Umbral Domains: Changeling Realms

I like Realms the way they are pretty much. The main differences being:

Actor

This Art now covers all beings (humans, chimera, fae, prodigals, & other beasties) with self awareness. Such self awareness is usually characterized by having Intelligence, Wits and Willpower scores of 1 or greater.

Ephemera

This Art replaces the regular “Fae”. Ephemera covers intangible things, this includesobviously “magical” effects, as well as all other subjects which don’t fall under other Realm.

Level Description

* - Affects the ongoing Cantrip effects of other fae.

** - Affects Redes, Birthrights, or other fae magic and powers.

*** - Affects all magic produced by non-fae entities.

**** - Affects Dreaming related unusual phenomena (the Mists, Firchlis, etc.).

***** - Affects Umbral phenomena, also affects concepts (ie. “freedom”, “love”, etc.)

Time

This Realm is simply expanded slightly. Invoking it normally allows the postponement of a cantrip’s effect. However, with this expansion the cantrip weaver can alternately use the Realm to extend the cantrip’s effective time increment. For example, using the Gimmix power with the first level of the Time realm could allow the changeling to telekinetic control for 2 turns without recasting. If the changeling had the second level of Time she could maintain the power for a whole Scene without recasting or spending Glamour.

Employing the duration extension aspect of the Time realm does require concentration though, not enough concentration to require an action, but the caster must be conscious. The only exception to this is the Week duration effect which does function even while the caster sleeps.

Level - Time Delay - Duration Extension

* - 1 turn - Extra turn

** - 1 hour - Scene

*** - 1 day - Hour

**** - 1 week - Day

***** - 1 month - Week

Realms & Spirits

Originally spirits were did not seem to be covered very clearly by the original dividion of realms. Some might say this was intentional since fae are not regular spirits and might have trouble interacting with such entities. Personally I view it as an oversight to be corrected rather than an intentional systems incompatibility.

Previously Greg Pluknet, et al came up with a different version of the Ephemera Realm specifically to cover spirits, however I figure the standard number of realms should really cover pretty much everything, so I'm going to shoehorn spirits into the standard realms along with the modifications presented above. I have however stolen the name "Ephemera" as the "Fae" realm replacement, just because "ephemera" is probably the most accurate concept descriptor I could find in the thesaurus.

Under these modifications the Ephemera Realm covers only some spirits. These rules work under the assumption that a spirit is the essence of a thing, thus any realm that controls the thing controls that spirit. So spirits of sentient Entities (those with Intelligence, Wits, and Will of at least 1) use the actor realm, spirits of trees use the nature realm, etc. However, spirits of intangible concepts (freedom, war, etc.) are generally controlled only by level 5 of the Ephemera realm.

Note though that while the spirits of concepts themselves are only affected by Ephemera level 5, most of the external magic they control can be affected by Ephemera level 3.

--Peter K. 18:06, 23 April 2006 (PDT)