Those who press forward unavoidably come to harm.
It can be a fellow traveller, Gheste manifestations itself (for it is both a wound and a wonder), any of un-monsters, just a bad accident, chance of Pain Saint taking a wrong turn in its endless roaming for new exhaltation, happening upon some wrecking rejoicers, even due to traveller's own intentional desire.
When traveller suffers any harm, one thing happens for sure:
– they take one heart of harm;
If they are still alive, then one of two things happen, as per traveller's choice:
– either traveller leaves their hearts open as they are and take all following full harm as it comes, if they die, Pain Saint comes to them as usual;
or
– the traveller hardens one of their hearts, making the traveller immune to all future harm of this kind.
Most beings will instinctively harden their hearts, so not to be hurt again. A being can always choose to leave their hearts open but it means that in the future they will be hurt again, and it will hurt just a little more, as per nature of Gheste. The choice to leave a heart open can be changed in the future and the heart can be hardened against the same or a new source of harm as soon as it experiences such harm again.
Hardened hearts are no longer affected by this particular kind of hurt, and the heart can harden against any source of hurt regardless if it comes from emotional, physical, spiritual, social or any other sources. One can become immune to all bladed weapons or all fear, all sickness or a flow of time, all reputation-harming gossip or all hurt from iron. One wounded heart such beings take initially can be healed back in any normal way, but no other harm from this kind of source will come to the traveller ever again.
When all hearts are hardened, three things happen:
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| by BehNaM |
– the traveller becomes fully impervious to all and any kind of harm, regardless of the source; they no longer can be hurt in any way, and Pain Saints will not see them any longer;
– their heart turns into a stone more beautiful than diamond and harder than ironstone;
– they lose ability to care about all and anything except themselves, but with nothing being able to harm them ever (not even the time itself, not even the boredom, not even Gheste) they don't really care about themselves either in a sense that humans do. Such entities are soon lost within depths of Gheste, becoming more a piece of its nature than a person, similar to an eternal rock that doesn't care where it falls and how it lies and for how long; sometimes they grow into ivory walls but many simply wander around not caring even about what miracles they behold. Their immortality is true and eternal. Such entities are not swayed by an arguments such as 'Doing X will further my goals" or 'Allying with Y and helping them would be to my comfort' or 'I have to learn / do Z for survival' because they no longer care about goals or comforts, and their self-sufficient preservation is a fully assured thing.
In two ways this final state can be averted, even if both solutions are, at best, imperfect:
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| from a site called spillwords |
One is keys: every time another heart is hardened, at that very moment of decision, a traveller can leave a crack of vulnerability in it which manifests as a special key. This key must be then kept away from the this traveller, somewhere in the world and out of their reach in order for the vulnerability to be true. The key can be hidden, given to a trusted person, put under layers of security and secrecy but as long as a potential for vulnerability of the key exists the heart doesn't count as fully hardened for the purpose of the final immortal fate, and is able to act, even if in diminished capacity.
A being who manifested the key remains fully vulnerable to the harm they are otherwise immune to coming from anybody holding the key to their heart even if their heart is otherwise hardened against this source of hurt. For example, even if Dancer is invulnerable to all blades they will be fully vulnerable to a blades if attacked by somebody, something or someplace that has their key to this particular heart.
A being who manifested the key – and only that being – can destroy it at any moment if they get a hold on it again. This fully hardens the heart and it can no longer create any keys, ever.
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| by Uruguay Minerals |
Second solution is to hollow the heart in question at the moment of hardening it. This can only be done before the final heart of a person is hardened, although the final heart can be hardened later, after the hollowing. For practical purposes of preventing immortality one hollowed heart is enough, and travellers on this path don't usually hollow out more than one or two hearts unless they wish to pretend to be a fully functional human, for some reason of their own.
The heart remains hardened with all the benefits of hurt negation but, as it is hollowed, the being can fill it with something else which would make it to pretend to be still open, for a time.
