Magical Sparkles 3: Enchantment of Rainbows
Magical SparklesAn Enchantment listing for Princess: the Pink.
Standard Enchantment: Rainbows
Rainbows are magical things, the bright bands of color that remind people that there's always something cheerful to look forward to after the rain. Some princesses learn to use them as receptive channels for sparkles, to ride the rainbow bridge from place to place. The Enchantment of Rainbows is the study of riding the light, and with it a princess can follow any monster of iniquity wherever it should flee, even beyond the bounds of the Earth.
Princesses following the Castle in the Clouds or the Shining Knighthood receive experience discounts when learning the Enchantment of Rainbows.
• Dream a Little Dream
The easiest way to channel sparkle magic through the rainbow is to lead it up where the sparkles go, towards the Pink Clouds of Virtue. While the Pink Clouds are a realm of their own, they link to Earth through rainbow trails across the astral realms, the place of dreams and thought. Dream a Little Dream allows princesses to follow the sparkles in their sleep, riding up through the astral realms to converge at the ivory gates of the Pink Clouds. While that is as far as this method of travel will take them, and not further in, the ivory gates are a good meeting point. Princesses who know how to Dream a Little Dream and do a little arranging ahead of time can therefore meet in their sleep across any distance, to plan, report, or even just to chat.
Cost: -
Action: Instant
Dice Pool: Composure + Occult + Rainbows
Roll Results
Dramatic Failure: Your character gets lost on the trail through the astral realms, stranding herself in a place of fear and nightmares. Her sleep is restless, and she does not recover a point of Willpower for the night's rest.
Failure: Your character fails to find the rainbow trail. She experiences an average night's sleep.
Success: Your character follows the rainbow trail to the gates of the Pink Clouds. While the gates will not open for her astral body, she can meet and converse with any other princesses using Dream a Little Dream at that same moment. The sparkle magic picked up from following the rainbow trail allows her to remember the experience vividly when she wakes up, and the memory does not fade like a normal dream would. While astral, she can do nothing that would affect her physical body except leave and wake up; the Enchantment of Love, for example, cannot be used to heal oneself while at the ivory gates.
Exceptional Success: Not only does your character reach the ivory gates, but she accumulates sparkles from the astral realms along the rainbow bridge upward. For every success rolled over four, recover one sparkle.
•• Color Flash
Once a princess begins to understand how rainbows link places, she can begin to apply that lesson in smaller scale. Color Flash allows a princess to suffuse her splendor with sparkle magic, to the point where it engulfs her temporarily and transforms her into brilliant light. The princess becomes a rainbow streak in the air, able to rush across the vicinity before reforming elsewhere. The princess loses the benefit of her senses for the duration of becoming the rainbow, requiring her to know ahead of time where she plans to go, and therefore limiting her to line-of-sight transit. She becomes a shining light for the duration, and therefore she cannot pass through anything which blocks light, such as an opaque solid surface. However, she is not as restricted by shape or size, and can pass through, for example, a metal grate or a narrow hole, as long as she can see where she is going before she begins to Color Flash. Objects up to a Size rating of one less than the user's are bound up in the flash of light with her, such as clothing or pocket change. Living things are harder to join to a princess's splendor, however, and only animals or plants too small to possess a nonzero Size trait, such as a mouse, can be brought along as passengers for the Color Flash.
Cost: 1 sparkle
Action: Instant
Dice Pool: Dexterity + Athletics + Rainbows
Roll Results
Dramatic Failure: Your princess gets distracted during the Color Flash, and when she reassumes material shape, she finds herself somewhere she did not intend to go. For example, a princess trying to fly up to a rooftop might overshoot and find herself in freefall.
Failure: Your character's splendor does not shine bright enough, and she does not assume rainbow form.
Success: Your character instantly finds herself at her destination.
Exceptional Success: Your character's rainbow flight before arrival is unusually dazzling, the sparkle magic invoking the splendor of the Pink Clouds. Demonic beings who see the flash take one point of lethal damage as the warmth of virtue erodes their ability to sustain themselves outside the Kingdoms of Hell. Other witnesses might be distracted by the sudden brilliance.
Suggested Modifiers:
-1The line of travel passes through a refractive surface, such as a glass window.
