List of Skills

This is a list of all **Skills** seen in Worth the Candle.

* **Air Magic 10, Currents:** In addition to your normal sense of air temperature, pressure, and composition, you are able to sense and manipulate the direction of air movement. This direction is subject to (and must act against) normal fluid dynamics and your normal range.

**Description:** Weak magic. Among other unknown uses, allows the user to suffocate people
**History:** Mentioned by Juniper as one of the only things that could still defeat him with maxxed out Still Magic. OP
### *Alchemy*

**Associated Stats:** at least one Mental
**Virtues**
* **Alchemy 10, Equivalent Exchange:** You instantly know the answer to any questions of stoichiometry.

**Description:** Just the game layer's name for "mundane" chemistry. although Aerb chemisty is more complicated thanks to the existence of magic. Reimer considered it fairly good, as long as you had other skills that synergised well and/or access to expensive magical materials. Chlorine triflouride was way beyond Juniper's skill level, but he was able to make and employ it anyway thanks to Earth knowledge.
**History:** Included in Juniper's character sheet to take advantage of his higher MEN as part of the Respec. By chapter 196, at the end of Book VIII**,** Juniper had reached 34 Alchemy as a result of his efforts creating chlorine triflouride to fight Onion. He was forced to sacrifice the skill for extra points to fight Perisev.
### *Analysis*

**Associated Stats:** at least one Mental, no Social stats
**Virtues**
* **Analysis 20,** **Flow State:** Allows you to enter into an analytical flow state, which temporarily doubles working memory with respect to the subject of analysis, halves the penalties for thirst, hunger, and exhaustion, and increases the chance of a Brilliant Insight by five percent per hour (compounding).
* **Combo Virtue: Narrow Expertise:** When you first obtain this virtue, determine a subject matter. When using skills within the subject matter, double your effective skill. When using untrained skills within your subject matter, treat your effective skill level as twenty. You retain your subject matter even if you lose this virtue, though you lose all bonuses until it is reacquired.

**Description:** Seemingly improves analytical thought.
**History:** Unlocked by Juniper while trying to figure out which of their enemies sold them out to the Abswifth and later to discern Fallatehr's actions and motivations. Moral Agency Tripartite Talks Included on Juniper's character sheet in the Respec to take advantage of his higher MEN, in part to take advantage of the synergy between Research, Analysis, and Logic, and quickly reached the soft cap of 20 via amateur training.
**Synergies:** Research, Analysis, and Logic form a trio with associated combo Virtues.
### *Appraisal*

**History:** Noted by Juniper as part of a group of potential utility/profession skills. In Which Juniper Stares At His Character Sheet, Again
### *Art*

**Associated Stats:** CHA,?
**Description:** Used in conjunction with skin magic, required to inscribe new tattoos.[*citation needed*]
**History:** Unlocked by Juniper while practicing Skin Magic with a tattoo gun. Plot Relevant Juniper lowered the skill as a test to see what would happen, but it proved useless because Fenn was sharing her own moderate skill at Art with him via Symbiosis. Juniper later removed the skill from his Character Sheet, deeming it flavor, not utility. In Which Juniper Stares At His Character Sheet, Again
### *Athletics*

**Associated Stats:** at least one Physical
**Virtues**
* **Athletics 20, Long Distance Runner:** For the purposes of calculating fatigue, you may consider your pace three categories slower than it is, to a minimum of “Standing Still”. Eliminates the penalty for performing unskilled actions while running.

**Description:** Improves stamina, speed and posture while running or walking briskly. [2]
**History:** Unlocked by Juniper while running away from Zombies. Taking the Fall Leveled up to 15 while preparing for the trek to Caer Laga. Later unlocked Long Distance Runner while escaping Larkspur. Desert Course Strategic Reserves One of Fenn' skills, which got considerably boosted as the story progressed via Twinned Souls.
### *Blood Magic*

**Associated Stats:** at least one Mental
**Virtues**
* **Blood Magic 20, Hypertension:** Doubles blood volume and (as a consequence) increases blood pressure. Eliminates the penalties for high blood pressure. Allows conscious and subconscious control of blood pressure.
* **Blood Magic 40, Flow Control:**  Your blood is now configured into a 'blood mass' which you can independently control, with every drop of blood controllable so long as it's part of the contiguous blood mass. Connection to your blood does not decay so long as it's a part of the blood mass, no matter how far from your body it is. This virtue does not grant you extra power to control your blood, except as provided by the lack of connection decay.
**Synergies:** Vibration magic can help Blood Mages by manipulating their heartbeat. Many Blood Mages learn climbing, dancing and music because they have some overlap (in terms of agility, rhythm and bodily awareness.)

### *Bone Magic*

**Associated Stats:** KNO, something Mental
### *Bows*

**Associated Stats:** ???, WIS

**Virtues**
* **Bows 20, Steady Aim:**  Completely eliminates the penalty for firing a bow while moving. Halves the penalty for firing a bow under pressure or duress. Triples the amount of time you can hold a bow at maximum draw.

**Description:** Improves skill with bows.
**History:** Unlocked by Juniper after touching Fenn's bow. Montage! As one of Fenn's highest skills, she granted Juniper middling skill with it regardless of his stats through Symbiosis. Used on several occasions as an easily leveled up skill to drain with Soul Slip. The Mouth of a Long River The Veil of the World
### *Carapace Magic*

**Description:** Seemingly the counterpart to Skin Magic for species with carapaces.
**History:** Mentioned in Essentialism's virtues. The Princess and the Pea
### *Climbing*

**Description:** Presumably increases the user's ability to climb.
**History:** One of Amaryllis' skills, which got considerably boosted as the story progressed via Twinned Souls. By Ch 155, her Climbing skill had increased to the point where Juniper's bonus from Symbiosis - half her skill - was in the 30s. This made it arguably his single highest skill, even though he didn't have the Climbing skill on his character sheet.
### *Comedy*

**Virtues**
* **Comedy 10, Class Clown:** You may increase the speed of your wit at the expense of its comedic efficiency, up to double your base wit and half your base comedic efficiency. Take half as much damage from physical humor, so long as it’s actually funny.

**Description:** Improves comedic skills, including sarcasm and wit.
**History:** Unlocked by Juniper while speaking to Amaryllis for the first time. Solely Responsible
### *Dancing*

**Description:** Improves dancing ability.
**History:** Seemingly one of the skills Amaryllis shares with June with Symbiosis; she trained in music and dance as part of her Blood Magic training, because it helps people get in tune with the the rhythm of their heartbeat. Thanks to Twinned Souls, she estimated her Dancing skill was in the 30s as of Ch 140.
### *Debate*

**Associated Stats:** KNO, CHA
**Virtues**
* **Debate 10, Shifting Sands:** Removes the penalty for reframing facts and figures in the middle of a debate, so long as all raw information was memorized beforehand.

**Description:** Improves Juniper's ability to win debates. Catered toward structured debates with two sides and facts and figures assembled.
**History:** Unlocked by Juniper while justifying his decisions regarding the rearrangement of his Character Sheet. The Long Night
### *Deception*

**Associated Stats:** POI (joint primary stat - lying), ?
**Description:** Gestalt of Lying and Stealth. Improves Juniper's ability to deceive others through speech or actions, as well as his stealth.
**History:** Though Gestalting is excluded, Juniper was able to unlock the (already Gestalted) skill while trying to be stealthy. Thickenings The game layer later forced Juniper to divide the skill into Lying and Stealth while committing the changes to his soul. In Which Juniper Stares At His Character Sheet, Again
### *Dodge*

**Associated Stats:** at least one Physical, INS
**Virtues**
* **Dodge 20, Thaumic Dodger:** Eliminates the penalty for dodging magic, magical effects, entads, entad effects, and any supplemental physics which would appear magical to The Layman.
* **Dodge 40, Lightfoot:** When dodging, if it is necessary to move in order to dodge, you may move, even if you would not otherwise have the time or speed to do so. You are limited to your normal movement speed for any given dodge.
* **Dodge 60, Retroactive Avoidance:** If some unknown or seemingly innocuous effect hits you and is revealed to be harmful within five minutes of the hit, you may retroactively decide to attempt to have dodged it, altering reality with no trace or memory other than the knowledge this virtue was invoked.
* **Dodge 80, Displacement:** When you successfully dodge, you can designate someone or something else as the target, so long as they are not the attacker or source of the effect you are dodging. The attack is made against them as though they were standing in your place. If successful, reality will be altered such that the attack was always against the target for redirection. Such an attack must be possible: if it is not, the dodged attack is simply dodged.
* **Dodge 100, Star Body:** Your dodges can transcend space and even time. No dodge is strictly impossible. The maximum cumulative penalty to any dodge cannot make any dodge worse than a 50% chance.

**Description:** Improves Juniper's chance to dodge attacks.
**History:** Unlocked by Juniper while dodging a Zombie's attack. Thickenings
### *Dual Wield*

**Associated Stats:** at least one Physical
**Virtues**
* **Dual Wield 10, Ambidexterity:** You no longer have a dominant hand. Removes the penalty for attacking with an off-hand, because you don’t have an off-hand anymore. You have no natural preference for which hand to use.

**Description:** Improves Juniper's fighting ability while using both hands.
**History:** Unlocked by Juniper while holding a pistol in each hand, just to see how it felt. Reaver
### *Engineering*

**Associated Stats:** CUN, some other Mental stat
**Virtues**
* **Engineering 10, Material Analysis:** Allows you to see weak points in materials, to within the first order of sensorium expansion. No visible effect, possibly disabled by Verisim Mode.
* **Engineering 30, Runtime Analysis:** Without actually running or using a piece of equipment or structure, you can make a number of determinations about how it would perform. These analyses include, but are not limited to: revolutions per minute, energy efficiency, carrying capacity, lift, thrust, wattage, and thaums. You must be able to adequately sense the equipment or structure in use to make these determinations, to within one degree of reasonableness.

**Description:** Improves Juniper's ability to build stuff.
**History:** Unlocked while crafting a sled to drag Amaryllis through the desert. Desert Course Later used to craft a rocket glider to escape Caer Laga. Rocket Man
### *Essentialism*

**Associated Stats:** WIS, KNO[*citation needed*]
**Virtues**
* **Essentialism 20,** **Soul Slip:** Allows you to make new modifications and alterations within the soul. Allows you to alter that which had been unalterable.
* **Essentialism 40, Soul Sight:** Grants a visual representation of souls, each with a unique color, which can be distinguished with acuity beyond the limits of the eye. Applies to both the soul and any magic which interfaces with a soul in some meaningful way.
* **Essentialism 60, Soul Saturation:** Knowledge of your soul allows it to fully suffuse you, giving a number of benefits to a wide variety of magic. Your blood works as an infusion for the purposes of pustule magic. You can use your blood as though it were magical ink (4ζ/mL) for the purposes of ink magic. Your bones are considered wood for the purposes of wood magic. Required connective power for plants is reduced by half. You may retract your soul from your extremities for the purposes of bypassing wards. Any magic items or magics which limit projection or application to your eyes, hands, feet, or mouth, can instead be projected or applied from any part of your body. Your skin and/or carapace is treated as though it were skin and/or carapace for the purposes of skin magic and carapace magic, whichever is more beneficial. Runes may be written on your skin as though it were prepared vellum. More benefits apply in specific exclusion zones: consult the manual for more detail.
* **Essentialism 80, Soul Scaphism:** You can carve out parts of other people to use for your own purposes. Any benefits are temporary; any costs are permanent.
* **Essentialism 100, Soul Symbiote:** Double your effective skill in Bone Magic, Blood Magic, Skin Magic, Carapace Magic, Pustule Magic, and the flower magic aspect of Horticulture, up to a cap of 75. Double your effective connection to any magical item which interfaces with your soul, unless doing so has associated maluses. Increase your skill with any specialty or subschool of magic that uses the soul by 20 points, up to a cap of 50.

**Description:** Also known as soul magic, allows Juniper to see and edit people's Souls (including his own) through physical contact or through Companion bonds, if they're high enough. Modifications range from stats to personal values to appearance, though values will drift to their starting point after some time has passed. Allows Juniper to rearrange his Character Sheet and swap in skills from the full list every few levels. After Soul Slip, allows Juniper to move skill points around, (at a price) and a limited number of stat points.
**History:** Taught to Juniper by Fallatehr Whiteshell after his rescue from the Amoureux Penitentiary on Sulid Isle. The Chemical History of a Candle
### *Fire Magic*

**Description:** Has a 1% chance to be unlocked when burned alive. Unknown use.
**History:** One of the skills considered by Juniper during downtime at the Isle of Poran. The One-Hand Warder
### *Flattery*

**Virtues**
* **Flattery 10, Silver Tongue:** Reduces the penalty for insincere flattery by twenty-five percent. When flattering in a language you are not fluent in, your penalty is halved. When flattering a group, the Forer effect is doubled.

**Description:** Improves ability to flatter other people.
**History:** Unlocked by Juniper while praising Fenn's bow. A Winding Course As of Ch 172, Juniper was getting an effective skill of 20+ from Symbiosis; in part for this reason, it was dropped from his own character sheet along with his other social skills.
### *Foraging*

**History:** Noted by Juniper as part of a group of potential arts-and-crafts skills usually taken for roleplaying purposes. In Which Juniper Stares At His Character Sheet, Again
### *Forgery*

**Description:** One of the skills possessed by Fenn. Increases the ability to forge documents.
**History:** Used by Fenn to forge the papers required to board the Lion's Tail. Aboard the Lion's Tail
### *Gem Magic*

**Associated Stats:** at least one Mental
**Virtues**
* **Gem Magic 10, Gem Appraisal:**  Two minutes of close examination of a gem allows you to determine its carat, color, cut, and clarity of a gemstone, to within 1% of the actual values. If you have specialist tools available, this examination takes thirty seconds instead.
* **Gem Magic 30, In The Rough:** Uncut gems may be used as though they were cut, with the number, shape, and symmetry of the facets determined by you at time of use. When you hold an uncut gem, you are aware of all the ways in which it could be cut.
* **Gem Magic 50, Fractured Brilliance:** You are no longer constrained by the gem for the purposes of determining number of projectiles. Instead, when you use a gem, you may choose to emit any number of projectiles with their properties as determined by the gems, with mental strain proportional to the number of projectiles. Similarly, you can elect to use a gem at lower power with lower strain.

**Description:** Requires the use of gemstones, each color causing a different offensive effect (for example, pure blue sapphires emit fifty homing projectiles in a spread of 180 degrees, while pure red gems merely emit force). Intuits targets automatically without the user's input or awareness.  Increases a Mental Exhaustion meter, which when filled drains the user's ability to concentrate or use the magic again.[*citation needed*]
**Synergies:** Optics is known to have synergies with Gem Magic. Vibration Magic of a level where they can manipulate light has applications involving the kinetic light of Gem Magic.
**History:** Unlocked by Juniper after reading The Commoner's Guide to Gem Magic. Plot Relevant Later used to slay a multitude of Tuung during the descent to Kuum Doona. Down and Out
### *Heavy Armor*

**Virtues**
* **Heavy Armor 20, Thaumic Defense:** When wearing heavy armor, add half your skill to any defense rolls made to defend against magical attacks, attacks using magical effects, entad attacks, or attacks using entad effects, even when this is unreasonable.
* **Heavy Armor 40, Solid Craftsmanship:** Your heavy armor is considered twice as dense, twice as hard, and twice as durable, where such properties would be beneficial. Your heavy armor has no weak spots, though it may still have the usual gaps in its defense. Embellishments and ornamentation on your heavy armor never count against you.
* **Heavy Armor 60, Immovable Rock:** While wearing heavy armor, you are able to resist ninety percent of forced movement. Missiles which impact your heavy armor do not impart any momentum, so long as they do no damage. You do not take fall damage while wearing heavy armor.
* **Heavy Armor 80, Adaptable Armor:** You do not suffer any penalties for wearing heavy armor meant for another species. All heavy armor resizes and refits to your body, even if it would not naturally do so.
* **Heavy Armor 100, Armor Synthesis:** You do not suffer any penalties whatsoever for wearing any heavy armor. Heavy armor you wear is inviolable.