The hollowed heart(s) will eventually devour everything that fills it and then demand more; it becomes forever hungry for more and, if not fed properly, will start devouring everything and anything vulnerable enough to be on its way, with no regards. Hollow-hearted beings rarely stay in one place or with somebody for too long, as their parasitic existence becomes noticeable sooner or later depending on how subtly they act. They cannot really care, only create a pretense of acting normally – and although some are very talented actors, they just go through the motions thus people they prey upon will eventually suss them out (if not devoured by that point). Hollow-hearted can devour their own Currencies to fill themselves instead of preying upon others, although this doesn't leave them a lot of space to maneuver and such altruism is always rare.
Unhardening:
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| Shutterstock, allegedly |
Nobody with hearts already fully hardened will care to go through this, and, as this is antithetical to being unhurt and a very, very bad gamble, even for people with hearts partially left open it is a rare process to undertake.
If a traveller decides to do it, they can break their own hardened hearts (keyed or not, hollowed or not, eternally beautiful or not).
Chances of failure are 50% + 10% for each hardened heart, but there is always 1 in 100 chance of success remaining somehow, even for fully immortal beings.
Failure means nothing happened, simply that they couldn't force themselves to do it. They do remember this failure though, and every subsequent attempt is more difficult for them to bring themselves to do, adding another 10% of failure on top of the existing chance. It is a bad gamble that becomes worse as it goes.
Sometimes a being simply dies, and sometimes this isn't even a failure state.
Success meaning opening all hearts again (all keys will be destroyed and whatever still fills a hollow heart regurgitated back into a world). The success hurts like hell and a traveller is left exposed and vulnerable for some time as they reel from their denial-of-eternity experience, but hey, they are fully themselves again.
HPs and leveling up
Obviously, people don't get more HPs for simply killing others, gathering wealth, knowing the world or any other way of experiencing the life if they don't care about this particular aspect of it. Each Heart Potential remaining unhardened at the end of the session/expedition can be used within Time-Downs to care for one or more goals, and if these pursuits eventually achieve something it might eventually increase the Heart Potential itself.
Additionally,
Yes, any sayings, idioms or heart-related puns can be used for additional mechanics.
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| don't know the actual author, picture from a dubious site called Team Connection |
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In Gheste one is unable to die fully in the usual DnD sense, so using HPs as a measurement of distance to death is only very partially useful. What if instead HPs were more important to goals / caring than survival? Out of game, downtime it a time when players supposed to take some action in a bigger world to further their plans, but there is just that much that any person is capable to care about.
In some many places true immortality is an end goal but the immortality in Gheste is true, is dirt cheap and is a fail state, as becoming truly immortal in this way robs people of any agency. From game point of view, it is running-of-out-HPs-still-sort-of-death but it fully comes as a player's choice, not a chance of being hit with a hammer to a head especially strongly or falling off the wrong cliff. Theoretically, if a player can somehow BS persuade DM that their fully immortal and caring for nothing PC still has some kind of agency the game might continue, but 'I will help them because it also benefits me' or self-improvement reasons won't work, so I am rather curious of the levels of word-twisting and definition-stretching such roleplay can achieve.
I think HPs are used to create, maintain and manifest bonds/goals, give or take care, and somesuch and so on. I would imagine these processes to be rather important in Gheste, if one cares to arrive at its center, where godbox is.
How many HPs player characters have at the start is related to how discrete sources of harm come: for 100 starting HPs harm source will be specific (for example, 'all swords' will not not protect from 'all daggers', for 10 HPs it would be more chunky ('all blades' will include all bladed weapons). It is always more sources of harm than HPs in the world, anyway, but it shouldn't be a drastic imbalance in groups
Recently there have been some notion to switch from Hit Points to Hearts which then work exactly like HPs anyway (damage to hearts as a function of spell and weapons and as a distance to death) changing nothing but the scale; thanks to 'Legend of Zelda' and various jewellery hearts are often portrayed as beautiful crystals, so I found it interesting to imagine what if a heart becoming a crystal was a reality in-world.
This post is almost six years due. Initially it was inspired by "Void" and "Mio, my Mio" with its stone-hearted Knight Kato, but it changed over time, and I don't even know if it is a good solution to Gheste now when 'Bleeding hearts' by Ms. Screwhead already exists.
Too much listening to sad alternative rock with emotional vocals of dead poet, but better than nothing.
Very cool, & poetically potent
ReplyDeleteThank you, glad if you liked it.
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