-1For every 20 yards travelled.
••• Rainbow Riding
A little sparkle can go a long way. A princess can use this Enchantment to lead the way, drawing a rainbow down from the sky with sparkle magic and riding the enchanted bridge through the sky to her destination. The travellers are invisible in transit across the sky except as the arc of color following along the rainbow, until they reach their destination and the colorful magic releases them safely. A princess has to navigate the rainbow, however, linking her heart to it through her blossoming splendor; consequentially, Rainbow Riding to or from unfamiliar or inhospitable places becomes more difficult.
A princess may take a number of passengers equal to her Splendor + 2 with her, and each may bring whatever they can carry. It is impossible to use Rainbow Riding while indoors, during a rainstorm, or under other conditions where a rainbow could not be called down from the sky; all attempts to do so automatically fail. Conversely, however, riding the color trail is made far easier when nature does the princess's work for her. The sparkle cost is waived for use of Rainbow Riding when there is a naturally-occurring rainbow in the sky.
Cost: 2 sparkles (none when there is a natural rainbow in the sky)
Action: Instant
Dice Pool: Wits + Occult + Rainbows
Roll Results
Dramatic Failure: Your character fails to direct the rainbow where she wants to go. It deposits her somewhere else, possibly leaving her stranded and lost, possibly leaving her in hostile territory. If she had passengers with her, they may not all arrive at the same destination.
Failure: Your character fails to call the rainbow.
Success: Your character, and any passengers she might bring with her, ride the rainbow trail to their destination instantly.
Exceptional Success: Not only does the travel go smoothly, but the rainbow lingers, held to this world by a sympathetic heartbeat imprinted on it by the user. The princess who used Rainbow Riding may use it again any time today to travel from where the rainbow first deposited her back to where she first called it, achieving an automatic success. She does not need to have the same passengers with her, if any. This may only be done once; after the return trip, the rainbow dissipates, its magic spent.
Suggested Modifiers:
+2The destination is in the direct vicinity of the princess's home.
-1The departure point or destination are unusually unpleasant or foreboding, or your princess associates them with bad memories.
-1For every 100 yards between the departure point and the destination.
•••• Over the Rainbow
The Enchantment of Rainbows doesn't only allow travel across two points on Earth. A princess who knows how to go Over the Rainbow can call a rainbow to take her to and from stranger realms entirely. Over the Rainbow operates under the same rainbow-calling and passenger strictures as Rainbow Riding, as it works the same way-the other end of the rainbow simply doesn't touch down on Earth.
There are hidden worlds adjacent to Earth where strange beings wielding magical Numina powers tread. The hidden worlds of the World of Darkness include, but at the Storyteller's discretion are not limited to, the Shadow, an animist spirit realm where all non-sentient things have spirits embodying them and jockeying for position to ensure their concept's superiority over others; Twilight, strictly speaking not so much a place as the immaterial state of being in which ghosts and some spirits reside in the world; and the Hedge, a strange and thorny realm which reacts to the thoughts and feelings of those within it, inhabited by dangerous faerie creatures and goblins. See the World of Darkness rulebook for more detail on Twilight, the Book of Spirits or Werewolf: the Forsaken for information on the Shadow, or Changeling: the Lost to learn more about the Hedge.
A princess may learn to use Over the Rainbow to enter and return from only one of these worlds. Each princess's natural predisposition leads her to one magical world, and the resonance prevents her from finding her way to the others. Note that the return trip can be dangerous; it might be hard to get a rainbow to hear you while in Twilight, and the rainbows of the Hedge might be living things that want to strike a deal with a princess before answering her call.
Note that a princess may not use Over the Rainbow to travel into the astral realms, Abyss or Realms Supernal from Mage: the Awakening, the land of Faerie from Changeling: the Lost, the Pink Clouds, or the Kingdoms of Hell. Humans can already enter the astral realms by dreaming; it is a place that abides only the mind, not the body. The Abyss isn't a place at all; there is nothing for a rainbow bridge to touch down on. The Realms Supernal are too far removed from Earth to reach by rainbow, and Faerie is also too distant, rainbows being able to carry a princess only as far as the borderland of the Hedge. The Gates of Hell are shut tight, and the guardians are quick to explain that that is well and good, to keep the demons in as much as to keep others out. As for the state of the Pink Clouds, that remains a mystery. The guardians possess absolute control over passage through the ivory gates, and while many of them are apologetic about it, none of them will volunteer the reason why they will not let anyone except their own kind go through.
