The Spider's Trick
Aug. 24th, 2021 12:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fictitiouswhimsigotTransmigration of the Soul
Major Mystery Virtue
Like the infamous Damhan-Allaidh, you have mastered the trick of allowing your soul to travel into a new body when killed, while preserving some of your own knowledge, personality and magical talents.
At any point after gaining this virtue, you may perform an act of ritualized sacrifice. At the end of that ritual, you prepare your body and your soul to transmigrate to a new body. When performing this ritual, you may choose to sacrifice some of your knowledge to bind some of the magical taint upon your soul into the dying body.
You choose any number of Warping points to leave behind, once you die (Below). This can reduce your Warping score. For each point of Warping you lose, you also lose five experience points in one of your abilities and five experience points in one of your supernatural or arcane abilities, or arts.
Roll a stress die. Once that number of years has elapsed, your body dies and your soul enters the body of a newborn within several hundred miles of where you died. If you suffer death or some other permanent change to your state of being, such as Final Twilight, before this time then you are unable to transmigrate your soul.
This new incarnation carries over your personality traits, but reduces them to no more or less than +2 or -2. Your mind is fresh and new, and it takes several years for memories to begin reasserting themselves- potentially allowing you time to grow or change as a person.
Your new incarnation may have Characteristics that differ from your previous incarnations, and lacks any Story flaws or Social status virtues that are no longer relevant. You may choose to change your character’s General, Social Status and Story virtues or flaws to suit the new incarnation, but otherwise you maintain all Virtues and Flaws from previous incarnations. If your prior incarnation had the Gift, this one does as well.
Naturally, this new incarnation lacks any aging points or decrepitude of prior incarnations.
Supernatural powers and Virtues, including Hermetic ones and knowledge of Arts or Arcane abilities, do not flow back naturally and must be remastered and learned (as described below). Your new incarnation does, however, always carry any supernatural or hermetic flaws from prior incarnations.
You do not automatically maintain any previously held mundane abilities or knowledge, starting with the normal amount of experience in abilities for a character of your age. However, your lost mundane abilities return to you as your memories do. Each year past your tenth year of life in your new incarnation, you gain an additional 15 experience points that you may divide between any of your previously known General, Academic and Martial abilities. This additional experience may only be spent on abilities previously held and may not be spent to raise those abilities higher than they were in your previous incarnation, accounting for any lost knowledge or abilities from shedding warping points with your transmigration (above). This explicitly allows you to learn abilities that would be otherwise unavailable to your background.
Your supernatural knowledge requires active effort to regain. When your soul is transmigrated, record each supernatural, hermetic or mystery virtue you possess, as well as the level of all supernatural or arcane abilities and arts. If your character has a score of less than three in a supernatural or arcane ability, or less than five in an Art, then your knowledge of that power is lost with your transmigration. Otherwise, you may regain any prior knowledge by any of the normal methods- practice, study or otherwise. You are treated as if you had a score of 0 in any applicable ability or art, save that you may not use any of the magical effects of that ability or art until you have at least a score of 1 in it. You ignore the penalty for learning new supernatural abilities or arts for those you previously held.
You may regain Virtues using similar methods. For each season spent practicing by meditation, research or attempts to recapture your lost powers, you gain 5 experience points towards any previously held virtue. Once the experience placed towards a particular virtue reaches 15 for minor virtues or 21 for major ones, your lost occult knowledge returns and you regain that virtue. The only distinction for this process is this virtue itself- the benefits of this virtue, allowing the character to relearn previously held knowledge, remain even before you relearn it. Without the virtue, however, they cannot attempt the ritual to be reborn once more.
For every three levels of supernatural abilities regained, or every five levels of arts, you increase one of your personality traits from your prior incarnations by one, up to the maximum of their previous intensity.
There is an unexpected consequence of your period of relearning your previously held supernatural powers- any power, art or virtue that you have yet to remaster or relearn does not count towards the difficulty of learning new supernatural abilities or having one’s gift opened to a new tradition. This can potentially allow a patient or clever character to gain new powers with each incarnation before remastering those previously held.