**Description:** Improves the effects of wearing what the Game Layer considers Heavy Armor.
**History:** Added by Juniper during the rearrangement of his Character Sheet to provide survivability. In Which Juniper Stares At His Character Sheet, Again
### *Horticulture*

**Virtues**
* **Horticulture 20, Green Thumb:** When you roll on the plant health chart, reroll any result lower than half your Horticulture. This reroll is done before modifiers are applied. If subsequent rolls are also lower than half your Horticulture, continue rerolling until you obtain a result higher than half your Horticulture, or until the roll history suffers from buffer overflow.

**Description:** Also known as flower magic. Establishes some kind of empathic link between the user and the seeds they plant and nurture. Once a plant has grown, each of its buds can be used to cause somewhat unpredictable effects.[*citation needed*]
**History:** Unlocked by Juniper after foraging some plants for him and Amaryllis to eat. Twenty Questions Later properly taught to Juniper by Oorang Solace. A Tiptoe Through the Tulips
### *Improvised Weapons*

**Associated Stats:** at least one Physical
**Virtues**
* **Improvised Weapons 10, Structural Assessment:** You can hold improvised weapons in such a way that they’re three times less likely to break, to within one degree of reasonableness. Halves reduced durability maluses from all weapons.

**Description:** Improves the ability to wield improvised weaponry.
**History:** Unlocked by Juniper after using a greeting card rack as a weapon. Taking the Fall
### *Ink Magic*

**Associated Stats:** at least one Mental
**Description:** Allows the user to create unique magic items, similar to entads but weaker and temporary, from thin air based on their creativity. Creating items with Ink Magic is moderately time consuming. The items created are called ‘neks’ colloquially or ‘monads’ formally; Juniper nicknamed them 'inktads'. The more creative the concept for the item, the more powerful it can be (up to a limit set by skill and ink potency), and the longer it will last; sufficiently boring, straightforward items may not function at all.
Ink magic requires consuming magical inks. It's possible to neutralize an Ink Mage by pumping their stomach for ink. Each ink is a "color" in the Ink Mage's "palette", representing a broad theme, concept, or prompt. More powerful inks increase the maximum potential power (i-factor) of their creations, but don't offer any benefit to an unskilled practitioner, only increase the ceiling.
**Synergies:** Part of a "construction cluster" with associated Combo Virtues that includes Rune Magic, Star Magic, Steel Magic, and Ink Magic, possibly others.
**History:** Mentioned in Essentialism's virtues. In Which Juniper Stares At His Character Sheet, Again Unlocked by Juniper as part of the Respec.Respec Although his results were outclassed by real entads, he used it to equip numerous Tuung guards, to equip himself when stripped of gear on an Anglecynn black site, and to create a backup weapon in Alvion's Vambrace. He tried to use it to create a counter for Shia LaBeouf but was unable to think of one creative enough in time. He spent a lot of time preparing specialized magic items for the Doris Finch and Necrolaborum Exclusion Zones, none of which proved useful. Juniper wrote extensive notes on his approach to Ink Magic, magic items, and creativity.
**Virtues**
* **Ink Magic 10, Burnout Resistance:** If you would suffer two or more levels of creative exhaustion, suffer one less instead. If any effect removes one or more levels of creative exhaustion, it removes one more than it normally would.

### *Intimidation*

**Description:** Improves Juniper's ability to intimidate an enemy.
**History:** Unlocked by Juniper on purpose by critically failing to intimidate Amaryllis. Twenty Questions Later used by Juniper to intimidate the tattoo mage Zeke into revealing the passphrase for Amaryllis' sabotaged tattoo. Fears
### *Language*

**Associated Stats:** KNO, CHA
**Description:** Improves Juniper's ability to learn languages, though it seemingly requires naturally reaching some fluency in a second language for the skill to get past level 1 and start working fully.Depths  Afterwards, massively increases the speed and efficiency of learning languages, with each level representing a language fully learned. Uskine Nervedah
**History:** Unlocked by Juniper while discussing Fenn with Grak in Groglir. Depths Later used to learn Kindeh at the Infinite Library. Uskine Nervedah
### *Leadership*

**History:** Noted by Juniper as part of a group of potential utility/profession skills. In Which Juniper Stares At His Character Sheet, Again
### *Library Magic*

**Associated Stats:** KNO, INS
**Virtues**
* **Library Magic 10, Open Book:** You gain an intuitive sense of all schema-relevant metrics in any book you handle.
* **Library Magic 30, Bookish Instinct:** Through focused meditation, you can learn the qualities of the book you’re looking for, so long as it exists within the library, and so long as the quality is part of the current schema. The more qualities of the book you know, the easier it is to learn more. If multiple books have the specified qualities, you will learn how many books there are with those qualities, and may meditate to distinguish them.

**Description:** Allows Juniper to develop an innate understanding of the Infinite Library's organization and schemas, helping him find specific books in it.
**History:** Unlocked and developed with the help of Raven at the Infinite Library. An Open Book
### *Light Armor*

**History:** Noted by Juniper as part of a handful of armor skills, but ignored in favor of Medium Armor, Heavy Armor and Unarmored. In Which Juniper Stares At His Character Sheet, Again
### *Livestock*

**History:** Never unlocked and eventually swapped out of Juniper's Character Sheet. In Which Juniper Stares At His Character Sheet, Again
### *Logic*

**Associated Stats:** something uner MEN; no social component
**Virtues**
* **Logic 20, Contradiction:** If anyone presents a logically inconsistent argument to you, or an argument which is inconsistent with the facts as you know them, you will instantly and firmly be aware of this, even if you do not remember the specifics.
* **Combo Virtue, Narrow Expertise:** When you first obtain this virtue, determine a subject matter. When using skills within the subject matter, double your effective skill. When using untrained skills within your subject matter, treat your effective skill level as twenty. You retain your subject matter even if you lose this virtue, though you lose all bonuses until it is reacquired. Juniper selected multi-magic combinations as his subject matter by reading a few books on the subject.

**Synergies:** Research, Analysis, and Logic form a trio with associated combo Virtues.
**History:** Added to Juniper's character sheet to take advantage of his higher MEN as part of the Respec, in part to take advantage of the synergy between Research, Analysis, and Logic, and quickly reached the soft cap of 20 via amateur training.
### *Logistics*

**Associated Stats:** something Mental
**History:** Noted by Juniper as part of a group of potential utility/profession skills. In Which Juniper Stares At His Character Sheet, Again Added to Juniper's character sheet to take advantage of his higher MEN as part of the Respec, and quickly reached the soft cap of 20 via amateur training.
### *Lying*

**Associated Stats:** POI (probably), ???
**Virtues**
* **Lying 10, Lesser Deceiver:** You will no longer forget the details of a lie, unless you wish to. Take half the usual self-consistency penalty when telling improvised lies.

**Description:** Improves Juniper's ability to lie without being caught.
**History:** Split from Deception after the rearrangement of Juniper's Character Sheet, serving the same social functions Deception did in the past. In Which Juniper Stares At His Character Sheet, Again Fenn shares half her score in this skill with Juniper via Symbiosis, making his score somewhat useless (her score in Lying, as of Ch 66, is in the mid-30s.)
### *Management*

**History:** Noted by Juniper as part of a group of potential utility/profession skills. In Which Juniper Stares At His Character Sheet, Again
### *Mathematics*

**Associated Stats:** something uner MEN
**Virtues**
* **Mathematics 10, Arithmetic:**  You can do simple arithmetic with two operands instantly and without thinking about it. You can count any number of objects instantly, so long as you can see them.

**History:** Noted by Juniper as part of a group of potential utility/profession skills. In Which Juniper Stares At His Character Sheet, Again Later theorized as a skill that might synergize with Library Magic. Schemata

### *Medicine*

**Virtues**
* **Medicine 10, Triage:**  When presented with multiple patients and/or multiple traumas, you will know the proper order to treat them in according to the metric of your choice (choose between quality-adjusted life-years, most people living, or their personal value to you).

**History:** Highly recommended by Amaryllis.  Immanentizing the Eschaton

### *Medium Armor*

**Virtues**
* **Medium Armor 10, Balanced Armor:** Your medium armor counts as heavy armor for obtaining the benefits of Heavy Armor virtues or bonuses, and light armor for obtaining the benefits of Light Armor virtues or bonuses. Afflictions and maluses are unaffected. It may count as light armor, medium armor, and heavy armor at the same time.

**Description:** Improves the effects of wearing what the Game Layer considers Medium Armor.
**History:** Added by Juniper during the rearrangement of his Character Sheet to provide survivability. In Which Juniper Stares At His Character Sheet, Again
### *Music*

**Associated Stats:** CHA, ?
**History:** Unlocked by Juniper by singing Blackbird while trying to unlock new skills. Juniper later removed the skill from his Character Sheet, deeming it flavor, not utility. In Which Juniper Stares At His Character Sheet, Again Seemingly one of the skills Amaryllis shares with June with Symbiosis; she trained in music and dance as part of her Blood Magic training, because it helps people get in tune with the the rhythm of their heartbeat.
### *One-handed Weapons*

**Associated Stats:** at least one Physical
**Virtues**
* **One-Handed Weapons 20, Monkey Grip:** Eliminates the penalty for using a weapon of a larger than usual size, to within one degree of reasonableness. This applies to N-handed weapons as well, so long as N >= 1.
* **One-Handed Weapons 40, Riposter:** When you successfully parry an attack using a one-handed weapon, you can immediately make an attack without the usual combat penalties, and in half the time the original attack took, if that’s faster than your normal attack.
* **One-Handed Weapons 60, Off-handed:** When wielding a one-handed weapon, using non-weapon items in your off-hand(s) can be done as easily as if you had both (or all) hands available, even when this is unreasonable. This applies to shields. For the purposes of this virtue, pistols and other one-handed ranged weapons are considered one-handed weapons.
* **One-Handed Weapons 80, Diamond Blade:** One-handed weapons you wield never break or dull, even if they would do so due to magic, magical effects, entads, or entad effects, though they may still suffer other conditions and effects. Your one-handed weapons do twice as much damage when they hit.
* **One-Handed Weapons 100, One With the Blade:** Using a one-handed weapon, including moving while using one, never fatigues you. While holding a one-handed weapon, you will not feel hunger, thirst, or the need to sleep, though you may still accrue afflictions. While in a fight where you are using a one-handed weapon, you do not suffer the maluses for any physical injuries sustained, even if they would otherwise be fatal (though these attacks still do damage, and you can still die by dropping to 0 HP).

**Description:** Improves Juniper's skill with one-handed weapons.
**History:** Unlocked by Juniper after holding a rusted machete. Taking the Fall
### *Optics*

**Virtues**
* **Optics 20, Clarity:** When you hold or touch, directly or indirectly, a lens or prism of any kind, you can alter its properties (e.g. altering focal point, concavity, refractive index, thickness). Any alterations you make will revert once you are no longer holding or touching the lens or prism. This includes biological lens, e.g. in the eye. Alterations must be physically possible.

**History:** Added to Juniper's character sheet to take advantage of a known synergy with Gem Magic as part of the Respec, and quickly reached the soft cap of 20 via amateur training.
### *Parry*

**Associated Stats:** SPD, INS
**Virtues**
* **Parry 20, Prescient Blade:** You take half the normal penalty to parry bullets, arrows, or other missile weapons. These attacks still do damage to your blade as normal.
* **Parry 40, Prophetic Blade:** For the purposes of parrying, any weapon you have accessible is considered drawn, even when it’s sheathed. This includes improvised weapons. You can parry even attacks that you are not aware of. Once parried, you are aware of them.
* **Parry 60, Mass Parry:** You suffer no penalties for parrying multiple projectiles or attacks, no matter how many of them there are or how many directions they’re coming from, no matter how unreasonable this would be.
* **Parry 80, Reflective Parry:** When you parry a projectile, you can redirect it back at the attacker or source. Use half your parry skill as the attack bonus. The redirected projectile travels at half the original speed.
* **Parry 100, Godly Deflection:** You no longer suffer size penalties for parrying projectiles, objects, or attacks. For the purposes of parrying, what you consider to be a projectile, object, or attack is expanded by two degrees of reasonableness. Parrying never damages your weapon.
* **Nascent Blade-bound (lvl 10 + Two-Handed Weapons lvl 10):** Unknown effect.
* **Neophyte Blade-bound (lvl 20 + Two-Handed Weapons lvl 20):** You have unlocked the ability to bond with a melee weapon, given a few minutes of meditation. You may only bond with one weapon at a time. When wielding a bonded weapon, double your effective skill with it, double your chance to parry, and you may cut with it as though it were twice as sharp.
* **Combo Virtue, Journeyman Blade-Bound:** You have double the effective attributes for the purposes of skills or checks related to using your bonded weapon. If your bonded weapon is a rate-limited entad, double its rate; otherwise, double the entad effects, if beneficial.
* **Combo Virtue, Master Blade-Bound:** While using your bound weapon, you gain a multiplier to speed equal to one twentieth your skill with it, to a maximum of five times faster. You can be one degree less reasonable when determining what you can do with your bonded weapon, including entad effects or properties, if it’s an entad.
* **Combo Virtue, Grandmaster Blade-Bound:** Your bonded weapon is infinitely sharp (unless it is sheathed). It is capable of cutting as though it were a two-dimensional plane for the purposes of friction, but as though it were any acute angle of blade for the purposes of separating cut material. Your bonded weapon can cut inviolable materials.

**Description:** Increases Juniper's ability to parry incoming attacks with a weapon.
**History:** Accidentally unlocked after Juniper's sword got in the way of a bullet. Reaver
### *Passion Magic*

**Associated Stats:** at least one Mental
**Virtues**
* **Passion Magic 20, Passionate:** You may split one complex emotion into two smaller ones for the purposes of passion magic expression. These can be used in tandem with the normal penalties for doing two things at once.

**Description:** A discipline of magic taught at Ink and Ardor, fallen out of favor in preference for more consistent magics. Wide spectrum of effects determined almost solely by the mood and emotion of the mage.
**History:** Learned about from the book Uskine Nervedah. Uskine Nervedah
### *Piloting*

**History:** Noted by Juniper as part of a group of potential transportation skills. In Which Juniper Stares At His Character Sheet, Again
### *Pistols*

**Associated Stats:** SPD, ?
**Description:** Improves Juniper's skill with pistols.
**History:** Unlocked by Juniper after being handed a weapon by Cypress. Solely Responsible
### *Pustule Magic*

**Description:** Allows the user to grow growths on their skin that cause a multitude of effects, from passively assisting in translation, to launching fireballs at enemies, and even regeneration from otherwise killing blows. [*citation needed*]
**Synergies:** The Essentialism 60 virtue *Soul Saturation* makes the Soul Mage's blood "*work [...] as an infusion for the purposes of pustule magic*", while the Spirit 70 virtue *Spirituality* improves the user's connections with their pustules*.*[*citation needed*]
**History:** Used against Juniper by pustule mages in the final battle against Larkspur and the descent into the Boundless Pit. Copse and Robbers Down and Out
### *Research*

**Associated Stats:** at least one Mental, no Social stats
**Virtues**
* **Research 10, Organizational Efficiency:** When you research anything, you are capable of holding in your head the location of all previous sorted or filed materials, so long as no one else has moved them. No special organizational schema is required for this, you simply know where everything is.
* **Combo Virtue, Narrow Expertise:** When you first obtain this virtue, determine a subject matter. When using skills within the subject matter, double your effective skill. When using untrained skills within your subject matter, treat your effective skill level as twenty. You retain your subject matter even if you lose this virtue, though you lose all bonuses until it is reacquired. Juniper selected multi-magic combinations as his subject matter by reading a few books on the subject.

