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Vestiges are Others that are incomplete versions of something, usually a human; often compared to shadows. They are classified as Excorporate and Wages Others, and are less complete and stable than simulacrums or dopplegangers but more than glamours or illusions. They are closely related to ghosts, which can be considered a sub-type of vestige, one left behind be intense emotion.

The book Vestiges: Glimmers and Gasps contains a wealth of information on the subject.

Creation[]

If a human's Self is sufficiently damaged, they may be left as a Vestige.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7]

It's also possible to create a Vestige from only a small portion of a person's Self, such as by stealing their shadow or reflection and using it to create a shadow version of them. In this case, the vestige is incomplete from the beginning, an imperfect copy.[1][8]

Practices which look back in time, drawing on the spirits' memories of the past, may result in echoes and vestiges coming through the connection.[9]

Vestiges are not limited to being made from humans. Via similar methods, a vestige can be made of a place[10] or an Other.[11]

Uses by Practitioner[]

Valkyries work with Vestiges as well as ghosts, creating vestiges of fallen warriors by leveraging bargains under cloak of religion, then imbuing them into Magic Items.[12]

Abilities[]

Vestiges can blur the lines of identity, human and Other. For example, Blake Thorburn and Rose Thorburn Junior both held different aspects of the role of Thorburn heir at different points, including the ability to Practice. In some cases, this blurring of identity can be used to bend or break magical bargains.[13]

Vestiges can count as "real" enough for Others to feed on them as they would humans, without being considered Innocent humans (at least by Karma and by some Practitioners; there is some debate as to their moral status.) Johannes uses them in his territory as playthings for Others, who wish to return to the days before the Seal of Solomon, at the admission of gaining power from them. He shores them up with mouse and dog spirits to make them controllable with his implement.[10]

Since the vestige will have some or all of the original's memories, some Practitioners will create them in order to interrogate them for information.[8]

Consuming human vestiges can be a way to grant an Other more human qualities (i.e. sapience),[8] or to heal a human's damaged Self.

Vestiges serve as excellent vessels for Elementals and other things, creating a whole which is stronger and more stable than either part was alone.[14][6]

Weaknesses[]

Though their nature makes them flexible and capable of being molded and altered, they are impermanent. Given time and external pressures they started to degrade and the degradation grows worse over time, to the point that it takes more and more effort and energy to keep them intact. Eventually they break down, but they can be shored up with other spirits and power sources, much as a ghost can become a wraith.[1][15][14]

They function best in enclosed spaces, places with a connection to them, and places with few Innocent human eyes.[16]

This weakness can be removed if the vestige is made into a Familiar, filling in the gaps with the Practitioner partner's humanity, although the details complete person that is created may be influenced by the Practitioner (consciously or unconsciously).[17][18]

Variants[]

  • Ghost (arguably)[1]
  • Bartisch[4] Composed of secrets, filling in for their missing eyes.
  • Broken [19]- connected with realm practices.
  • Clotted[20] - when a group of vestiges of a similar origin organizes together.
  • Glimmer[5] - Created from mad-science type Technomancy.
  • Indelible [20] - upheld by Innocence, hard to erase.
  • Husks those burnt out by Harbingers of Greater Powers, or the powers themselves, much tougher then a standard vestige.[19]
  • Promethean[21] left over from elemental practice.
  • rapacious derived vestiges[20] the vestiges created from the wide and varied rapacious practices arguably as individual to the practices that spawn them.

Notable Vestiges[]

References[]

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Vestiges can arise naturally. In fact, you could make the argument that ghosts are a subset of vestiges as a whole - they're just really reinforced by the ongoing and complicated pattern of life and death, arising from things that push beyond the boundaries of that pattern.

    You're otherwise right, though I'll note only some vestiges have a self. Vestiges are essentially the equivalent of tracing existing work, creating mock replicas of some or all of something already in existence, or taking the stuffing out of X and leaving only the husk. They resemble the original but something is missing and they're often very fragile. They're not all alive.

    A faerie using glamour and trickery to steal your shadow and create a shadow you would be creating a vestige. A mockery of you shored up by expectation, by spirits, by the fact it's acting like you and getting away with it (the wheel is still spinning but the hamster is long gone). Depending on how that situation played out, the shadow could gain strength enough to become something else while depleting you, and you'd be the vestige instead.

    Curses and magical attacks that hit you on a level beyond the physical and the real could also leave you on the brink of... not death, because your heart beats and you breathe, not being emotionally or mentally dead because you think and feel, but being so less that you're barely not there. The effect might be like Bart when he sells his soul or Gollum with the one ring. Practitioners might put too much personal power into a created item or demesne and lose the power to affect the real world, making them very close to being that husk.

