Spells

OVERVIEW

Before the Fall, demons wielded great spiritual power as the gift of the God Machine. Everything that the God Machine is able to grant, however, is due to existing laws and metaphysical subroutines of the world. If an angel can fly, it is because the God Machine long ago built some law into reality allowing it. Over the eons, these laws have grown exponentially more complex than any living soul can hope to express. Arcane rules and precepts converge at strange nexuses, allowing mystical energies to pool and gather. Various supernatural forces make use of these laws, normally without ever understanding that the God Machine had any part in it or even exists.

When a demon Falls, they give up their intuitive understanding of the God Machine's laws. They can no longer call upon Numina and must find other ways of expressing supernatural ability. This is part of the reason why demons manipulate Aether instead of Essence. What the demon can do, however, is call upon the preexisting mystical pathways and laws that they remember from their time as an angel. By exploiting this knowledge, they are effectively using "back doors" into reality, changing it in subtle ways. An angel does this to facilitate its mission. A demon does it to follow their Agenda.

These memories are called Etudes and Cadenzas.

ETUDES

As escaped servants of the God Machine, demons often favor the subtle pressure of Etudes. These shortcuts in reality allow a user to achieve impressive feats with minimal risk of compromise and at no measurable cost. They never require Aether, and the time it takes to bring an Etude into play is negligible. For a user who knows Knockout, the ability to quickly incapacitate targets is as much a part of them as the teeth in their mouth and the nails on their fingers. Although it isn’t foolproof, they can wield it as much or as little as they wish.

DESIGN PRINCIPLES

NO COST: Etudes are free. They don’t cost Willpower - and recently, the Symphonic populace has noticed that they no longer cost Aether, either
QUICK: Etudes are always reflexive or instant actions.
DICE POOL: Since they rely on careful manipulation of natural and supernatural laws, Etudes always use a Finesse Attribute (Dexterity, Wits and Manipulation) + a Skill (any type). Unskilled penalties do not apply.
TRYING AGAIN: Most of the time, if a user fails an Etudes roll, they can try again with a cumulative -1 penalty for each successive attempt. This penalty doesn’t apply in situations that are fluid enough to change second by second (such as combat).
COMPROMISE: Etudes do not usually risk Cover for demons; they are not overt supernatural manifestations of power. However, some Etudes, especially those that tap into the God Machine’s workings on a direct level (such as Read Score) might force a roll to avoid breaking Cover, or Compromise where pactholders are concerned. Dramatic failures often do too.

"For there is a musicke where-ever there is a harmony, order or proportion; and thus farre we may maintain the musick of the spheres; for those well ordered motions, and regular paces, though they give no sound unto the eare, yet to the understanding they strike a note most full of harmony." - Browne, Thomas (1643). Religio Medici. Part 2, section 9

NOTE:

While the term for powers of the Symphony are called spells as colloquial shorthand, in reality, Etudes (and Cadenzas) are not "spells". The neural pathways are already in place for a demon and the muscle memory is there, it's just a matter of training the body to reactivate these things.
For pactholders, it is a matter of drawing upon their demon’s knowledge, as well as human study and intuition.

An Etude is a rule or natural law already hard-coded into the workings of the world that a demon or pactholder can tap for a specific effect. For a mundane example, consider a child who knows of a loose board in a neighbor’s fence. He can move the board, take a shortcut through the neighbor’s yard, and save himself the time of running around the block. Anyone could do that, provided they have the same knowledge the child does (that is, that the board is loose) and that they can fit through the opening thus created.

Etudes work much the same way. Any demon can learn any Etude. The demon simply has to remember that the groundwork is there. As angels, all servants of the God Machine are aware of these pathways, but they make use of them differently. Angels do not make conscious effort to use Etudes, they are able to do so simply as part of their missions. Going back to the example of the loose board in the fence, consider a dog or a cat that simply noses the board aside to get through. The animal doesn’t think of the fence as a barrier or the loose board as an anomaly; for all it knows, that loose board was put there specifically to allow it passage. When a demon falls, they lose this instinctive, subconscious understanding of the world and must relearn these supernatural secrets. When they do, they are able to use Etudes in specific ways.

Angels have different capabilities based on their missions. An angel doesn't normally think to question whether it can make use of mystical subroutines that it hasn’t specifically been instructed to use, both because most angels don’t question their missions and because, again, these subroutines aren’t something that angels generally think about. That said, an angel that does start to consider these subroutines — thinking about the framework of reality, rather than just using it — might be getting close to falling. Once an angel does fall, they find that certain types of Etudes are easier to remember than others, depending on their Incarnation.