**Synergies:** Research, Analysis, and Logic form a trio with associated combo Virtues.
**History:** Added to Juniper's character sheet to take advantage of his higher MEN as part of the Respec, in part to take advantage of the synergy between Research, Analysis, and Logic, and quickly reached the soft cap of 20 via amateur training.
### *Repair*

**Associated Stats:** something Mental,
**History:** Added to Juniper's character sheet to take advantage of his higher MEN as part of the Respec,
### *Revision Magic*

**Description:** Allows the user to reverse the flow of time and undo injuries and events, as well as breaking down objects into component parts. Requires being revised backwards by a year in order to get unlocked, including memories.
**History:** Learned about by Juniper from a book while in Silmar City. A Winding Course Aumann employed a revision mage to heal his injuries, Colwin Hearst, but he was ultimately stabbed through the head by Amaryllis, an injury he couldn't reverse back from. Tenth
### *Riding*

**History:** Noted by Juniper as part of a group of potential transportation skills. In Which Juniper Stares At His Character Sheet, Again
### *Rifles*

**Associated Stats:** CUN, ???
**Virtues**
* **Rifles 20, Compensator:** You automatically compensate for bullet drop and wind speed, even when gravitational constant, distance to target, wind speed, and wind direction are not known (or unknowable) to you. Halves the penalty for shooting at a moving target.

**Description:** Improves Juniper's ability to wield rifles.
**History:** Unlocked by Juniper after picking up a rifle shortly before getting on the Soulcycle for the first time. Cold Comfort
### *Romance*

**Description:** Seemingly improves Juniper's social skills when it comes to romantic endeavors.
**History:** Unlocked by Juniper after talking to Cypress for the first time. Thickenings
### *Rune Magic*

**Description:** Among other unknown uses, can be used to create wearable runes that absorb, store, and/or redirect energy, but they must be placed at proper points on custom equipment as part of a modular kit and will only work for that purpose. One of the most flexible magics; but it requires access to a Runeforge, time, and materials in order to craft the equipment; and the runes and parts will suffer from wear and tear or risk overloading the more energy is run through them.[*citation needed*] The Essentialism virtue Soul Saturation allows runes to be "*written on your skin as though it were prepared vellum*", which may suggest that rune mages have some kind of ability to scribe scrolls.[*speculation*] Importantly, the rune-encrusted spikes used to bottle souls are the product of rune magic; the only other method of keeping people from the Hells costs 100,000 obols and requires a week of advance notice.
Rune Magic is heavily regulated, in part to avoid risking the moral catastrophe of having soul bottling excluded.
**Synergies:** Synergizes extremely well with Still Magic and Star Magic. Rune mages tend to base their designs on pre-existing patterns, which limits the potential for multi-mages.Notes II Star Magic can empower a Rune Mage's constructs, both via the tension in an extradimensional space (which could in turn be reinforced with runework) and via portals to energy-rich planes such as the Plane of Fire. However, in practice combining the two is fairly rare, perhaps because the two fields are so different and few have the requisite knowledge of both. Part of a "construction cluster" with associated Combo Virtues: Rune Magic, Star Magic, Steel Magic, and Ink Magic, possibly others.
**History:** Harold's most recent attempt to end the world made use of rune magic, and took place at the Lexian runeforge. He was barely stopped by Uniquities in the middle of his ritual. Somehow used by Amaryllis in the Doomed Timeline to drop ten thousand pounds of antimatter onto Celestar's surface. Uskine Nervedah Mentioned in Oberlin's lecture about the natural enemies of Vibration magic. Good Vibrations Used by a mage in glowing rune armor, but instantly brought down by Juniper. Added to Juniper's character sheet as part of the first respec. RespecOn the Merits of Oblivion A rune mage attempted to use a powerful green beam weapon agaist Shia LaBeouf, but only succeeded in kiling Juniper and several others after Shia killed them, forcing Juniper to reset using unicorn magic. Finally unlocked by June bribing his way into a runeforge as an apprentice. He also figured out the secret of the rune bomb - converting energy into antimatter rather than matter, which can then generate more energy in a chain reaction. The armour he created was designed to convert incoming damage into light, either directly upwards or at an enemy.RuninationIn theory this allowed him to withstand immense amounts of damage, but not enough to handle Fel Seed. Rune Magic was excluded while Juniper was dead, after an antimatter rune bomb was dropped on Fel Seed to free his soul; prompting a last-ditch plan to rescue him from the Hells.
### *Sailing*

**History:** Noted by Juniper as part of a group of potential transportation skills. In Which Juniper Stares At His Character Sheet, Again
### *Shields*

**Virtues**
* **Shields 10, Bulwark:** Shields you hold are twice as durable. If a force acts on your shield to move you, you will move only half the usual distance, with the reduction capped at ten feet of movement negated.

**Description:** Improves the effects of using shields.
**History:** Added by Juniper during the rearrangement of his Character Sheet to provide survivability. In Which Juniper Stares At His Character Sheet, Again
### *Shotguns*

**History:** Never unlocked and eventually swapped out of Juniper's Character Sheet. In Which Juniper Stares At His Character Sheet, Again
### *Skin Magic*

**Associated Stats:** KNO, ?
**Virtues**
* **Skin Magic 10, Shifting Skin:** Allows you to freely move and rotate tattoos around your skin with a thought, even when you cannot feel your skin. Perception of the location of tattoos is added to your sensorium. You no longer take a penalty for inexperience when in a contest to move tattoos.

**Description:** Also known as tattoo magic. Allows Juniper to inscribe specific magical tattoos on his skin, which grant or cause different effects on Juniper and the world, as well as moving those tattoos around on the surface of his skin. The ability to inscribe complex tattoos is capped by Juniper's Art skill. Currently excluded.
**History:** Unlocked by Juniper after having the Fool's Choker placed on him by Leonold Pavran. Life of the Party
### *Smithing*

**History:** Never unlocked and eventually swapped out of Juniper's Character Sheet. In Which Juniper Stares At His Character Sheet, Again
### *Spirit*

**Associated Stats:** both Mental
**Virtues**
* **Spirit 10,** **Threadbare:** When analyzing a thread, you gain information on which threads it has historically had some connection with, which aspects of the soul it has connected with, and a sense of historic thread size.
* **Spirit 30, Multithreading:** Your thread utilization capacity is twice as high, though this cannot act as a flat increase on thread speed. Thread allocation works as before and is automatic.
* **Spirit 50, Thread Priority:**You may designate certain threads as high priority threads, which will be utilized first, taking precedence over competing threads. Rampant threads will automatically be set to low priority. Thread allocation otherwise works as before and is automatic.
* **Spirit 70, Spirituality:** You gain supernatural control of your spirit, giving you a number of benefits to a wide variety of magic. Emotions can be initiated and stopped at-will for the purposes of passion magic with no associated qualia. Amount of mental strain is divided by your skill in Gem Magic for the purposes of gem magic. Branches receive a bonus to their Wilson score prior to rank calculation for the purposes of Tree Magic. When doing Accounting, you can hold any number of numbers in your head simultaneously (though you are still limited as usual for the purposes of calculation). Connections (Horticulture, Pustule Magic, etc.) have their decay halved and gains doubled. More benefits apply in specific exclusion zones: consult the manual for more detail.
* **Spirit 90, Spiritual Amplification**: When using any skill, treat your effective skill as being ten percent higher, rounded down, before any other modifiers. This applies only to raw skill, not including environmental modifiers, circumstance bonuses, entad bonuses, magical or pseudo-magical enhancement, or other bonuses or modifiers.
* **Spirit 100, The Loom**: You have a full understanding of the history of any and all spirits you view, including historic changes to those spirits. You may alter a person’s spirit to any state its has been in before. You are completely immune to memes and antimemes that only affect the spirit, and are immune to the spirit effects of memes and antimemes that affect multiple aspects of your being.

**Description:** A counterpart to Essentialism, also known as spirit magic. Allows Juniper to alter "threads" with a variety of functions in people's souls.
**History:** Practiced by a rare few masters historically, including Vervain and Uther (who, naturally, surpassed his teachers). Used by Uther to protect his team from the Outer Reaches. Uther did his best to eradicate it, hoping that it would die with him, and it did. Unlocked by Juniper at the Infinite Library after reading about its use in the lost text *Uskine Nervedah*. Uskine Nervedah Later used to nullify a memetic agent in his soul, Safe Mode telepathically battle Harold, and copy Speculator Masters' protection against the antimemetic effects of the Outer Reaches.[*citation needed*]
### *Star Magic*

**Description:** Star Magic is based around creating and fabricating designs, based on magical formulae, your location on Aerb and the positions of the stars, which then cause planar or spatial effects. Most Star Mages use special lenses called *fak* and *lep* glass to quantify the stellar hues, although this isn't strictly necessary, just helpful.
* The most basic Star Mage "spell", a Base Prismatic Expansion, will create an extradimensional divot in a surface over the course of about two hours when correctly calculated and drawn, and lasts only as long as the stars stay aligned. Given enough time and paint, it's possible to use Star Magic to collapse a building.
* Star Mages are the only ones who can reach the Ethereal Plane, which requires holding the correct Star Magic pattern in your head.
* Portals or micro-portals can be opened to the Plane of Blood, Plane of Flesh, Plane of Fire, etc.; however, opening planar portals that a person can pass through intact is incredibly hard. Opening elemental portals at all is very difficult, and takes long enough that the portal must be "untethered" to prevent it from collapsing when the stars change. In at least some cases, they require constant maintenance from Star Mages to remain open. The elemental planes are different "distances" from Aerb, generally correlating with how useful they are, with the Plane of Blood being one of the more accessible "crappy" ones, the Plane of Flesh also being relatively near, while the Plane of Gold is beyond known reach. Even so, a navigable portal to the Plane of Blood took a huge team of Dorises over 8 years, and required a large 3D array etched with complex markings. If the markings holding a portal open are destroyed, it vanishes harmlessly.
* Star Magic is also employed to map the planes. The Star Dorises were able to map out the fact that each plane had a corresponding Dorris Finch Exclusion Zone decades before they ever reached one.
* At great expense, it's possible to create rooms that are bigger on the inside with Star Magic, but they usually need to be heavily reinforced because collapses can be very dangerous, with everything inside returning to full size and spilling out; any openings to the outside also need to be designed very carefully. Similarly, Juniper was able to create a "subspace assembly" to hold some of his rune-forged equipment, worn on his back, and he acquired a construct that let him effectively carry a Mome Rath bone around for the Fel Seed fight at great expense.
* A group of Star Mages could be employed to help transport a very large object, such as the corpse of Mome Rath.
* Star Magic can manipulate the planar boundary with the Hells to make possession easier.
* Classified Star Magic techniques exist which can augment Infernoscopes enough to see directly into the Omega Hell.
* Uther employed Star Magic beyond any seen before or since to seperate the rogue plane of Xoltle from Aerb.
* Reimer speculated based on the games he played with June that high-level Star Magic could compresses travel time dramatically and reach "a lot of places that it’s really helpful to be able to go to", in addition to the more basic uses. However, he admitted the exact details changed between games, and some of these effects were seemingly not available to real-life Star Mages.

**Synergies:** Star Magic could empower a Rune Mage's constructs, both via the tension in an extradimensional space (which could in turn be reinforced with runework) and via portals to energy-rich planes such as the Plane of Fire. However, in practice combining the two was fairly rare, perhaps because the two fields were so different. Part of a "construction cluster" with associated Combo Virtues that includes Rune Magic, Star Magic, Steel Magic, and Ink Magic, possibly others.
**History:** One of the 8 known magics Uther mastered, he employed it when rescuing Raven from the daydream-plane of Xoltle late in his reign. In 17 FE, he defeated a clan of Star Mages who were helping to raise a brood of dragons on food from the Plane of Flesh. The Second Empire once attempted a major push for resource extraction from the closer Elemental Planes, to little success; flesh mining was the most effective, but the produce was low-quality and upkeep costs considerable. Harold once employed Star Mages in one of his cults to create a planar depression in Five Spires and summon demons, and was eventually stopped by Uniquities. Juniper read about Star Magic in the book A Tour of the Elemental Planes. Used by a faction of Doris Finch to open a portal to the Plane of Blood, resulting in Blood God Doris. One of the Star Mage Dorises taught it to Juniper. Juniper worked with a team offscreen to build a portal to the Plane of Flesh to feed Necrolaborum. Star Magic was one of the tools required to open the gateway to the Long Stairs in Fel Seed's domain.
### *Stealth*

**Virtues**
* **Stealth 20, Light Foot:**  When moving silently, reduce your sound by 10 dB, to a minimum of 0 dB. When attempting not to be seen, reduce your visual contrast by half. When attempting to not be smelled, reduce your odor by one rank. You take half the normal penalty for stealth checks against forms of perception which are unknown to you.

**Description:** Improves Juniper's ability to avoid detection
**History:** Split from Deception after the rearrangement of Juniper's Character Sheet. In Which Juniper Stares At His Character Sheet, Again Fenn shares half her score in this skill with Juniper via Symbiosis, making his score somewhat useless.
### *Steel Magic*

**Description:** Allows the user to create stone structures and buildings out of hand-forged steel models. [*citation needed*]
**Synergies:** Part of a "construction cluster" with associated Combo Virtues that includes Rune Magic, Star Magic, Steel Magic, and Ink Magic, possibly others.
**History:** One of the 8 known magics Uther mastered. Noted to be used in the construction of several massive structures, such as the walls of Silmar City. Making Magic Never unlocked and eventually swapped out of Juniper's Character Sheet. In Which Juniper Stares At His Character Sheet, Again
### *Still Magic*

**Associated Stats:** both Mental
**Virtues**
* **Still Magic 20,** **Proportional Halting:**If the change you are attempting to still exceeds your current maximum capacity, the object/force/concept will be stilled proportional to your Still Magic level or to your current maximum capacity, whichever is greater, over the common stilling interval.
* **Still Magic 40, Instinctive Halting:** So long as you’re not stilling beyond your capacity, still magic will be applied automatically to any and all effects when it would be beneficial to you. For more information on intent and volition, see LUK rules. This effect applies only when you are conscious.
* **Still Magic 60, Partial Stilling:** Removes the penalty for attempting to still a single part of an object. Doubles the damage dealt to objects by stopping or slowing only half of them.
* **Still Magic 80, Still Soul:** You can still any changes to your soul, including natural ones. When contesting an entad, roll against its i-level with a multiplier for reasonableness. When contesting a skill use, follow normal contest rules. For other cases, consult your Dungeon Master.
* **Still Magic 100, Meta Stilling:** You can still any game effect with a duration.

