Tweet
As I'm wont to do when starting a new campaign, I've written up a bit of homebrew. This is a new Path for a Punk Mage game, designed for one Angela Reid, also known as Aether. She's in a rough spot right now, having just Awakened and in so doing departed a job as a hired killer for a Shadowy Government Agency, Looking forward to her rage against the machine that took a young woman and turned her into a weapon, then left her there without purpose when no longer useful.
I don't super expect that anyone else will find this useful, but threads here on the forum are a good place to host by homebrew, and maybe someone will at least find it interesting.
I'll probably tweak and update this a bit as the game goes on, as usual.
Other Legacies I've written up and posted here: Sisterhood of the Blessed (Prime/Time) - a new take on a 1e legacy, Broken Bonds (Prime/Space) - a weird Lower Depths focused legacy, and House of Fire and Stone (Prime/Matter) which revolves around Occultation and crafting.
Huldre
The Hidden Guides
Magic is the Sight, to see the channels that shape the world, and to view all the world's souls as the water making up the current. Swim against it and be drowned. join unresisting and find yourself swept out to sea.
We Awaken to learn that there are other choices open to us.
This is not your life; it was chosen for you, carved into the bedrock by a million generations who came before. It wasn't from evil that they chose your path for you, taking a young woman and shaping her into a weapon to fight their war, nor was it from evil that you accepted their teachings, fought, bled, killed others so far from home. No evil here, no choice at all. Water flowing downhill, a path carved into the shape of the world with blood. Evil is what we call it when the river flows against our desires, when the world is shaped against our wills. Good is what they tell you you're doing when you don't fight the current, when you accept the destiny of all minds born and borne by the river's flow.
Wake up. Evil is a word made of power. Good is a word made of weakness. Wake up.
Guides Awaken to discover that the world is mutable, an interplay of vast forces across the aeons that wear channels of habit into the substrate of the world. Society shapes itself in patterns, creating the material forms that support it; in turn, these material forms shape the next generation. Accepting or rebelling, these new minds are regardless shaped by the world around them, the world carved by the society they are now a part of. There is no escape from this interplay - to rebel is tobe shaped by forces beyond your control just as much as to obey. And what would it even mean, to escape? There is no fundamental self, if freed from the forces that shaped it. All is water, flowing to fit the vessel into which it has been poured. To Awaken is the ultimate form of rebellion. Not to step outside (outside of the self? Nonsense), but to see the channels. To reshape the world, and thus, everyone within it.
The Huldre take their name from river spirits of Scandanavian folk lore, creatures seductive or hideous who watch over the waterways and those who make a living from them. They are hidden and watching, so that humans may sleep soundly. And in dreams, while they whisper and watch over you, that is their power.
They are the lullaby telling you that now is the time for rest, that guardians watch over you. They are the wrathful storm, washing away the old rivers and carving new paths. They are the world made anew in wonder and terror.
The rain has stopped. Wake up!
Huldre Magic
Ruling Arcana
Matter and Mind. The world and the people that fill it, inseparable and intertwined.
Guides approach Matter not as a static medium - it is as active participant, the clay which shapes and is shaped by everyone who comes into contact with it. A plow is as active a participant as farmer, a part of inseparable totality. To reshape matter is to reshape those who interact with it, and vis-versa. There is no spoon.
Mind is the water which flows from birth into the great unknown, the moving medium that turns stasis into flow. Mind gives clay meaning, just as clay gives shape to Mind. Nothing grows without water. Nothing is interesting without motion to give it purpose.
Inferior Arcana
Death. A corpse a machine without motion, a dead river bed, clay to be reshaped into something more interesting. Without water, a river is dead and depressing. Carbon and nitrogen and blood and bone, raw material and uninteresting except in how the water flows around it, how the people still living react to it. What is a ghost but a sad remnant, slowly falling asleep.
Symbols and Myths
The Chariot and Judgement. Authority and rebellion. The shape of society, the shape of the world, the shape of the self. Rain and rivers and storms, motion and change. Nothing stagnant.