    Most don't stay in that state for long. It's either the last phase before utter destruction or other things will jump on it or capitalize on it, because a vestige is a pretty valuable resource, a nice home for something parasitic, or a 'stock' that could quintuple in value in a matter of days, as things return to normal.

    It's like taxidermied animals, sculptures, or those models of people with the guts and internal organs on display, but its practice that gets them there and practice that keeps them going, playing off of the fact that you can look at them and you can say "that's a human" or "That's clearly Chad", but they're not, there's obviously something missing or gone. - Vestige suff
  2. 2.0 2.1 “This is Dreg.”

    Right.  They were the callers of these great spirits of drugs or whatever.

    Maybe not boyfriend material.  They’d been told to be careful and steer clear.

    “Is he the spirit you call?” Lucy asked.

    Tymon laughed, suddenly enough it startled her.

    “No,” Dreg rasped, speaking with an adult’s voice.  “A good familiar is a partner, something you can control, or something you’re willing to be controlled by.  Things as large and wild as Black Gutter do nothing except drown you out.”

    “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
  3. 3.0 3.1 Musser said.  “[Yellowston] rotated the exterior border, moving the chalk on the floor to point it at me, while pushing power into the diagram.  I asserted my ownership over the space, stopped it just in time.  Pushed it back toward him.  He broke at the last second, ran, and I put my fist into his throat.  While he sputtered and choked, I pointed the diagram at him and let him have what he planned for me.  Now he’s a stain on the wall, a vestige of his former self, aware of things but… dim.”

    “You should go right home and let him go, Musser,” Luisa said.  Her expression was troubled.

    “I don’t like to discard resources.  I could have use of the vestige later.”

    “He doesn’t deserve that.” - Excerpt from Gone Ahead 7.x
  4. 4.0 4.1 Bartisch

    The Bartisch are vestiges resulting from certain cruel practices that prey on human victims.  The practice would target wrongdoers, often adulterers and keepers of secrets, and distill a symbol within their eye, which could then be extruded.  The eye would tear open and spill forth things such as hot coals, moths, apples, and feathers, often symbolic of the secret or a particular scene of the adultery.  So long as the item was kept by the practitioner, the Bartisch was kept enslaved, a creature that could stand watch or lurk just beyond the existence of innocents, collecting and penning down secrets.  In areas where this ritual is done with any frequency, they can start emerging on their own, when silences are kept about things seen or when a very good individual is done a wrong by a partner who maintains unerring eye contact for too long.

    Bartisch are eyeless and fragile, and often collect their personal motifs (example: apples) around them, either by way of the spiritual energies around them or because they actively collect the things to salve the gaping hole in their Self.  They wander, lurk, appear to those going against convention, and if one is seen, invariably it serves as an omen that that person has been found out, if only because the Bartisch must tell the one who owns their 'tear' what they discover.  Tears of a Bartisch (particularly those of one who emerges naturally vs. being made with practice) are often hard to hold onto but will grant whispers of secrets, dreams of the same, or visitations with the Bartisch, who will tell the holder things.  Losing the tear, however, may mean becoming a Bartisch oneself, a process that starts slowly but comes to a violent climax if one cannot rid themselves of their own secrets and wrongs before the object in their eye spills forth. - Wildbow on Discord
  5. 5.0 5.1 Glimmers

    Vestiges that tend to come about specifically from science that verges on practice (mad science, for lack of a better way of putting it), or from technomancers who fuck up.  They'd be called shadows of their former self, but they tend to be the opposite- light.  They lead pretty frantic, frenzied existences trying to keep themselves going while maintaining traces or bastardizations of their former scientific knowledge or practices.  Can become what they work with for brief periods - an ex-virologist can become disease.  A Tesla-like mad scientist can become electricity.  An ex-technomancer glimmer can create and become his ritual, coming out the other side.  Very smart, very reckless. - Wildbow on Discord
  6. 6.0 6.1 These three were vessels.  Like Edith was, but these ones were too neat, when he looked at them with the Doom’s eyes.  Closer to the space he’d carved out for his Doom, but… a much, much bigger hole.
    There were practices that asked for high prices.  Practices like the Heartless practice his father had conducted.  Blood magic, host magic, cultists… and many preyed on innocents, or counted innocents among the collateral damage.  When too much was taken out, there could be vestiges.  Just enough of a person that it could stand, walk, and breathe, but something integral was gone and wouldn’t come back.  A house with an exterior and little in the way of rooms or furniture, if it had anything at all.  A practitioner could put anything in that space, really.
    Someone had probably done that to these four. - excerpt from Back Away 5.d
  7. “His victim, maybe.  I’m not sure what happens when a person gets hit by the Evil Eye a lot but doesn’t die or whatever.” “I can think of a few things,” Raquel said, twisting around to look over at the other table.  “Vestige.  Lost something essential?  Like a hollow shell without the filling, or you lose a bit of soul and something else takes its place and plugs into the stuff the soul would.” - excerpt from Cutting Class 6.3
  8. 8.0 8.1 8.2 Jie has his Demesne start speaking to him, and turns it into an assistant, running the data and organizing things so he is more free to work on the less dreary details.  As part of a critical project for a key individual, he captures reflections of the various members of one family, brings them to the Demesne, and then interrogates those vestiges thoroughly for details to further the project.  Once used up, the consciousnesses and remains of the vestiges are fed to the Demesne to advance its own awareness and capacity. - List of Books#Demesnes, quoted in 6.5 Bonus: Demesnes Text
  9. “Not looking forward, but back.  Many of the Sight-focused practices, the research-rooted practices, and the practices focused around awareness have some form of it because… it’s all there.  Spirits remember, the forces of this world leave tracks where they tread.  Trace back those tracks, put in the right power, and you can ask. [...] There are some where you outright seek out a signal.  Turn the dial, focus the image.  But it can fight you.  Scenes with emotional weight, a deep meaning or significance to them might make that fight harder.  You may end up with the device wrenching the dial one way, plunging sound and audio into incomprehensible static at the most critical moments you most wanted to see.”