The same waiver of sparkle cost applies as for Rainbow Riding when there is a natural rainbow in the sky and the character intends to travel from Earth to one of the secret worlds. This does not apply when going in the other direction. If rainbows exist in the destination world at all, they are very different from Earth rainbows, and their constituent magic is foreign and hard to work with.
Cost: 2 sparkles (none when there is a natural Earth rainbow in the sky)
Action: Instant
Dice Pool: Wits + Occult + Rainbows
Roll Results
Dramatic Failure: The rainbow gets lost on the way, and deposits the princess and any passengers she might have in the wrong "place." Maybe she lands in the Shadow when she only knows how to call a rainbow back to Earth from a state of Twilight. Maybe she lands somewhere else altogether, somewhere nobody knows anything about.
Failure: Your character fails to call the rainbow. You're not going anywhere.
Success: The rainbow carries your character and any passengers she might have across the boundary between worlds. Normally. If she's calling the rainbow from a secret world back towards Earth, there might be extra strings attached before she can go home...
Exceptional Success: As an exceptional success when Rainbow Riding. Time passes strangely in the hidden worlds sometimes; the "day" the rainbow waits is measured by the internal clock of the princess whose heartbeat rings across it.
Suggested Modifiers:
+1The departure point is a "shallow" which touches on the edge of the destination world when going from Earth to another realm-a spirit locus into the Shadow, or an established gateway into the Hedge.
-The departure point resonates with the destination world-an eerie, ethereal place when going from material Earth into Twilight, or an unusally grounded and predictable region of the Hedge when returning.
-2The departure point is unsuitable-a sterile, empty place when entering the Shadow, or a tangible, vibrant place when entering a state of Twilight.
-3You are attempting to leave a hidden world, but the hidden world doesn't want to let you go.
••••• Pretty Portal
Once a princess knows how to slide across the different layers of being laid across the world, she has unlocked the true secret of travel. A master of the Enchantment of Rainbows can weave a rainbow from raw sparkle magic, twist it into a funnel, and leave it in place. She tells the funnel a destination and a password, and anyone using that password can ride the funnel down to its endpoint. The Pretty Portal cannot cross the boundaries between worlds, as it instead uses the space between worlds as a shortcut across one. It must be put in place in a gateway or something that must be opened-through a door, inside a closet, in a toy chest-and the Pretty Portal remains invisible to those who cannot see ambient sparkles until it is activated by its password. It lasts in place up to a number of days equal to the caster's Splendor, or the caster can open the gateway and tell the Pretty Portal it's done, at which point it dissipates. The password must be an action explicitly performed by the person going through. Saying a phrase, whistling a particular tune, or making a special knock is alright. Wearing red socks, being taller than five and a half feet, or working at Burger King are not valid passwords. A Pretty Portal is a one-way trip, unless a second Pretty Portal is set up on the other side to go the other way.
Cost: 2 sparkles
Action: Instant
Dice Pool: Intelligence + Occult + Rainbows
Roll Results
Dramatic Failure: Your character fails to direct the rainbow funnel to the right destination, but does not realize it. Only when the first person takes the trip through will it become clear. The Pretty Portal sends travellers to somewhere else entirely, although it still will not cross the boundary between worlds.
Failure: The princess fails to shape the sparkles into a stable rainbow, and no Pretty Portal is formed.
Success: The Pretty Portal is established.
Exceptional Success: Your character's workmanship on the Pretty Portal is superb, and it is unusually sturdy for a structure made of sparkles alone. The Pretty Portal can last for your character's Splendor in weeks, instead of days.
Suggested Modifiers:
-1The departure point or destination are unusually unpleasant or foreboding, or your princess associates them with bad memories.
-1For every 100 yards between the departure point and the destination.
Princess: the Pink to do list:
• Character creation template Done!
• Character sheets Done!