**Description:** Users of still magic can bring things to a halt through direct contact, such as bullets about to penetrate their skin. Though it's mostly a defensive magic, a still mage can also kill by stopping the enemy's heart. Some people can shrug the effect off.[*citation needed*]
**Synergies:** Vibration Magic help Still Mages to Still waves of various kinds.
**History:** Juniper, Grak and Fenn faced and defeated a still mage while climbing Aumann's tower. Be Still My Heart The Uniquities team sent to capture Valencia contained a still mage, who was defeated by a blood ward. The Adventures of Valencia the Red Juniper kind of broke the game using Meta Stilling on several occasions, since it applied to effects that boosted Still Magic.[*citation needed*] One of the 8 known magics Uther mastered.
### *Tailoring*

**History:** Noted by Juniper as part of a group of potential arts-and-crafts skills usually taken for roleplaying purposes. In Which Juniper Stares At His Character Sheet, Again
### *Thrown Weapons*

**Associated Stats:** at least one Physical
**Virtues**
* **Thrown Weapons 10, Range Finder:** Doubles your accuracy when determining distance. Take half the normal penalty for lack of references when attempting to determine how far away something is.
* **Thrown Weapons 30, Boomerang:** Thrown weapons can hit additional targets, even if they otherwise couldn’t. Reduce your initial attack bonus by 25% for each additional target. A target cannot be hit more than once in an attack chain in this way. All weapons you throw have the returning property.
* **Thrown Weapons 50, Richoshot:**  You can bounce thrown weapons off surfaces without respect to normal physics, up to three times in a row. Weapons bounced in this way do not have to follow the angles dictated by physics, the weapon does not lose speed, and you do not have to have clear sight to secondary surfaces or the target. Attacks made in this way provide a ten percent surprise bonus to attack, because this is stupid and should not work.
* **Thrown Weapons 70, Multithrow:** When you throw a weapon, you can throw as many duplicates or near-duplicates of that weapon as you have available, making a separate attack roll for each.
* **Thrown Weapons 90, Megathrow:** When you throw weapons, you are no longer subject to penalties for size or weight, so long as you can physically lift and maneuver them.
* **Thrown Weapons 100, Throw Me To The Moon:**  You can throw anything you can get your hands on, including enemies, teammates, and yourself.

**Description:** Improves Juniper's ability to throw weapons.
**History:** Unlocked by Juniper after being handed a Void Grenade. Cold Comfort He was forced to sacrifice the skill for extra points to fight Perisev.
### *Tree Magic*

**Description:** A mysterious form of magic unknown to the public, or the Party for that matter. Amaryllis speculated it might, paradoxically, be the same form of magic invented by Juniper for the Arches campaign during his time on Aerb. Although the Party never confirmed it, this was correct. It also had something to do with Thargox. It centered around invisible trees which grew out of the heads of the practitioners (called Salvers in the Arches campaign), inhabited by fairies which they needed to entertain in exchange for magical assistance. Effects they could create included healing and magical attacks. They're controlled through mental commands, and sending them outside the user's line-of-sight is harder. Behind the scenes, Juniper intended them as a metaphor for an online community. Each Salver had a specific Compulsion they needed to fulfill to keep their fairies satisfied.
**Synergies:** the Spirit 70 Virtue "Spirituality" granted the following cryptic benefit (among others): "Branches receive a bonus to their Wilson score prior to rank calculation".
**History:** One of the skills added during Juniper's rearrangement of his Character Sheet. Unknown use. In Which Juniper Stares At His Character Sheet, Again Amaryllis and Juniper brainstormed various possibilities and ways to unlock it together. Included under the Respec just to be safe, although given it's unknown purpose, this was a subject of some debate.
### *Two-Handed Weapons*

**Associated Stats:** at least one Physical
**Virtues**
* **Two-Handed Weapons 20, Lunge Striker:** Eliminates the maneuverability penalty for all reach weapons. Eliminates the penalty for striking at close range with reach weapons. Allows you to more quickly cover ground when moving in short bursts and in a fighting stance.
* **Two-Handed Weapons 40, Heavy Swings:** Your attacks with two-handed weapons generate twice as much force, multiplying the energy put into them. This does not always mean that they will do twice as much damage, depending on the circumstances of the attack.
* **Two-Handed Weapons 60, Weapon Shield:** When using a two-handed weapon, you may block with it as though it were a shield, using either your skill in Shields or half of your Two-Handed Weapons skill, whichever is higher. This shield is not considered a parry, and does not interfere with normal use of the weapon.
* **Two-Handed Weapons 80, Thaum Breaker:**  Any two-handed weapon you wield is wardproof. When you attack a creature or object with magical defenses using a two-handed weapon, ignore those defenses.
* **Two-Handed Weapons 100, Total Commitment:** When wielding a two-handed weapon, you can choose to not use two hands, but rather, your entire body, spirit, and soul. If you choose to do so, you can take no other actions (including talking) aside from using your two-handed weapon (you can parry, but not dodge, and weapon shield, but not shield). If you stay in this state for two minutes of combat, you may make an attack that automatically succeeds, with maximum possible damage, and your selection of injuries from the injury chart. The two minutes must be continuous. You may leave the state at any time. If you attack in this way, you must wait one week to enter this state again.
* **Nascent Blade-bound (lvl 10 + Parry lvl 10):** Unknown effect.
* **Neophyte Blade-bound (lvl 20 + Parry lvl 20):** You have unlocked the ability to bond with a melee weapon, given a few minutes of meditation. You may only bond with one weapon at a time. When wielding a bonded weapon, double your effective skill with it, double your chance to parry, and you may cut with it as though it were twice as sharp.
* **Combo Virtue, Journeyman Blade-Bound:** You have double the effective attributes for the purposes of skills or checks related to using your bonded weapon. If your bonded weapon is a rate-limited entad, double its rate; otherwise, double the entad effects, if beneficial.
* **Combo Virtue, Master Blade-Bound:** While using your bound weapon, you gain a multiplier to speed equal to one twentieth your skill with it, to a maximum of five times faster. You can be one degree less reasonable when determining what you can do with your bonded weapon, including entad effects or properties, if it’s an entad.
* **Combo Virtue, Grandmaster Blade-Bound:** Your bonded weapon is infinitely sharp (unless it is sheathed). It is capable of cutting as though it were a two-dimensional plane for the purposes of friction, but as though it were any acute angle of blade for the purposes of separating cut material. Your bonded weapon can cut inviolable materials.

**Description:** Improves Juniper's skill with two-handed weapons.
**History:** Unlocked by Juniper at some point before their trek to Caer Laga. Siege
### *Unarmed Combat*

**Associated Stats:** at least one Physical
**Virtues**
* **Unarmed Combat 10, Hardened Knuckles:** Lessens the toll that unarmed combat takes on you. Does not actually increase the hardness of your knuckles as measured by indentation or scratch tests.
* **Unarmed Combat 30, Hardened Fists:** You suffer none of the usual durability, pain, or injury penalties for using your hands, feet, elbows, etc. in combat, even if they are not your primary weapons. You will never suffer any affliction from attacking using your body, though you may still suffer afflictions while defending.
* **Unarmed Combat 50, Penetrating Punches:** Armor, including natural armor, is half as effective against your unarmed attacks. When attacking objects, you may consider your unarmed attacks piercing, bludgeoning, or slashing, though not more than one at a time.
* **Unarmed Combat 70, Weapon Emulation:** Your unarmed attacks may be considered weapons when it would be beneficial for them to be so. Also, your unarmed attacks may be considered short-range melee weapons (e.g. daggers) for the purposes of entads, magical effects, or pseudomagical effects, even when this would be unreasonable. Further, your unarmed attacks may be considered specific weapons, even exotic ones, even when this would be completely unreasonable.
* **Unarmed Combat 90, Ghost Hand:** Your unarmed attacks no longer require direct physical contact, instead working even when executed up to several inches away from the target. You take no penalties for not actually touching your target when using unarmed attacks. This effect can be used to completely negate armor, including natural armor.
* **Unarmed Combat 100, Pressure Points:** Your unarmed attacks can be used to strike directly at the soul, disabling body parts on a critical hit. In lieu of dealing damage to an opponent with an unarmed attack, you may instead damage their soul. This effect bypasses any abilities that would normally prevent damage.
* **Monkish Warrior (Unarmored lvl 20):** While unarmed and unarmored, you may parry attacks as though you held a weapon, dodge at twice your effective skill, and automatically re-roll injuries if they are in the lowest five percent of outcomes (you keep any lower rolls).
* **Combo Virtue, Monkish Master:** While unarmed and unarmored, you no longer suffer falling damage, can run on water, can run on walls, jump twice as high/far, and double your effective SPD. You instantly master any unarmed fighting styles or maneuvers you spend five uninterrupted minutes watching.
* **Combo Virtue, Monkish Grandmaster:** While unarmed and unarmored, you may use your Unarmed or Unarmored skill, whichever is higher, for any roll that would use PHY or a PHY attribute. Double your effective PHY.
* **Combo Virtue, Monkish Ascendant:** While unarmed and unarmored, your body, soul, and spirit are inviolable, except as necessary to carry out useful or beneficial functions.

**Description:** Improves Juniper's unarmed combat skills.
**History:** Unlocked by Juniper while kicking a zombie. Taking the Fall
### *Unarmored*

**Associated Stats:** SPD, ?
**Virtues**
* **Unarmored 10, Hardened Skin:** Lessens the toll that physical damage in combat takes on you. Slightly increases natural healing. Increases force required to break skin.
* **Unarmored 30, Glancing Blow:** While unarmored, add a bonus to injury rolls equal to your unarmored skill. While unarmored, you can ignore one physical injury affliction, changing which is ignored whenever you would like.
* **Unarmored 50, Ghost Body:** While unarmored, attacks which hit your body no longer make physical contact for the purposes of contact damage or effects, whether magical or otherwise, even if those attacks still do damage.
* **Unarmored 70, A Body in Motion:** Attempts to net, ensnare, grapple, or otherwise restrain you have a 50% chance to fail (after dodge attempts), and are twice as easy to escape if they don’t fail. For purposes of dodging, you move twice as fast while unarmored.
* **Unarmored 90, Bodily Stasis:** You heal from injuries and wounds at one hundred times the normal speed. You need one hundredth the water, air, and food you normally would.
* **Unarmored 100, Perfected Body:** Your skin is as hard as steel. While unarmored, you gain a twenty percent bonus to all defensive rolls, including dodge, parry, entad defense rolls, and magical defense rolls. If this would result in a total defense bonus below fifty, raise it to fifty instead.
* **Monkish Warrior (Unarmored Combat lvl 20):** While unarmed and unarmored, you may parry attacks as though you held a weapon, dodge at twice your effective skill, and automatically re-roll injuries if they are in the lowest five percent of outcomes (you keep any lower rolls).
* **Combo Virtue, Monkish Master:** While unarmed and unarmored, you no longer suffer falling damage, can run on water, can run on walls, jump twice as high/far, and double your effective SPD. You instantly master any unarmed fighting styles or maneuvers you spend five uninterrupted minutes watching.
* **Combo Virtue, Monkish Grandmaster:** While unarmed and unarmored, you may use your Unarmed or Unarmored skill, whichever is higher, for any roll that would use PHY or a PHY attribute. Double your effective PHY.
* **Combo Virtue, Monkish Ascendant:** While unarmed and unarmored, your body, soul, and spirit are inviolable, except as necessary to carry out useful or beneficial functions.

**Description:** Improves defense while wearing no armor.
**History:** Added by Juniper during the rearrangement of his Character Sheet to provide survivability. In Which Juniper Stares At His Character Sheet, Again As one of Fenn's highest skills, she granted Juniper middling skill with it regardless of his stats via Symbiosis.
### *Velocity Magic*

**Description:** Magic almost entirely focused on producing effects such as increased reaction times and speed. Unlock conditions require moving faster than anyone before without magical assistance. [*citation needed*]
**History:** One of the skills considered by Juniper during downtime at the Isle of Poran. The One-Hand Warder
### *Vibrational Magic*

**Associated Stats:** both Mental
**Virtues**
* **Vibrational Magic 10, Biorhythms**: You are in tune with the natural cycles of your body and capable of altering them at the expense of breath, either temporarily or on a permanent basis. This virtue does not prevent any ill effects from e.g. loss of breath or loss of sleep.
* **Vibrational Magic 30, Spectra:** You can expend breath to apply the sensory aspects of vibrational magic to a wider range of vibrations, including the entire electromagnetic spectrum and everything covered under warder's sight. Breath cost of these extra senses is based on time used, doubling each minute of use.

**Description:** Can be unlocked by being tapped on the head from a magic item controlled by the Athenaeum of Sound and Silence.
**Synergies:** Can help Still Mages to Still waves of various kinds, and help Blood Mages by manipulating their heartbeat; if they reach a level where they can manipulate light, that has synergies with the kinetic light of Gem Magic.
**History:** One of the skills considered by Juniper during downtime at the Isle of Poran. The One-Hand Warder
### *Warding*

**Description:** Warding creates areas of generalized, rules-based, countermagic. "Magic" includes abstract categories and concepts, like blood or bones or water or even velocity due to the consideration of latent magic.[*citation needed*]
**History:** Grak's greatest skill, developed after training in the Athenaeum of Barriers. Weik Handum One of the 8 known magics Uther mastered.
### *Water Magic*

**Associated Stats:** at least one Mental
**Virtues**
* **Hydromancer, 10**: If you can sense the water around you, you have an intuitive understanding of what the weather will be like and how it can be affected by changes to the water content of the air and movement of vaporized water.

**Description:** Bloodline magic. Helps "deal with storms". Allows the user to weakly control and sense large amounts of water, including weather manipulation and sensing large groups of people.[*citation needed*]

**History:** One of the skills considered by Juniper during downtime at the Isle of Poran. The One-Hand Warder Juniper has been waiting for a teacher, who's been unavoidably delayed by a storm. Holding
### *Weaving*

**History:** Noted by Juniper as part of a group of potential arts-and-crafts skills usually taken for roleplaying purposes. In Which Juniper Stares At His Character Sheet, Again
### *Woodworking*

**Description:** Described by Reimer (from memory) as an especially poorly-designed skill which improved carving, carpentry etc. Skewered**Virtues**
* **100**: Notably broken, the capstone for woodworking allowed you to make literally anything out of wood, according to Reimer's recollections. Skewered

**History:** Never unlocked and eventually swapped out of Juniper's Character Sheet. In Which Juniper Stares At His Character Sheet, Again
## Deprecated Skills

### *Butterfly Magic*

**Description:** Excluded magic. Allowed users to alter probabilities by releasing butterflies at specific times and places to attain the effects they wanted.
**History:** Explained to Juniper by Raven. A Cypress Waits
### *Carrolism*

**Description:** Deprecated skill of unknown use.
**History:** Mentioned by Juniper as an excluded skill. The Veil of the World
### *Chronomancy*

**History**: One of the 8 known magics Uther mastered, but excluded in the modern day.
### *Conjoinery*

**Description:** Phenomenological magic of unknown use.
**History:** Mentioned by Juniper as an excluded skill. The Veil of the World Later mentioned by the Urquhart Stone. Good VibrationsOne of the 8 known magics Uther mastered.
### *Constriction Magic*

**Description:** Deprecated magic (Exclusion #18) of unknown use.
**History:** Noticed by Juniper as an excluded potential skill in his soul. In Which Juniper Stares At His Character Sheet, Again
### *Custom*

**Description:** Deprecated skill (Exclusion #17). Likely a way to create and use skills beyond the available 256.
**History:** Noticed by Juniper as an excluded potential skill in his soul. In Which Juniper Stares At His Character Sheet, Again
### *Ex Nihilo*

**Description:** Deprecated skill (Exclusion #216) of unknown use.
**History:** Noticed by Juniper as an excluded potential skill in his soul. In Which Juniper Stares At His Character Sheet, Again
### *Funnel magic*

