Install Essentia
Install Essentia
This powerful rite allows a shardshaper to substitute any Fundament within a shard with another one. Historically when granted the ability to change their environment, nations transcended into empires consolidating their resources and controlling their assets with greater precision. Taking fate into their own hands, many emperors fell to their hubris when their Shardshapers lead them down routes of aggressive expansion and societal exploitation.
Common Use
Great for replacing the parent essentia from a shard- swapping in the fundament crafted with Alter Essentia. Initially this was used to make shards more hospitable to settlers, but in time empire used it to change the climate, mineral composition and soil quality of the shards they expanded to. As the ages churned by, many shards lay abandoned in the Nebula with valuable remnants of essentia. Left in their earthen tombs and engraved in dire stone spheres, many were branded with their ancient symbols of civilization.
With more precise control of their empire, improving the land lead to better economies and efficient economies of scale whether it was for, agricultural, industrial or domestic sectors. Conditioned for this purpose several specialist shards became resources to create cash crops, food staples, or rich mining operations for their Imperial masters. Now left to the wayside in the ages after imperial decline, independent societies insulate around these resource troves. In hostile realms, these shards become honey pots for adventurers to get trapped in. Prospecting great veins of ore, the wood of magical trees or the pelts of great feral beasts, many adventurer has lost their lives seeking sequestered riches.
Game Mastery
This ritual is a great cause for adventur with players who are both proactive and reactive. Excellent essentia are a great reward in and of themselves for adventurers braving the dark caverns close to the hearts of the shard ***edit this when you revamp the shard article. If not used proactively to solve problems or fuel player ambitions, megalith can be used as McGuffin in quest archs. Megalith are particularly powerful if a game master decides to rarify or remove the ability to create them with Reveal Essentia and entire campaigns may be created around the retrieval or destruction of powerful essentia within.
The act of performing this ritual on it's own is a cause for players to proactively or reactively engage with the story and in turn their world. Many species cannot survive without particular conditions in the Nebula or its many shards. Install Essentia as a terraforming approach can be a great way to have adventurers come to the aid of refugees by turning a barren world into an oasis. Alternatively, a more cruel species may be seeking a haven for their activities- such as vampire coven using an essentia to eclipse the light of a realm.
As a Gamemaster, you might find a need to limit the amount of interaction that players and adventurers can exert on the shards. Some great ideas include essentia enclosure, to limit the whiplash a shard might have between multiple parties altering shards traits. This can be included on particular shards so that they uniquely cannot be modified as a sort of meta-essentia, protecting a shard from wild transformation. This is an alternative system rule that can further restrict the shardshaping system. Shardshaping Advanced Rules.
Meta-Essentia
A shard can only have one Essentia with the Meta-Essentia trait. Meta-Essentia do not count against the allotments permitted by Meta-Essentia.
Law of Enclosure Essentia 5
When an Essentia is installed upon this shard through convergence or ritual 1, no other essentia can be installed for one month 2.
1 : Substitute convergence or ritual alone -3 Spell Rank. 2 : Substitute for a greater amount of time: 3 months (+2) 1 year (+3) 100 years (+4) or a lesser amount of time 2 weeks (-2), one week (-2). --------
If you have a particular group that is a bit enthusiastic about shardshaping, then the following fundaments will provide some strategic depth to their alterations. In particular, fundaments that limit the amount of essentia that can be "slotted in" to shards or "typing slots" to limit what can be placed within can provide strategy and depth if they are more interested in sharing a worldbuilding sandbox.
This could easily serve as the default, meta-fundament for groups with avid shardshapers or campaigns where megalith are more common.
Rule of Threes Meta-Essentia 0
Three Essentia can be installed into this shard.
Elemental Equilibrium Meta-Essentia 10
Four Essentia can be installed into this shard.
The Essentia must have the Fire, Water, AIr, Earth, Wood or Metal types.
Each Essentia modify the levels of that Element within the shard by +1 and other elements by -1.
False Dichotomy Meta-Essentia 3
Two Essentia can be installed into this shard.
The Essentia must be of the same type.
Essentia is only expressed half the time and never at the same time.
Install Essentia |
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| Uncommon | Shardshaping | Trial |
Source Nebula, the Shattered Land
Cast 1 day;
Cost 4 Astral Points per rank; One megalith shard with the desired essentia and fundaments enscribed upon it.
Primary Check Religion or Shardshaping Lore, Secondary Checks Crafting
Range Within 100 feet of a core plate of a shard
Target A shard whose level is no more than half the rank of this ritual
Success The fundamental laws of the shard shift with your ritual, the replaced fundament slowly loses influence over the land while the new fundament gains control.
Failure: You do not sustain enough power or force to immitate the impact of a convergence event. Your megalith is not expended and you may reattempt this ritual when you reroute the correct amount of AP.
Critical Failure The powers you wield are beyond your control as they wildly whip around the surface of the shard. You create a destructive convergence event with it's epicenter at the ritual site. This manifests as a great Nebular creature breaching through the boundaries of the edge or a phenomenol natural disaster that tears through the countryside.
Cast 1 day;
Cost 4 Astral Points per rank; One megalith shard with the desired essentia and fundaments enscribed upon it.
Primary Check Religion or Shardshaping Lore, Secondary Checks Crafting
Range Within 100 feet of a core plate of a shard
Target A shard whose level is no more than half the rank of this ritual
You disjoint the fundaments for a brief moment during the ritual, simulating the massive confluence of energy released during a convergence event. Upon concluding this ritual you exchange one known fundament within the shard with a fundament within a megalith you have available. Effects from this exchange are gradual and delayed, coming into full effect after one travel day.
Success The fundamental laws of the shard shift with your ritual, the replaced fundament slowly loses influence over the land while the new fundament gains control.
Failure: You do not sustain enough power or force to immitate the impact of a convergence event. Your megalith is not expended and you may reattempt this ritual when you reroute the correct amount of AP.
Critical Failure The powers you wield are beyond your control as they wildly whip around the surface of the shard. You create a destructive convergence event with it's epicenter at the ritual site. This manifests as a great Nebular creature breaching through the boundaries of the edge or a phenomenol natural disaster that tears through the countryside.
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