Tutorial:Wyrd & You

Participants

Lecture given by Annapurna. Attended by: Etsy, Franklyn, Rozalia, Cian, Cressida, Regina, Iris, Allen, Dielle, Cassian, Liam, Matterhorn

26 August, 2017

Annapurna gives a tutorial on Wyrd, its mechanics and themes.

Location

Temproom

The Wyrd & You - Introduction

What does it mean to be High Wyrd?

First off, before anything else is going to make sense, we have to clarify: just what IS the Wyrd, anyway?

Per the core book, it is the space between. It is not a single entity; it is more like a force of nature, like entropy, like the ties that bind. It is the relationships between all things. Action and reaction -- IT is the causality. Higher than. Shorter than. Kinder than. Crueler than.

It has no soul.

It has no self.

...and THAT is what the Fae are born from.

THAT is why the Fae themselves are so horrifying to us, and why they simply will not ever understand us on the same levels we understand ourselves, no matter how many of us they Take away. They don't have the capacity to feel it. They have no deep existential questions. After all, per the core book, they can't help but know precisely who and what they are, and their place in the world. The Lady of White Winter is colder than her sister, crueler than her Lord, sweeter than her slaves...and they had best remember their places, too. The Title defines the Fae.

Ergo, sliding toward our true topic here, the Fae -have- no self-definition, and the closer you get to being one, the less self-definition YOU will have as well.

Being a High Wyrd character means you operate with perfect sanity -- by someone else's rules.

Throw human expectations out the window.

Wyrd Levels - Mechanics & Theme

The Wyrd operates on a sliding scale of humanity.

At 0, you're human.

At 10, you're fae.

The books are vague and flippyfloppy (surprise surprise) about just when a Changeling can make the bump from lowercase fae to Fae, leaving it up to the ST to decide what they prefer. Some STs may prefer to say that changelings never can really be Fae.

On this game, suffice it to say that being Wyrd 10, while certainly enough to make your character something you can no longer play beyond its swan song of a plot (unless you intend to lose Wyrd and regain humanity), is not enough to automatically bump you up a capital letter.

You need a Title for that.

To be more specific, you need somehow to acquire a Title and ACCEPT it into all the tattered little niches where your by-now barely-breathing soul used to reside, allowing it to replace You. There will be no more You. Ever. There will be whichever Title you now are and represent within the fabric of the Wyrd.

Given how dramatic the changes are as you progress through the levels of binding yourself into the warp and weft of Fate's design, this is why staff asks folks not to try to bump Wyrd up like it's some easy, simple thing. It isn't. It's tied in to a lot of character development, not all of it positive.

Raising Wyrd

Power Stats are cool to have at high levels. Who wouldn't want to be able to toss 10 dice into all of their magic rolls?

Unfortunately, as mentioned above, that's nnnnoooot always a good idea.

When we talk about "raising" Wyrd, it's not just a vertical progression up a chart, thematically.

Thematically, it is relinquishing bits and pieces of your soul to tie yourself into the force which binds all aspects of the world into relationship.

Every time you go up in Wyrd, you're a little less human, a little more fae.

The fact that you are weaving yourself into Fate, deliberately or not, is what staff is looking for.

Changelings occupy a horrifying, soul-crushing neither-here-nor-there position every day of their hunted lives. Humans are (typically) blind to the maneuverings of Fate, of the Wyrd, but Changelings USE their ties to that fabric, use the symbolism, every day. Their power is drawn from those ties, and if they don't maintain a balance of What It Means To Be Human, they won't be.

In a way, you could say that every Changeling is a form of stereotype. Fate, via the Fae, has tried to shape them into one, however complicated a jumble of ideas they have become (read: whatever Seeming/Kith combo you choose to play; free will can be such an inconvenience to Intended Design, poor thing). Nascent Changelings are treated in certain ways, have certain abilities, and are predictable that way, within the realm of variability their own consciences provide.

Remember, Changelings still have a soul.

