The Fourfold Divisions of Vesperbanes

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 exist between objects, 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 users could replicate 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 really water they're controlling, though that certainly comes easiest. The water form controls oxygen, which comprises most of water's weight. This is why a 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: one breathes oxygen, after all. 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 called azote. 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,[^seven] but few suffered as much as Gaveldika, enduring perhaps the gravest shame: their blood secret became a matter of common revelation. [^seven]: See "On the Seven Forsaker Clans".] 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 forgotten earlier --- or rather, deferred: interactions between elements. no clean rock-paper-scissors or elemental cycle exists. 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. - Ash users are most effective with manipulating adumbration and the emission of enervate. This means they excel at destabilizing and dispelling other enervate techniques. - Sand users are most effective at imbuing and enshrouding matter with enervate, and particularly adept with amalgams. - Water users are most effective shaping enervate itself, rendering them the best at conjuring enervate constructs. - Niter users have the greatest range and finesse with force projections. - Lightning users, perhaps as a consequence of their ability to charge their enervate, excel at nature transformations. 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: - 2-5: sand affinity (10/36) - 6-7: ash affinity (11/36) - 8-9: water affinity (9/36) - 10-11: niter affinity (5/36) - 12: special affinity --- probably neutral or maybe lightning. could be a clan affinity or mutation (1/36) Complexion Like a body with specialized organs for each purpose, vesperbat blood has differentiated humors, each executing a particular function. Myxoma 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 nego