Black Nerve

Affinity 

Most vesperbanes have an affinity for one of the four earthly elements. Wrapped up in that word ‘affinity’ is a complex, poorly understood phenomena, a consequence both of a soul’s enervate composition and the physiology of their umbral system, as well as subtle thing like diet or health. There is a long‍-​lasting nature vs nurture debate on the matter of affinity; while most vesperbanes seem to have an innate affinity, it has in some cases mutated with training‍ ‍—‍ but is that a true change, or the revelation of what was always there, or incipient, like a nymph turning imago?

Ash: When fire burns, the flame is nothing but incandescent ash turning to smoke. Ash form techniques grant a user a sense for and control over fuel, ash, and smoke, with their influence being strongest for fuel & ash. This, of course, grants them a fine ability to shape flames, stoke or quench them.

Ash forms cannot create fire from nothing; for this reason, every user is made unique by their choice of fuel. Various oils are common choices, while adepts may make use of gases, or coals.

One also requires a means of starting the fire: for this, the ash forms include supplementary ‘spark’ and ‘flashpoint’ techniques to instigate flames, the latter being a powerful, expensive burst of thermal radiation. By similar means, ash form techniques can be used as a source of illumination.

While ash forms grant no innate resistance to burning per se (unless your clan name is Thimithi), their control means directing tongues of flame and plumes of smoke away from you is a matter of skill.

Ash forms are more properly thought of as a mastery of carbon, and for this reason advanced ash users have tricks that might surprise those who view them as only pyromaniacs: control of wood, graphite, or even diamond.

Sand: Sand, or glass, or stone. All of these would be equally accurate labels‍ ‍—‍ inaccurate, rather. If the ash style concerns itself with carbon, sand is silicon. But a pure example of this element is a rare thing. Sand has, further, has two additional weaknesses. One is density: to lift a heavier thing requires more power, and the heavier it is, the more you run the risk of, rather than throwing it, being thrown, because enervate forces existbetweenobjects, rather than going solely from one to another.

The second reason is inertness. Fire can burn, but what can sand or stone do? apply force, chiefly. Which worsens the first problem (for if force is the end, using as much mass as possible is the means). Because of this, unlike all the other other elements, sand form users rarely manipulate their element alone.

Every vesper has fungal symbionts, and vesperbanes with sand affine enervate cultivate them extensively, letting their root masses grow deep and broad into the earth before a command directs them to retract, curling into a tight compressed mass. This is their preparation. When the time comes for tactical use, these masses can be return to the ground, and directed to rapidly expand to their original shape. Fungi are well known for the pressures they can exert, and these conduct the users enervate to apply further force to the earth.

This is the true power of sand forms: while a user can fling boulders at a distance, or blast foes with gouts of sand and shards of glass, their control of the battlefield, creating platforms, pits, bridges, could not be done with kinetic force alone, and is a matter of what fungal patterns they have prepared.

Water: Water is a subtle element, and occasionally underestimated: it lacks the flash of ash form, or the scale of sand form. When it is considered, it’s often purely as a counter: water extinguishes flame. This lack consideration is fine; water is the assassin’s element.

For one, because water chiefly composes bodies, water form users can easily sense the presence of enemies or animals in general. (Carbon, being not uncommon itself, means ash form userscouldreplicate a lesser version of this‍ ‍—‍ if any of them bothered with sensory specialization.)

For two, an extension of the first, force applied to the water in a body can be easily deadly. A vesperbane, particularly a trained one, can resist this, but no resistance is perfect.

For three, what is poison, but adulterated water?

Finally, when a water form user spends enough time studying their ability to rust iron, they will come to a realization: it’s not reallywaterthey’re controlling, though that certainly comes easiest. The water form controlsoxygen, which comprises most of water’s weight. This is why a water form user can extinguish flames without even using water, or why rusting (a long term process) can be accomplished so quickly.

The uncreative will see an immediate application: we breathe oxygen. Others go on to imagine what chemical possibilities this opens.

Niter: For much of history, an oddly appreciated element. It had domestic applications in the form of crop fertilizer, while users occasionally dared to produce blackpowder, often exploding themselves.