**Description:** Deprecated skill of unknown use.
**History:** Mentioned by Juniper as an excluded skill. The Veil of the World
### *Glass Magic*

**Description:** Deprecated magic (Exclusion #112) of unknown use. Excluded to the Glassy Fields Exclusion Zone.
**History:** Noticed by Juniper as an excluded potential skill in his soul. In Which Juniper Stares At His Character Sheet, Again
### *Groove Casting*

**Description:** Excluded magic which involved shaping energy, growing more effective with repeated use as the "grooves" wore down, which can be worked on while doing other tasks. Somewhat comparable to rune Magic. Obscure and of limited use even before it was Excluded, except to the longest-lived species. A bit on the lethal side. Synergized well with Dibbling, which could provide energy to channel into Grooves. Cooldown
**History:** Learned by Raven Masters and used during her stint as a vigilante under the Second Empire, prior to it's exclusion.Cooldown Noticed by Juniper as a depreciated potential skill (Exclusion #217) in his soul of then-unknown function. In Which Juniper Stares At His Character Sheet, Again
### *Ice Magic*

**Virtues**
**Description:** Deprecated magic (Exclusion #16) of unknown use. Presumably related to the Invasion of the Ice Wizards on 4FE.
**History:** Noticed by Juniper as an excluded potential skill in his soul. In Which Juniper Stares At His Character Sheet, Again Juniper continues to muse on the skill later, theorizing Uther Penndraig was involved in the exclusion after he slayed the Ice Wizards. Grayscales
### *Illusion Magic*

**Description:** Excluded magic. While within the confines of its Exclusion Zone near Boastre Vino, allows the user to fake input for any senses the user is aware of, including touch, proprioception and pain. Among many unexplained limitations, illusions can't cross a certain threshold of intensity, and they apparently fade after the victim is fully aware of the trick.
**History:** Used by Speculator Masters to attack Juniper's Party at the Athenaeum of Speculation and Scrutiny. The Veil of the World
### *Mentalism*

**History:** Unknown potential skill, briefly considered by Juniper to be the excluded magic used by Speculator Masters (which was eventually revealed to be illusion magic). The Veil of the World
### *Psionics*

**History:** Unknown potential skill, briefly considered by Juniper to be the excluded magic used by Speculator Masters (which was eventually revealed to be illusion magic). The Veil of the World
### *Uniqulomancy*

**Description:** Deprecated skill of unknown use.
**History:** Mentioned by Juniper as an excluded skill. The Veil of the World
## Possible Skills

### *Automatic Rifles*

Speculated to exist by Juniper on the basis of existing firearms skills.

### *Bloodline Magic*

An excluded magic that "acts on a person’s bloodline", not to be confused with the general concept of bloodline magics like Water Magic (or with the Blood Magic technique of the same name). "Pretty much no one knows about" it, but it's mentioned in Juniper's notes. Presumably, the same excluded magic mentioned by Raven that "Esclin Tearheart threatened to destroy the whole of dwarvenkind through a bloodline attack" using on one of her more obscure adventures with Uther, which could be used to "kill a man by weaving a spell and punching his father hard enough" before it was quietly excluded to an unknown location.

### *Dibbling*

**Description:** Excluded magic, which drew upon the abstract concepts of earth/ground for a variety of effects, mostly similar to Wards but faster and short-term. Lethal, and synergized well with Groove Casting because you could Dibble for energy and channel it into Grooves. Cooldown
**History:** Learned by Raven Masters and used during her stint as a vigilante under the Second Empire, prior to it's exclusion.Cooldown Mentioned by the Urquhart Stone's simulacrum of Uther Penndraig as an example of a "metaphorical" magic. Good Vibrations
### *Diplomacy*

**History:** Theorized by Juniper to be one of Amaryllis' skills. Place Your Figs
### *Feng Shui*

**Description:** Phenomenological magic of unknown use.Good Vibrations Implied to have allowed for arranging furniture in such a way that it "would make you focused and revitalized", but been excluded at some point after the Second Empire.
**History:** Mentioned by the Urquhart Stone's simulacrum of Uther Penndraig.Good Vibrations Raven mentioned it as an example of the more magic-rich era that was the Second Empire.
### *Gray Magic*

**Description:** An excluded magic inspired in some way by The Picture of Dorian Gray.
**History:** Mentioned in passing in Amaryllis' notes. Notes
### *Mining*

Speculated to exist by Juniper given the existence of the Horticulture skill.

### *Sand Magic*

**Description:** Among other unknown uses, allows sand mages to create Time Chambers.
**History:** Mentioned by Bethel as the origin of her Time Chamber. Immanentizing the Eschaton
### *Wood Magic*

**Description:** Channels the residual life-force of wood, especially certain rare woods. Can be used to shape wood into weapons and armor, or create explosions of growth etc in combat.
**History:** Mentioned by Masters and Amaryllis as related to trees. Notes The Veil of the WorldOne of the 8 known magics Uther mastered. Generally made obsolete by the march of technology and over-harvesting by the Second Empire.
### Redaction Magic

**History:** Excluded magic which Raven compared DM schenanigans to, albeit not on the same scale.Medieval Stasis

==References==

1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 Based on the figures given on Juniper's character sheet in Chapter 196: Notes II
2. ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 2.12 2.13 2.14 In their place went a wide array of useful things, mostly those along the same axis as everything that had already been added, taking into account all of the skills that I was planning to keep. Optics went in, because there was a known synergy with Gem Magic. I took a cluster of mental abilities, because I was going to be pushing MEN anyway: Engineering, Analysis, Research, Repair, Logistics, Logic, Mathematics, and Alchemy, some of which synergized with either magics or with each other. - Chapter 172: Respec
3. ↑ 3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09 3.10 3.11 **Optics 20, Clarity:** When you hold or touch, directly or indirectly, a lens or prism of any kind, you can alter its properties (e.g. altering focal point, concavity, refractive index, thickness). Any alterations you make will revert once you are no longer holding or touching the lens or prism. This includes biological lens, e.g. in the eye. Alterations must be physically possible.

**Research 10, Organizational Efficiency:** When you research anything, you are capable of holding in your head the location of all previous sorted or filed materials, so long as no one else has moved them. No special organizational schema is required for this, you simply know where everything is.

**Mathematics 10, Arithmetic:** You can do simple arithmetic with two operands instantly and without thinking about it. You can count any number of objects instantly, so long as you can see them.

**Alchemy 10, Equivalent Exchange:** You instantly know the answer to any questions of stoichiometry.

**Logic 20, Contradiction:** If anyone presents a logically inconsistent argument to you, or an argument which is inconsistent with the facts as you know them, you will instantly and firmly be aware of this, even if you do not remember the specifics.

**Logistics 10, Worst Case:** Whenever you make a roll using this skill, you cannot have more than two degrees of failure. When making a sequence of chained rolls, overall results are still limited to two degrees of failure.

**Repair 20, Parts:** When you look at something broken, you instantly know which parts need to be replaced and which need to be repaired, so long as you have some method of knowing that within three degrees of reasonableness.

**Ink Magic 10, Burnout Resistance:** If you would suffer two or more levels of creative exhaustion, suffer one less instead. If any effect removes one or more levels of creative exhaustion, it removes one more than it normally would.

**Air Magic 10, Currents:** In addition to your normal sense of air temperature, pressure, and composition, you are able to sense and manipulate the direction of air movement. This direction is subject to (and must act against) normal fluid dynamics and your normal range.

**Passion Magic 20, Passionate:** You may split one complex emotion into two smaller ones for the purposes of passion magic expression. These can be used in tandem with the normal penalties for doing two things at once.

**Gem Magic 30, In The Rough:** Uncut gems may be used as though they were cut, with the number, shape, and symmetry of the facets determined by you at time of use. When you hold an uncut gem, you are aware of all the ways in which it could be cut.

**Gem Magic 50, Fractured Brilliance:** You are no longer constrained by the gem for the purposes of determining number of projectiles. Instead, when you use a gem, you may choose to emit any number of projectiles with their properties as determined by the gems, with mental strain proportional to the number of projectiles. Similarly, you can elect to use a gem at lower power with lower strain.

**Blood Magic 40, Flow Control:** Your blood is now configured into a 'blood mass' which you can independently control, with every drop of blood controllable so long as it's part of the contiguous blood mass. Connection to your blood does not decay so long as it's a part of the blood mass, no matter how far from your body it is. This virtue does not grant you extra power to control your blood, except as provided by the lack of connection decay.

**Vibrational Magic 30, Spectra:** You can expend breath to apply the sensory aspects of vibrational magic to a wider range of vibrations, including the entire electromagnetic spectrum and everything covered under warder's sight. Breath cost of these extra senses is based on time used, doubling each minute of use.

**Engineering 30, Runtime Analysis:** Without actually running or using a piece of equipment or structure, you can make a number of determinations about how it would perform. These analyses include, but are not limited to: revolutions per minute, energy efficiency, carrying capacity, lift, thrust, wattage, and thaums. You must be able to adequately sense the equipment or structure in use to make these determinations, to within one degree of reasonableness.

Five days after the Respec, I was bumped up against the level twenty soft cap of amateur training in every new skill that I had taken.
- Chapter 174: The Blade of the Self
4. ↑ Alchemy in particular had been an odd duck, but Reimer’s explanation had been that it was just ‘my’ name for mundane chemistry, and fairly good if you had other skills to pair it with, or a vast hoard of magical reagents. There was nothing like standard potion-making in the same way it existed in D&D, but there was more to chemistry simply because of all the magic there was in the world, which we thought was probably one of the reasons that chemistry on Aerb lagged so far behind Earth in a way that a lot of their other technologies didn’t. - Chapter 172: Respec
5. ↑ (I was deathly afraid of the metal Super Soaker I’d used, in part because I had been the one to create it, as well as the one to synthesize the death fire inside of it. It was way beyond my skill level in Alchemy, and for how little time I’d had to produce the stuff, there had been an awful lot of nearly disastrous consequences. Aerb had all kinds of materials that weren’t available on Earth, some of them magical, some of them ‘not’ magical, and we’d done three tests with different Aerbian materials, all of which had been a bust. There was a gel made by an aquatic plant that firefighters would smear themselves with before running into a fire, and chlorine trifluoride *set it on fire* at the moment of first contact. It was impressive, seeing chlorine trifluoride burn through a piece of starmetal, which was supposed to stop dragonfire, but it really made me think that I was playing with something *way* beyond my paygrade.) - Chapter 191: Overwhelming Violence
6. ↑ `**34** Alchemy -` Chapter 196: Notes II
7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 I settled on dumping Alchemy, which I’d gotten quite high in the process of creating the chlorine trifluoride, and which we wouldn’t be able to take advantage of until after this was all over anyway. Thrown Weapons also got sacrificed, which was the second time for it, and while I would be able to get it back up with Scaphism, it was going to be more effort than it was worth to train it up again. - Chapter 210: Push and Pull
8. ↑ 8.00 8.01 8.02 8.03 8.04 8.05 8.06 8.07 8.08 8.09 8.10 The trio of Research, Analysis, and Logic *did* give me the first of my synergy bonuses, which was part of the reason that they’d been chosen (also because they didn’t have social components).

 ***Narrow Expertise:*** *When you first obtain this virtue, determine a subject matter. When using skills within the subject matter, double your effective skill. When using untrained skills within your subject matter, treat your effective skill level as twenty. You retain your subject matter even if you lose this virtue, though you lose all bonuses until it is reacquired.*

- Chapter 172: Respec
9. ↑ 9.0 9.1  ***Skill Increased: Art lvl 6! (Skill capped at triple the value of primary stat CHA.)*** [...]

 ***Skill Increased: Skin Magic lvl 10!***
***New Virtue: Shifting Skin!***
***Skill Increased: Skin Magic lvl 12! (Skill capped at triple the value of primary stat KNO.)***

- Chapter 30: Plot Relevant
10. ↑ “You’re testing your skill,” said Fenn. “Trying to see what’s left when a skill says that it’s been reduced to zero?”

“Yeah,” I replied, frowning at the picture of Fenn. “And obviously I still do have some faculty with it … I was going to say that I retained all the ability I had on Earth, but I was never that great at drawing people. I thought this was going to turn out terribly.”

“And you didn’t think to ask whether I was any good at art?” asked Fenn with a raised eyebrow.

It took a moment for what she was saying to sink in, and when it did, I slapped my forehead. “Symbiosis,” I said. “I’m an idiot.”

“It’s not something I’ve really brought up,” said Fenn. “Training under the elves, not terribly pleasant.”

“I saw it when I looked at your soul,” I replied. “It wasn’t high enough that I really noted it, you’re good at a lot of things.” - Chapter 71: The Soul of Discretion
11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 11.5 11.6 11.7 Based on the figures given on Juniper's character sheet in Chapter 34: Weik Handum
12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 All their skills and abilities had increased, some of them noticeably, but the increases were unevenly distributed, and though Amaryllis was far better at Climbing, Fenn had gotten a boost to Athletics. It was hard to tell what any of that actually meant, given all the other factors, but Fenn hadn’t been lying when she’d said that she could cover two hundred yards in a handful of seconds. - Chapter 111: Peer Pressure
13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 13.3 13.4 13.5 Once I’d gone through a few mostly-useless books on multi-magic to help lock it in, I could feel it settle at once. Vibration magic could change my biorhythms, which could alter the beat of my heart, which helped with blood magic. Vibration magic gave me an edge on stilling waves of all shapes and sizes, not that I currently needed it. Gem magic was essentially kinetic light, and while I wasn’t quite at the level where my vibration magic could manipulate light, there was some promise of that for the future, an intuitive sense that it was a thing I might be able to do by combining the disciplines. It was going to take some time and sparring to suss out where the bonuses might possibly apply, but I had a feeling that the expertise had taken. - Chapter 172: Respec
14. ↑ Amaryllis was good at climbing. The Athenaeum of Quills and Blood was built high up on a plateau, and climbing was part of the school’s tradition, a sport taken to the extremes that magic would allow. There were paths on the school’s climbing walls that could only be taken if you were skilled in blood magic, capable of flinging yourself to the timing of your pulse from one hold to another. There were competitions, and clans of climbers; it was one of the school’s primary extracurriculars. Amaryllis had only been at the athenaeum for three years, which was long enough to have learned a little, but not so long that she had considered herself a blood mage. - Chapter 88: The House of Solitude
15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 She looked over to where people were dancing to the music. There were four couples, Esuen and Souno, Bethel and Ropey (split once more), Valencia and Jorge, and Solace with Grak. The music was sedate, in 3/4 time, suitable for a waltz. That was unearned musical knowledge coming into my head, courtesy of the Symbiosis with Amaryllis.

“Care to dance?” I asked.

“Do you know how?” asked Amaryllis with a raised eyebrow.

“I have half your skill,” I replied. There was a Dancing skill, which so far as I knew was worthless for anything besides actual dancing. It probably gave a set bonus with some other skills, or some amazing perks at high levels, but without knowing what actual utility it had, it wasn’t a serious consideration. [...]

“Are you just really good at dancing?” I asked as I brought her in close for a more sedate, more stationary waltz.

