Broken Lands

Spoiler

Ability Descriptions

Anchor: Aura

You are no longer limited to the body that was once your prison or your home.

An Anchor is required for the first Upgrade. This may be modified by your Signature once it is discovered.

Signature: Plume

Plumes of both feathers and magic form the outward manifestations of your style.

A Signature is required for the second Upgrade. This may be modified by your Grand Talent once it is discovered.

Grand Talent: Demense of the Arcane Coatl

An Arcane Coatl creates her lair not in space but in magic. You claim all of the magic that lies within your Aura as your Demense.

A Grand Talent is required for the third Upgrade. This may be modified by your Cardinal Facet once it is discovered.

Arcane Demense Abilities:

Hoard of Plumes, Anchor Ability

Take control of plumes’ mana to collect them. Release some or all to establish and extend your Demense. Plumes form the points you can use to exert your will on your Demense.

Arcane Signifier

Place your arcane signifier of a plume on something or someone to affect them as if they were one of your plumes.

Plumed Knowledge

As your Plumes gather knowledge for your partner from all within your Demense, you may relay your partner’s information to those marked with your Arcane Signifier so long as they are within your Demense.

Lucid Plume of Perception

See, hear, and know all that lies within your Demense as your Plumes reach out to test it. Your understanding is enhanced near your Plumes.

Translucent Aura

Your plumes deflect and diffuse the magic imbued in attacks within your aura. You can concentrate plumes together to enhance their effect. Attacks initiated by people and objects marked with your Arcane Signifier are ignored unless you direct your plumes to stop them. Other attacks may be permitted by commanding your plumes.

Plume Shift

You are your plumes and your plumes are you. Turn yourself into a cloud of Plumes that you can spread across your Domain. So long as any Plume is intact, you may return to your normal physical form without injury at the location of that Plume. While using Plume Shift, your Shield is disabled.

Prismatic Plume Strike

Strike your opponents with the magic contained in your Plumes. Plumes can be combined to form a single prismatic strike or split into their constituent parts and targeted separately.

Aural Plumes

Enhance Plumes within your Aura using all of the different modifiers you have learned. Available Modifiers:

Stunning - Send a shock through the spirit

Soothing - Relax the spirit

Focused - Grants increased control of a particular Plume in exchange for less control of other Plumes

Piercing - Strike the Shield

Binding - Slow mana movement

Reinforced - Adds cohesion and resistance to dispersion to the Plume

Disruptive - Break spell structures

Thermoregulation - Locally adjust the physical temperature for comfort and safety. Requires a compatible Plume. Provides limited protection against temperature-based attacks.

Rending - Attack the body. Cannot penetrate Shield.

Corruption - Erode the core element

True Death - Lay that which is not living to rest

Translucent - Move through unaffiliated mana with lower loss

Prismatic - Split affiliated magic into its components

Defensive Elemental Attunement - Disperse an attack with its own element

Sweetfire Purge - Burn away negative effects with sweetfire

Breezy - Move the air in a controlled fashion

Pulse - Expend mana in a cohesive clump that may be directed

Elementally Enhanced - Imbue all effects with a particular element that synergizes with itself

Arcane Coatl Hybrid Abilities:

Armored in Arcane Scales

You passively exude mana that reinforces your skin with magic-resistant scales. Your scales provide unparalleled defense against magical damage but require additional mana to aid them against other forms of damage. You may expend even more mana to manifest your scales in a secondary suit of scaled armor as a layered defense.

Prismatic Wings

Lift yourself into the sky upon wings made of all types of magic splitting and blending to obey your will.

Lifeweb Link

To be Suras is to be linked to the life around you, especially to those of your kind. Your skill and inclination aids you in what connections you find. You have found that the Archons are your people just as the Suras are and you are connected to them through the Lifeweb.

Child of Death

The child of a world of death and a man who is Death Itself, your touch carries both the finality of death and the hope for a new beginning … that will still end in Death.

Fleeting Foresight

The future reaches out to you yet you cannot see its full breadth. Only a hint comes through, questionable and lost, shaping your actions to reach the future you desire.

Arcane Absorption

You are mana and mana is you. You can absorb unaffiliated mana.

Scion of the Towers

You are linked to all Towers as though each was your home Tower.

Attunements:

Contraceptive Amulet

Prevents conception of a child.

Unbroken Link Bracelet

Shared Shield - Creates a common Shield pool.

Send Mana - Mana may be sent along the link.

Icicle Wand

Throw small spears of ice.

Force Splash Wand

Push away your enemies.

Recall Ally Wand

Teleport your ally to your side.

Sweetfire Claw Gloves

Create any weapon from sweetfire. Default: Fire Claws.

Sweetfire’s Sweets Ring

Aids in the control of sweetfire. Tinges all effects with the tang of sweetfire.

Prehensile-Tailed Belt

This belt has a tail that can be controlled by the attuned user.

Boots of Earthsense

Use the movement of the ground below you to feel things that affect the earth.