That soul is your Self, your self-determination, your You. It is the little kernel which makes you human, ish. It is what gives you your ability to defy definition.

So how do you stop being human(ish)? What makes that Power Stat go higher?

The three most common methods are related to Contracts, magical abilities and Hedge time.

Contracts

See above: power drawn from symbolism.

A Contract is an agreement which someone, somewhere, made with an aspect of the Wyrd. They work because everything is related, on some underlying level too deep for most of humanity to realise.

Delving into studying those powers, into devoting your character's life to deepening his understanding of the ways in which they operate, is a two-way street, but if you're truly, deeply, committed to feeling those relationships in ways which increase your power...voila! Whether or not you mean to, you are voluntarily, however accidentally, succumbing to the Wyrd's design. Everything has a place.

Magical Abilities

The same goes here. You have those abilities because you aren't human anymore. There's no way short of insanity for you to close your eyes on reality and ignore the truth of the world and its underlying power.

For example...

A Fairest who chooses to be antisocial and brusque, deliberately sabotaging her innate Blessings, is acting against the pattern she has been slated to fill. She would stay more grounded than others, and be less likely to deepen her ties to the Wyrd in this particular fashion.

On the other hand, a Fairest who is persistently social, who takes advantage of her gifts, innate and Faerie-given, is acting in accordance with the Wyrd's design. She would have more trouble with avoiding losing bits of herself to that design. That is to say, bit by bit, in combination with other actions and circumstances, this would be one part of the rationale behind buying up the Power Stat.

Hedge Activity

For all that it is a borderland, the Hedge is not human borderland, and only vaguely operates by human laws in the sections nearest the Gates into our world.

When you are there, in order to survive, in order to make sense of the world around you, it is necessary to change the way you think, associate, behave. It's not like navigating a regular landscape.

While it would be fantastic to skip over Connecticut and avoid Hartford entirely on the RL drive down toward DC, no one has yet figured out how to do so (more's the pity).

In the Hedge, that isn't true.

Your Clarity of thought pinpoints a destination, and your ties to the Wyrd determine how quickly you can essentially reshape the Hedge around you to carry you down snippets of this trod here, that trod there, skipping over large chunks of linear space because it isn't linear.

It fundamentally isn't a human way of looking at the world.

You're using the Wyrd, and you more or less travel at the speed of the "connectedness" of your party's most human member. Improving your abilities in the Hedge is like waving a handkerchief byebye to your humanity.

When the book says that spending time in the Hedge is one means of increasing one's Wyrd score, this is a big part of what they are referring to: the deliberate or accidental denial of human perception. In the Hedge, your will can shape the world.

Maintaining Your Wyrd Score

Balance is what any "sane" Changeling strives toward attaining.

By "sane" in this case, we mean any Changeling who wants to be able to function adequately in the mortal world, but that's a broad range. Some Entitlements require that you never progress beyond a certain point, and, frankly, it just isn't smart to go too far anyway. Sure, you get more power, but you may as well be stringing flashy lights on yourself reading FAERIE SNACK.

This is something you as a player should pay attention to in your RP.

Let's look at the pros and antis on our imaginary Wyrd Up and Wyrd Down chart.

Pro Wyrd Actions: see above regarding Contracts, excessive use of faerie abilities and time spent altering your own perceptions in the Hedge. Tack on sacrificing your human life for faerie concerns, like, say, choosing to miss your daughter's sixteenth birthday party because you found a lead in your search for an ancient Token in the Hedge, or, say, living solely amongst Changelings with only a modicum of contact with mortal reality.

Anti Wyrd Actions: avoid all of the above. Be a soccer mom. Your Wyrd is not going to go up if you have been turning your back on all things fae. This is why a lot of folks who otherwise act super Wyrd spend scads of time in the real world, dealing with their laundry, running a mundane business, etc. It keeps them from rising in power and losing touch with humanity.