“It’s taught at Quills and Blood,” replied Amaryllis. “Part of blood magic is timing your magic to the pulse of your heart, and music and dance both help with it. I wouldn’t call myself good, but I’m a fair bit past competent,” <and I’ve gotten better as part of Twinned Souls, I believe. Numerically, it would be in the thirties.> - Chapter 140: Commingling
16. ↑ 16.0 16.1  ***Skill increased: Bone Magic lvl 12! (Skill capped at triple the value of primary stat KNO.)***

[...] ***Skill increased: Parry lvl 10! (Skill capped at five times the value of secondary stat INS.)*** - Chapter 19: Montage!
17. ↑  ***Skill increased: Bone Magic lvl 21! (Skill capped at triple the value of primary stat KNO.)***
***Skill increased: Skin Magic lvl 21! (Skill capped at triple the value of primary stat KNO.)*** - Chapter 40: The Feminine Mystique
18. ↑ No hard caps for non-J, see F w/ Bows >50 but WIS=5 (why? Skill vs. skill? DM fiat?) - Amaryllis' notes, Chapter 105: Notes
19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 Eventually, we decided on Bows, Unarmored, Unarmed Combat, and Shields. The first two were fairly easy choices, because Fenn had high skill in both, which meant that through Symbiosis I was at least middling. Unarmed and Shields both had the virtue of being little-used and seeming like they’d be straightforward to train. - Chapter 78: The Sacrifice
20. ↑ On a game-mechanical level, there was a Climbing skill, which Mary had, and I didn’t. I had half her skill, which left me in the low 30s, because Climbing was apparently one of the things that was canonically part of her character by whatever metric the game was using to decide what it meant for my companions to ‘keep up’ with me... my effective climbing skill was masterclass, better than maybe any other skill I possessed - Chapter 155: Mome Rath
21. ↑ 21.0 21.1  ***Skill increased: Deception lvl 6! (Further skill gains from telling lies are capped by joint primary stat POI.)*** - Chapter 12: Life of the Party
22. ↑  ***Skill increased: Dodge lvl 20! (Skill capped at five times the value of secondary stat INS.)*** - Chapter 37: Paths
23. ↑ 23.0 23.1 23.2 23.3 23.4 23.5 Based on the figures given on Juniper's character sheet in Chapter 23: Siege
24. ↑ 24.0 24.1 24.2 24.3 I got a few more virtues along the way, but they were incredibly minor effects when I looked them up on the ‘Virtues’ screen. Unarmed Combat 10 gave me the virtue “Hardened Knuckles” that lessened the toll unarmed combat would take on me (no numbers, just that flat statement). Dual Wield 10 gave me Ambidexterity, the uneasy feeling of being equally adept at using either hand for a task and removing all preference (which I immediately tested by writing; it was unnerving to sign my name left-handed). Thrown Weapons 10 gave me “Range Finder”, the ability to more easily determine how far away something was. Improvised Weapons 10 gave me “Structural Assessment”, the ability to hold and wield improvised weapons in such a way that they would break less easily, though never outside the bounds of reason.- Chapter 19: Montage!
25. ↑ 25.0 25.1  ***Skill increased: Engineering lvl 10!***
***New Virtue: Material Analysis!***

Material Analysis supposedly allowed me to see “weak points”, though I noticed nothing terribly obvious when I started looking around (which made me really hope that this wasn't one of those things silently disabled by Verisim mode). It certainly didn’t flash red on anything or give me a targeting reticule. I could see the weak points of Fenn, the places where I could hit her to inflict the most damage, but I’d been able to see them before getting the virtue. Still, better to have than not.

[...] ***Skill increased: Engineering lvl 12! (Skill capped at triple the value of primary stat CUN.)*** - Chapter 24: Like a Glove
26. ↑ **Engineering 10, Material Analysis:** Allows you to see weak points in materials, to within the first order of sensorium expansion. - Chapter 105: Notes
27. ↑ 27.0 27.1 27.2  ***Soul Sight:*** *Grants a visual representation of souls, each with a unique color, which can be distinguished with acuity beyond the limits of the eye. Applies to both the soul and any magic which interfaces with a soul in some meaningful way.*
***Soul Saturation:*** *Knowledge of your soul allows it to fully suffuse you, giving a number of benefits to a wide variety of magic. Your blood works as an infusion for the purposes of pustule magic. You can use your blood as though it were magical ink (4* ζ */mL) for the purposes of ink magic. Your bones are considered wood for the purposes of wood magic. Required connective power for plants is reduced by half.  You may retract your soul from your extremities for the purposes of bypassing wards. Any magic items or magics which limit projection or application to your eyes, hands, feet, or mouth, can instead be projected or applied from any part of your body. Your skin and/or carapace is treated as though it were skin and/or carapace for the purposes of skin magic and carapace magic, whichever is more beneficial. Runes may be written on your skin as though it were prepared vellum. More benefits apply in specific exclusion zones: consult the manual for more detail.*
***Soul Scaphism:*** *You can carve out parts of other people to use for your own purposes. Any benefits are temporary; any costs are permanent.*
***Soul Symbiote:*** *Double your effective skill in Bone Magic, Blood Magic, Skin Magic, Carapace Magic, Pustule Magic, and the flower magic aspect of Horticulture, up to a cap of 75. Double your effective connection to any magical item which interfaces with your soul, unless doing so has associated maluses. Increase your skill with any specialty or subschool of magic that uses the soul by 20 points, up to a cap of 50.* - Chapter 80: The Princess and the Pea
28. ↑ Reimer’s interpretation of “effective skill” had been that it was just the base number, meaning that it would be multiplied by *my* abilities, rather than by whoever’s abilities I had borrowed from, at least for the purposes of Symbiosis. Taken that way, my nine in Flattery was really useless, because Symbiosis would push me up into the mid-twenties. The same applied to pretty much all of the social skills I had retained. - Chapter 172: Respec
29. ↑ SOC important for many magics. Obvious in retro that gold mage would rely on it, 1 part TK control via CUN, 1 part POI as social interaction with gold (entity-like) (why not CHA? J unhelpful). - Chapter 105: Notes
30. ↑ 30.0 30.1 Chapter 172: Respec
31. ↑ I went through small demonstrations of each, leaving aside ink magic, because it took too long, water magic, because it needed more room, and skin magic, because it was excluded. - Chapter 188: Common Law
32. ↑ 32.0 32.1 Ink magic basically allows you to roll your own entads, and the cooler they are, the more powerful they’re allowed to be. The relationship between entads and inktads (called ‘neks’ colloquially or ‘monads’ if you’re being technical, and inktads only if you’re me) is pretty simple, but the people who study them are really reluctant to say that they’re exactly the same. Entads are created by a forge frenzy, their designs and distribution fait accompli. Inktads spring forth from the mind of the creator, limited by their palette of inks, their internal feeling of creativity, and i-level limitations, among others. - Chapter 196: Notes II
33. ↑ 33.0 33.1 I tried ink magic and then gave up. What I needed was a magic item that could manipulate a paper bag onto someone’s head, but ink magic worked best when you approached a problem from the side, making items that could solve your intended problems as though they weren’t designed to do that. If you needed a wooden stake to kill a vampire, then a gun that fired wooden stakes was an incredibly lame and uncreative way to do that, and in ink magic terms, that meant a crappy product that would last you a single use before crumpling, if that. And to make an entad that could accomplish ‘put a paper bag on a specific someone’s head’ was *really, really* hard to approach from the side. I gave up after about a minute, not wanting to waste time when I didn’t know how much time I had. I was sure that it would come to me later, the perfect elegant entad to design that would only obviously be the solution in context. - Chapter 194: Coda II
34. ↑ 34.0 34.1 I definitely have access to whatever inks I want, not that they matter *that* much. Inks are basically equivalent to a prompt, or a bit of inspiration, and the symbolic construct that you create for them (the worldbuilding notion) works better if it matches up well with the base ink. The ink having actual magical properties is a necessity, but unlike tattoo magic, where you’re dependent on the inks, for an ink mage, especially a relatively low level one, you can get by with relatively little in the way of cost. My understanding is that inks could limit you but not elevate you. A rank amateur wouldn’t be propelled to grandmaster status by being handed godly inks, but a grandmaster *would* be hampered by poor quality inks.

(To create some formulas and rules from thin air, you’re capped by either the max i-level of your skill or the i-level of the ink, with the ‘quality’ of symbolic construction in relation to the ink providing a malus on i-level, and then the actual inktad concept and execution further limiting actual i-level, with degradation being a function of skill, i-level, and how well you could map item to campaign.) - Chapter 196: Notes II
35. ↑ 35.0 35.1 A quick check showed me that a few of my magics were back online, but they were the least combat-oriented ones, water magic, ink magic, and air magic, all of them traditional utility magic. [...] Ink magic used magical inks to do its thing, and they hadn’t pumped my stomach, but I just didn’t think that we had the time for me to create something and put it on, even something small like a bracelet or amulet. [...] “I’m done with the first armor,” I said. I held it up in my hand. It was the size and approximate shape of a hockey puck, laced through with several metallic lines. I tossed it into the air, and it spun around once before stopping in place and then bursting outward into a thousand small lines that wrapped themselves around me. I braced myself and tried not to flinch; eventually you had to trust in ink magic, but DIY entads weren’t without their risks, and I hadn’t had the magic for that long, nor did I have a competent teacher. When the pseudo-entad was finished, it had wrapped me up, with a thin film between the lines that covered me. It was form-fitting and felt incredibly light, not really by design so much as an outgrowth of the general principles I’d been working along. If I was hit, the lines would snap as though under tension, providing defense for me and acting as a weapon as well. “I could make a weapon for myself, but I think the truncheon will do. I want to save juice for if we really need it. Solace, do you have a bead on which direction we should head in to get to the locus?” [...] Pallida returned by the time I had my teleporting chakram finished. It wasn’t shoddy work by any means, but I was asking a lot from ink magic, and it was a hard problem with tight bounds. If I threw the chakram at anyone, it would teleport right up to them, crossing the intervening distance in the blink of an eye. I could feel that it wasn’t very sturdy, maybe not even capable of lasting for more than a single shot. On a better day, I might have been able to come up with a better design, something that felt like it was an elegant sideways approach to the problem of a revision mage.- Chapter 182: Painless
36. ↑ Palette took me a bit to understand. The extended metaphor that’s used for ink magic is that of paint, a painter, and their canvas. I’m not going to say that this is outright false, but for me, it was certainly misleading. I’d thought that I would ingest an ink, label it something like ‘extradimensionality’, and then be locked in with that, making a bunch of inktads that had extradimensional effects of one flavor or the other, in combination with the effects of my other inks. To my mind, on hearing about ink magic, it seemed like I might have three inks, one for ‘fire’, one for ‘might’, and one for ‘sight’, mixing and matching them. But that was wrong, and once I found the metaphor that they had been trying to point at with ‘palette’, I realized what it was they actually meant: each paint in the palette was a campaign world, or at least a part of it. [...]

An example would be a cult of occulum trying to bring back their dead god. They were a species that grew extra arms, legs, eyes, and other extremities or organs, culling what they’d budded until they had the best their body could produce. If the cult was attempting to summon forth a dead god that was once the patron of their species, then their magic items could be based around either the occulum themselves and their habit of budding off new parts or sundering their own redundant limbs. Maybe you would find life-sustaining magics intended to allow limb transfers, maybe you would find ways to link between organisms, maybe make knives that would cauterize and heal as they cut, there were lots of things that you could do with it.

Or if you wanted to focus on summoning a dead god, then you could have a magic item that drew from the past, which, in-world, would be an application of their research (though non-duplicable, unless there was a good story there somewhere). But it wouldn’t *just* be some backwards-looking aspect, it would be mending that which was broken, or trying to knit together things that had been ruined, or to see the way things had been.

In ink magic terms, those might be two inks in the palette, each of them mapped to a specific ingested ink, the closer the relationship, the better.

Once all that was grokked, the inktads flowed out a lot more easily. There is some power in inks, and it was necessary, once they were ingested, to give them each a coherent symbolic identity, but that didn’t need to be a strict aesthetic or concept, it just needed to be some aspect of a campaign world, a stable base from which to draw out creative magic items. It even made sense why the inks went dull or wore out their welcome: making the first magic item for a temple of cultists was easy, but making the fiftieth was really, really hard, because you were picking high-hanging fruit. Better to move on to other inks so that different conceits could be explored. - Chapter 196: Notes II
37. ↑ 37.0 37.1 37.2 37.3 From there, we can start to think about multimagic, the most notable multimagic being the combined power of rune magic and star magic, which are both construction magics and can feed into each other, especially given the amount of energy that a high tier star mage is capable of harnessing. [...] Well I know they don’t all synergize, if you want the ‘proper’ synergies you go with the predefined clusters, like the bodily cluster, or the connection cluster, the physics cluster, the creation cluster, or whatever else. But those are all explicit synergies, so you’re doing it for a handful of virtues, and the inherent crossover is sometimes weak. Ink magic and steel magic are both construction cluster, but beyond combo virtues, they don’t overlap and let you, I don’t know, make ink magic structures or something, though that would be cool. - Chapter 196: Notes II
38. ↑ As we got to the top of the steps, we saw two of the tuung beside the balcony, one looking out over the edge to see what was going on down below in the lobby with a pair of pseudo-entad binoculars that I’d made using ink magic on the airship, while the other was watching the stairs. We were probably the only people so high up, but we had quite a way to go until we actually got to our room.

“How are the binoculars holding up?” I asked the tuung who was using them. (His name was Brian. I knew a fairly large number of the tuung by name, including all of those that had come on the airship with us, but it didn’t come up often.)

“Good,” he replied without looking at me. “No signs of degradation yet.” There was a good reason for him not to look at me; when I’d been making the binoculars, I’d decided that the way they would work was that they would grab onto the eyeballs when you got them close to your face. They prevented you from looking at close things unless you spent some time unlatching them.

(Ink magic was, at the heart of it, just a matter of making up magic items. They were entad-lite in a lot of ways, and shoddy enough that you’d almost always rather have a proper entad, or maybe even just a mundane piece of equipment, but I’d taken to ink magic like a fish to water, and not in the same accelerated way that I did with other skills, but with true, natural aptitude. The trick was in making things artful, spontaneous and playful, or awe-inspiring, or cool, and to do it over and over again without it getting stale or overstaying its welcome. I’d burnt myself out over the course of a day trying to push it with a suit of armor and a weapon for each of ten tuung fire teams: by the time the sun was going down, my results were dogshit, because even if I focused away from armor that would, say, stop a rifle round, it was a struggle to figure out something that wasn’t derivative or lazy. I was also limited by i-factor, a nebulous concept that roughly mapped to power, but knowing which magic items were level-appropriate was thankfully a skill that I had a lot of experience with.)

[...]

This one was Liam, whip-smart and politically minded, who I had actually spent some time in committee meetings with back on Poran, where he’d talked about the opinions of the tuung on a second generation. He was wearing three items I’d made for him with ink magic: a pistol that fired cutlery, a suit of armor that would divert incoming objects downward, and a bandana that kept him moist without the need for a mister. - Chapter 179: Hilbert's Paradox
39. ↑ The rest of the party took their pick of things as well, including the tuung, who found a few major upgrades to the ink magic that I had been furnishing them with. - Chapter 197: Second Degree
40. ↑ I [...] slap[ped] at Alvion’s Vambrace to get a change of armor. All at once I was in the Gardner’s Plate, an ink magic sword at my hip along with a shield that I had borrowed from Rosemallow, but the Vambrace itself was still coated in dragonfire, and it was searing hot. [...] I pulled out my sword with my other hand and began whacking away at him. It was an ink magic creation, one that was supposed to build in power with every hit, but it was fucking worthless, because every wound on the Cannibal was a surface wound. - Chapter 194: Coda II
41. ↑ I had been busy making inktads on the ship. Like rune magic, ink magic was best if you had quite a bit of time to prepare, since that would let you make the strongest results that were most applicable to your situation. Most of the stuff I’d made for the Doris EZ had been completely useless, since I had thought that we would need crowd control and area of effect magic, but since we hadn’t actually had to go up against a clone tide (except a few brief moments in the market, which Grak had solved), they’d gone unused. There had been a really neat gun that got better the more people were around, and I hadn’t used it a single time. Heck, I had gotten through the whole EZ without killing a single Doris.