    “Does it hurt to try?” Zed asked.

    “It can.  Echoes can come roaring through the static.  But I know you have Mister Kurtz’s radio, and you’ve run into that very thing.  But more important-”

    “More important than murderous echoes and vestiges?” Nicolette asked. - Excerpt from Cutting Class 6.2
  10. 10.0 10.1 The buildings were twisted, the street more winding and narrow, the rooftops changing.  All towards one peculiar, oddly cramped aesthetic.

    I could see people there.  Vaguely, from a distance, but they were people.
    [...]
    “Yeah,” Rose answered me.  “He said I’d find myself in good company.  Maggie said it was because I was an Other, and this is some kind of amusement park for Others.  But that’s not it.  All of that stuff we’re looking at…”

    “Vestiges,” I said.  “Or it’s one vestige.  A big one.  How’d he do it?”

    That is a very good question,” Ms. Lewis said.

    “One that would be very costly to buy an answer for, I’m betting,” I said.  “Right.”

    “He took over an area,” Rose said.  “He made it a demesnes… and this vestige is some kind of reflection of that demesnes.”
    [...]
    Rose spoke up, “He took over an area and then copied it.  But it’s different.  A vestige degrades with attention and stress, so maybe he’s shoring it up with something?  Some kind of power source that would twist it by association?”

    “Or,” I said.  “Like other amusement parks, there’s a cost to visit.  A lot of little power sources.  Each one has a general influence, twisting things in a certain way when it fills in the cracks and gaps.”

    “Oh god,” Rose said.  “Oh.  Maggie said it was a place for Others to relive the old days, before mankind got its footing.  I thought maybe it was scaring people, picking off one every few months or so.  But it isn’t.  If the people were copied over too, if they aren’t real people, then what’s to stop Others from hurting them all the time?  Openly hunting them down and eating them?  Making it a constant, daily thing?  Those people would be stuck there, like I’m stuck in the mirror.”
    [...]
    “What do you think I wanted you to take away from that?”  Ms. Lewis asked.

    “A place can be a vestige,” I said.