Lowering Wyrd

Mechanically, you can drop a dot in the Wyrd stat by using no active Seeming/Kith blessings, avoiding using your passive Seeming/Kith blessings, using NO Contracts, harvesting only the bare minimum amount of Glamour needed to survive, using NO faerie-oriented magical items (this includes Tokens/Gewgaws/Hedgespun/Trifles), avoiding goblin fruits, avoiding the Hedge...

Basically, act like you're a human being. For an entire year. Since this game works on a 1:1 time ratio with reality, that would mean playing your character that way for an entire RL year, too.

Understandably, that sort of RP doesn't often happen. One slip, and you start all over again. Fate doesn't understand forgiveness.

Goblin Markets

It is worth noting that goblin markets can, and will, sell ephemerals. This includes humanity.

Be wary, however.

Sure, you could go to the Market and purchase some borrowed human soul to lower your own Wyrd score, to fill up those tattered holes inside with dabs of soul-glue, but just whose was that soul? Effects may vary. Staff on this particular game would be amused to work out possible side effects based on that soul-snippet's original owner.

Insert finger-steepling and evil laughter.

Alternately, you could go there to sell your own humanity and thereby raise your Wyrd score, using that as your justification.

In both cases, staff would count this as a Breaking Point for extreme life changes and trauma, and in both cases, you would be charged an arm and a leg. Possibly literally. That stuff wouldn't go cheaply.

Speaking of life changes...

Living with Wyrd

Your Wyrd score isn't just a number on paper.

It affects everything you do. It colours the world in a different light. Your emotions are different, your expectations are different, and the way people react to you will change.

In terms of pure physical presence, not capital P Presence...

It may help to think of it as one of those old images of gravity wells acting like a stretchy sheet being pulled down by big planetary bowling balls, with you as the planet.

You can feel it when your body is being pulled around by gravity. The weight, the intangible, but very real sense of something out of your control.

Changelings and, to a far lesser extent, mortals, can also feel it when they are being pulled around by Fate.

There is no way to hide your Wyrd score, short of pouring Glamour into your Mask to conceal the fact that you're a fae at all.

Anyone near you will be able to tell, in a relative sense, whether you are more or less powerful than they are, even without the visual cues of physical inhumanity.

In terms of roleplay, describing the effects of your tie to the Wyrd should be just as important in your entrance poses as describing your appearance, your clothing and your Mantle. It is something ALL CHANGELINGS will immediately feel. Doubly so for those with High Wyrd.

This is part of Changeling life, and this is part of why it is wisest to go Masked in public places. There's no hard and fast rule of distances, since a lot of it is poetic license outside the Hedge. You're not going to sense someone coming from the other side of the supermarket, but take it as read that if they can feel your Mantle, they can feel anything else. I.e. if they are within five feet of you. Any theatrics other than that are purely for your own amusement.

In the Hedge... well. The book has an entire section devoted to that.

Suffice it to say that, in summary, you leave Wyrdy fingerprints everywhere you go, and the higher Wyrd you have, the bigger those smudges are and the longer they last.

Makes it easier for things to track you.

Once you hit certain Wyrd levels, you can manipulate the Hedge itself, but it isn't easy.

Summary of Benefits

The core book goes into the "benefits of Wyrd" in pretty good detail, so if you want the actual mechanics, check page 84 onward. In summary:

The more you are bound into the Wyrd, the more Glamour you can hold, and the more you can spend per turn. Up until you hit high Wyrd, your max is 10, +1 for every dot of Wyrd above one, and your per-turn is your Wyrd score. That starts changing after Wyrd 6.

Speaking of which, if your Wyrd is 6 or higher, you are supernatural enough to buy your Attributes and Skills up to THAT dot, not just up to 5.

Your Wyrd determines how many goblin fruits you can keep from rotting into a sludgy powerless mess in mortalville land.

Being tied into the Wyrd more extensively means you can bind more pledges into it, in turn. This applies to Vows, mind. Check the Pledges page on the wiki for more details of where the power of pledges is invested, and why Vows act that way.