THE SPHERES

Etudes fall into one of four categories, roughly corresponding to branches of the musica universalis, also called the "music of the spheres". The Music of the Spheres is a metaphysical concept, which states that the "tones" created by the motion of celestial bodies can be seen as music and expressed as mathematical relationships, using numbers, shapes and sounds, all following a divine pattern of proportion. The "music", then, was the imperceptible system that guided the cosmos. Some demons with a bent for Medieval or Classical philosophy refer to the God Machine's mystical subroutines as the "music of the spheres".

LEARNING ETUDES

Etudes are not learned from musty tomes, nor do mysterious entities impart them upon the worthy. Mastering an Etude is more like learning a new acrobatic trick or mathematical principle. One can stumble onto the knowledge by accident but it is uncommon. In most cases, the outcast must first know what can be done. Someone who has never seen anyone perform a somersault or cartwheel is unlikely to become an Olympic gymnast, and someone who has never had algebraic notation explained to them would have to reinvent the mathematics of the last several centuries in order to perform calculus. In the same way, a demon seldom stumbles onto an Etude.
Once someone understands the possibilities, they must then discover the method by which ordinary natural laws can be circumvented. Books are a poor source of such information because what an outcast does to activate an Etude cannot be translated into human language — as beyond mortal comprehension as ancient history is beyond a dog’s. Some Unchained have invented metaphors to describe the process of achieving these feats of arcane science indirectly, but in the end they are only metaphors.
Demons and pactholders can teach Etudes to each other, but largely do so by example and imitation. Although these abilities adhere to the laws of arcane physics, even if the Unchained knew the principles on which they operated (and they don’t), theory knowledge would be of little use in mastering Etudes. Too much of the process of slipping through gaps in the natural laws is a matter of doing rather than knowing. A teaching session among the Symphony is closer to a group of skateboarders in an empty lot.

Musica Universalis Further Reading »

CACOPHONY

The Etudes of chaos, violence and disharmony. Their concepts are destruction, renewal and entropy. Obviously, they are the purview of the Destroyers.

Cacophony Etudes allow for selective, targeted destruction. The user carefully chooses their focus and then introduces chaos, changing variables in the background equations of reality just enough to throw things out of balance ... or to enable them to kill with surgical precision.

Cacophony Etudes all allow a user to “destroy” ideas, causing doubt or inaction in the face of crisis. They can change entropy, making a situation more or less chaotic. And, while not all Destroyers want to admit it, destruction is part of a cycle that leads to renewal. Cacophony Etudes are therefore tied to that renewal, and demons that study them can make use of that.

INSTRUMENTAL

These Etudes allow the demon to affect material objects and machines. They affect timing, precision and utility. Guardians have an affinity for them.

As angels, Guardians had to be intimately aware of their surroundings, of the materials composing everything in their vicinity, and what effect those might have on their charges. As demons, they keep that highly analytical mindset, allowing them to make best use of the resources at their disposal.

On the abstract level, Instrumental Etudes allow the user to perceive and twist the passage of time. The user can change expressions of precision, making their own efforts surgical and meticulous or making someone else’s laughably vague. Finally, the user can alter the nature of utility, making all of a target’s possessions useless, even for their intended purposes

VOCAL

Demons use these Etudes to exert influence over people and other thinking beings. Conceptually, they relate to communication, revelation and realization. Messengers make easiest use of Vocal Etudes.

Vocal Etudes allow a demon to exert influence over thinking beings. Cognition level is fluid; some Messengers report that, in their angelic lives, they were instructed to give realizations to dogs or cats that their masters needed immediate assistance (or distraction). For users, then, Vocal Etudes provide a way to make contact and change the tenor of an interaction.

These Etudes allow influence of the concept of communication. In some ways this makes them the most powerful Etudes, because the whole of human civilization is based upon communication. Vocal Etudes also encompass the concepts of revelation and realization, which are two sides of a coin. The user reveals and the target realizes, but either of those occurrences is subject to manipulation ... which means enemies of a demon who studies these Etudes can’t trust what they see or what they learn.

MUNDANE

These Etudes help a demon stay unnoticed and incognito. Conceptually, they deal with the notions of concealing, obfuscation and forgetting. Psychopomps find these powers easier to learn.

Can the power of a fallen angel truly be “mundane?” A user that truly understands the nature of Etudes would have to answer in the affirmative, for what allows Etudes but the fundamental nature of the universe, and what could be more mundane? That said, Mundane Etudes allow the user to fit in with the world a little better and let the user go about their business unnoticed by man or angel.

Conceptually, Mundane Etudes allow the user to capitalize on the fact that, to humans, a thing or a word can have multiple meanings. A “shot” can be a small, powerful drink of alcohol, an injection or an attempt to kill with a gun — and with the right application of a Mundane Etude, the demon can cloud which of those options is immediately relevant. In addition, these Etudes deal with the concept of forgetting, and many have reasons to make a witness forget — or be unable to forget.