For Captain Blue-in-the-Bottle, I was most worried about undead warriors, the kind of implacable killing machines that would be hard to take down no matter what magic I used, so I had thought long and hard about it, and then gone whole hog on burning out nervous systems. That was frighteningly high i-level, meaning that I couldn’t quite manage it without some serious limitations, which I put in place as requiring charge up time, discharge time, close contact, and precise positioning. The end result was three pieces of kit: one was a glove that could do nerve damage to whatever it touched or kill outright by scorching through the nerve system if I could have a hand on someone’s neck or skull for long enough; another was a dagger that could pulse outward from wherever it was planted, targeting the nerves specifically; the third was a net, which, instead of burning through nerves, would draw them out instead, literally pulling them from the body that was trapped beneath the fibers. That third one was weaker, too derivative of the first, but I was hoping that it would be good for a single use.

I hadn’t been able to solve the issue of him being underground with inktads though. - Chapter 207: An Elevated Monologue
42. ↑ Chapter 196: Notes II
43. ↑ **Ink Magic 10, Burnout Resistance:** If you would suffer two or more levels of creative exhaustion, suffer one less instead. If any effect removes one or more levels of creative exhaustion, it removes one more than it normally would. - Chapter 174: The Blade of the Self
44. ↑ There *was* a Language skill, with KNO as primary and CHA as secondary - Chapter 64: In Which Juniper Stares At His Character Sheet, Again
45. ↑ 45.0 45.1  ***Symbiosis:*** *You and Fenn are connected on a deeper level now, with the last vestiges of reluctance stripped away. When together, you may both use either your own skill, or half the skill of the other, rounded down, whichever is higher.* [...] So long as I was with her, the ungestalted Lying and Stealth were both practically useless to me, since I could just bum off her. My optimal build, which I hadn't even worked out yet, had shifted again with this new passive. [...]

 ***Skill increased: Lying lvl 2!***

With Deception ungestalted, I had to level Lying and Stealth back up, but luckily, Fenn had Lying in the mid-30s, which meant that through Symbiosis I had Lying in the high teens so long as she was near me.

- Chapter 66: The Long Night
46. ↑ I think the lie came out better that time, and I got another skill-up for it, which still left me far below the bonus that I was getting from Fenn’s Symbiosis passive. - Chapter 70: Moral Agency
47. ↑  ***Skill increased: Music lvl 6! (Skill capped at triple the value of primary stat CHA.)*** - Chapter 37: Paths
48. ↑ I had capped out Parry at 18, as planned, which revealed its primary stat as SPD, a minor (and predictable) bit of new information. - Chapter 25: Rocket Man
49. ↑ 49.0 49.1  ***Skill increased: Pistols lvl 12! (Skill capped at triple the value of primary stat SPD.)***

[...] ***Skill increased: Rifles lvl 6! (Skill capped at triple the value of primary stat CUN.)*** - Chapter 8: Diamond and Iron
50. ↑ **Essentialism 40, Soul Sight:** Grants a visual representation of souls, each with a unique color, which can be distinguished with acuity beyond the limits of the eye. Applies to both the soul and any magic which interfaces with a soul in some meaningful way.

**Essentialism 60, Soul Saturation:** Knowledge of your soul allows it to fully suffuse you, giving a number of benefits to a wide variety of magic. Your blood works as an infusion for the purposes of pustule magic. You can use your blood as though it were magical ink (4 ζ /mL) for the purposes of ink magic. Your bones are considered wood for the purposes of wood magic. Required connective power for plants is reduced by half.  You may retract your soul from your extremities for the purposes of bypassing wards. Any magic items or magics which limit projection or application to your eyes, hands, feet, or mouth, can instead be projected or applied from any part of your body. Your skin and/or carapace is treated as though it were skin and/or carapace for the purposes of skin magic and carapace magic, whichever is more beneficial. Runes may be written on your skin as though it were prepared vellum. More benefits apply in specific exclusion zones: consult the manual for more detail.

**Essentialism 80, Soul Scaphism:** You can carve out parts of other people to use for your own purposes. Any benefits are temporary; any costs are permanent.

**Essentialism 100, Soul Symbiote:** Double your effective skill in Bone Magic, Blood Magic, Skin Magic, Carapace Magic, Pustule Magic, and the flower magic aspect of Horticulture, up to a cap of 75. Double your effective connection to any magical item which interfaces with your soul, unless doing so has associated maluses. Increase your skill with any specialty or subschool of magic that uses the soul by 20 points, up to a cap of 50. - Chapter 105: Notes
51. ↑  ***Skill increased: Rifles lvl 21! (Skill capped at triple the value of primary stat CUN.)***
***New Virtue: Compensator!*** - Chapter 40: The Feminine Mystique
52. ↑ If we lose rune magic, that means an end to bottling and millions in the hells. - Chapter 200: Feeling Blue
53. ↑ 53.0 53.1 But to actually do it would almost certainly bring an exclusion down on rune magic, and rune magic was, unfortunately, linked in to soul extraction. If rune magic got excluded, then soul capture as a whole would evaporate overnight, and virtually everyone who died would end up in the hells. This was one of the primary reasons that a lot of potential applications of rune magic never got serious research and development. From what I knew, the regulatory apparatus for rune magic was huge and overgrown, but it hadn’t been trimmed back, because too much was riding on making sure that rune magic never got excluded. I had come to the runeforge in order to get some basics and cover some bases, and I was under strict instructions (that I didn’t really need) not to make improvisations or add on extra things beyond the base design. It wasn’t really my fault, but I had precipitated a fair number of exclusions, and rune magic getting excluded would have made things a lot worse for Aerb. - Chapter 225: Runination
54. ↑ 54.0 54.1 “This was the third contingency,” said Lisi. “The other two plans should have worked, but didn’t. We got an exclusion.”

“Which?” I asked, frowning.

“Rune magic,” said Lisi.

“Fuuuuck,” I said.

“Yup,” replied Lisi. “No rune magic, no soul spikes, no way to prevent people from going to the hells, not unless they have a hundred thousand obols and a week to prepare … there are reasons time is of the essence, and that’s one of them.” - Chapter 233: Tartarology
55. ↑ 55.0 55.1 55.2 So those are our core four magics, as I see them: still, rune, passion, and star. From there, we can start to think about multimagic, the most notable multimagic being the combined power of rune magic and star magic, which are both construction magics and can feed into each other, especially given the amount of energy that a high tier star mage is capable of harnessing. By opening a floating microportal to the plane of fire, for example, you can keep full tanks for your runework, and the tension of an extradimensional space or construction can provide energy all on its own, with runework providing the struts.

Yeah, they can.

Well, it’s a matter of fact, you can look it up.

Probably because they’re so different, but there have been a few people who cross-specialized, and a few more who collaborated, and Juniper was nothing if not a fiend for research. Research and bullshit, anyway, but he was usually pretty honest about which was which, if you pressed him.

[...]

*There’s nothing for us to grab off the shelf. At best, we could hire rune mages or at least experts in rune magic to make plans for us, but this would require significant amounts of time, and as far as star magic goes, might not even help, given that you would need to have proper knowledge of both fields to make the necessary designs. Beyond that, some of your proposed designs (then and now) were only ever possible within the magic system that Juniper created, not in the real world.* - Chapter 196: Notes II
56. ↑ Last time he tried some shit like this, he got close, close enough that we were breaking down doors in order to stop the ritual-in-progress. It wasn’t the singing, it was some other attack on the world, rune magic, near the Lexian forge. - Chapter 157: The Bird on the Fence
57. ↑ I did my best to see the attacks coming and get out of the way, but everyone was getting as lethal as they could get, and when the Cannibal killed a rune mage that had been powering up a green beam weapon, it lanced through the air, slicing through me and a few others.

Dying wasn’t quite an old hat, but I’d been burning my way through the unicorn’s bones for quite a while now, and I was used to utterly failing and having to reset.

[...]

That *fucking* rune mage had killed me, though in some sense I couldn’t blame him, because he literally couldn’t have known I was there. I tried the same route again, waiting for the Cannibal to approach me, this time circling to the left in order to get him closer to his eventual target. I burned the same mome bone again, and this time, held the paper bag in my mouth for just long enough that I could pull out my returning dagger and chuck it right at the rune mage, bonking him in the head hard enough to give him second thoughts about the attack he was charging up. - Chapter 194: Coda II
58. ↑ ...with the runeworks on top of my armor, I could in theory tank some pretty ridiculous amounts of direct damage. None of that mattered in the face of Fel Seed, but at least it was something. - Chapter 229: The Road
59. ↑ “When you were lost in Fel Seed’s domain, we searched the hells for you but could not find you. Eventually, we determined that it was probable that you were either alive or bottled. The bomb took care of both possibilities.”

“How big a bomb?” I asked.

“There’s a smoking crater where the City of a Thousand Brides used to be,” said Lisi.

“So we sent thousands of people to the hells?” I asked. “More?”

“Well, *we* didn’t do that, because you’ve been gone for three years,” said Lisi. “But yes. It made it hard to find you. By the time we did, information was already flowing and nearly impossible to stop. Allowing the interrogation was a calculated risk so that we could find out how much they knew.”

“Antimatter rune bomb?” I asked.

[...]

“We were more worried about exclusion,” said Lisi. “Which is what happened.” - Chapter 234: Heck if I Know
60. ↑ “You may continue. The Outer Reaches next, if you please.” [...] “Uther was the one who protected us. It’s not impossible that you might be able to match that feat, but Uther could only do it after having surpassed yet another master, and all the masters who would teach you are now dead.”

“Vervain among them,” said Heshnel. - Chapter 125: The Remnants of the Past
61. ↑ “Uther had hoped that the art would die with him. He found it nearly as abhorrent as he found soul magic. He said that if a person’s soul was a rock, then their spirit was water flowing over it. If the soul was etched in a book, then the spirit was the pen that wrote that book.”

 ***Quest Accepted: As the Spirit Moves You - There are no spirit mages left alive. The art has been dead for some five hundred years, and Uther was the one to kill it. Though the books have all been destroyed since long ago, there is one place where books can never be entirely removed from. Once you find the entrance to the Infinite Library, you might be able to find the lost power.*** - Chapter 128: An Open Book
62. ↑  ***Quest Completed: As the Spirit Moves You - Uther did his best to remove it from the world, but there are some places where secrets are archived. You are now the sole practitioner of the art. Use it wisely.*** - Chapter 132: Uskine Nervedah
63. ↑ 63.0 63.1 63.2 63.3 63.4 63.5 Chapter 202: Star Pupil
64. ↑ Chapter 203: Where the Streets Run Red
65. ↑ 65.0 65.1 *A Tour of the Elemental Planes* listed twenty-eight of them: acid, base, blood, bone, chitin, clay, earth, electricity, fire, flesh, glass, gold, ice, iron, lava, light, magnetism, mist, rust, salt, sand, shadow, smoke, steam, stone, vacuum, water, and wood. There had been hundreds of demi-planes, but they were excluded back in Uther’s day. There had been a mirror dimension and a dream dimension, both excluded. There were a handful of planes which were even more entirely hostile to human life than the elemental planes, including *m*-space, *n-* space, *t-* space, and *p-*space, most of which had only been detected by exotic instruments or mathematical proofs. There were nine thousand hells and no heavens. There was an equivalent to the Ethereal Plane, but it was badly out of sync with Aerb, and you could only get there if you were a star mage. The Plane of Drift had similarly harsh requirements for access, unless you ended up there by chance, and was largely useless (its Earth origin was what Reimer had called ‘the Amelia Earhart dimension’). There were no less than *thirty-seven* dangerous parallel dimensions, three that were excluded, eight that had apparently been destroyed, and another twenty-six that were ‘inaccessible’, a fact that everyone seemed to accept. - Chapter 128: [[An Open Book|An Open Book ]]
66. ↑ 66.0 66.1 The Doris Finch Exclusion Zone arc, Chapters 201-205
67. ↑ 67.0 67.1 Raven cleared her throat. “Yes, your grace,” said Raven. “In 17 FE Uther uncovered a draconic breeding program organized by a collective of three dragons whose primary aim, as I understand it, was to unleash an unprecedented number of wyrmlings onto Aerb with the goal of destabilizing the First Empire and reverting a number of technological, scientific, and magical advancements these dragons found problematic. The wyrmlings were being raised in an old-growth demiplane with food imported from the elemental plane of flesh by a small clan of star mages. Uther fought and killed the three dragons, the first singly and the other two at the same time, and was then left with the question of what to do about the wyrmling swarm.” - Chapter 170: On Treating With Dragons
68. ↑ It did help to answer the question of ‘why blood’ though. The elemental planes were different ‘distances’ from Aerb, I’d known that much just from reading. Generally speaking, the more worthwhile planes were harder to get to, but even if you had to pick from among the crappy ones, accessing the elemental plane of blood seemed like one of the worst to me. There was no air, just blood, and I wasn’t sure what good those faceplates would do, because blood wasn’t particularly easy to see through. I had thought that maybe it had something to do with the overabundance of basically-real blood that the Dorises could produce, blood which was real enough to count for the purposes of blood magic. That was still a decent theory. - Chapter 204: Open Veins
69. ↑ 69.0 69.1 “The Second Empire tried it,” said Raven, already shaking her head. “There was an imperial-funded project that attempted extraction from all the closer elemental planes. Flesh was promising, but in practice, the continued efforts of star mages to keep the portal open, the bottlenecks of the flesh mines, and the poor quality of what was taken out, all led to it being closed. It was also tried during the First Empire, somewhat more successfully, by a group of dragons that needed enormous quantities of meat, but it wasn’t sustainable.” - Chapter 213: The Endless Toil
70. ↑  *We will gather all of the gold that is easy to gather and rightfully yours,* replied the call of the gold. *Once that is done we will venture out to capture gold stores. After that, we will convert any funds or services into permanent sources of gold income, or liquidate those in exchange for gold that cannot be acquired. We will mine out gold from ore. We will acquire all gold on the face of Aerb and Celestar. We will generate new gold through entads and magic. We will open a gate to the plane of gold.*

“Huh,” I said. That was a lot more information than I thought I would get. The end goal of opening a portal to the elemental plane of gold was pretty much never going to happen, because it would require lots and lots of star mages working together, or boosting my own skill in star magic, which I couldn’t do now that Essentialism was gone. Portals to the elemental planes were very rarely done, and a portal to the plane of gold was, if not impossible, then so hard that I knew of no successful attempts at it. - Chapter 217: A Dragon's Roost
71. ↑ In the center of it was an elaborate construction of a type I’d never seen before, with lots of struts, many of them curved, connecting in odd places. It was only when the light bathed them that I finally saw the lines marked on them. The whole assembly, which looked like a particularly erratic playground set, twenty feet tall and much bigger around, must have been three-dimensional star magic. I knew the equivalent of ‘hello world’ in star magic, but this … I could see how this would have taken a whole team of star mages a lot of time to do, since each of those lines would have required its own calculations, nevermind the work of actually putting them in place with a high degree of accuracy, and I was pretty sure that they were etched there rather than drawn on, mostly because parts of it were covered with dried blood.

“This is the portal,” said Star Doris. “Eight years of my life were spent on this.” Spent by whom, she didn’t say. - Chapter 204: Open Veins
72. ↑ “We go in, find the portal, and … close it. Which should be as easy as breaking up the markings that allow the star magic to work.”

[...]

