Excellent Surveyor’s Insight
Cost: 3m Type: Simple (Dramatic Action)
Duration: Indefinite
Keywords: Stackable
Mins: Survival 3, Essence 2 Prereqs: (Any) Survival Excellency
The Exalt can quickly acquaint himself with a region. This Charm is a dramatic action that involves exploring a region. The amount of time this takes varies, but the longer the Exalt explores the more territory this Charm will cover (one hour of exploration might survey a single small forest while the entire Eastern Direction would take a thousand years to explore in full). Once completed, the character spends 3m and gains a one die specialty to all Survival rolls while in that territory, as he has identified all the best paths, where to find food and shelter and so on. This specialty may be gained multiple times by taking more time to explore the area and spend the motes repeatedly but as usual the maximum specialty bonus is +3 from any combination.
Perfect Cartographer Understanding
Cost: 5m, 1wp Type: Simple (Dramatic Action)
Duration: Instant
Keywords: Stackable
Mins: Survival 5, Essence 3 Prereqs: Instant Survival Refinement, Excellent Surveyor’s Insight
This Charm is a dramatic action to create a detailed map with which a character is familiar (enough to have a specialty related to that area). The Exalt rolls Intelligence + Survival, subtracting a number of successes based on the size of the area he is making the map for (from one for a single forest to five for the entire south-western jungle) and one success for each die of Specialty the character has for the area (making the minimum difficulty of this roll two).
If the Exalt is successful, he creates an extremely detailed and useful map. Anybody who consults this map gains an effective specialty in the region on all their Survival rolls (from +1 to +3 depending on the Exalt’s specialty and how well he rolled) in the region. In order to take advantage of this map the user must be sufficiently familiar with such things (either Lore 1 or Survival 1). The map created by this Charm is an actual permanent object, the motes used to create it are not committed. Even if the Exalt later loses the specialties that allowed him to create the map, the usefulness of the map does not degrade. However significant magical changes to the location (Solar Circle Sorcery, Neighbourhood Relocation Scheme, the opening and closing of shadowlands etc) can render the map useless. Similarly, enough time passing can make the map less useful: the map’s effective bonus drops by one die at ten, one hundred and one thousand years respectively.
EG: A map of the Noss Fens created with this Charm has a +3 bonus from the cartographer’s relevant Specialty. However, it is over five hundred years old, so the natural course of changes in the area has reduced the effective specialty provided by the map to only +1.
Terrestrial Administration Plan
Cost: 3m, 1wp Type: Simple (Dramatic Action)
Duration: One Growing Season
Keywords: None
Mins: Survival 2, Essence 2 Prereqs: Third Survival Excellency
This Charm is a dramatic action to come up with a plan for how to gain the best yield out of a particular farmland. The player makes an Intelligence + Survival roll against a difficulty equal to the Magnitude of the social unit that is needed to farm a particular area. He must have basic information regarding the area’s climate, soil, crops and workers, which can be gathered in about an hour of effort. The plan created will last for about a season.
If he is successful, this Charm creates a plan for how to administer the land. Provided the Terrestrial Administration Plan is applied to the land, the area will produce its maximum yield of crops this season, suffering no losses due to poor weather, pests, drought or any mundane, non-magically imposed penalty. Following this plan does not deplete the area of resources faster than the usual act of farming the land, so it is safe to use this Charm season after season with no fear of ruining the land.
This Charm fails if the area is subjected to any magical enchantments outside the normal actions of the least gods and the Bureau of Nature and Seasons. Thus, its effects do not stack with most sorcery spells, Fair Folk glamours and so on. This Charm has no effect outside Creation (i.e., in the Underworld, Malfeas or the Bordermarches or worse of the Wyld).
Taint of Blighted Land
Cost: 7m,1wp Type: Simple (Dramatic Action)
Duration: Instant
Keywords: Obvious, Cooperative
Mins: Survival 5, Essence 3 Prereqs: Terrestrial Administration Plan
On occasion it is better to destroy an enemy through starvation rather than force of arms. This Charm blights a land, cutting it off from the flow of Wood Essence which allows all things to grow. This Charm affects an area the Exalt’s Essence in miles across. The taint visibly spreads through the ground as a darkening shadow that is very easy to track to its source. Using this Charm takes about five minutes (five long ticks), and if the Exalt is forced to abandon this Charm before then, the effects do not take hold.
The blighted land created by this Charm is unable to grow plants of any kind. Any existing plants in the region wither and die over the course of the next day. The blight remains for one year and shrinks at the rate of one mile per year thereafter. No known Dragonblooded Charm can speed up this recovery, so use of this Charm is considered a last resort (and has not been approved at all since the Mask of Winters sacked Thorns).
If multiple Dragonblooded use this Charm cooperatively, then land blighted is equal to the participating Dragonbloodeds’ total Essence.