CADENZAS

Every tool has an intended function, but virtually all can be employed to achieve something else entirely. Household chemicals can be mixed to create explosives. Life-saving medicines can be transformed into street drugs or deadly poisons. Just about anything small enough to lift can be wielded as an improvised weapon. A Cadenza is a distortion of an Etude’s intentions, a misuse or abuse of its principles. The result can be a raw and simple improvisations, the metaphysical equivalent of braining someone with a wrench or pipe, or carefully crafted and complex, if unexpected, applications of an Etude’s underlying principles on par with the genius of gifted human inventors.

DESIGN PRINCIPLES

AETHER COST: All Cadenzas costs at least 1 Aether; some cost multiple points of Aether or include a Willpower cost.
ACTIONS: Cadenzas can be instant, extended, or reflexive actions.
DICE POOL: Because Cadenza require raw power to initiate and control, their dice pools are composed of a Power Attribute (Strength, Intelligence or Presence) + a Skill + Resonance/Primum.
TRYING AGAIN: If a roll to activate a Cadenza fails, the user can usually try again next turn without a dice penalty. Any Aether costs, however, must be paid again.
COMPROMISE: All Cadenzas always cause Compromise, though the user may spend a point of Willpower to negate it.

In contrast to Etudes, Cadenzas are not subtle at all. While they use the same metaphysical subroutines as Etudes, they are not relearned or remembered abilities but rather gross applications of the knowledge that the user already has. If an Etude is a word, and a Leitmotif is a sentence, then an Cadenza is a shouted expletive. As such, Cadenzas are effective but run the risk of drawing attention. A Cadenza takes the knowledge imparted by an Etude and uses it to better, or at least more dramatic, effect. Unlike Etudes, though, Cadenzas are obvious and flamboyant, and therefore a Compromise risk.

A Cadenza relies on a demon’s knowledge of the world’s metaphysical subroutines, just like Etudes, but instead of gently applying this knowledge, the user forces Aether into the system, overcharging it and directing the result. While learning to use an Etude is a matter of re-acquiring knowledge that the demon had as an angel, learning to use an Cadenza is more a matter of application. Angels therefore do not use Cadenza — even their more grandiose powers are perfectly in line with their missions and therefore the parameters laid down by the God Machine. An angel that decides to emulate a demon, pushing energy through the world’s mystical framework just to see what will happen, is probably on the verge of Falling.

Learning a given Cadenza requires that the user has the knowledge base to do so. For example, in order to learn the Hellfire Cadenza, the user needs to understand how the subroutines work with regards to firearms. This means that the user needs to know an Etude such as Misfire. Each Cadenza lists potential prerequisite Etudes, but the user need not know them all in order to learn the Cadenza.

LEARNING CADENZAS

Although some Symphonic denizens develop Cadenzas after careful thought, others find the knowledge comes in a flash of inspiration at a critical moment. Each relies on the user's familiarity with a relevant Etude, but beyond that they are remarkably easy to figure out.

NOTE:

Cadenzas do not fall into categories the way Etudes do, nor do they require conceptual underpinnings. They rely on the user forcing the mystical power of Aether into the same subroutines that allow Etudes, and then keeping that burst of power under control. They are more overtly powerful than Etudes, but they draw attention.

LEITMOTIFS

The road to Hell is long and complex, with few guide stones along the way. To a large extent, it’s based on faith and nothing more, but the belief in Hell is nearly universal among the Symphony. Hidden on the way to the depths are signs and omens, a faint trail, a silvery line connecting here to there. It’s all but imperceptible and requires a great deal of luck and devotion to truly understand. This trail is the Verses, or Leitmotif Verses. Some are lucky and can build upon it. Some never progress through it at all. Many see this moment of revelation as the halfway mark to Hell. It’s always sudden, always different than expected, and it always either affirms the seeker’s path or subtly refocuses it.

DESIGN PRINCIPLES

AETHER COST: All Leitmotifs costs at least 1 Aether, though more advanced Leitmotifs are bound to cost more; some may include a additional Willpower costs in their effects.
ACTIONS: Leitmotifs can be instant, extended, or reflexive actions.
DICE POOL: Because of the wide range of effects Leitmotifs encompass, they can be composed of Power or Finesse attributes.
TRYING AGAIN: If a roll to activate a Leitmotif fails, the user can usually try again next turn without a dice penalty. Any Aether costs, however, must be paid again.
COMPROMISE: Leitmotifs can be used up to [Resonance] + 1 Times in a scene before incurring Compromise.

Leitmotifs are personal, and directly tied to their user’s Title either directly or in subtle ways. A given set of Leitmotif Verses might include any number of effects, some of which may synchronize together purposefully, remain standalone, or even change completely over time with their wielder's subconscious shifts in various Symphonic fields.