• Enchantment list - in progress
• New Advantage sections: Splendor, Sparkles, Purity
• Antagonists section
• Storytelling section
Standard Enchantment: Rainbows
Rainbows are magical things, the bright bands of color that remind people that there's always something cheerful to look forward to after the rain. Some princesses learn to use them as receptive channels for sparkles, to ride the rainbow bridge from place to place. The Enchantment of Rainbows is the study of riding the light, and with it a princess can follow any monster of iniquity wherever it should flee, even beyond the bounds of the Earth.
Princesses following the Castle in the Clouds or the Shining Knighthood receive experience discounts when learning the Enchantment of Rainbows.
• Dream a Little Dream
The easiest way to channel sparkle magic through the rainbow is to lead it up where the sparkles go, towards the Pink Clouds of Virtue. While the Pink Clouds are a realm of their own, they link to Earth through rainbow trails across the astral realms, the place of dreams and thought. Dream a Little Dream allows princesses to follow the sparkles in their sleep, riding up through the astral realms to converge at the ivory gates of the Pink Clouds. While that is as far as this method of travel will take them, and not further in, the ivory gates are a good meeting point. Princesses who know how to Dream a Little Dream and do a little arranging ahead of time can therefore meet in their sleep across any distance, to plan, report, or even just to chat.
Cost: -
Action: Instant
Dice Pool: Composure + Occult + Rainbows
Roll Results
Dramatic Failure: Your character gets lost on the trail through the astral realms, stranding herself in a place of fear and nightmares. Her sleep is restless, and she does not recover a point of Willpower for the night's rest.
Failure: Your character fails to find the rainbow trail. She experiences an average night's sleep.
Success: Your character follows the rainbow trail to the gates of the Pink Clouds. While the gates will not open for her astral body, she can meet and converse with any other princesses using Dream a Little Dream at that same moment. The sparkle magic picked up from following the rainbow trail allows her to remember the experience vividly when she wakes up, and the memory does not fade like a normal dream would. While astral, she can do nothing that would affect her physical body except leave and wake up; the Enchantment of Love, for example, cannot be used to heal oneself while at the ivory gates.
Exceptional Success: Not only does your character reach the ivory gates, but she accumulates sparkles from the astral realms along the rainbow bridge upward. For every success rolled over four, recover one sparkle.
•• Color Flash
Once a princess begins to understand how rainbows link places, she can begin to apply that lesson in smaller scale. Color Flash allows a princess to suffuse her splendor with sparkle magic, to the point where it engulfs her temporarily and transforms her into brilliant light. The princess becomes a rainbow streak in the air, able to rush across the vicinity before reforming elsewhere. The princess loses the benefit of her senses for the duration of becoming the rainbow, requiring her to know ahead of time where she plans to go, and therefore limiting her to line-of-sight transit. She becomes a shining light for the duration, and therefore she cannot pass through anything which blocks light, such as an opaque solid surface. However, she is not as restricted by shape or size, and can pass through, for example, a metal grate or a narrow hole, as long as she can see where she is going before she begins to Color Flash. Objects up to a Size rating of one less than the user's are bound up in the flash of light with her, such as clothing or pocket change. Living things are harder to join to a princess's splendor, however, and only animals or plants too small to possess a nonzero Size trait, such as a mouse, can be brought along as passengers for the Color Flash.
Cost: 1 sparkle
Action: Instant
Dice Pool: Dexterity + Athletics + Rainbows
Roll Results
Dramatic Failure: Your princess gets distracted during the Color Flash, and when she reassumes material shape, she finds herself somewhere she did not intend to go. For example, a princess trying to fly up to a rooftop might overshoot and find herself in freefall.
Failure: Your character's splendor does not shine bright enough, and she does not assume rainbow form.
Success: Your character instantly finds herself at her destination.
Exceptional Success: Your character's rainbow flight before arrival is unusually dazzling, the sparkle magic invoking the splendor of the Pink Clouds. Demonic beings who see the flash take one point of lethal damage as the warmth of virtue erodes their ability to sustain themselves outside the Kingdoms of Hell. Other witnesses might be distracted by the sudden brilliance.
Suggested Modifiers:
-1The line of travel passes through a refractive surface, such as a glass window.
-1For every 20 yards travelled.