The higher your Wyrd rating, the more often you dream about your visit to lovely Arcadia, and the more vivid those dreams are. Changelings are, thematically, tied to Fate, Time and Dreams. It is interesting that the mechanic for recalling the history you lost when you escaped IS through dreaming, that it isn't in your own control, and, more to the point, that all Changelings do have these recurring dreams (or nightmares) of their servitude in Faerie. A lot of plot points there. I've yet to find any underlying message in the books to answer why they chose dreams as the vehicle for memories, but they can certainly be fun ways for you to suddenly recall things you had once forgotten. Moving on from dreams...

Being tied more deeply into the Wyrd means you're a bit more difficult to affect with most mystical powers. Read: you add it to contested rolls, unlike mortals, who have no power stat.

The depth of your tie to Fate also determines how slowly you -age-.

Once you hit Wyrd 6, you can incite Bedlam. That is to say, you can grab a bunch of people by the emotional gonads and force them to feel what you want. Granted, you can only do it once per <insert time period here> and that limits it pretty hard, but it's a powerful ability, and a dangerous one. Not just to humans, either. Toying with human emotions and manipulating people into losing themselves sounds awfully familiar, doesn't it..?

You'll want to check Equinox Road for the original thematic writeups on these, but going up in Wyrd, hitting 7+, also means you get more mileage out of your Seeming and Kith Blessings and Curses. In this game we did our best to balance out the types of benefits characters got, so while you can certainly get a good idea of theme from the books, please always check the Kiths page on the wiki for any mechanical questions. There were a LOT of kiths which originally HAD no high Wyrd blessing at all, so we invented them.

Summary of Drawbacks

Now we get to the fun part.

Visibility: sure, Changelings can tell relative power, but their sense of it is nowhere near as keen as, you know, someone very literally an aspect of Fate itself. The Fae may ignore lower Wyrd characters as powerless pawns, but once you pass that midline, once you give yourself over to being more fae than human, you become much... more... 'interesting'... Your power is the equal of some of the lesser beings of Arcadia, and the Fae -will- notice this. You are useful, now. YOU would make an excellent rival, plaything, piece in the endless game of immortals. You should come home.

In addition, being more fae than human has its issues. Your body is too far gone, now, to subsist solely on human foods. You need Glamour to survive, to fuel yourself. Being able to see when your eyes are pools of shadowstuff or, say, being a living popsicle doesn't come from nothing. This need manifests mechanically as an addiction, where you are physically dependent upon and psychologically fixated on obtaining Glamour. This WILL influence your roleplay with mortals. Any time their emotions are strong, or, more to the point, any time your character is in a situation where they know there are strong emotions, you are the faerie equivalent of a heroin addict with a needle being waved under your nose. You will react. I cannot stress this enough. Even at Wyrd 5, you should be responding to it. You're just as much fae as human, and at that point, while it hasn't reached the level of an addiction yet, while you can still resist without consequence, you want it. You need a hit. The rush...it's like nothing else on earth.

Frailties

A frailty is a fairy tale weakness. Every powerful person has an Achilles heel (or more than one). It's part of Fate's design. Once you start rivaling the Fae for power, you develop your own frailties, too. They are typically something which means something to your character. They don't tend to develop at random. For example, if your character has been trapped by an abusive relationship in the past, and getting over that experience is a key point of her psychology, you might very well develop a compulsion to save others from that fate if you see them being abused...whether or not they want to be saved.

For those of us who enjoy playing broken, alien people struggling to don the mask of humanity long enough to blend in, frailties are a delight and a curse. They can be a lot of fun to roleplay around, but at the same time, there's always the fear that someone will abuse them to ruin your character.

Welcome to life as a Changeling.

That fear of trolling, that desire to hide or to lash out, is what your character feels.

If you take Bashing every time you hear a dog bark, you're going to react by wanting to keep dogs from barking. Depending on your sanity, your city may suddenly develop a thriving black market dog meat ring when you raid the local animal shelters to euthanize them all.

