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Harbinger

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Harbingers, sometimes also called berserker mages, are chosen by a greater Power/powerful Other to become their metaphorical weapon against the world. Harbingers aren't required to be awakened though it does offer more options. Their patron's power resides within them, with the harbinger paying a prices every time they draw on it.

Oftentimes, Harbingers are mistaken for Hosts however the main difference is that Harbingers are bound to only one Other. Additionally Hosts have some control over their transformations whereas Harbingers are stuck with the forms they get.[1]

Methodology[]

A Conflict and Price-oriented school.[2] They usually get a subtle aura, a transformation into an appropriate Other, and some other abilities depending the mark and deal made. The nature of the deal, the mark, the means of binding and release and the power that they dealt with are all critically important. [1] They are a hollow practice specifically as they are channeling, usually unwillingly, one of the Greater Powers.

The Power[]

The greater power that creates a Harbinger can be anything under the sun, really, with the power and flavor of practices varying as a result. They can include Elementals, Spirits, Ghosts, Goblins, Gods, facets of the abyss, ghosts in the machine, Oni, Fae, the lost, Heroic spirits, Incarnations, Zeitgeists and karmic representatives. So long as it is powerful, it is doable.

Two partial exceptions are Demons and Angels, which are rarely used to create Harbingers because they both tend to overwhelm and destroy or permanently transform the host.

The Deal[]

The nature of the deal influences the relationship, and tends to confer some benefits. Whatever the greater Power spent to hook the individual or establish the connection, it’s liable to keep those things in place. Some examples include:

  • Being rescued from peril, in exchange for becoming forever indebted. Usually comes with some kind of defensive benefit.
  • Having a wish granted in exchange for becoming forever indebted. Abilities gain a bonus depending on the wish.
  • Using a treasure created the greater Power and becoming indebted. Comes with another powerful tool.
  • Inherited the deal from their family. Usually comes with abilities granting bonuses to repeating patterns.
  • Believers willingly wanting to become Harbingers, or sacrificing someone else to it. The greater Power gets more freedom in deciding how the power works.[1]

The Mark[]

The Harbinger tends to bear an outward expression of the greater power’s influence on them. The fine details can differ, depending on the nature of the mark - for some powers, it may be more ragged, for others, it could be elegant. The mark is generally "unleashed" to transform the Harbinger by tearing it open, removing or reversing the bindings, magically growing to cover them etc.

Some examples are:

  • A Branding - a burn, scar, glowing crack in skin, etc. Often modifies their transformation into one with more puissance or physical prowess.
  • A Blemish - a small mutation or physical abnormality. Tends to offer a bit of flexibility or mobility to their transformation.
  • A Token - a non-removable item. Often allows faster transformations and/or a physical augmentation.
  • A Tattoo - a symbolic tattoo related to the power. Often offers more accuracy and awareness to their transformation and more aesthetically pleasing forms.
  • A Window - a hole in their skin to somewhere else. Less prone to spreading, and tends to represent and grant magical knowledge.
  • A Heart - engorged veins, maybe connected to an organ or tumor. Often results in hardiness and longer life, whether through efficient use of magical resources, durability in human or transformed form, resurrection powers etc.[1]

Most Harbingers Bind their Mark to help deal with it. This may involve marking one's flesh in a pattern around the Mark, taking drugs or poisons to inhibit it, binding the affected part with chain, feeding the Mark to placate it, etc etc.[3]

Associated Others[]

Known Harbingers[]

  • Ari, dogsbody of The Man Without A Heart who gave him his existence back[5]
  • Esther, vassal of Mrs. Lapin, divine "rounding error" of fecundity and violence[6]

References[]

