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Heartless magic is the process of giving up your humanity and becoming an immortal force. There are many names for the practitioners who use this form of magic; Liches, Hags, Parasites, etc.[1][2] Halflight magic is a Visceral variation which focuses more on crossing the line between human and monster, blending the strengths of both.[3]

Methodology[]

Heartless is a immaterial and price oriented school. Every use gradually pushes the practitioner away from humanity and closer to becoming Other. However it is an excellent way to quickly regain power, youth, and other abilities. They tend to focus on the long term. Often preferring to stick to small, subtle effects, and then constantly layering it for reinforcement.[4]

Basic Heartless techniques revolve around removing essential parts of oneself or others, removing a specific emotion for example, or creating vestiges from targets.[4]

Some Heartless will store parts of themselves (e.g. blood, fingernails) which they can later draw on for an infusion of humanity/self, if they feel their identity slipping.[5]

Kinds of Heartless[]

There is a wide variety of methods to becoming a Heartless, a few are outlined here.

Heart in a Box[]

The Heartless creates a phylactery or vessel, where the root of their being is placed.  Their body becomes a construction or representation. If the vessel is damaged or destroyed, the Heartless practitioner is destroyed as well.  Should the body that faces the world be destroyed, they reform or are resurrected. Once achieved, further research or rites may steadily cut down on any of the drawbacks, with more laborious efforts enabling them to decorate or augment the construction they form.  Other forms include taking one’s heart and wrapping it in a riddle, instead (a Rumplestiltskin effect), or arcane science (practice plus a transfer or upload of consciousness, with the prepared clones being the ‘box’).[4]

Deflected Heart[]

The Heartless creates an effigy, such as a piece of art.  They invest wholesale into this and reach the point where the effigy absorbs the entirety of the practitioner’s years (the Heartless practitioner ceases to age) and/or the practitioner would need to suffer a thousand wounds in a day before the effigy’s limit was reached.  Other forms may not use art, but something like science (the aging or pain becomes a waste that accrues and must be stored) or a whipping boy- a once-mortal person that is kept in a place that Death cannot reach, tattooed or otherwise set up to have the Practitioner’s ills transferred to them.[4]

Body Thief[]

The heartless uses a ritual to remove the target from their body and then extracts their own heart to transfer it in.  Some practitioner families maintain farms or close associations with families that they have cultivated and encouraged to be optimal vessels. Variants tend to play on what exactly is done with the hearts extracted from victims and the nature of the ritual conducted.  A more extreme variant involves using practice to swap bodies with others, willing or otherwise, with the other person (now in the practitioner’s old body) either left to live their life or killed after the fact.[4]

Mind Thief[]

The Heartless enact an assault on a target.  They break a target and then create openings, which they ultimately capitalize on to possess the target as a spirit would.  Mental combats or ‘dream doors’ may see the practitioner fighting the target or exploring the target’s psyche as a pseudo-physical space to be invaded.  Some attack, retreat, and marshal their strength before repeating, while others will occupy, gradually affecting the target’s actions. As more leverage is gained, those that stay gain more time or influence.  Either way, on eventual success, they take over the subject’s mind and body both. Some variants on this might approach things differently, or in a more personal way. The right words can worm their way into people’s heads, with curses and key phrases serving to break a person down, for a very effective mind-thieving ritual that requires the consent of the victim.  A therapist might have a patient willingly let them in through hypnosis sessions, exploring the psyche in a purely benign way over prior sessions, then utilize this at one final point, going on the offensive for their one real shot at attacking and conquering.[4]

Bloodied[]

To remain young and strong, one preys on others to take what they have.  Extracting key fluids or essences serves to renew or refresh the practitioner.  This road makes a practitioner much more Other, in a faster way than many alternate paths.  Variants will take different things in different ways. Bathing in blood is common, but it’s possible to steal the skin of others to wear, or modify one’s own genitals with needles that extrude mid-coitus to leech out vital essences.  Taps can be used on others to extract vital things, in a series of collections that are mixed and balanced to restore or enhance particular qualities of the Bloodied Heartless, in a more alchemical approach.[4]

Viscera[]

A Jekyll-and-Hyde type Halflight practice, overlapping with Alchemy. Begins with a herbal concoction known as the Sixberry admixture, which allows for temporary molding of one's body.[6][7] This type of magic can even be employed by the unawakened, but risks eroding the Self to the point you could collapse and be left a Vestige.[8]

Mein[]

Removing aspects of the 'Self' with strips of paper and replacing them with some external source of power.