If you are compelled to pick up every spilled grain of rice you see, you probably won't go near Asian restaurants. If a guy at work constantly brings his Chinese food to the office and drops rice on the floor while he is eating, you may well take steps to stop him from enjoying rice, up to and including food poisoning or destroying any rice container he may have, regardless of how such an outburst would look to your employer. It's perfectly reasonable -- to you.

This, this extremity of emotional reaction, is what it is like to play a High Wyrd character.

You're not human anymore, and there's a reason people fear you.

The Wyrd's Effects upon Emotions

Remember when I mentioned that the more you bind yourself into the Wyrd, the less of a person and more of a stereotype you become? Yeeep. Keep that in mind. Your emotions become less your emotions and more the emotion itself. The essence of anger. The essence of sorrow. Pure. There aren't necessarily as many shades of grey.

The book doesn't really go into exacting detail here, so the list below is just a guideline of examples based on experience and excessive time spent reading source material.

Obviously, every character is different, and if you have a high Willpower or your character is someone with a lot of Subterfuge, Intelligence, Empathy and Manipulation, you have good mechanical reasons to be better than most at suppressing or hiding your seemingly irrational reactions. Subterfuge to lie or conceal, Intelligence to know you should hide it, Empathy to anticipate the emotional reactions of others, Manipulation or Expression to convincingly portray your reaction as something else.

Your stats do matter. They aren't just on your sheet for the times you need to roll something.

Example Situation: you're at the supermarket looking at apples, choosing which ones to buy. You really like apples. Someone takes one of the apples you were considering.

Wyrd 0

You're human! Yay! You react like any human would.

You maybe feel a flicker of annoyance at the stranger's interruption, but, eh, it's just an apple.

Wyrd 1

You're still essentially human. There's negligible difference between your reactions and the average mortal.

See above. Okay, that was a jerk move on their part, but whatever. It was just an apple.

Wyrd 2

You're still not that far from human. Your reactions aren't that different.

The flash of irritation may be stronger, but that's about it.

Wyrd 3

You're a third of the way toward being fae now, and it's starting to show.

That apple looked really good. Maybe you call the person out, but still, there are other apples.

Wyrd 4

You're almost half fae. Still more human than not, but only barely.

Maybe you yell, instead of just calling them out. Maybe you make a scene deliberately uncomfortable.

Wyrd 5

You're half and half, and your reactions show it. Your emotions are prone to irrational flares, but they can still be ascribed to a mercurial temperament. Mostly.

Maybe you go off on the person, yell at them like before. Maybe you throw a different apple at them. Sure, there are other apples out there, but that was the one you wanted.

Wyrd 6

You're officially more fae than human now, and your reactions are starting to look odd to folks around you.

That apple was yours. You were looking at it first. Maybe you mark who took it from you, and make a point of taking the next thing THEY had their eye on. Fair is fair. A theft for a theft. At this point, recall, shades of grey start leaning white-ward and black-ward. You aren't going to be reacting rationally by human standards. You aren't human.

Wyrd 7

You're more than two thirds fae, and you're having an increasingly tough time understanding why people care so much about pointless minutiae. Your reactions are swift and powerful.

Perhaps you start a conversation. You follow the woman through the store, discussing how she wronged you. Perhaps you punch her. Perhaps you use a Contract to persuade her into giving your fruit back, or otherwise compel her to do something against her will to satisfy your own sense of being wronged. What's wrong with that? No harm was done.

Wyrd 8

You're starting the downward slide toward Faerie.

So what if you terrified that woman at the grocery store with fear Contracts? She was going to take the apple you wanted, the apple you needed, and she should have known better. You got there first.

Wyrd 9

You're hanging on to your humanity with teeth and toenails, but it's tough to remember why you even want to bother. Your emotions are wildly powerful, your wishes of paramount importance.

You've spent time studying each apple, learning their shapes, their symmetries. Then, someone takes the best of them. Why do people act so horrified when they learn that you terrified her for it? She is a thief. What could possibly be wrong with cursing the human's luck, or using Lost 5 to ensure she can't find her way out of the store for the next 45 minutes? She will remember not to behave that way again -- you made sure of it.