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Pact Dice: Harbinger
  2. ↑ Harbinger
    Chosen of a higher power/powerful other, who bears their strength & serves to clear the way, metaphorically. Tends to come with transformations, changes, costs in other forms, far more direct, and doesn't necessarily have (or rarely has) a direct line to the power. Practice includes ambient effects on surroundings & altered consequences to their actions (ie. fights happen around them), balancing act to restrain this or release it without too much casualties. Harbingers are rarely inducted willingly, but rather forced to become a harbinger by intervention of powerful other, by family, or by accident. - Pact Dice: The Practices - Wbow Version
  3. ↑ The mark is generally bound.  This is typically up to the practitioner, and the means of binding can include burning one’s own flesh, injections of poison or other drugs, chains bound around the body, tattoos, cutting/stitching or feeding the mark.  These correspond roughly to their equivalents named above and are mostly flavor, though they may impact the transformation to some degree, as well as the parameters of any practice they perform that uses or relates to the mark. - Pact Dice: Harbinger
  4. ↑ The Fulminate is a Harbinger or other Channeling practice who is spent, usually wholly or partially rooted to the spot they burned out, surrounded by a swathe of waste or altered reality. - PACT DICE: Hollow
  5. ↑ Ari was given the gift of a slice of nothingness and the gift of his renewed existence, after his efforts to use a cursed camera backfired on him. Where the power reached out to push him back to reality, however, there’s a handprint-shaped indent in his arm- painfully noticeable in the right light. The Man Without A Heart bids him to remove certain… extraneous elements from reality, and he grudgingly obeys. As his heart pounds with adrenaline and he draws nearer to the kill, the handprint presses in so deep that skin hugs bone, smoking around the edges, and it hurts, so he uses drugs to dull the emotion and quiet the mark. Most die with a bit of Practice, the right timing, and a stabbing- the fact that the mark and the power that leaks out makes everything muted and slower around him helps. When the target catches on, though, and they choose to fight or flee, he has to take extra steps. A different drug, one to do the opposite as the ones that calm his emotion, The backlash is intense, and handprints slap down across his body, fingers digging in- tooth marks, other things- squeezing him out of this world and into spaces between, leaving him as something subtle, wretched, and sleek. He can appear and disappear like this, he’s fast, and his thoughts are as clear as ice water through a mountain stream, making both mundane skills and Practice easier to employ. It’s for emergencies only, though. When he comes back to his regular form, he’s seen depressions reminiscent of the ones on his arm. A thumbprint here, a faint handprint there. - Pact Dice: Harbinger
  6. ↑ Believers - Mom and dad are so lame. They’re so boring. Boring jobs, boring hobbies. They don’t even have friends- just this Mrs. Lapin they keep talking about. You’ve never seen her, and ever since learning about the birds and the bees, with a few schoolmates filling you in on the weird stuff like swingers and poly relationships, you might even wonder if- no, ew. That’d require them to actually have sex, and it’d require them to not be boring. They just seem so happy after seeing her. You just turned fourteen, and… they want you to meet her? Well, you do- you did. You had to leave this earthly plane to do it. She’s not human, for one thing. She’s a rabbit-headed fertility deity, like a very bloody, intense easter bunny. She tells you that she was removed from the godly or spiritual cosmology because she’s a glitch in the system, a rounding error that collected a whole lot of violence and a whole lot of fecundity into her before being pinched off and shoved into a cosmological corner somewhere. Now she needs a warrior to fight for her cause and carve out a place in the grand scheme of everything for her to occupy. She sounds like a crazy person, even discounting all the god stuff, yet your parents smile and nod. You turn to go, and they grab you. Your parents -your boring parents- hold you down and rip your shirt to expose your shoulderblade. It’ll be like a tattoo, you’re told. They would have happily been vessels, if they’d been compatible, they say, but Mrs. Lapin believed they’d go permanently berserk or give birth to an endless stream of dead babies and rabbits because they’re imperfect. You? You might be able to keep that power contained, especially with the spells and rituals they’ve researched that should help. The mark burns its way into your flesh, and you scream. It burns its way into your being, and you make a sound like the death throes of a thousand rabbits being killed all at once. You find your breath and piece together enough thoughts to ask: “Why?” The answer? They’re whole-hearted believers. They think Mrs. Lapin is really, really neat, and by golly, if you want them to help with the rituals and safeguards to keep this power from splitting you at your seams, you’d better start acting like you do too.

    [...]

    Esther was branded by a mad ‘glitch’ of a deity in a cave, while her parents held her down. She managed to avoid the worst of it all for a few years, insisting that her parents should take her to the middle of nowhere so she could ‘train’, but that had to end sometime. Now she’s older, and the power that ripples out from her means that people around her are fucking and fighting constantly. She’s looking for a way out, but it’s hard when the mark -and consequently the deity’s eye- is always on her. The mark is a scar, with skin peeling away in tatters that can look like tufts of white hair or fur in the right light- more so when the mark throbs because the deity thinks she should be doing something. Her goddess doesn’t know what she’s doing, but Esther has discovered that if she pursues her own goals while pretending like she has a greater plan, her goddess will usually be content. She thinks she’s on her way to an answer, venturing into a place at the periphery of reality where gods have trouble seeing or acting, but her misdirections to her goddess is proving a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, because the ambient effect of her Harbinger ‘storm’ gets an awful lot more traction in such a place, so her goddess may get a foothold after all, if she doesn’t hurry. There’s another downside too- these fringes of reality have some pretty horrifying things residing in them. If cornered, as a last-ditch resort, she can reach up to the brand, dig her fingernails in, and rip, tearing away as much flesh as she can. The form revealed from beneath is lithe, agile, bloody, and not wholly sane, rabbit-headed with white fur slick and matted with gore, eyes large with pinpoint pupils. She has another form, but the day she tears her skin the other way and leverages that form’s strengths is the day she abandons sanity and hope. - Pact Dice: Harbinger
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