    Ms. Lewis smiled, “True, but that isn’t the answer to my question.” - excerpt from Damages 2.6
  11. They made more wretches, casting some into the air, causing the masses to stumble and pile up.  All by dividing them further.  Broken vestiges even before they were divided. - Excerpt from Judgment 16.9
  12. I read it because I thought maybe it was related to vestiges like me.  And it is.  But this one focuses on ghosts too, on historical elements, and some more practical applications.  You’ve got practitioners who specialize a hundred percent on ghosts and vestiges.  A kind of necromancy. [...] In this case, you’ve got practitioners convincing warriors, usually dying soldiers, that there’s an amazing afterlife of parties and respect for their deeds waiting for them, so the warriors agree to give up their spirits after death.  Use that agreement to help make a vestige or create a ghost, a representation of their skills or their knowledge, their strength, whatever else, and imbue all of that into a vessel. - excerpt from Damages 2.3
  13. “Okay, speaking generally then, what advantages are there, to having a vestige partner?”  To making a close copy of someone?  Can you use that to get around contracts?”
    “You can.” - excerpt from Damages 2.6
  14. 14.0 14.1 These are other excorporate Others, vestiges, echoes, spirits, and even a cracked cherubim. [...] We were talking about hallows and homes for elementals.  Others can be that point of residence.  A vestige can be the broken jar that hold most of it.  Even a hazy echo can be the structure an elemental maps to if it has the right anchoring points.  The elemental becomes the beating heart of the Other. - excerpt from Vanishing Points 4.8
  15. “Glimmers.  Almost-people, like shadows come to life.”
    “Vestiges.  Good.  Keep going.”
    [...]
    “One… wraith-vestige?” the middle Ibix brother suggested.  “It smells like rotted branches, and birds, and the abyss.  It doesn’t smell very big, but it passed by here not long ago.” - excerpt from Interlude 9
  16. "Ghosts, like any vestige, don’t hold up that much to poking and prodding.  [...] They function best in enclosed spaces, especially any enclosed spaces they have connections to.  Houses, houses with bodies still in them, lurking near their murder weapons, and so on.  But that’s not the key bit.  They also function in places with very few humans to mess with them.  The wilderness. [...] There aren’t many places where you find intact ghosts, and they aren’t really sought after, because they’re unreliable to work with and they tend to burn out if you draw on them for power.” Like a vestige does. - excerpt from Damages 2.3
  17. It can be another kind of domineering relationship.  Picking a familiar with no true mind of its own.  Often, the familiar will be raised up, rounded out, until it is on a roughly even keel.  An echo or ghost could develop a full personality, instead of being a stuttering replay of events.  A vestige, or a broken shadow of an existence?  It could patch itself up.  What it pulls in is often consciously or unconsciously influenced by the practitioner, who has the power in the relationship. - excerpt from Leaving a Mark 4.7
  18. When an Other is incomplete, it may be elevated ... Elevated Others can include vestiges, dull echoes, creatures from the dreaming places, and the varied Hounds of War.  Some like the echo are stable in how unfinished they are, while others like the Hounds of War or dopplegangers will gain faces and names as they take lives.  The shape or nature an Other takes as it is elevated to something ‘complete’ can be controlled, but this kind of control requires more power, and may make the familiar weaker in the end.  Incomplete Others that have been Elevated tend to be decent repositories for power. - Famulus Text
  19. 19.0 19.1 The Others of Hollow practices include Vestiges, which appear across most Prices practices- those individuals who have had something subtracted from them. Often fragile, a vestige is to a human as a broken glass is to a whole one; what is there may be used as a structure to reinforce or hold something, and the broken edges can be dangerous. Subcategories of Vestige include the Paper Men, who are the tempered remains of a person who was consumed or blown away by power, the Broken, who linger on the fringes of society and absorb energies from nearby realms and thin places, like collections of spirits, elemental, or Abyssal energies, and the Awestruck, who had their minds and Selves blasted out by a great power, while their bodies remain. [...] Vestiges tend to be fairly weak - PACT DICE: Hollow
  20. 20.0 20.1 20.2 The Others of Rapacious practices mirror those of other Prices practices, but primarily because the victims are paying a price and may become Othered. Take someone’s Soul, Self, emotions, or dreams from them, and they’re liable to become a vestige - an Othered person with something (or a lot of somethings) missing. These vary as much as others do, and can overlap, but may have aspects that mirror the approach. If there are many victims, you may see Clotted vestiges, which are groups of semi-organized and connected vestiges that tend to find shared solace and strength in a singular motif, like having holes in their heads, tied together by shared and horrific experience. Others may exist as a backlash to hostile and detrimental practice, particularly the Indelible vestige, who exists as a stubborn vestige liable to return again and again, like a solid echo, empowered by the fact the victim was able to get some word out about what was happening, or the way they went out drew and sustains notice; for as long as a family member searches, the vestige persists, even growing stronger, more coherent, and smarter over time. By contrast, there is a whole subclass of vestiges dubbed Embered, Shatter, and Maim, among many, many others, damaged in the taking, who are more mindless and flock to similar power, self-destructing on contact. Practices that leave these things around, as one can imagine, do not engender good relationships with the rest of the practitioner community, akin to leaving heat-seeking mines on the sites of battlefields, if they aren’t conscientious about cleaning up… and Rapacious practitioners aren’t very selfless, by definition. - PACT DICE: Rapacious
  21. Promethean

    Typically the result of an accident with elementalist practice combined with a high-price school, that results in a vestige with an ember of fire within them, filling in the gaps created.  Other varieties exist, tied to other elements, but fire is common due to its propensity to burn, consume, and burn away.

    Prometheans are drawn to the insubstantial, spirits, echoes, and places with meaning, trying to fill the void in themselves, but will instead feed these things with elemental power.  Because of their propensity to act out patterns as vestiges of their former lives, and the power at their disposal, they can become pseudo-practitioners with an elementalist bent.  The ones who don't flame out or get dealt with immediately (often due to being rural) will gradually build up a collection of fiery wraiths, spirits, and husks, before gradually finding their way to civilization, as that is the next best source of echoes and other things to feed on.

    In rare circumstances, Prometheans can be be found in the deep wilderness, fed with echoes and spirits by ritual while being worshiped as living goddesses or gods.  This tends to go to very bad places when it inevitably collapses, though this collapse can sometimes take centuries. - Wildbow on Discord
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