Major Mystery Virtue
Like the infamous Damhan-Allaidh, you have mastered the trick of allowing your soul to travel into a new body when killed, while preserving some of your own knowledge, personality and magical talents.
At any point after gaining this virtue, you may perform an act of ritualized sacrifice. At the end of that ritual, you prepare your body and your soul to transmigrate to a new body. When performing this ritual, you may choose to sacrifice some of your knowledge to bind some of the magical taint upon your soul into the dying body.
You choose any number of Warping points to leave behind, once you die (Below). This can reduce your Warping score. For each point of Warping you lose, you also lose five experience points in one of your abilities and five experience points in one of your supernatural or arcane abilities, or arts.
Roll a stress die. Once that number of years has elapsed, your body dies and your soul enters the body of a newborn within several hundred miles of where you died. If you suffer death or some other permanent change to your state of being, such as Final Twilight, before this time then you are unable to transmigrate your soul.
This new incarnation carries over your personality traits, but reduces them to no more or less than +2 or -2. Your mind is fresh and new, and it takes several years for memories to begin reasserting themselves- potentially allowing you time to grow or change as a person.
Your new incarnation may have Characteristics that differ from your previous incarnations, and lacks any Story flaws or Social status virtues that are no longer relevant. You may choose to change your character’s General, Social Status and Story virtues or flaws to suit the new incarnation, but otherwise you maintain all Virtues and Flaws from previous incarnations. If your prior incarnation had the Gift, this one does as well.
Naturally, this new incarnation lacks any aging points or decrepitude of prior incarnations.
Supernatural powers and Virtues, including Hermetic ones and knowledge of Arts or Arcane abilities, do not flow back naturally and must be remastered and learned (as described below). Your new incarnation does, however, always carry any supernatural or hermetic flaws from prior incarnations.
You do not automatically maintain any previously held mundane abilities or knowledge, starting with the normal amount of experience in abilities for a character of your age. However, your lost mundane abilities return to you as your memories do. Each year past your tenth year of life in your new incarnation, you gain an additional 15 experience points that you may divide between any of your previously known General, Academic and Martial abilities. This additional experience may only be spent on abilities previously held and may not be spent to raise those abilities higher than they were in your previous incarnation, accounting for any lost knowledge or abilities from shedding warping points with your transmigration (above). This explicitly allows you to learn abilities that would be otherwise unavailable to your background.
Your supernatural knowledge requires active effort to regain. When your soul is transmigrated, record each supernatural, hermetic or mystery virtue you possess, as well as the level of all supernatural or arcane abilities and arts. If your character has a score of less than three in a supernatural or arcane ability, or less than five in an Art, then your knowledge of that power is lost with your transmigration. Otherwise, you may regain any prior knowledge by any of the normal methods- practice, study or otherwise. You are treated as if you had a score of 0 in any applicable ability or art, save that you may not use any of the magical effects of that ability or art until you have at least a score of 1 in it. You ignore the penalty for learning new supernatural abilities or arts for those you previously held.
You may regain Virtues using similar methods. For each season spent practicing by meditation, research or attempts to recapture your lost powers, you gain 5 experience points towards any previously held virtue. Once the experience placed towards a particular virtue reaches 15 for minor virtues or 21 for major ones, your lost occult knowledge returns and you regain that virtue. The only distinction for this process is this virtue itself- the benefits of this virtue, allowing the character to relearn previously held knowledge, remain even before you relearn it. Without the virtue, however, they cannot attempt the ritual to be reborn once more.
For every three levels of supernatural abilities regained, or every five levels of arts, you increase one of your personality traits from your prior incarnations by one, up to the maximum of their previous intensity.
There is an unexpected consequence of your period of relearning your previously held supernatural powers- any power, art or virtue that you have yet to remaster or relearn does not count towards the difficulty of learning new supernatural abilities or having one’s gift opened to a new tradition. This can potentially allow a patient or clever character to gain new powers with each incarnation before remastering those previously held.
