Primordial Powers

The village of Stonetop sits upon ancient ruins, built centuries or even millennia ago by the Makers world. Strange and alien things. Primordial things and primordial powers, from the very dawn of time.

Themes

Choose or roll 1, or 2 and combine.

Hooks

• A grand conjunction of the stars approaches, signaling momentous change.
• A meteorite crashes not far from Stonetop.
• A scholar returns from an ancient monument, preaching gibberish that infects the minds of others.
• A ritual can be performed only at a site of primordial power.
• Centuries ago, the spirit of War renounced their role and duties and incarnated as a reclusive shepherd, to live a simple life.
• A sleeping titan—big as a mountain, covered in millennia of soil, debris, and growth—starts to stir.
• A clan of refugees from no known region emerges from the portal below the Ruined Tower.

Questions

• The Pale Hunter is associated with "the" moon, but are there other moons? What are they associated with?
• What tends to make you feel insignificant and small?
• Do you believe in fate? Or do we chart our own destinies?
• What strange place did you once visit that was clearly touched by ancient, eldritch powers?

Cosmology

Many aspects of the setting's cosmology are intentionally left vague, for you and your group to flesh out as needed. Here are a few things to ask about or consider:

• How mythic is your cosmos? Like, is the sun a star, orbited by the world? Or does Helior drive his chariot across the sky? Or what?
• Do other worlds float in the void? Can they be reached via the spirit world or portals?
• What lies beyond the Last Door? Is the afterlife the same for all, or do different fates await each soul?
• What exactly is the relationship between the First Creators, the great spirits, the gods of forgotten peoples, and the gods worshipped today?
• Did life evolve over eons? Or did the First Creators populate the world with much of the flora and fauna we know today? Or what?
• Where did humanity come from? Do we predate the Makers or were we made by them?

The answers to these questions will depend on how your players answer questions about other topics, and decisions you make about them. In particular, see Aratis, Danu, Helior, Tor, gods and religion, death and the undying, the Makers, Lygos and the south, and Stonetop itself.

The First Creators

They were the first minds to know themselves, the first beings to give themselves names. They were born of the cosmic void, of light and possibility and the churning chaos of nothingness and all. They spoke reality into being, set down its fundamental laws. They made the world and bound the Things Below.

The First Creators are unlikely to feature directly in your game. Mostly, they serve as background, an excuse for why things are the way they are. Some might linger as what we now call gods, but as a rule they no longer actively shape the world.

Perhaps they have forgotten it entirely.

The Things Below

Beings of darkness, chaos, and corruption, older even than the First Creators. They are jealous and hateful and full of infinite malice, and so the First Creators bound them in the depths of the earth.

Though imprisoned, they still influence the world. The Green Lords called on them when the Fae rebelled. The servants of the Stone Lords succumbed to their whispers and ushered in the Time of Cataclysm. The Barrow Builders courted them openly and worshipped them as gods. Their influence has lessened in the current age, but it lingers still.

Great spirits

Impossibly potent entities, numinous and grand. The First Creators made some as experiments, some to be companions, some to serve as stewards of the world. Other great spirits arose spontaneously, birthed from the cosmos or the beliefs of mortal beings.

Many of these great spirits are aloof, alien, and disinterested in the world (or at least, in this world). Others are active, but shape the world in subtle ways. Their numbers might well include the Lady of Crows, and some or all of the major gods.

To create a great spirit for your game, decide whether it's worshipped as a god.

If it is, create it using the procedure for other gods. Otherwise, pick or roll 2 primordial themes and imagine the entity suggested by the combination. Consider why it goes unworshipped—is it unknown, uncaring, alien, or what?

Should one of the great spirits become active in your game, write it up as a threat (a magical entity). Even benevolent beings of such cosmic power can't help but cause trouble.

Incarnations

The great spirits sometimes manifest directly in the world. Such incarnations are likely to become figures of myth and legend. For examples, see:

• The Willow Witches
• The Nine-fingered stranger if you assume that Tor is a great spirit
• The Pale Hunter, if you decide he's a primordial entity To create an incarnation, first establish what great spirit it's a manifestation of.

Then choose or roll for why it incarnated, its manifestation, and 1-3 constraints.

Write it up as a monster, and possibly as a threat, with all manner of powerful moves—such beings are not bound by the normal laws of reality. See the examples (previous column) for inspiration.

Be cautious about introducing incarnations into your game. They should make the world feel rich and mysterious and help you punctuate the PCs' lives with adventure; they should not overshadow the PCs, or serve as a convenient contrivance. Their involvement should always feel dangerous, fraught, and complicated.

THE NIGHTINGALE

Solitary, tiny, primordial, magical,

Archons

Archons are constructed spirits, made by the First Creators or one of the great spirits as guardians and enforcers of the cosmic order.

Start with the base archon stat block below. Pick or roll for their purpose, their manifestation, and up to 3 powers. Adjust the stat block to reflect these choices or results, writing at least one move to reflect its purpose and one to reflect it manifesting (unless its manifestation is a construct/ animate statue).

