Beyond Destination

All things can happen, but there is always a price.

That is the first law and the heart of the game. Anything can be done, bent, escaped or broken — somebody pays for it, somewhere, somehow. Most prices are small: the energy it took to do the thing. Some are your morals, your life, other people's lives, or what you hold dearest. Play is choosing what you are willing to pay.

Generosity does not break the rule. It only changes who pays.

No matter how powerful or immortal, everything ends. This runs deeper than anything that could be argued with or appealed. It is a property of reality itself.

Ending is not the same as killing. Some things cannot be killed in any reasonable way. They can still be ended.

Everything that exists is built from three core planes:

1. The Physical — matter, and the laws of physics. It gives things substance and permanence.
2. The Spiritual — souls, and a kind of energy called essence. It gives will: the power to make intent happen.
3. The Mind — if it can think, it exists here. It gives reason: the ability to imagine something and mean to act on it.

These are not places you can visit. Think of them like the three axes of space. Everything sits on them.

Free will needs all three. A being with free will exists on all three at once. Being on all three does not guarantee free will — but you cannot have it without them.

Humans, and beings like them, are assumed to have souls unless something says otherwise. That includes artificial beings complex enough to earn one.

There are three categories of power: Magic power, Cosmic power, and Psychic power. Every other kind falls under one or more of them.

• Magic power is will expressed as effect. It draws its power from the Spiritual plane.
• Psychic power is tied to the Mind.
• Cosmic power is not tied to any plane. It is a very specific exception written into the rules of reality — reality simply makes it happen.

All three can make the same effect, but they are separate. A cosmic fireball is not magic. So a world where magic does not work stops magic — and nothing else.

At the table, all three work the same way.

An effect is separate from the force that causes it. The same fire can come from magic, cosmic power or a psychic mind.

You can combine any effect with any force, as many as you like. There is no table of what is allowed. The only thing you need is a reason it works — and that reason usually comes as either Reason or Rhyme.

• Reason is logic and physics. You know how fire works well enough to build it.
• Rhyme is meaning and metaphor. The concept of a thing carries the weight, and the universe agrees that it happens that way.

In this multiverse, metaphor is not decoration. It is how power works. A poet can have a real advantage — and so can someone who argues well enough that the contest should run on plain logic instead.

A reality is a stack of planes, like a stack of paper. Every sheet is made of the same three core planes; what changes from sheet to sheet is the mix. The middle, most balanced sheet is the Prime Material Plane — the one most people live on.

Tip the mix far enough toward one core plane and physics changes drastically. Some planes barely touch the Physical at all. There, time and distance come loose: spend an hour there, and you may come back to find much more or much less time has passed.

Each plane also carries its own concept. On a plane of fire, fire is easier and anything against fire is much harder.

Realities are usually built almost the same, so a plane in one reality will usually show up in others in some form. Realities also touch and interfere with each other — sometimes gently, like waves on a beach, sometimes like a tsunami. Travel between realities is possible and natural. It is also close to a death sentence for anyone not very well prepared.

A soul is not only for casting. It is part of every living person, mage or not. It grows like a muscle — through use, through hardship survived, and through what you achieve. A bigger soul carries more weight when reality decides how things turn out.

Magic is enforcing your will on reality. It always costs energy — usually essence from your soul, or loose essence in the world around you. Powers of any kind can also cost harder things, up to years of your life.

There are two broad ways to cast. Both use rhyme — it is part of how magic works. What differs is what each leans on.

• Spellweaving leans on Reason. You build the spell like writing code, piece by piece. It is precise, and it is hard on the mind: you have to hold everything the spell is doing, clearly, all at once. Hold too much and the spell fizzles — it fails, the energy is spent, and you start over. Its power is limited to what one small being's mind and will can put behind it.
• Esoteric casting leans on Rhyme — chants, rituals, passed-down forms. The rhyme carries the conceptual load, so it asks much less of your mind. It makes powerful spells easier to pull off, and it can draw more raw power, because it throws more of the universe's will behind the spell. It is reliable — if you understand what you are tapping into and how it reacts to outside forces. That is why it takes so much education.

Any magic can be changed by outside forces. The more exactly you spell out what should happen, the less room there is. Spellweaving leaves less to the universe, so it is steadier; esoteric casting leaves more. And even a spell cast with no outside interference can still react with outside forces once its effect is out in the world.

Both take discipline. And nothing stops a mage from using both — many do.

Anyone can invent their own school of magic, or use familiar ones. The rule the GM uses: give a good enough reason or rhyme, and enough resources, and you can try.

Cosmic power comes in more variety than any other kind. Magic is the most flexible and the easiest to reach; cosmic power is the most varied and the most unique. Every cosmic power is its own thing.

Where it comes from. You can be born with it, be given it, and sometimes take it. Most often, though, there is no reason at all. You just have it. Many cosmic powers are small and subtle, so quiet nobody thinks of them as powers. It's the person things just seem to happen to, or around. An inexplicable quirk that everyone notices and no one thinks too hard about.

What it costs. It depends on the power, but the stronger it is, the more it costs. The cost only has to take something away, bring a bad outcome, or add a complication. A power that brings someone back from death demands a sacrifice: a life, several lives, or the world growing darker and more tragic each time it is used.

Control. Control is questionable at best. Having a cosmic power you can actually control is lucky, though not rare. Many cosmic powers simply happen — to the person who has them as much as to anyone else.

If nothing else is influencing the soul, this is what happens. The soul drifts in the Spiritual plane. Over time, the soul around the spark of life melds and returns to nature. Then the spark of life disappears from observable reality.

That is the default. Other things can change what happens.

Fate is a cosmic force that makes sure what is supposed to happen, happens. It is not one set path — it is all the possibilities added together. Free will's most important job is your ability to change your own fate, whether or not you know what you are doing.

Destiny is a guaranteed event. It will happen, however long it takes — but how it happens is still up to the people involved. A destiny can sometimes be felt as a pull on the soul toward a time when the conditions are right.

Both can be escaped. There is always a price.

Perception is how power finds its target. In this multiverse, to affect something directly, a being first has to notice it. That holds all the way up: even a being whose opinion becomes fact can only directly change what it can perceive. Indirect effects can still reach you.

Names have power. A name is a reference to a being, and a reference carries that being's signature. Saying a true name spreads awareness of it, and awareness can draw the attention of whoever it belongs to. Careful people in the world speak in titles and descriptions instead. That lowers the risk; it does not remove it.

So being unnoticed is protection. Being small, quiet or beneath notice keeps you out of the way of beings of enormous power. Against the very greatest, being uninteresting may be the only safety there is.

This is about the world, not the table. Out of game, you can say any name you like.

A god is bound more tightly by universal law than anyone else. Climbing toward godhood is climbing into law, not out of it. Freedom is greatest somewhere in the middle: a person with no power has little freedom, and a person with enormous power has too many things demanding their share.

Your character knows what someone in their position would know. For most people that means a good deal about their own universe, and very little about the wider multiverse. Knowing more has to come from somewhere — someone who has been beyond, or something your character learned in play.