Flashflare Wings (Cloak)

The feathers of this cloak can store mana and spells that can be carried by feathers. The stored mana and spells can be discharged in a single event by flaring the cloak into wings. The flare is spherical but will not affect the attuned user.

[collapse]

Sophia sighed after the last Item Manifestation finished. She really hated the way using one felt; it didn’t hurt, it just felt weird, sort of like touching a part of your body that was numbed. She’d used five of them, which was at least two more than most Archons used in the third upgrade, and she was very tired of it.

Looking at what changed should help; at least she’d see the benefits then. She’d need to smooth the rough edges the Item Manifestation left behind with Thread, but she was already well used to the task by now and she had a very good idea where this one was going to end up. She’d just need to use a little Thread over the next few days to shore it up, just like the others.

She’d increased her Body and Core, but the words beside them didn’t change until she increased her Level. At that point, they both changed. The change from Luxuriant to Bountiful next to her Core didn’t seem significant, but the change from Buoyant to Shielded next to Body seemed important. If Sophia had to guess, it came from using an Item Manifestation Treasure on her armor. It probably wasn’t overly important, since she wasn’t going to pick Body for her Cardinal Facet, but it was interesting to see how it changed.

Lucid Plume of Perception came from the Clarity Adornment. It was unexpected; she’d expected it to alter her Lifeweb Link, not her Plume of Perception. It said absolutely nothing about range, which was overall probably a good thing.

Her Lifeweb Link did also change with the absorption of the Clarity Adornment. It wasn’t simply the removal of the word Latent that happened back when she learned to deal with her connection to the Lifeweb, though that was most of the change. It now talked about her skill and inclination helping her instead of the existence of the link itself. The word skill was added after her training with Shaman Venique, but the word inclination apparently came from the Clarity Adornment.

Lucid Plume of Perception

See, hear, and know all that lies within your Demense as your Plumes reach out to test it. Your understanding is enhanced near your Plumes.

Lifeweb Link

To be Suras is to be linked to the life around you, especially to those of your kind. Your skill and inclination aids you in what connections you find. You have found that the Archons are your people just as the Suras are and you are connected to them through the Lifeweb.

The only way to test either of them was to test both of them. It was actually hard to tell the difference immediately … until Dav pointed out that she was still seeing from his position even though he was outside her aura, which meant the plumes now extended her Demense. That seemed to be what the last line in the description meant, rather than some sort of increased knowledge-gathering near the location of plumes that were within her previous Demense.

Another round of testing with the help of Notii’s team let her know that she could sense things around feathered Archons outside her aura as well, but not around Archons without feathers unless they carried them the same way her team normally did. It took a little time to find someone who wasn’t an Archon to test what happened with a feather but without a psychic link, but it had the expected result: Sophia’s Demense didn’t follow the feather once it left her aura. She needed both some sort of link and a feather.

More experiments showed that a plume could replace the feather, even a plume of mana … but plumes dissipated while feathers were solid items that didn’t just evaporate or mix with their surroundings. Feathers were more reliable. It was still something to remember; if she needed to be able to affect someone like one of her plumes, she could now do that inside her aura by creating a plume of mana near them.

That thought was what led her to using Item Manifestation on the Mana Pulsar. It wasn’t just useful for disrupting magic like a Disruptive plume; it could do other things as well. Sophia wasn’t entirely certain what she’d use it for, but simply having a way to locally increase the mana density would probably come in useful at some point.

It turned into an Aural Plume, Pulse, which was a pleasant surprise. She did have to strengthen the connection with Thread afterwards, but that was all. That was where she wanted it to go but she didn’t expect it to get there with only a little work.

It wasn’t the only item that ended up turning into a plume, either.

Three different enchantments from her armor, Temperature Control, the new Defensive Elemental Attunement and Sweetfire Purge, ended up as Plumes. They required more work with Thread than Pulse did, but they were both basically in the right place and she knew they’d both be useful.

Temperature Control took the place of her old Warming plume and turned the armor’s minimally protective comfort enchantment into something she could use on an area. Sophia was certain her friends would enjoy that. It was a good thing she had plenty of mana to work with; her Core was more than enough to support that level of mana use.

Defensive Elemental Attunement was exactly what it said it was and ought to work whenever she had to deal with hostile mana. It wasn’t that important for herself, because she had several other ways to protect herself from mana and didn’t really need another, but it ought to let her protect others who wore her feathers as well. That was well worth the feathers Xin’ri used on it.

Sweetfire Purge was an even better enchantment. It could, theoretically, remove anything she thought of as a “negative condition” that was caused by the presence of something - by burning it away. It didn’t replace anything that was damaged or burnt and it didn’t prevent spell backlash, but the sweetfire only burned what she wanted it to. As an armor enchantment, it would really only target things that also touched her armor, but as a Plume she could apply it to all sorts of things. It even interacted well with Pulse, since she could Pulse an area to create a plume of mana that she then burnt as a Sweetfire Purge to remove whatever needed to be removed.

