a slot and has a proficiency tier.

Slots at creation

• Sworn, Wanderer: 2 slots, Novice and Beginner.
• Courtier, C-Class: 3 slots, Adept, Intermediate, Novice.
• B-Class: 3 slots, High Adept, Adept, Intermediate.
• Emissary, Shadow, A-Class: 4 slots, Substantial Mastery, High Adept, Adept, Intermediate.
• High Lord / Lady: the Emissary slots plus the Court Power slot.

At creation each slot must sit at least one tier below the slot before it. New slots after creation are unlocked in play (see Progression).

The nine tiers

0. Dormant: potential, unknown even to its owner. Mostly sleeping bloodlines.
1. Beginner: a trick or two, unreliable under pressure. A Sworn's second slot.
2. Novice: a small, practical repertoire, some of it usable in a fight. A Sworn's first slot.
3. Intermediate: the fundamentals, plus one or two harder workings.
4. Adept: genuinely good. Costly workings are hard, but no longer dreams. A Courtier's first slot.
5. High Adept: creative, with workings of one's own. Known in one's court.
6. Substantial Mastery: near the peak, able to pull off great feats under pressure. An Emissary's first slot.
7. Mastery: a master. Others come to learn; stories spread.
8. Grand Mastery: legend. Several masters together might match you. The Inner Circle and the High Lords in their prime.

Tiers are guides, not ceilings on imagination. Someone who specializes narrowly will beat someone with the same tier spread thin; that is common sense, and staff rule by it.

Gifts

Elemental power, raised from within or drawn from the world.

• Fire: flame and heat.
• Water: rivers, rain, blood's water, the sea.
• Wind: air, pressure, flight-currents.
• Earth: stone, soil, metal ore, root.
• Light: radiance, heat-shimmer, blinding brilliance.
• Darkness: shadow, night, the absence of light.

Confluences

The joining of two gifts into a third. A confluence is awakened on-screen once both gifts reach Intermediate. It advances one of the two gift slots instead of taking a new one. Maximum one confluence.

• Ice: Water and Wind.
• Storm: Wind and Light. Lightning and thunder.
• Bloom: Earth and Water. Living wood and growing things.
• Ember: Fire and Earth. Magma and molten stone.
• Mist: Fire and Water. Steam, fog, scalding vapor.
• Starfire: Fire and Light. Radiance that burns.
• Shadowflame: Fire and Darkness. Black fire that gives no light.
• Sand: Earth and Wind.
• Starlight: Light and Darkness. The night sky itself.

Arts

Learned crafts. Anyone may study them.

• Healing: mending flesh and bone, drawing out poison. Masters regrow what was lost.
• Wardcraft: shields, wards, bindings, and the enforcement of bargains.
• Artifice: enchanting objects, from lock-charms to weapons that remember their wielder.
• Shapeshifting: taking other forms, beast or otherwise. Spring's specialty.
• Glamour: illusion over oneself or one's surroundings. Rules in Combat.
• Winnowing: court training gives a short step (see below). The art extends it: within sight at Novice, across a city at Adept, across a court at Substantial Mastery, anywhere in Prythian at Grand Mastery. Wards and the Wall still stop it.
• Beast-bond: a companion animal and the hunting craft around it.
• Mind-warding: shields for the mind, beyond the basic one, and the sense to know when someone is knocking.

Martial arts

Fighting with body or weapon. Write your own style into your application: Illyrian blade-work, archery, court dueling, tavern brawling, a dead order's spear-forms. There is no list to choose from, but staff check that it is a style, not a superpower.

Spellblade

A gift fused into a martial style, so every strike carries fire, frost or shadow and keeps carrying it. Once a gift and a martial art both reach Substantial Mastery, a third slot opens for the Spellblade style.

Bloodlines

Powers of birth. A bloodline takes two slots: one for the dormant gift and one to awaken it. A character who will ever wield a bloodline must start with at least the dormant slot. Maximum one bloodline.

• Daemati: walking into minds, reading them, bending them.
• Seer: visions, flashes of what will come, and eyes that see through glamour at high tiers.
• Truth-teller: hearing lies. Masters hear what a careful truth hides.
• Shadowsinger: shadows that whisper secrets and carry their singer through the dark.
• Spell-cleaver: seeing the threads of a spell, and cutting them.
• Illyrian wings: Illyrians only. Flight, from a clumsy glide to carrying a rider through a storm.
• Peregryn wings: Peregryns only. Flight, and a stoop no prey outruns.

Every Illyrian and Peregryn has wings, but only an awakened wings bloodline flies in any way that counts. Dormant or never taken, wings are description: no flight in combat, no travel or exploration by air, nothing that changes an outcome.

More bloodlines may be submitted in #houses-and-bloodlines.

Houses

Families and orders with secret arts passed down in private. Houses are player-made in #houses-and-bloodlines.

• A house's secret art takes one slot, like any ability.
• It must be taught by a member of the house, player or NPC; only house members may use house NPC teachers.
• Teaching a house's art to an outsider is a crime, punished by exile, prison or death.
• A house's creator may ask to be consulted, but may not refuse a new member whose history fits the house.

Forbidden magic

Workings so dangerous that every court outlaws them. Each must be claimed before it can be learned at all, and is won through a quest that may kill you. See Claims.

• Cauldron-Making: being remade by the Cauldron.
• Necromancy: raising the dead as obedient husks.
• Life-gift: pouring one's own life into another. It kills the giver and restores the receiver, even from death.
• Vessel-taking: moving one's soul into another body. Once every three years, with a captive vessel.
• The Burning: opening seven inner locks on one's power. Each brings strength and harm; the seventh kills.
• Hybern's Brand: a cursed mark that grants surges of power and eats the mind.
• Soul-drinking: consuming a fresh corpse's gift, at the cost of one's sanity.
• Thousand Glamours: a host of solid illusions that leaves its maker nearly empty.
• Death-binding: sealing an enemy's soul with one's own. Both die.

Court Power

Only a High Lord or Lady holds it. It starts at Intermediate when the claim is approved and grows like any ability. It carries the court's own power (see Courts). At Mastery its bearer feels the court's lands as their own body.

What everyone can do

Every character can, without a slot:

• throw a punch, swing a sword clumsily, throw a knife accurately within about ten meters;
• climb, leap and keep their balance like a fae (or a fit human);
• read, ride and survive in the wild, if their history allows it.

Court training

Characters who swore to a court, including outlaws who once did, learned these basics:

• Short winnowing: a step within line of sight. Costly, and impossible through wards.
• Personal shield: stops one blow, once per fight.
• Self-glamour: look like someone of similar size. Seers, daemati and spell-cleavers see through it.
• Basic mind shield: turns away casual daemati. A determined Adept breaks it.

Courtless characters lack court training unless their history earned it, and staff agree.

Peoples

• High Fae: keen senses, strength, speed, fast healing, long life.
• Lesser faerie: one natural trait fitting the kind (gills, claws, glow), approved by staff.
• Illyrian: wings (flight is a bloodline), warrior conditioning; may buy siphons (see Market).
• Peregryn: wings (flight is a bloodline), a hawk's sight.
• Human: no magic. Iron and ash weapons come free, and humans may be Made.