Heart is the very basis of your character. Order defines you, forte distinguishes you, but heart is your purest, truest self. It is not, however, your soul. Heart is more open, and more overt. Souls are secret. Heart suggests your most basic nature. The philosopher Niul Rellistas first said that a vislae has three centers (no, four). He defined the heart as the vislae’s emotional core, while the order represents the intellectual core. Forte is the spiritual core. And of course, there is the secret soul. After choosing your order, you should select your heart from one of the four different types: Galants, Stoics, Empaths, and Ardents. There are also names, antiquated and awkward to today’s ears and rarely used. Galants were once called Flamehearts. Stoics were Stonehearts. Empaths were Wavehearts, and Ardents were Stormhearts. Few modern vislae think in terms of the classical elements outside their Sooth Deck card family associations, and so only occasionally think of heart in these terms.
To make things even more dynamic, some vislae use the older, more classical name, but drop the “heart” portion, simply calling themselves a flame, a stone, a wave, or a storm. Each individual heart’s section, below, has even more possible adjectives that a player can choose to fit an individual character. Players should call their heart what they wish.
In this general section, we will use the basic names for simplicity’s sake. Heart is emotion and one’s emotional core that (among other things) defines how to react to other people or outside stimuli. If there are four hearts, each represents a quadrant on a coordinate grid measuring extroverted/introverted nature and impulsive/thoughtful nature. A Galant is extroverted/impulsive, a Stoic is introverted/ thoughtful, an Empath is extroverted/thoughtful and an Ardent is introverted/impulsive. Of course, every individual is different and reflects their own personal heart in different ways.
Each heart is tied not only to one of the classical elements but also to a family of cards in the Sooth Deck. Thus, Galants (Flamehearts) are tied to Secrets, Stoics (Stonehearts) to Mysteries, Empaths (Wavehearts) to Visions, and Ardents (Stormhearts) to Notions. This, then, directly ties them to a particular animal and an object because each card family has animal and object correlations as well. This affinity is only rarely more than superficial, but for some, such a connection can take on a more profound meaning. A Stoic living in a gallery of mirrors or an Ardent with a multitude of cats is certainly not unheard of.
Heart determines your starting stat values and grants you a pair of skills.
After you choose your heart, you take the base stat values provided and put them into both the core and refined values of each stat. Then, add 6 additional points to any of those four values as you see fit. Let’s say a Galant who starts with Certes 9, Qualia 8 adds 3 points to Certes and 3 to Qualia. This means Certes will be 12, and Qualia 11. Later, as the character advances, she will gain more points to divide among her stats.
Because each card family in the Sooth Deck has ties to each element, and thus each heart, turned cards affect characters differently based on their heart. When a card is turned, characters whose heart is associated with the card’s family gains a +1 bonus to all actions as long as that card is in play (the exception being Apprentice cards, which give a −1 penalty to characters associated with the family).
Although it’s possible to describe anyone in terms of their appropriate heart (hotheads are ardents, careful thinkers are Stoics, and so on), only vislae talk about heart in this way. It’s an insight into how vislae see the world, and how people interact with the (often unseen) magical world.
There is no reason that characters of different hearts can’t get along and be best friends, lifelong companions, or lovers. In fact, it’s easy to see how each could complement the others, with the various strengths of one making up for the weaknesses of another.
The differences between two hearts are not unlike those between two people who scored differently on a personality test. There also is no familial relationship between two different hearts. An Ardent father and a Stoic mother are as likely to have an Empath child as any of the other hearts.
Ultimately, then, the four hearts are fairly simplistic categories with somewhat esoteric significances, but the significances are still real. The more one delves into the magical currents, spellcraft, and other mystical pursuits, the more one sees the importance of each heart. Some rituals, for example, require performers of different hearts. Some objects of power or ephemera react differently to those of different hearts. A wise and powerful vislae is always going to keep their own heart in mind, always aware of how it can affect the magic around them.