Demesne Farming Prana
Cost: None Type: Permanent
Duration: Permanent
Keywords: Anima
Mins: Survival 3, Essence 2 Prereqs: Terrestrial Administration Plan
Using this Charm, the character can enter one of Creation’s demesnes and exit with food. This process takes about one hour, and the character must spend 10m. At the end of this hour he produces a nutritious but not very appealing food appropriate to the demesne’s aspect (herbs from a Wood demesne, rock candy from an Earth one, golden loaves of bread from a Solar demesne and so on). The food produced is enough to supply a social unit of magnitude equal to the demesnes rating for one day.
Use of this Charm more than once per day reduces the demesne’s effective rating by one each time. This “damage” is healed at the rate of one rating point per week.
Cleanse the Tainted Water
Cost: 5m Type: Simple (Speed 5, DV -1)
Duration: Instant
Keywords: Cooperative
Mins: Survival 3, Essence 2 Prereqs: (Any) Survival Excellency
This Charm allows the Exalt to produce clean water from any water source, no matter how fouled or undrinkable. The Dragonblooded touches the water and it becomes drinkable after he spends the motes. The effects of this Charm vary depending on the Exalt’s aspect (Fire boils water free of impurities, Wood creates seeds that bloom into plants that absorb all the taint through their roots and so on). Mechanically this makes any source of water drinkable. All Sickness and Poison (both magical and mundane) effects lingering in the water are removed. This Charm even affects saltwater, and can affect any drink made out of water (though it turns such drinks into flavourless water in the process).
A single Dragonblooded can affect enough water to provide for a Magnitude 1 unit for one day. However, this is limited by the available water and containers. Simply touching the ocean and evoking this Charm will create a pocket of cleansed water… for about the five second it will last before the current mixes it with the rest of the saltwater. Multiple Dragonblooded can affect more water, enough to provide for a unit whose Magnitude is equal to the total Dragonblooded. Note that in especially dry, hot weather the amount of water a unit will need is considerably higher, and this Charm may need to be evoked two or three times per day… provided enough water is available!
Creation Knows Its Own
Cost: None Type: Permanent
Duration: Permanent
Keywords: Anima
Mins: Survival 3, Essence 2 Prereqs: (Any) Survival Excellency
When the Dragonblooded does not want to be followed, he cannot be followed. This Charm takes effect so long as the Dragonblooded’s anima banner is manifesting at the 1+ mote level. When he moves through a natural area of Creation, the environment moves to conceal his passage: erasing his footsteps, nullifying his scent and so on. Any attempt to track the Exalt through the wilderness has the dice pool reduced to 0 before applying Charms. This Charm has no effect outside of Creation (in Malfeas, the Underworld or the Deep Wyld) nor does it work in Yu Shan, whose environment is under the control of Celestial rather than terrestrial authorities.
(Direction) Adapting Evolution
Cost: None Type: Permanent
Duration: Permanent
Keywords: Anima, Elemental, Cooperative, Training
Mins: Survival 5, Essence 3 Prereqs: Creation Knows Its Own
This Charm allows a Dragonblooded to adapt any living thing to the directions of Creation. The character chooses a social unit with a magnitude of 1, gathers them into a circle holding hands and spends 7 motes. Every member of that social unit becomes infused with the Dragonblooded’s anima, gaining the equivalent of the (Elemental) Adaptation pox (CoCD: The Wyld pg. 145) appropriate to the Exalt (i.e. Fire Aspects grants Fire Adaptation, Water Aspects grant Water Adaptation). This transformation is painful to the subjects, all of them lose one willpower point and may take damage unless they are protected against Anima Flux damage.
The effects of this power persist for one week, at which point they have to be employed again. If performed by a Dragonblooded in a demesne this Charm becomes a Training effect, allowing the subject to purchase the Pox for 4XP (or go into XP Debt if they don’t have enough). This mutation does not count against the maximum mutation points the subject can have and still be viable in Creation, since it is harmonized with the power of the five elements. Even so, the Immaculate Order considers granting human beings permanent mutations via this Charm a heresy, far too close to the hubris of the Anathema at the height of their power. Still, rumours persist of outcaste Dragonblooded with access to higher Essence versions of this Charm capable of far more than just elemental adaptation.
If used cooperatively, this Charm affects a unit of Magnitude equal to the number of Dragonblooded participants, However it can only grant one Pox at a time, chosen from among the aspects available. Granting additional aspects requires multiple invocations.
New Pox Earth Adaptation – Common only to people affected by this Charm, Earth Adaptation makes the character well suited to survival under the Earth. The character can breathe any air, no matter how stagnant or foul it has become provided it has not actually been poisoned by deliberate effort. He also can climb and crawl through caves with extra ease, reducing the difficulty of any Athletics or Larceny rolls to climb on stone or squeeze through tight spaces by one (to a minimum of one).