So I made a thread on this topic a few years ago, and since then we've had a lot of other material come out that's shifted the available evidence for how the system works. I figured I'd get my understanding out in writing.
Resonant: The broadest and most straightforward of the three baseline Manifestation Conditions. If you're a spirit or a Dreamborn or an Abyssal entity and something matches the description of one of your Influences (even in more abstract terms like having a fiery temper or gloomy aesthetics), it has this Condition tagged to you and you can draw Essence from it once per day in addition to the daily single-point drip-feed you get from proximity to such things, and by perhaps-tautological definition it falls under your Influence. You'll need to exert that Influence or otherwise prepare the subject if you want to Manifest more control over it than making a physical appearance, but the groundwork is there for you to do more with them as long at the Condition lasts.
Anchor: The narrowest and most particular of the three baseline Manifestation Conditions. If you're a ghost, you have a small handful of instances of this Condition naturally and can have more made for you through magic. You may or may not have an umbrella Influence that basically turns instances of this Condition into tags for Resonant (You), but even without broad-scope Influence over one to three potentially wildly disparate phenomena the Condition staves off Essence bleed in a fashion that most ephemeral beings need actual Manifestations to manage. Like angels, if you've got an applicable instance of this Condition you reform from discorporation in the material world instead of in a different dimension. If you've got a grave or a body you likely have at least one safe place away from the Underworld, for all that "safe" means much in the face of how Avernian Gates work.
Infrastructure: The most intricate and impersonal of the three baseline Manifestation Conditions. If you're an angel, pretty much anything the God-Machine is messing with can empower you and serve as a handhold for your ephemeral activities. You probably don't have a wholesale Influence over the entire edifice of facilities and occult matrices and the like, but your more prosaic Influences (along with those of your compatriots) can interface with appropriate phenomena to make the necessary tweaks if the equivalent of a Cover has not been provided to you to bypass the limitations of your ephemeral constitution. You have good reason to possess the Discorporate Manifestation, and can generally rely on reforming in a secure location if you use it or are otherwise rendered inoperable.
Open: This is where the real involvement begins; most Manifestations rely on this Condition. It can exist independent of an underlying Condition, though the most lasting instances — facilities and loci — are within Infrastructure or keyed to specific forms of Resonance. This is significant mostly because ephemeral beings with three or more dots of Influence can create this Condition wholesale at lower cost than generating the underlying Conditions low-Rank ephemeral beings generally rely upon; a ghost Fettering itself to a mortal has not secured an inherent source of Essence, but it has gained a vector for creating the Anchor Condition or being remembered down the road, and an opportunistic spirit-thief on the run who finds a victim of Lunacy has a getaway vehicle but no sustenance.
Controlled: This is comparatively rare and generally bad news for everyone — the issues spirit-Claimed present mostly go without saying, but the fact that ghosts can Claim subjects in the Underworld and the nature of the ghosts most likely to have the Manifestation to do so combine to make this a dangerous (albeit expensive) prospect. Any Rank 3 entity with three dots in an Influence and the Claim Manifestation can pull this off, and while that's a fairly specific set of skills the results are horrifying enough that werewolves and Sin-Eaters generally take notice.
Essence and Bleed - Dreamborn: Goetia don't naturally have Manifestations and/because they have no normal means of leaving the Astral. They can draw sustenance from Resonant Conditions like spirits, but without Manifestations (pending some future clarification that they treat Resonant like ghosts treat Anchor) they won't last a full day in the material realm unless they're packing the spiritual power that comes with incredibly esoteric weaknesses. They are, however, the only "common" ephemeral being whose home realm actually sustains them — chthonians are fed by the Underworld and its Rivers, but last an even shorter time away from home. In short, there's a reason things from the Astral are seldom a direct concern even in the gameline where you play someone with a direct connection to part of the Astral.
Essence and Bleed - Spirits: Spirits are basically the standard by which the model operates — they do not manage for any length of time outside of the Shadow without Manifestations or the support structure of serving as a pack totem, and this serves as their principal point of conflict with werewolves and other residents of the material realm. They gain Essence from tending to their purviews in a fashion that the Gauntlet stymies slightly, but their main means of gaining Essence in the Shadow is taking it from other spirits, which is part of how their politics emerge (since consumption/tithing is not limited in the same way that normal harvesting is). In short, the way the Shadow works means spirits chiefly come to Earth because of other actors in that space, either in the abstract or on the impetus of specific forces.