“What do we need to do for disassembly?” I asked. “You would have built in redundancies, maybe even booby traps.”

“Just knock the thing down,” said Star Doris, staring at it.

It was very still and quiet in that big room. We were more than fifty feet from it.

“That closes the portal,” I said. “In theory.” Portals closed easily and safely by default, even if you weren’t trying, at least from what I knew, with none of the calamity that an extradimensional space might have. - Chapter 204: Open Veins
73. ↑ A skilled star mage could make a room that was bigger on the inside than the outside, but it was hellishly expensive, and the failure modes weren’t pretty. Nothing in the schematics had indicated the kind of reinforcement that you would expect, if there really were extradimensional spaces in play. - Chapter 160: On the Merits of Oblivion
74. ↑ And *normally* caving in a building would be pretty terrible, but caving in one that was packed to the gills with extradimensional space? That was on a different level of urban calamity. Where Greychapel had crunched in, whole rooms had spilled out the sides, and the internal wreckage of the primary legislative building of Anglecynn had barfed out into the surrounding streets, filling them up with walls, floors, tables, chairs, cabinets, and (I was sure) bodies. [...] I didn’t have a firm grasp on the layout of Greychapel, so I simply ran over to the hole that Tommul had made and jumped down, using still magic to keep from breaking a leg. I ended up in a room that had been half pushed out when the star magic had failed and the extradimensional stuff had come undone, but after I’d gone past the door, everything looked more or less fine. - Chapter 194: Coda II
75. ↑ The problem with extradimensional spaces was almost always in their boundary conditions. The inside was bigger than the outside, yes, but how did that work when at some point the inside and outside had to meet each other? For something like Sable, that was easy, since the only connection from the exterior to the interior was through commands that seamlessly placed things in or out. But for a building that was bigger on the inside through star magic, the warping *really* had to take account of the difference between the inside and the outside, *especially* if you wanted something dumb, like a window, because if the interior wall was stretched, then the window might also be stretched, and would let in the same amount of light over a much larger surface area, making the outside dim, to say nothing of what would happen if someone tried to go through the thing. There had been cases of amateur star magic outright killing people who tried to walk into their new extradimensional rooms. - Chapter 199: Nearest and Dearest
76. ↑ “Look at the scale on this thing,” said Xo, pointing at the blueprint rather than the piece I had in hand. “You know that you’re going to have to carry this around, right?”

“I’m a star mage,” I said. “All this is going to be placed into a kind of subspace assembly that I’ll wear on my back. That’s a work in progress, but it’s mostly done.” - Chapter 225: Runination
77. ↑ He went after Raven first, leaping through the air, and I used one of our secret weapons, tapping a bone. It wasn’t just any bone though, it was one that I was touching through a star magic construct that had been specially built for exactly that purpose at great expense.

The bone belonged to Mome Rath. - Chapter 236: More Dakka
78. ↑ “We need to clean up, clear out, and rebuild. The only question that anyone should be concerned with is what shape that rebuilding will take. There are people who will argue that Li’o should become a ghost town, that the temple and rod should be moved somewhere else. Mortality has been extremely high. Infrastructure is in a sorry state. There is a *corpse* sitting in the middle of the city, smelling more every day.”

“The empire is attempting to pass legislation that will bring a group of star mages in to take care of it,” said Satyr. - Chapter 165: Politics, blah, blah, blah
79. ↑ “I thought that it was a — a monster, so tall it was scraping the clouds, so big that when it fell it crushed thousands,” said Heath. “They were bringing in star mages to remove the body, that’s how big it was.” - Chapter 177: The Erstwhile Manor
80. ↑ It had been a rather interesting time for whalers, who had, for the most part, put their dealings with sea creatures to the side. A bit less than two months prior, an absolutely enormous monster had appeared in Li’o, and many of the whalers had been teleported over at great expense to help cut it apart and harvest whatever could be harvested from it as fast as possible, before the flesh began to putrefy and as much of the corpse as possible was delivered by star magic to somewhere that wasn’t urbanized. - Chapter 213: The Endless Toil
81. ↑ 81.0 81.1 “It’s not,” said Oberlin. “The second time we encountered the symbol of the man on fire, he was part of a demonic cult. They were out of Five Spires, urban, with a cluster of star mages creating a planar depression that facilitated possessions. Nothing world ending, we don’t think, though they were making an honest effort there at the end. There was discussion of the man on fire in their notebooks, and a handful of drawings. That time there were survivors we were able to talk to. They talked about him showing up in their dreams.” - Chapter 151: The Mind's Eye
82. ↑ “Someone go stand in the center of the ring and we can test it. They should be monitoring us.” She gave a brief wave to an imagined person above us.

“I suppose you made some advancement in infernoscopes while I was gone?” I asked.

“No,” said Lisi. “You just didn’t know everything.”

“Star magic augmentation,” said Grak. “It was classified.” - Chapter 234: Heck if I Know
83. ↑ 83.0 83.1 Late during Uther’s time on Aerb, there started to be disappearances. Raven became one of the missing: she was having a daydream of a shining palace on top of a cliff, and ended up there, leaving the prime material plane behind. As it turned out, one of the other planes, Xoltle, had been brought into collision with the material plane. Anyone who daydreamed about the place on Xoltle that was co-located with the dreamer’s physical location on Aerb would wind up on Xoltle, where they would be picked up by the insane hierarch who had set his sights on conquest. Uther had defeated the hierarch (naturally), then untangled the planes with star magic beyond anything anyone had seen before or since. - Chapter 148: Sing For Your Supper
84. ↑ For a fourth magic, which is as many as I recommend at the higher levels given how slowly skills raise, star magic is my pick. It’s absolutely garbage-tier terrible when you start out, but it’s pretty much a linchpin at the higher levels, since it compresses travel time so much, lets you go to a lot of places that it’s really helpful to be able to go to, and has bonus utility in terms of what structures and traps you can build. It’s definitely not a frontline ability, but if you’re taking one for utility, best to take the one that can crack the endgame wide open, and that you can use consistently enough to actually level up.

Well I know that star mages can’t do some of that, but it’s what they could do in the game, and if we’re operating under the assumption that Juniper has something like the modified game rules, or some version of them where the different versions conflict... - Chapter 196: Notes II
85. ↑ 85.0 85.1 85.2 85.3 85.4 85.5 Q: What magics did Uther know? We never got a full list, despite Fenn mentioning he mastered 8 super early on.

A: I actually lost my list I made when Fenn said that, then had to reconstruct it, always worried that I was going to contradict myself, but of the eight that were generally known: Warding, Steel, Still, Vibration, Star, Wood, and two excluded, Chronomancy and Conjoinery. Of the ones that aren't know, there are also Soul and Spirit, and possibly others. - WtC Q&A
86. ↑ “The tuung can handle it from here, now that food and water have been sorted.” Food was through the portal I had helped to make with a squadron of star mages, but water had been entirely Grak, who had provided the critical wards for a hastily built filtration station at what was soon going to become a metropolis. - Chapter 221: Targets of Opportunity
87. ↑ Chapter 230: The Palace
88. ↑ 88.0 88.1 88.2 Tree Magic: distinct from Wood Magic. J gave six examples (from games), none obviously right: tree as totem of power, tree as connection (flower mage? similar), tree as divination re: forks (! seems good), tree as voodoo doll, tree as Dorian Gray ref (sp? maybe read, Wilde, close to historical Gray Magic (excluded)), tree as branches/timelines (less sure on that one). Large search space. Will test unlocks. Ask Solace too. Relationship to salvers from Arches re: head trees? But salvers “invented” while on Aerb, per J. DM existential fuckery? -

Chapter 105: Notes
89. ↑ 89.0 89.1 That left two, which went to more speculative abilities: Tree Magic and Gold Magic.

Tree Magic was contentious, because we still didn’t know what it did. Gold Magic was even more contentious, because it came with a steep downside. Both were taken on contingency, the former because it might end up being necessary, the latter so that we could break glass in case of emergency. - Chapter 172: Respec
90. ↑ Tree magic was as described in the Council of Arches side story, which would then tie into a Thargox arc that I always kind of thought I was never going to do. WtC spends a lot of time on the relationship between creator and creations, but the Thargox arc was going to be about the relationship between consumers/readers and creations, which tree magic was meant to be a part. Plus I liked the idea of something that Juniper had come up with on Aerb existing as a magic system on Aerb. The story thematically needed loose threads and dropped plotlines, so I didn't worry too much about it. - Alexander Wales, WtC AMA
91. ↑ “But sure, if you want to be a wizard, there are basically two types of magic in this world, one that centers around Wits, and another that centers around Charm. You need a 5 in the respective stat, and you’ll take a malus of one on Physique if you pick either. Salvers are Charm-centric. They have little trees growing from their heads that only they can see, and little fairies inhabit these trees, which the salver is under some obligation to entertain in some esoteric way, called a Compulsion. In exchange, the fairies will do your bidding, so when you attack, you’ll flip up a card and add Charm rather than Physique, like, for example, if you were firing a bow. Your defense will still be Endurance based, so either make that a priority, or stay away from combat. And the fairies aren’t bound by the rules of reality, they can do some fantastical things that you simply couldn’t on your own, like healing. The flip side of that is that they can be a liability, or they can fail you. You should think of it like having a partner who isn’t really all-in on the relationship.” - The Council of Arches (story), Chapter 1
92. ↑ “Can I send one in for a lookout?” asked Amaryllis.

“Sure,” I said. “Make a flip.”

Amaryllis flipped over a card, her slender hands moving fast. She frowned at the result. “One. Plus my Charm is eight.”

“The fairies flit around your head-tree, as though they’re going to obey, but after a wide circle, they return, having not done your bidding, laughing merrily among themselves. When they land on one of the tree branches, it grows, now slightly crooked.”

(I wasn’t *quite* making up things as I went along, but it was a near thing; I had a metaphor in mind for the tree and fairies, that of an online community and its denizens, with branches being threads of discussion, the Compulsion being the subreddit or forum topic, and the powers being, essentially, calls to action. When I made decisions about how the fairies behaved, it was within that framework. The crooked branch was something like “the fairies are not your personal army”.)

“Can I try again?” asked Amaryllis. Her eyebrows were pulled together slightly in either focus or frustration; on her, it was quite fetching.

“You can, but there will be a penalty, minus two on the flip,” I replied. “Just to pull back the curtain a bit, in order to help you make choices, I set the target at thirteen; the average salver’s got five Charm, the average flip is seven, and having the fairies do things out of your sight is somewhat difficult -- half the time for a *normal* salver, but you’re better than normal. Failure by five or more represents *significant* failure, which is why you get a penalty, rather than it just costing you time and some of the fairies’ goodwill, which I’m tracking but is opaque to you.”

“Fine,” said Amaryllis. “Can I pretend that I didn’t try at all?”

“You want to retcon your actions?” I asked. “Retcon means, um, retroactive continuity.”

“You’ve explained it before,” said Amaryllis. “And no, I want to keep it from the group in order to save face.”

“Ah,” I said. “Yeah, commands are non-verbal, non-somatic, you do it through thought alone.” - The Council of Arches (story), Chapter 1
93. ↑ == Salvers ==
**Prerequisites:** A 5 or greater in Charm.

**Malus:** -1 to base Physique.

**Effect:** You may use your fairies to replace the attribute for any flip besides a defense flip with Charm instead. You may also make a Charm flip to perform supernatural acts (your Archemaster will tell you the target ahead of time, with bigger effects requiring you to meet a higher target). However, you are in some ways a slave to the fairies, and must select a Compulsion that they expect you to follow. Additionally, too many requests to the fairies in too short a period may result in a malus on flips, especially if their desires haven’t been sated (your Archemaster will give you periodic updates, either as you pass certain thresholds, or when you ask).

**Example Compulsions:** A salver might have a Compulsion toward flowers, and be compelled to always seek more of them, more unique ones, more beautiful ones, etc. A salver with such a compulsion might find themselves constantly on the road, visiting new flowers, buying books depicting flowers, and otherwise finding ways to feed their tree and the fairies that have been attracted to it. A skilled salver who devotes time to the task can maintain a large collective of invested fairies indefinitely.

 *Salvers have small, crystalline trees growing from their heads, which only they can see and interact with. Fairies are drawn to this tree, and whatever specialty it provides them. The salver can, in some respects, be seen as a farmer or herder, tending to the tree and the fairies by hewing to their esoteric demands, and in return, harvesting their labor. They often name the most active and valuable of their fairies, though the populations can be quite ephemeral.*

- The Council of Arches (story), Chapter 2: The Rules of Arches
94. ↑ ***Skill increased: Unarmored lvl 21! (Skill capped at triple the value of primary stat SPD.)*** - Chapter 40: The Feminine Mystique
95. ↑ I didn’t have a clear idea of what those restrictions would be, or how you would go about quantifying them. Plausibility of the illusion? Percent of senses that could to be faked at once? I tried to think about what I had seen, and what that said about illusion magic. If you were going to make a red-hot bit of stone to stop me from touching someone, why do it like that? Why not just create it mid-air, hovering in place?

I reached forward again, and the glowing tip of rock was there again. I pushed forward, trying to channel WIS so that I could better withstand the pain. It still made my eyes water as I clenched my teeth to get through it, but it wasn’t as painful as it should have been.
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 109: "The Veil of the World"
96. ↑ 96.0 96.1 “One-handed weapons implies two-handed weapons, parrying and dodging imply blocking with a shield, pistols and rifles mean maybe automatic rifles or shotguns, horticulture is new but that makes me think along the lines of crafting or gathering skills like smithing or mining, and of the social skills … persuasion is notably absent, and I think I would have gotten that by now, but that does leave intimidation. And depending on how magic works, I’d think I’d have at least one magic skill.” - Chapter 7: Twenty Questions
97. ↑ Bloodline Magic [...] Juniper’s Notes: Not to be confused with bloodline magic, which acts on a person’s bloodline. Pretty much no one knows about bloodline magic, and it’s excluded, so it’s a confusion of terms that only affects a very few. - Worth the Candle: A Brief Description of Aerb - Magics
98. ↑ “I didn’t mean … I only thought maybe it would interest you. I’m seventeen hundred years old. I’ve seen things. I met Godo the Everliving, ten miles beneath the surface of Aerb. There was a different time when Esclin Tearheart threatened to destroy the whole of dwarvenkind through a bloodline attack, a long but largely unsung adventure that led us to the home of the first dwarves.”

“Bloodline attack?” asked Grak. “I’m unfamiliar.”

“Excluded magic,” said Raven with a shrug. “So many magics gone, more than the Empire counts. That was one of the nastier ones, silently excluded to an unknown place. It was once possible to kill a man by weaving a spell and punching his father hard enough.” - Chapter 150: Than One Innocent Suffer
99. ↑ 99.0 99.1 Raven nodded. “More during that era than now, but less than during Uther’s time. Or maybe it was just more spread out, commonplace. Airships crowded the air around the Spires like flies,” she said. “The city of Five Spires paid a tithe to a dragon, I think.” She frowned. “There were shuist parlors on every corner that had been perfectly arranged so that you could spend five or ten minutes sitting in the center, which would make you focused and revitalized. And there was such a variety of cultures, so many of which have been watered down and mixed into a dull brown by the centuries. Five Spires was one of the cosmopolitan centers, even in Uther’s time.” She sighed. “We’ve lost so unbelievably much.” - Chapter 206: Parallel Lines
100. ↑ the time chamber isn't/wasn't an entad, it's a magic item, produced by a sand mage
—[https://discordapp.com/channels/437695037401464851/437696073293758484/502324331871862795
 Alexander Wales on Discord, 2018/10/18]