The Awakened Tarot calls Huldre the Path of The Chariot. She is the powerful current, irresistible, sweeping aside everything that stands in her path, or she is the power to reshape the banks of the river, to change the course of the water that others see as inevitable. She has seen how society is shaped, and in so doing, gained power. Her mystery card is Judgement, a moment to pause and reflect, to see clearly the forces that have brought you to this point and to understand yourself at the center of the universe, all paths possible and laid out before you, and to call upon the wisdom of generations that shaped you into something special - someone capable of genuine choice. Wake up.
Yantras
Huldre tools are always manufactured, shaped by human hands in some fashion or another. The path resonates with worked wood, cloth and moving water. It fits with handcuffs, batons and non-lethal weaponry, but also with Molotov cocktails, black bandanas, and broken bottles - symbols of society protecting its current form, and of inevitable change.
Awakening
Before they Awaken, Huldre see themselves as trapped. They may welcome the place the world has carved out for them or rebel against it, but they always understand that they have a place. The Awakening begins with a change in perspective - they rebel against the place in society they'd previously accepted without question, or they settle down and accept the role that they'd chaffed against. Either way, they begin to understand that they are only a drop of water in the river that is humanity, flowing together down paths that they have collectively chosen. The change in perspective is vital, opening the door to realizing that one can shape the world as well as be shaped by it. A lock is only as solid as the intention that what is behind it stays hidden. A tank rolling in the streets is an expression of collective will, and the sugar mixing in the cement of a new dam so it won't set is a desire for a change of course mixing with a desire for progress.
The Guides have no Watchtower. Awakening, they carve their name in no static place, for their Awakening is itself the realization that unchanging stagnation is an illusion. They write their name in sand, and it is washed away by the next wave, an act no less significant for its transitory nature.
Supernal Realm: Saivo
The currents underlying reality
In their Sight, Saivo is a realm of a realm of rivers of thought, darkness and gloom mixed with bright ribons of consciousness. The whole material world is awash in intention - a knife is filled with the thoughts of its smith, of the one who sold it, the one who bought it, the one who wields it to end another life. Every object is composed of its own history, not even the smallest pebble untouched by the hiker that once stepped over it and thought it was pretty. Society is the same, mighty rivers of driven purpose, deltas of unformed decision, rains of willpower and storms of self-doubt. People are not separate phenomena - they exist, surely, just as each individual gallon of water exists. the veins of the world repeated inside each person in fractal complexity.
References:
I don't super expect that anyone else will find this useful, but threads here on the forum are a good place to host by homebrew, and maybe someone will at least find it interesting.
I'll probably tweak and update this a bit as the game goes on, as usual.Other Legacies I've written up and posted here: Sisterhood of the Blessed (Prime/Time) - a new take on a 1e legacy, Broken Bonds (Prime/Space) - a weird Lower Depths focused legacy, and House of Fire and Stone (Prime/Matter) which revolves around Occultation and crafting.
Huldre
The Hidden Guides
Magic is the Sight, to see the channels that shape the world, and to view all the world's souls as the water making up the current. Swim against it and be drowned. join unresisting and find yourself swept out to sea.
We Awaken to learn that there are other choices open to us.
This is not your life; it was chosen for you, carved into the bedrock by a million generations who came before. It wasn't from evil that they chose your path for you, taking a young woman and shaping her into a weapon to fight their war, nor was it from evil that you accepted their teachings, fought, bled, killed others so far from home. No evil here, no choice at all. Water flowing downhill, a path carved into the shape of the world with blood. Evil is what we call it when the river flows against our desires, when the world is shaped against our wills. Good is what they tell you you're doing when you don't fight the current, when you accept the destiny of all minds born and borne by the river's flow.
Wake up. Evil is a word made of power. Good is a word made of weakness. Wake up.
Guides Awaken to discover that the world is mutable, an interplay of vast forces across the aeons that wear channels of habit into the substrate of the world. Society shapes itself in patterns, creating the material forms that support it; in turn, these material forms shape the next generation. Accepting or rebelling, these new minds are regardless shaped by the world around them, the world carved by the society they are now a part of. There is no escape from this interplay - to rebel is tobe shaped by forces beyond your control just as much as to obey. And what would it even mean, to escape? There is no fundamental self, if freed from the forces that shaped it. All is water, flowing to fit the vessel into which it has been poured. To Awaken is the ultimate form of rebellion. Not to step outside (outside of the self? Nonsense), but to see the channels. To reshape the world, and thus, everyone within it.