••• Rainbow Riding
A little sparkle can go a long way. A princess can use this Enchantment to lead the way, drawing a rainbow down from the sky with sparkle magic and riding the enchanted bridge through the sky to her destination. The travellers are invisible in transit across the sky except as the arc of color following along the rainbow, until they reach their destination and the colorful magic releases them safely. A princess has to navigate the rainbow, however, linking her heart to it through her blossoming splendor; consequentially, Rainbow Riding to or from unfamiliar or inhospitable places becomes more difficult.
A princess may take a number of passengers equal to her Splendor + 2 with her, and each may bring whatever they can carry. It is impossible to use Rainbow Riding while indoors, during a rainstorm, or under other conditions where a rainbow could not be called down from the sky; all attempts to do so automatically fail. Conversely, however, riding the color trail is made far easier when nature does the princess's work for her. The sparkle cost is waived for use of Rainbow Riding when there is a naturally-occurring rainbow in the sky.
Cost: 2 sparkles (none when there is a natural rainbow in the sky)
Action: Instant
Dice Pool: Wits + Occult + Rainbows
Roll Results
Dramatic Failure: Your character fails to direct the rainbow where she wants to go. It deposits her somewhere else, possibly leaving her stranded and lost, possibly leaving her in hostile territory. If she had passengers with her, they may not all arrive at the same destination.
Failure: Your character fails to call the rainbow.
Success: Your character, and any passengers she might bring with her, ride the rainbow trail to their destination instantly.
Exceptional Success: Not only does the travel go smoothly, but the rainbow lingers, held to this world by a sympathetic heartbeat imprinted on it by the user. The princess who used Rainbow Riding may use it again any time today to travel from where the rainbow first deposited her back to where she first called it, achieving an automatic success. She does not need to have the same passengers with her, if any. This may only be done once; after the return trip, the rainbow dissipates, its magic spent.
Suggested Modifiers:
+2The destination is in the direct vicinity of the princess's home.
-1The departure point or destination are unusually unpleasant or foreboding, or your princess associates them with bad memories.
-1For every 100 yards between the departure point and the destination.
•••• Over the Rainbow
The Enchantment of Rainbows doesn't only allow travel across two points on Earth. A princess who knows how to go Over the Rainbow can call a rainbow to take her to and from stranger realms entirely. Over the Rainbow operates under the same rainbow-calling and passenger strictures as Rainbow Riding, as it works the same way-the other end of the rainbow simply doesn't touch down on Earth.
There are hidden worlds adjacent to Earth where strange beings wielding magical Numina powers tread. The hidden worlds of the World of Darkness include, but at the Storyteller's discretion are not limited to, the Shadow, an animist spirit realm where all non-sentient things have spirits embodying them and jockeying for position to ensure their concept's superiority over others; Twilight, strictly speaking not so much a place as the immaterial state of being in which ghosts and some spirits reside in the world; and the Hedge, a strange and thorny realm which reacts to the thoughts and feelings of those within it, inhabited by dangerous faerie creatures and goblins. See the World of Darkness rulebook for more detail on Twilight, the Book of Spirits or Werewolf: the Forsaken for information on the Shadow, or Changeling: the Lost to learn more about the Hedge.
A princess may learn to use Over the Rainbow to enter and return from only one of these worlds. Each princess's natural predisposition leads her to one magical world, and the resonance prevents her from finding her way to the others. Note that the return trip can be dangerous; it might be hard to get a rainbow to hear you while in Twilight, and the rainbows of the Hedge might be living things that want to strike a deal with a princess before answering her call.
Note that a princess may not use Over the Rainbow to travel into the astral realms, Abyss or Realms Supernal from Mage: the Awakening, the land of Faerie from Changeling: the Lost, the Pink Clouds, or the Kingdoms of Hell. Humans can already enter the astral realms by dreaming; it is a place that abides only the mind, not the body. The Abyss isn't a place at all; there is nothing for a rainbow bridge to touch down on. The Realms Supernal are too far removed from Earth to reach by rainbow, and Faerie is also too distant, rainbows being able to carry a princess only as far as the borderland of the Hedge. The Gates of Hell are shut tight, and the guardians are quick to explain that that is well and good, to keep the demons in as much as to keep others out. As for the state of the Pink Clouds, that remains a mystery. The guardians possess absolute control over passage through the ivory gates, and while many of them are apologetic about it, none of them will volunteer the reason why they will not let anyone except their own kind go through.