The most basic practice on this path is called Citation; specially-prepared paper is touched to a body part and comes away with a part of the 'Self' (e.g. eye colour) attached. Starting with these sorts of external surface elements is essential to becoming strong enough to survive the more advanced techniques.

Advanced practices include removing abstract properties from yourself, removing injuries, stealing aspects from a human or Other, or inflicting your own removed properties on a target. The removed things can also be used for various non-Heartless purposes.[9]

Calender[]

A "werewolf" Heartless practice. Setting up a timetable, with periods during which you're not human or otherwise altered.[10][7]

Unfettered[]

Described as "Otherness through detatchment",[7] this path involves entering one's Self with astral projection and altering it. Battling past internal barriers and automatic defences against damage, it is possible to physically destroy things like one's own mortality, bad karma, certain connections, curses, memories, psychological issues etc. This is very hard and dangerous, generally requiring one already be an experienced Practitioner with backup, with the more fundamental aspects or those that connect with the outside world being harder to reach.[11]

Notable Heartless[]

Trivia[]

  • The title of this school recalls the Russian mythological figure Koschei more commonly called Koschei the Deathless. His soul being hid within a convoluted series of objects is commonly cited as the inspiration for liches.

References[]

  1. Heartless
    Heartless give up their body. The inverse of the Host, they work to make themselves the possessing force. They are the liches, the hags, the parasite forces, and more, often losing the ability to practice over time or over generations as they leave their human origins further and further behind. - Pact Dice: The Practices
  2. If one pursues the path of a heartless, their typical goal is that of longevity or even immortality.  This isn’t necessarily a war against Death, however- the path of the Heartless can be a way to bring death unto others as an assassin wearing a different skin, a means of stealing advantageous identities, challenging one’s own class or birth, dodging a curse or the weight of karma.  It can also, ironically, be a question of the heart and of passion, taking an identity to pursue love when their old self cannot, freeing themselves to continue a line of study beyond the confines of what their life would allow, or enabling themselves to continue refining an art or aspiration, such as creating a world-class masterpiece in music or painting.  On the flip side of this, finally, is the possibility that they seek longevity out of a dark passion, one for killing or revenge.
    The cost of these things, inevitably, is the same.  Mortal flesh.  By rituals and stages, with a care like that of a medical operation or a procedure repeated a hundred times over, the Heartless moves into being something Other. - Heartless Document
  3. Schools: Halflight (Heartless var., Visceral) [...] Walls separate man and monster.  Artfully addressed, halflight practices aim to capture the best of both at once.  Once we begin the journey, however, the way back to normalcy is hard, if not impossible. - Quasi, quoted in Bonus Material: Bedtime Reading.
  4. 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 Heartless Document
  5. Schools: Halflight (Heartless var., Visceral) [...] we look at the means of storing and restoring humanity.  Those who have been set on this path by another may find the techniques therein a good way to stave off transformations or progression of a condition, such as becoming a ghoul or securing a fading Self.  Beginners of Halflight practices are advised to read that section next, and take steps to prepare and stock up on measures to control or recover from what follows.  When a situation gets out of control, the stock of old fingernail clippings or stored blood may prove invaluable for a quick infusion of one’s prior self. - excerpt from Quasi, quoted in Bonus Material: Bedtime Reading
  6. A man dons an animal skin and stalks a forest trail.  Another drinks an alchemical admixture, and becomes a beast of another sort.
    [...]
    The Sixberry admixture is the basic ritual for the Viscera approach, and paves the way for future progression.  A simple and flexible herbal concoction, softening those parts of the Self that are firm, and scouring away that which is disposable.  Taken as a triple dose, one might soften their own bones and features enough to mold them, but should expect up to a month of aches and pains after the admixture’s effect wears off, as the body fights to return to normal. - Quasi, quoted in Bonus Material: Bedtime Reading.