Essence and Bleed - Ghosts: Ghosts are built for a more dichotomous setup than other ephemeral beings. In the living world, they can hold on lightly to their Anchors and (at the lower Ranks) make appearances or otherwise communicate with the living to be remembered to save up Essence. Without that safety net, the Underworld forces them to sift the streams and Rivers for castoffs, trade memories, or risk their Integrity eating their fellow ghosts. Geists and Reapers, meanwhile, have a few more options available to them; neither suffers Essence bleed, both can open Avernian Gates from either side, and their greater Rank makes ectophagia more manageable even without the ability to tag new Anchors. Reapers further have the universal benefits of the Engulf Numen on their side, and geists who make the Bargain sidestep even the limitations of daily upkeep. Any ghost can be part of a krewe and gain Essence from participating in actions in line with its ethos, and ghosts who resolve all of their Anchors also become free from Essence bleed. In short, the consumptive nature of the Underworld means a lot more of its Earthly clientele have conditional immunity to accelerated burnout as a workaround.
Essence and Bleed - Angels: Not having a home realm to be whisked back to through dormancy, angels who engage with the system of Manifestation Conditions are in an odd place. They have the most prosaic means of gaining Essence — literal directed sacrifice — and the ingenuity of their maker theoretically offers an assortment of workarounds to the matter of upkeep, but an angel that runs out of power without discorporating simply stays where it is, largely invisible to anyone except for other angels, necessitating reboot or retrieval to wake it up. Exiles have their Parameters to fall back on, and the right Incept theoretically enables an angel to top off its reserves from active Infrastructure in a pinch, but in general the main way angels deal with Essence bleed is by, well, not dealing with Essence bleed. In short, the God-Machine typically ensures that most angels interact with the material world as material actors that occasionally exist out of phase with the rest of material reality.
Anybody have further thoughts on this bunch?
Resonant: The broadest and most straightforward of the three baseline Manifestation Conditions. If you're a spirit or a Dreamborn or an Abyssal entity and something matches the description of one of your Influences (even in more abstract terms like having a fiery temper or gloomy aesthetics), it has this Condition tagged to you and you can draw Essence from it once per day in addition to the daily single-point drip-feed you get from proximity to such things, and by perhaps-tautological definition it falls under your Influence. You'll need to exert that Influence or otherwise prepare the subject if you want to Manifest more control over it than making a physical appearance, but the groundwork is there for you to do more with them as long at the Condition lasts.
Anchor: The narrowest and most particular of the three baseline Manifestation Conditions. If you're a ghost, you have a small handful of instances of this Condition naturally and can have more made for you through magic. You may or may not have an umbrella Influence that basically turns instances of this Condition into tags for Resonant (You), but even without broad-scope Influence over one to three potentially wildly disparate phenomena the Condition staves off Essence bleed in a fashion that most ephemeral beings need actual Manifestations to manage. Like angels, if you've got an applicable instance of this Condition you reform from discorporation in the material world instead of in a different dimension. If you've got a grave or a body you likely have at least one safe place away from the Underworld, for all that "safe" means much in the face of how Avernian Gates work.
Infrastructure: The most intricate and impersonal of the three baseline Manifestation Conditions. If you're an angel, pretty much anything the God-Machine is messing with can empower you and serve as a handhold for your ephemeral activities. You probably don't have a wholesale Influence over the entire edifice of facilities and occult matrices and the like, but your more prosaic Influences (along with those of your compatriots) can interface with appropriate phenomena to make the necessary tweaks if the equivalent of a Cover has not been provided to you to bypass the limitations of your ephemeral constitution. You have good reason to possess the Discorporate Manifestation, and can generally rely on reforming in a secure location if you use it or are otherwise rendered inoperable.