It could also now be used to burn out poisons and the like, but realistically it still wasn’t the best option for doing things inside the body of anyone who wasn’t already partially fire. It probably worked fine for Sweetfire himself, but Dav’s Purifying Phoenix was far better, since it healed as it burned.

To some extent, that overlapped with Sophia’s initial intent for the Feather Fan, but it didn’t change the fact that it could create a breeze to move her feathers. The primary trick was actually moving the feathers out of the area she was leaving rather than blowing them into the new area, so it was a little tricky, the Breezy Aural Plume gave her capabilities she hadn’t had before.

The last Item Manifestation Sophia used ended up exactly where Sophia expected: as another Aural Plume.

It started as a robe covered in feathers, similar to the cape Xin’ri added to the armor. Just like the Defensive Elemental Attunement cape, it was made of a mix of feathered trinkets and mana-enhanced feathers that Xin’ri somehow converted into an item, but she directed the robe in the opposite direction: instead of using feathers to enhance an element defensively, she wanted to turn it into offense. It was based on the enchantment used in Sweetfire’s Sweets ring, which added sweetfire to everything, but the robe let her pick any of its elements instead of having one always on. The flexibility came at the cost of attention; she had to actually choose the element, but other than that the primary cost was how much more the item cost to make in the way of materials.

No wonder Xin’ri walked away with so many of Sophia’s feathers! It was for a good cause, at least.

Aural Plumes

Enhance Plumes within your Aura using all of the different modifiers you have learned. Available Modifiers:

Stunning - Send a shock through the spirit

Soothing - Relax the spirit

Focused - Grants increased control of a particular Plume in exchange for less control of other Plumes

Piercing - Strike the Shield

Binding - Slow mana movement

Reinforced - Adds cohesion and resistance to dispersion to the Plume

Disruptive - Break spell structures

Thermoregulation - Locally adjust the physical temperature for comfort and safety. Requires a compatible Plume. Provides limited protection against temperature-based attacks.

Rending - Attack the body. Cannot penetrate Shield.

Corruption - Erode the core element

True Death - Lay that which is not living to rest

Translucent - Move through unaffiliated mana with lower loss

Prismatic - Split affiliated magic into its components

Defensive Elemental Attunement - Disperse an attack with its own element

Sweetfire Purge - Burn away negative effects with sweetfire

Breezy - Move the air in a controlled fashion

Pulse - Expend mana in a cohesive clump that may be directed

Elementally Enhanced - Imbue all effects with a particular element that synergizes with itself

That was all of the items Sopha used Item Manifestation on, but it wasn’t all of the changes to Abilities. Like the Clarity Adornment, Sophia’s armor affected more than one Ability.

The second Ability it affected was one she probably should have expected. Her Arcane Scales became Armored in Arcane Scales.

Armored in Arcane Scales

You passively exude mana that reinforces your skin with magic-resistant scales. Your scales provide unparalleled defense against magical damage but require additional mana to aid them against other forms of damage. You may expend even more mana to manifest your scales in a secondary suit of scaled armor as a layered defense.

If she let them, the lower layer of scales would cover her entire body. Fortunately, it was fairly easy to limit the parts of the body that were and were not covered. It wasn’t fast to change; the scales took time and mana to form and once they were formed, they took time to dissipate after she cut off the mana that maintained them. It was a tradeoff she’d happily accept.

It let her have the face she knew as her own most of the time yet be more protected when she went to fight. It wouldn’t help if they were surprised, but that wasn’t exactly a big concern. She knew when she was going to delve and no one was trying to kidnap her while she was here.

The outer armor she could summon was the closest thing to a normal “Item Manifestation” she had. The armor looked exactly like the one that was destroyed by the Treasure turning it into an Ability and was just as good as that armor as well, which meant that she could actually double-dip on the Temperature Control, Defensive Elemental Attunement, and Sweetfire Purge if she was willing to spend the mana, though they could only apply to herself and her armor instead of anyone the way the Aural Plumes could.

Overall, it was a nice set of upgrades. None were going to directly increase her power; that came from the level upgrade and the extra Thread she spent to reinforce her Abilities to go with the upgrade. It was a very nice increase in flexibility, even if it did make the point that she was leaning into her ability to support others rather than deal with monsters herself.

The fact that she could project her Plumes over the Lifeweb was simply too powerful to ignore. It was going to help them a lot in the Event they needed to reach the fifth branch where Archon of Stone Issvako lived.

That did bring to light one large weakness: she didn’t have a way to make a psychic link herself even though her Abilities worked across one. Without Dav or the Lifeweb, she was limited to the area of her aura. That seemed large until she saw what she could do for a larger population if she could reach them all. Unfortunately, it was a weakness the Archons were notably unable to address; they had the Lifeweb. Those who wanted access to a psychic network usually worked to gain access, rather than creating items that allowed for separate team-based psychic links like the one Dav maintained.