But when purified, ancients found the essence of niter was a colorless, odorless, suffocating gas once calledazote. This broadened the imagination, and allowed for the modern niter forms. All air, it turns out, is composed mostly of this azote, and control of it allows users to call the winds, dampen or generate sounds, and of course, choke the life out of enemies.

But even a gale force wind is more tactical than it is offensive, and thus the chief technique of niter form is the compression of much air into tiny volumes. when released, it unleashes a devastating blastwave in the opponent’s direction. another technique exploits the stability of vortex rings to deliverate enervate or toxic fumes at a distance, without the diffusion of winds.

Those are the four earthly elements, but one other bears mentioning.

Lightning: this was a blood secret, the hidden art of the Gaveldika clan. Clanshatter stripped many clans of their accrued power and status, but few suffered as much as Gaveldika, enduring perhaps the gravest shame: their blood secret became a matter of common revelation.

Lightning is simultaneously the most narrowly straightforward and versatile of the elements. It is offensive to a fault, and devastating at that (there are few recourses to even a small amperage run through the heart), but can disrupt most other elements, ionizing and catalyzing reactions.

This neatly segues into a thing I forgot, or rather, deferred. Interactions between elements. There is no clean rock paper scissors or elemental cycle here.

Water puts out fire, but so do most things. Sand (especially augmented with fungi) easily absorbs water, while fire can burn the fungi, crippling a sand form users’ effectiveness.

Niter, other than extinguishing flame, has no particular strengths or weaknesses interacting with the other elements. Lightning, as mentioned, has an advantage against all of them.

Further, each affinity also has implications for the users’ ability to shape enervate, even without affinity distillation.

Finally, demographics. As implied, affinity is influenced by genetic and environmental factors. If your mother was a niter user, you are more likely to be a niter user. If you live by a lake populated with water affine enervate, you are more likely to be a water user. Some of it is just random, though.

Basically, roll 2d6:

Complexion 

Like a body with specialized organs for each purpose, vesperbat blood has differentiated humors, each executing a particular function. Mx cells have a natural plasticity, but it’s common for vesperbanes to develop a hypertrophic excess of one particular humor.

Oleocholer, the blood of pyrexia: A dark, oily secretion, oleocholer wouldn’t be inaccurately viewed as the fuel of the blood. It is burned to produce heat and energy, and in oleocholic banes, this often results in a jittery, manic presentation. An excess of oleocholer allows for pyrexia form techniques: temporarily heightening the body’s metabolism to feverish extremes, either for enhanced combat ability, or specialized purpose (burning out a poison, or quickly synthesizing a compound).

Malphlegm, the blood of contagion: Slimey, moldy, and somewhat jelly‍-​like, malphlegm is the waste of the blood, innumerable unwelcome viruses and bacteria expelled‍ ‍—‍ occasionally including diseases of the users own design. Malphlegmic is the most obviously combat focused complexion, and this is taken to extreme in the infamous plaguespitters: banes with thoraces bloated with toxic build up, the billary sac ready to be discharged upon their foes.

Hemoserum, the blood of homeostasis: Clear and inviscid, it’s unclear if this humor, once called sanguine, is the blood itself, or some manner of immune‍-​like specialization. The hemoserumic humor allows for the incorporation and assimilation of others’ blood, and the adaptation of ones’ own blood to be transfused into another. Some have called it the interface humor, responsible for hormone and conjugation communication, ichor’s negotiator and coordinator. In a way, it’s the jack of all trades complexion, which is suited for support and healing.

Myxogen, the blood of metaplasia: Thick and rich, this humor is the most fertile and protean, the stem cells which transform themselves into other tissues. Banes of this complexion often find themselves constantly shedding cuticle, dripping red fluids from trachae or eyes or mouth, as their blood incessantly generates new cells. Though inclined to regeneration, the art of many myxogenic banes is healing others, growing tissues to be transplanted. For this, a myxogenic often has the presentation of physogastrism: an abdomen bloated with bespoke organs. If not for healing, the other calling of the myxogen is incubation: birthing loyal minion of the users’ design.

Melancholer, the mysterious black bile: it’s unclear whether this humor actually exists, whether the ostensible isolations of it are in fact confusions of something else. Some cite black bile as the source or result of autonomous, tumor‍-​like defects of ichor, while others prefer to claim it as the interface between the umbral and ichor systems, and still other believe it the source of all ichor’s mutations. Complete treatment of humorism could not omit it, but a serious treatment could not include it.