The Seeker acquires the Ineffable Words arcanum and eventually unlocks their mysteries, only to then mark a consequence that has an "eternal, ancient being of Order" seek them out and reprimand them. That sounds like an archon to me!

I pick a purpose of "To warn/castigate/ correct," and roll a 2 for its manifestation ("pure energy/light/fire"). For powers, I roll a 3 ("teleports, or close enough") and pick both "stuns/deafens/ blinds/hobbles" (it's made of light!) and "dispels/disenchants magic." I ponder a little, and write up the following:

LIVROTHOS,

CLEANSING FLAME

Titans

Legends speak of a time when beasts and beings of impossible scale roamed the world. The god Tor is said to have slain three such beasts, and everyone knows about the skeleton on the side of Titan Bones.

Perhaps the First Creators placed these titans in the world. Perhaps they evolved amid the early world's riot of vitality and life. Some could have been incarnations of the great spirits, or emanations of the Things Below.

Regardless, titans no longer roam the world like they once did. The Crombil might be one, but it wakes only once every few decades. The Suileach might be another, but it is confined to the Dread River. The hidden lands around the Golden Oak are full of gargantuan beasts, but whether they are truly titans is up to you.

There might be other such titans, hidden away in remote corners of the world, sleeping the centuries away, waiting to rise once more.

Sites

There are places in the world marked or marred by primordial power. If such a site needs to be established, combine the terrain in which it's located with a marker.

Other sites of primordial power

• A small lake: cold, acidic, devoid of life. During thick mists, it connects to other times, places, or realities.
• A hill overlooking a river, where an emanation is impaled on a rod of black iron. An archon hides the hill and its prisoner from the world.
• The base of a rusty metal tower, 6' wide, rising over a lush meadow that teems with nature spirits. The bones of a titan are buried below.
• A fallen megalith, half-sunk in peat and mire. When the stars align, a mortal here can ask one question and get a total, overwhelming answer.
• A lonely peak where, if one is not careful, their spirit will be drawn from their body and up into the void.

, to be found in a primordial site in the Whitefang Moun-I roll a 4 on the Whitefangs terrain table ("waterlogged soil, frozen or muddy") and a 9 for few chunks of Maker-carved stone sticking out of muddy soil. There's a stillness to the air, in

• An underground arch marked with runes, opening to a long straight hall. The hallway is a loop; you always return to where you started.
• Plenty of corrupted sites
• Certain chambers below the Ruined Tower.
• The Golden Oak.
• The Utterwell.
• Titan Bones, perhaps.
• Maybe Tor's Fist?
• Possibly the Stone itself.

Portals

There are places throughout the world that touch each other on a fundamental level, despite being hundreds of miles apart.

The Makers knew how to create portals in such places, allowing for instantaneous travel between them. One might find such a portal…

• beneath the Ruined Tower
• in the Labyrinth
• hidden away near Three Coven Lake
• among the ruins of Vor Svetelik
• up on Tor's Fist, perhaps
• maybe in certain ruins down in Lygos and the South
• anywhere else you think makes sense.

Portals can be activated via Opening the Way, which requires inscribing the sigil sequence of one portal within the sigils of another.

Should the PCs learn to use portals, they might wish to create new ones. To do so, they must:

• Locate a suitable site of primordial power
• Transport a slab of pure white stone (Value 2 or 3, depending on size) to the site
• Discern the correct sigil sequence for this site
• Have an exceptional stonecutter spend a season (Value 2) carving the sigils into the stone
• Risk damage to the stone or a flawed portal The Makers' portals were safe and stable, but flawed or damaged portals are terribly dangerous. One might explode, tear travelers apart, and/or open a rift in the world. See the cracked portal of Vor Svetelik for an example.

Black iron

A few rare veins of this metal exist in the world, but mostly it's retrieved from meteorites. It is completely, utterly immune to magic.

• Fae treat it like iron, but worse—its touch unravels their magic and they take +1d6 damage (messy, ignores armor) from it
• Spirits can't touch it, perhaps can't even perceive it
• It can damage even insubstantial forms of manifest spirits, but does no true harm to the spirit itself
• It damages or destroys any open portal it touches, going nowhere
• Spells, rituals, and other magic cannot affect it, pierce it, detect it, or perceive things enclosed by it

When the PCs encounter some, pick or roll for its form:

Artifacts

Major arcana

The following are (or could be) associated with primordial powers.

• The Ineffable Words
• Storm Markings
• Noruba's Ice Sphere

Dangers

Natural forces

• Storms, violent weather, lightning, flooding
• Avalanches, rockslides and mudslides
• Prairie fire run amok
• Volcanic activity
• Earthquakes
• Radiation

Other primordial entities

• The Things Below
• Great spirits, possibly including the Lady of Crows and some or all of the major gods
• Incarnations, including the Willow Witches and perhaps the Nine-fingered stranger and/or the Pale Hunter
• Archons, including Tcaventes, Shackle and Key
• Titans, perhaps including the Crombil and/or the Suileach