While the Symphony doesn't regard Etudes as anything more remarkable than grade school chemistry or physics, many develop a deep mysticism regarding their Leitmotif Verses. The fact that no two demons or pactholders have the same Verse, and that even those with similar Verses do not develop them identically, is not lost on them. Some claim that Leitmotifs hold some connection to the Descent — a secret that will help lead them to Hell, or at least to a better understanding of how to achieve it. Others insist that it is nothing so mysterious. Mechanically minded outcasts of this bent liken it to the process of combining simple machines into a more complex device and snort derisively at those who cloak the Verses in superstition. If an Etude is a word, In the same way, Verses are nothing more to them than sentences strung together in the right order and attached to a compatible chassis (the user).

A few maintain that a complete set of Leitmotif Verses contains a truth about arcane physics not yet known to the God Machine — knowledge Inquisitors believe It covets and Integrators hope they can give their creator as a peace offering. This thinking is further believed, due to claims that those who come into a complete set of five Verses capture the attention of the God Machine directly as long as they have them.

LEARNING LEITMOTIFS

The only way to discover the Verses is to advance in Resonance, or Primum. For a demon, it is a matter of adapting further into one’s Fall, self actualizing, and growing deeper within their integration of reality. For a pactholder it is far different, and at times much harder, as one learns to reconcile harmonizing with their demonic passenger on a spiritual and metaphysical level, with their own road of self discovery and makeshift Descent.

RESONANCE LEVELS:

1 - VERSE 13 - VERSE 25 - VERSE 37 - VERSE 410 - VERSE 5

ACTUALIZATION

When a demon or pactholder comes into one of these specialized powers, some claim to undergo a transcendental, life-altering moment of awareness. This might be blissful, or it could be so shocking that the individual withdraws from all contact with others for a week. In any case, when those of the Symphony learn a new Leitmotif, they never truly forget it — most find it far easier to return to the same level of Resonance or Primum once it has already been reached, and some claim it is due to the intimacy of being connected to ones Leitmotifs shrouded behind the veil of Primum and Resonance.

ACOUSTICS

Consider the natural laws of the universe as if they were an old wooden floor in a house. Over time, a resident of the house learns the gait of their household members by the way the wooden floor creaks in a specific way for each individual. A clue that this resident of the house uses to recognize who is approaching their room. Furthermore, the resident learns where to carefully step on the floor so as to not creak it at all and move silently around the house, if not at a slower pace. This same principle can be applied to Acoustics, an identifying signature unique to every individual within the Symphony that rings out whenever they impose their will upon the hard-coded laws of the universe.

Many theories exist about the nature of Acoustics, otherwise known as “spell sounds”, though the most popular school of thought is the assumption that Acoustics are the sounds of natural laws and metaphysical structure of the universe “bending”, not unlike the floorboard example.

When someone triggers a symphonic power, they are tapping into the inner workings of the world and bending them in a direction that benefits them. This creates a “sound”, but not one that requires hearing to sense. Instead, this “sound” manifests as a sort of sixth sense that demons, pactholders, stigmatics, and angels may pick up on. The “sound” that is generated is not one of mundane origin, nor is it’s true tone describable by anyone save for potentially the God Machine itself. This lack of being able to perceive such a thing causes Symphonic denizen’s processors to take in the tone and interpret it through the lens of perceivable, mundane sounds.

Each person bends laws in a different way, even if manipulating the same concepts. Two people using the same Etude will generate different Acoustics. One may cause a riff on an electric guitar, and another may herald the sound of thunder and rain. Acoustics can be interpreted as any conceivable sound, regardless if it is a traditional musical instrument, mechanical clicks, voices, or even animal calls. Two people may generate similar Acoustics, but with time and exposure one would be able to pick out the differences between them.

Acoustics have also been known to change over time, or even suddenly without warning, much in the same way as Leitmotifs might do. A pactholder is likely to inherit their passenger’s Acoustics in the beginning of their arrangement (for better or worse), though it's just as likely for them to adjust to their own style as they develop.

MUTING ACOUSTICS

Acoustics are both a blessing and a curse, as one’s enemies may grow accustomed to their signature and give themselves away whenever they attempt to use their powers. To combat this, the Symphony has developed a method of silencing the creaking of manipulated laws, typically referred to as “Muting” or “Silencing”. Much like the floorboard example, it can be compared to learning how and where to carefully and slowly step on an old wooden floor so that it remains quiet. This can be applied similarly to symphonic powers — one may apply a softer, more cautious touch in order to trigger their powers without a sound. Such a thing makes these powers more of a challenge to use successfully, but when it is the difference between life and death, people cannot complain. The Symphony is yet to devise a method of silencing the raucous noise generated by using Cadenzas, though some people have been known to be able to greatly decrease the radius of which it rings out.

Acoustic Resonance Mechanics »

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