  7. 7.0 7.1 7.2 Four basic rituals are listed, in order, as per the Viscera (Otherness stemming from within),  Mien (Otherness starting at the outside), Calendar (Otherness at set intervals), and Unfettered (Otherness from detachment) categories. - Quasi, quoted in Bonus Material: Bedtime Reading.
  8. “Dreg is a vestige.  Was Aware enough to dip into some Jekyll and Hyde type alchemy, eroded away a good chunk of his Self.  Only a fragment of the person was left, other stuff took up residence.”“I was almost a doctor,” Dreg said.  “A sip of this, a drab of that, to bring out the sharpness of my mind and my attention to details and diagnosis.  I was an angel to hundreds of people who had nothing.  But the same drug made me frail, and some people broke me to pieces so they could take my stash of herbs and chemicals.  Then I had only the frailty, a shattered body, an old self I’d forgotten, and dashed dreams of what might have been.” - Excerpt from Leaving a Mark 4.6
  9. The Citation practice is the basic ritual for the Mien approach.  A paper is prepared and laid into the skin to meet the Self, then removed.  Color may be pulled from a lock of hair, pupils from eyes, or scars from flesh.  This will weaken the practitioner in many ways, some not immediately obvious or intuitive.  The practitioner should then shore themselves up with power, with the awareness that the type and amount of power will affect just how the body fills in the blanks.  Each ‘surgery’ in this manner may strengthen or alter them in the longer term.  Advanced use of this practice can cite away more abstract elements, but this should be done with extreme care, on a sturdy foundation of healed physical changes done with this or other Mien practices.  Other advanced approaches allow citing away the qualities of another individual or Other, to be taken into oneself, forcing one’s own exaggerated, unwanted qualities into others, and treating one’s wounds by using the Citation to remove the damage.  Removed scraps will take on physical form as papers, mementos and/or things with small power to them, useful in various Visceral practices.  Note that restoration of what was sacrificed is difficult to impossible. - Quasi, quoted in Bonus Material: Bedtime Reading.
  10. The ‘Bloody Sundays’ Calendar practice is rather more open ended, setting a strict timeframe for changes (not necessarily the namesake Sundays), with a list of possible contracts and Others.  Some of the possibilities include transformation into a vengeance curse, shift into one of the seven Ideal Selves covered in Eclipsed Self Part II (the Brute, the Grace, etc), and tapping into a realm for a set time.  This should be considered a moderate-tier ritual and be conducted with close assistance and due precaution.  Once begun, the contracted timeframe must be ridden out. - Quasi, quoted in Bonus Material: Bedtime Reading.
  11. Finally, the most accessible Unfettered practice is the Shadow of Oneself.  The Self is opened up and astral projected into, sometimes while the practitioner is asleep.  Individual issues, memories, and facets of the Self can be explored and confronted as physical things and places, growing more meaningful as one gets deeper, and may be slain with physical means or altered with practice.  At seven points along the periphery of the Self where it meets the rest of the universe, often past key barriers (core memories, Karmic barriers, inner demons), one can address or attempt to slay things such as specific connections, specific marks of karma, mortality (and other incarnation-related aspects), and any attached curses or abstract qualities.  Once sufficiently threatened (and it will be threatened even if the practitioner is ‘healing’ it, such as by removing a curse), the Self can be expected to attack the practitioner, in hopes of destroying the part of them that seeks to change so drastically.  A moderate ritual for which assistance is strongly recommended, primarily used for strategic targeting of key problems by those who cannot wait as long as Citation requires. - Quasi, quoted in Bonus Material: Bedtime Reading.
  12. Wild Abandon 18.c
  13. “Pair of heartless, been around a long time. Paid their dues, retired, but they’re basically immortal. Pay enough, you can get them out of retirement. They liked our stuff, because it was the only way they could feel certain emotions. Musser paid enough to get them out of retirement, they went up against a Lord, and now they’re trapped. We can’t rescue them, Musser can’t or won’t. Now we have items with nowhere to go, and we’re still making more.” - Crossed with Silver 19.14
  14. Heartless practitioners are those who use practice to prolong their own lives; lich-types, hags, Dorian Grey types, body thieves and such. - /gc273yl Wildbow on Reddit
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