The Huldre take their name from river spirits of Scandanavian folk lore, creatures seductive or hideous who watch over the waterways and those who make a living from them. They are hidden and watching, so that humans may sleep soundly. And in dreams, while they whisper and watch over you, that is their power.
They are the lullaby telling you that now is the time for rest, that guardians watch over you. They are the wrathful storm, washing away the old rivers and carving new paths. They are the world made anew in wonder and terror.
The rain has stopped. Wake up!
Huldre Magic
Ruling Arcana
Matter and Mind. The world and the people that fill it, inseparable and intertwined.
Guides approach Matter not as a static medium - it is as active participant, the clay which shapes and is shaped by everyone who comes into contact with it. A plow is as active a participant as farmer, a part of inseparable totality. To reshape matter is to reshape those who interact with it, and vis-versa. There is no spoon.
Mind is the water which flows from birth into the great unknown, the moving medium that turns stasis into flow. Mind gives clay meaning, just as clay gives shape to Mind. Nothing grows without water. Nothing is interesting without motion to give it purpose.
Inferior Arcana
Death. A corpse a machine without motion, a dead river bed, clay to be reshaped into something more interesting. Without water, a river is dead and depressing. Carbon and nitrogen and blood and bone, raw material and uninteresting except in how the water flows around it, how the people still living react to it. What is a ghost but a sad remnant, slowly falling asleep.
Symbols and Myths
The Chariot and Judgement. Authority and rebellion. The shape of society, the shape of the world, the shape of the self. Rain and rivers and storms, motion and change. Nothing stagnant.
The Awakened Tarot calls Huldre the Path of The Chariot. She is the powerful current, irresistible, sweeping aside everything that stands in her path, or she is the power to reshape the banks of the river, to change the course of the water that others see as inevitable. She has seen how society is shaped, and in so doing, gained power. Her mystery card is Judgement, a moment to pause and reflect, to see clearly the forces that have brought you to this point and to understand yourself at the center of the universe, all paths possible and laid out before you, and to call upon the wisdom of generations that shaped you into something special - someone capable of genuine choice. Wake up.
Yantras
Huldre tools are always manufactured, shaped by human hands in some fashion or another. The path resonates with worked wood, cloth and moving water. It fits with handcuffs, batons and non-lethal weaponry, but also with Molotov cocktails, black bandanas, and broken bottles - symbols of society protecting its current form, and of inevitable change.
Awakening
Before they Awaken, Huldre see themselves as trapped. They may welcome the place the world has carved out for them or rebel against it, but they always understand that they have a place. The Awakening begins with a change in perspective - they rebel against the place in society they'd previously accepted without question, or they settle down and accept the role that they'd chaffed against. Either way, they begin to understand that they are only a drop of water in the river that is humanity, flowing together down paths that they have collectively chosen. The change in perspective is vital, opening the door to realizing that one can shape the world as well as be shaped by it. A lock is only as solid as the intention that what is behind it stays hidden. A tank rolling in the streets is an expression of collective will, and the sugar mixing in the cement of a new dam so it won't set is a desire for a change of course mixing with a desire for progress.
The Guides have no Watchtower. Awakening, they carve their name in no static place, for their Awakening is itself the realization that unchanging stagnation is an illusion. They write their name in sand, and it is washed away by the next wave, an act no less significant for its transitory nature.
Supernal Realm: Saivo
The currents underlying reality
In their Sight, Saivo is a realm of a realm of rivers of thought, darkness and gloom mixed with bright ribons of consciousness. The whole material world is awash in intention - a knife is filled with the thoughts of its smith, of the one who sold it, the one who bought it, the one who wields it to end another life. Every object is composed of its own history, not even the smallest pebble untouched by the hiker that once stepped over it and thought it was pretty. Society is the same, mighty rivers of driven purpose, deltas of unformed decision, rains of willpower and storms of self-doubt. People are not separate phenomena - they exist, surely, just as each individual gallon of water exists. the veins of the world repeated inside each person in fractal complexity.
References:
Comment