Open: This is where the real involvement begins; most Manifestations rely on this Condition. It can exist independent of an underlying Condition, though the most lasting instances — facilities and loci — are within Infrastructure or keyed to specific forms of Resonance. This is significant mostly because ephemeral beings with three or more dots of Influence can create this Condition wholesale at lower cost than generating the underlying Conditions low-Rank ephemeral beings generally rely upon; a ghost Fettering itself to a mortal has not secured an inherent source of Essence, but it has gained a vector for creating the Anchor Condition or being remembered down the road, and an opportunistic spirit-thief on the run who finds a victim of Lunacy has a getaway vehicle but no sustenance.
Controlled: This is comparatively rare and generally bad news for everyone — the issues spirit-Claimed present mostly go without saying, but the fact that ghosts can Claim subjects in the Underworld and the nature of the ghosts most likely to have the Manifestation to do so combine to make this a dangerous (albeit expensive) prospect. Any Rank 3 entity with three dots in an Influence and the Claim Manifestation can pull this off, and while that's a fairly specific set of skills the results are horrifying enough that werewolves and Sin-Eaters generally take notice.
Essence and Bleed - Dreamborn: Goetia don't naturally have Manifestations and/because they have no normal means of leaving the Astral. They can draw sustenance from Resonant Conditions like spirits, but without Manifestations (pending some future clarification that they treat Resonant like ghosts treat Anchor) they won't last a full day in the material realm unless they're packing the spiritual power that comes with incredibly esoteric weaknesses. They are, however, the only "common" ephemeral being whose home realm actually sustains them — chthonians are fed by the Underworld and its Rivers, but last an even shorter time away from home. In short, there's a reason things from the Astral are seldom a direct concern even in the gameline where you play someone with a direct connection to part of the Astral.
Essence and Bleed - Spirits: Spirits are basically the standard by which the model operates — they do not manage for any length of time outside of the Shadow without Manifestations or the support structure of serving as a pack totem, and this serves as their principal point of conflict with werewolves and other residents of the material realm. They gain Essence from tending to their purviews in a fashion that the Gauntlet stymies slightly, but their main means of gaining Essence in the Shadow is taking it from other spirits, which is part of how their politics emerge (since consumption/tithing is not limited in the same way that normal harvesting is). In short, the way the Shadow works means spirits chiefly come to Earth because of other actors in that space, either in the abstract or on the impetus of specific forces.
Essence and Bleed - Ghosts: Ghosts are built for a more dichotomous setup than other ephemeral beings. In the living world, they can hold on lightly to their Anchors and (at the lower Ranks) make appearances or otherwise communicate with the living to be remembered to save up Essence. Without that safety net, the Underworld forces them to sift the streams and Rivers for castoffs, trade memories, or risk their Integrity eating their fellow ghosts. Geists and Reapers, meanwhile, have a few more options available to them; neither suffers Essence bleed, both can open Avernian Gates from either side, and their greater Rank makes ectophagia more manageable even without the ability to tag new Anchors. Reapers further have the universal benefits of the Engulf Numen on their side, and geists who make the Bargain sidestep even the limitations of daily upkeep. Any ghost can be part of a krewe and gain Essence from participating in actions in line with its ethos, and ghosts who resolve all of their Anchors also become free from Essence bleed. In short, the consumptive nature of the Underworld means a lot more of its Earthly clientele have conditional immunity to accelerated burnout as a workaround.
Essence and Bleed - Angels: Not having a home realm to be whisked back to through dormancy, angels who engage with the system of Manifestation Conditions are in an odd place. They have the most prosaic means of gaining Essence — literal directed sacrifice — and the ingenuity of their maker theoretically offers an assortment of workarounds to the matter of upkeep, but an angel that runs out of power without discorporating simply stays where it is, largely invisible to anyone except for other angels, necessitating reboot or retrieval to wake it up. Exiles have their Parameters to fall back on, and the right Incept theoretically enables an angel to top off its reserves from active Infrastructure in a pinch, but in general the main way angels deal with Essence bleed is by, well, not dealing with Essence bleed. In short, the God-Machine typically ensures that most angels interact with the material world as material actors that occasionally exist out of phase with the rest of material reality.
Anybody have further thoughts on this bunch?
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