The same waiver of sparkle cost applies as for Rainbow Riding when there is a natural rainbow in the sky and the character intends to travel from Earth to one of the secret worlds. This does not apply when going in the other direction. If rainbows exist in the destination world at all, they are very different from Earth rainbows, and their constituent magic is foreign and hard to work with.
Cost: 2 sparkles (none when there is a natural Earth rainbow in the sky)
Action: Instant
Dice Pool: Wits + Occult + Rainbows
Roll Results
Dramatic Failure: The rainbow gets lost on the way, and deposits the princess and any passengers she might have in the wrong "place." Maybe she lands in the Shadow when she only knows how to call a rainbow back to Earth from a state of Twilight. Maybe she lands somewhere else altogether, somewhere nobody knows anything about.
Failure: Your character fails to call the rainbow. You're not going anywhere.
Success: The rainbow carries your character and any passengers she might have across the boundary between worlds. Normally. If she's calling the rainbow from a secret world back towards Earth, there might be extra strings attached before she can go home...
Exceptional Success: As an exceptional success when Rainbow Riding. Time passes strangely in the hidden worlds sometimes; the "day" the rainbow waits is measured by the internal clock of the princess whose heartbeat rings across it.
Suggested Modifiers:
+1The departure point is a "shallow" which touches on the edge of the destination world when going from Earth to another realm-a spirit locus into the Shadow, or an established gateway into the Hedge.
-The departure point resonates with the destination world-an eerie, ethereal place when going from material Earth into Twilight, or an unusally grounded and predictable region of the Hedge when returning.
-2The departure point is unsuitable-a sterile, empty place when entering the Shadow, or a tangible, vibrant place when entering a state of Twilight.
-3You are attempting to leave a hidden world, but the hidden world doesn't want to let you go.
••••• Pretty Portal
Once a princess knows how to slide across the different layers of being laid across the world, she has unlocked the true secret of travel. A master of the Enchantment of Rainbows can weave a rainbow from raw sparkle magic, twist it into a funnel, and leave it in place. She tells the funnel a destination and a password, and anyone using that password can ride the funnel down to its endpoint. The Pretty Portal cannot cross the boundaries between worlds, as it instead uses the space between worlds as a shortcut across one. It must be put in place in a gateway or something that must be opened-through a door, inside a closet, in a toy chest-and the Pretty Portal remains invisible to those who cannot see ambient sparkles until it is activated by its password. It lasts in place up to a number of days equal to the caster's Splendor, or the caster can open the gateway and tell the Pretty Portal it's done, at which point it dissipates. The password must be an action explicitly performed by the person going through. Saying a phrase, whistling a particular tune, or making a special knock is alright. Wearing red socks, being taller than five and a half feet, or working at Burger King are not valid passwords. A Pretty Portal is a one-way trip, unless a second Pretty Portal is set up on the other side to go the other way.
Cost: 2 sparkles
Action: Instant
Dice Pool: Intelligence + Occult + Rainbows
Roll Results
Dramatic Failure: Your character fails to direct the rainbow funnel to the right destination, but does not realize it. Only when the first person takes the trip through will it become clear. The Pretty Portal sends travellers to somewhere else entirely, although it still will not cross the boundary between worlds.
Failure: The princess fails to shape the sparkles into a stable rainbow, and no Pretty Portal is formed.
Success: The Pretty Portal is established.
Exceptional Success: Your character's workmanship on the Pretty Portal is superb, and it is unusually sturdy for a structure made of sparkles alone. The Pretty Portal can last for your character's Splendor in weeks, instead of days.
Suggested Modifiers:
-1The departure point or destination are unusually unpleasant or foreboding, or your princess associates them with bad memories.
-1For every 100 yards between the departure point and the destination.
Princess: the Pink to do list:
• Character creation template Done!
• Character sheets Done!
• Enchantment list - in progress
• New Advantage sections: Splendor, Sparkles, Purity
• Antagonists section
• Storytelling section