Wyrd 10

You're fae. You have the vaguest vestigial shreds of a soul, but you are fundamentally incapable of understanding human priorities.

You've been standing there, watching that apple, for a good minute and a half, forcing other shoppers to break around you like a faerie rock in a human stream. The apple is yours. You saw it, and it is fated to belong to you. You savour the moment of its acquisition. Look at how the light shines on its skin, how it picks out the tiny imperfections, the variegation of its colouration. Will it taste different where there are bruises beneath the skin? What is the flavour of failure? Will it be sweet? What stories would it tell, were it pressed to the red red lips of a princess soon to sleep? Was it the brightest apple of them all? Was its tree ugly, to produce such beauty?

Then, a hand. A hand touches your apple.

Worse, it takes it away. It steals it from you. It didn't ask permission.

So.

You fix the problem.

You follow the thief. You learn her name. You bind her, unaware, into a pledge which you KNOW she will break...and she does. You make sure of it, and you remember, every month, to take a moment and extend her suffering, willing the pledge's broken sanctions to continue for another moon.

See above: your Wyrd score isn't just a number on paper.

The Wyrd's Effects upon Your Mien

This one can be slippery.

Your mien is affected by your Wyrd, but it can also be influenced by merits you take and your Entitlement.

Someone with a lot of mien-effecting merits may well seem like they are at a higher Wyrd level than they actually are, at first glance.

The key thing to remember is that no matter what you do, your Seeming and primary Kith are always going to be the most influential. Secondary kith, tertiary, quaternary, quinary, they just won't have as much of an effect. Some kiths just don't have a lot of physical changes, so, as always, this rule of thumb can end up being fudged. Staff is aware of this.

I went into some general guidelines on the wiki's Mien_Guidelines page, but to summarize:

Wyrd 1

This is the equivalent of painting yourself blue to say that you're a Smurf, or wearing slit-pupiled contact lenses to say you're a cat. Pick ONE minor superficial change. Hair, eyes, skin, voice, fingernails, it can be anything.

Wyrd 2

Maybe your eyes are slit AND you have little tufts of fur on the tips of your otherwise human ears. Woohoo! Still basically human. Your hair could change colours, your skin could change colours, maybe you could smell different, but really, this is like low-key cosplay. Pick up a second minor superficial change, or strengthen whatever change you already had.

If you're planning on a tail or wings, they don't exist yet.

If you're planning on antlers or horns, at most you'll have bumps where one day they'll grow.

Wyrd 3

You're an alien on Star Trek! Paint yourself green, get some weird wobbly ridges on your forehead, maybe some odd bumps on your skin here and there. More or less, add another minor superficial change or, again, strengthen something you already had. This particular message will get old.

Tails/Wings: No. You may feel the occasional ache where one will grow, however.

Antlers/Horns: Yes. Nothing over an inch high.

Wyrd 4

You're nearing the tipping point here. Add another minor superficial change, or strengthen something you already had. If you're the beastly sort, maybe you have some more furry patches, but certainly not a full pelt.

Tails/Wings: Yes. They will be very stubby at this point, barely in existence.

Antlers/Horns: Yes. Nothing over five inches high.

Wyrd 5

You're at the tipping point. You're half fae, now, and half human. This is where most people end up settling, since this is where you get the first Wyrd Evolution, and who wouldn't want an extra kith? If you're the animal sort, maybe your face is shifting shape, maybe you have the start of what looks like it may one day become a muzzle.

This is the first point where staff won't side-eye you for saying you have a full pelt of fur.

Tails/Wings: Yes. They are still small, still not at the maximum allowable size.

Antlers/Horns: Yes. Nothing over eight inches high/wide.

Wyrd 6

You're officially more fae than human, and here is where you start looking like it. It's hard to give a meaningful guideline, because there are so many different ways your mien is going to express itself. Every kith has its own "reasonable" changes. This would be a reasonable place to start getting a muzzle or other dramatic physical alterations.