Roll 2d6:

Cultivar 

All banes nurse ferment within themselves some variety of fungus; this is integral to vesper biology. Thus, all banes are capable of basic feats of rootnursing ‍-​‍-​ producing sclerotia (a arete storage medium) and appressoria (as a means of penetrative attack). Those who dive deep into the arts necessarily breed their own fungal cultivars, as their rhizomes grow. Four recognized categories of cultivar exist, determined by form and function

Fruits: These rhizomes are defined by mushrooms and sporecaps. A wide variety exists ‍-​‍-​ fruiting bodies are all that distinguish fungus to laybugs ‍-​‍-​ but most rootnurses cultivate a single morphology. Techniques of this form can be used to farm sporocarps as food or drug, to grow mycelia for arete farming, or as a basis for fabricating mycomaterials like baneleather. Some argue that the production of vespermala from failed pharmaka means the rites are an instance of the fruit cultivar.

Molds: These rhizones bear a fuzzy presentation. Banes of this form excel at producing toxic spores, cuticle infections, as well as producing antibiotics. Techniques for accelerating decomposition, and with training, the mold can be imbued with enervate. At an intermediate level, users can grow molds (or spores) that target e.g. enervate or ichor, countering them. Otherwise, a middling useful basis for mycomaterials.

Yeasts: perhaps the most dramatically different of the expressions; the user’s colony lacks mycelia at all, replaced by a single celled biofilm. Users are capable of internal infection‍-​based attacks, chemical synthesis, and can achieve an excellent fungisanguine symbiosis. Also effective at killing other fungi. However, this rhizome is basically unusable for mycomaterials.

Roots: an expression focused around growing specialized hyphal organs, users often practice the production and arrangement of banestone. Advanced techniques allow for the creation and maintenance of rootwands, golems, and in general, various external umbral systems. The infamous cordyceps techniques are often attributed to this form.

Alignment 

Alignment is cryptic, and to some, unnecessary or meaningless categorization of vesperbanes. In a sense, it characterizes the broad nature of the relationship between the bane and their vespers. If it were a nation, one might consider this the form of government, the leadership structure, the professed philosophy.

Spring, or matutinal: The springtime of a vesper is youthfulness and growth. Manifestations are raw and reactive impulses. In a word, the abilities of a spring bane are emergent. Keywords are simple, thematic, natural. For a spring bane, power is given and grown. They may not control what form it takes, but can shape how it develops. Their vespers interact with each other sincerely, baring the uncomplicated cores of their nature‍ ‍—‍ connection and friction alike coming easily, many relations tending to come and go quickly.

Summer, or diurnal: The summertime of a vesper is maturity and consolidation. Manifestations are deliberate and rule‍-​bound invocations. Keywords are order, expansion, tradition, clarity. For a summer bane, power is something designed and willed. They decide what they will be, but they are limited by their imaginations. Their vespers interact with each other politely, adhering to rules of decorum and playing politics.

Fall, or vespertinal: The autumn of a vesper is waning and cynicism. Manifestations are unusual and caveated exchanges. In a word, the abilities of a fall bane are double‍-​edged. Keywords are depth, transformation, side‍-​effects, ramifications, sacrifice. For a fall bane, power is something negotiated and costly. They chose, but may not understand what until it’s too late. Their vespers interact with each other treacherously, defecting and seizing advantage, sharing secrets and hiding depth in plain acts.

Winter, or nocturnal: The wintertime of a vesperbane is devoid and desolate. Manifestations are nebulous and unique. Abilities can resemble any of the other alignments‍ ‍—‍ the elegance of spring, the order of summer, the depth of fall. For a winter bane, power is illegible and alienated; it can be harnessed, appeased, supplicated, but not controlled or predicted. Their vespers interact with with each other like mechanisms in motion, or witless fools of minds lost and stuck in ruts, or as forces of nature.

A discussion of alignment is incomplete without a treatment of crookedness.

Vesperbanes strive to act in alignment with their vespers’ nature. Said acts are of course aligned. To act out of alignment is to be crooked.

To reprise:

A bane who acts in accordance with the previous season is also acting aligned. But a bane who acts in according to the next season, or the opposed season? They are crooked.

But time advances with crooked acts.