Fate

“Nera, be careful, you are crossing a band of turbulence…”

The radio crackles, then goes quiet: contact with Kamalia is lost.

And all at once, the calm. Too calm. My skyglider is struggling to hold — not a breath left to carry it.

I know this moment. It is the one that comes before the storm.

I straighten up, I start the emergency controls: I fold the wings back, I ready the stern sail. The first squalls are already arriving, the sky is turning black. I can feel it. I am going to have to fight to live.

There comes a moment when a Major Arcanum tempts you at the openingOpening (the)the gesture that begins every scene: three cards, you keep one, you give up the other two. The only draw where choosing costs, and the only door of fate.part 3, and you take it. It brings fate in, and fate resolves like nothing else in the game: no card cuts it, and it is the coinCointhe oracle of closed questions: heads the first pole, tails the second. It is what resolves an action (part 5) and fate (part 6).part 1 that says what it carries off. It is there, and only there, that your character can truly change.

◆ What fate changes

Fate sets the world alight, and whoever crosses it with the world. It does not ask for nuance, it asks for the spectacular: the major taken, you give yourself a constraint — to make of this sceneScenethe unit of play: you open it, you play it, you close it.part 3 a moment that changes the story deeply. That is why one takes a major: because the scene that follows will resemble no other.

Nothing ever obliges you, and that is precisely what makes it tempting. But taking the card commits you: you do not withdraw along the way.

Open a major kept

Play the card tightens the scene

Wager two clauses, at the height of the scene

Toss the coin it cuts

Close the mark on the standing pageStanding pagethe page that keeps what is pending: living actors, waits, stakes, desires under way, fate’s marks. There is only one, and it replaces the previous one.part 8

◆ Opening with a major

A major kept at the opening brings an actorActora presence that wants: someone who will come back and weigh, where the Backdrop is forgotten. You anchor him on the standing page in one line.part 7 (part 7) into the scene: someone who was already there and whom you raise, or someone the card brings in. It does not say his name, it says what he carries — and what varies is the relation between him and you. Four, most often:

• The actor becomes a threat. What his major names turns around and bears down on you. Strength: a military barque bears down on your skyglider. The Chariot: someone come from far off is hunting you.
• The actor is good, and you are badly placed. The major is beautiful, and that is exactly the problem. The Sun: a child-king adored by his people bars your way; he is genuinely loved, and there is the obstacle. The Empress: you are received with such generosity that you can no longer leave without wounding. Temperance: somebody steps in to calm you, when the anger is precisely what is keeping you standing.
• The actor stays good, and he is in danger. What is worth saving is what threatens to be lost. The Star: the mentor who always believed in you has disappeared. The Empress: the house that fed you will not last the winter.
• An actor already dark is read as he is. The Devil, The Tower: no need to look for the shadow in them, it is there. Softening it would be gentler, and fate does not soften. Take it as it comes.

A card is read at several depths.

The Lovers — VI, the card of bonds.

The Lovers are not only a choice of the heart: they are bondsBondwhat an actor seems to expect of you, written in his portrait and never crossed out: you stack, you do not correct.part 7, commitments, what you said yes to:

• at the surface of the scene: two people close to you barring your road, a brother being arrested
• at the bottom of a life: somebody is living fully the existence you set aside, and he has done nothing wrong
• or the bond itself turns around: an old relationship that comes back, and holds it against you

A card that inspires nothing in you is almost always read too narrowly: look for what it names, not what it illustrates.

◆ Playing the scene

Fate does not have to fall in the first lines. Open, frame, play as you always do — but keep the major in mind: it colors what is said, and it tightens the scene toward its height. That is where it strikes.

◆ Nera at Heartshadow, the card that climbs

Fate came in at the opening, and nothing has moved yet. You play, and you tighten toward it.

I open: three cards. The Six of Cups (what one comes back for), the Five of Pentacles (the cold outside), and Death — the end, and the departure it opens. I take the major, I let the other two go.

what one comes back for

the cold outside

kept

The opening at Heartshadow — Death, the end and the departure.

I begin simply.

I walk the streets of Heartshadow, I look around me. I end up finding a tavern, and I go in. Another skyfarer is drinking there, Aphtaï, a clan mother. She seems welcoming.

The major has not colored the scene yet, and I can feel that I have to tighten toward it. I decide that Aphtaï is the one who carries it.

Aphtaï knows who I am. She has heard of the trouble I left behind me, in the lower city. Her tone changes as the conversation goes on: she is markedly less friendly.

Death is ready to take something. Is she after my friends? My standing? Everything is still possible.

◆ The wager

At the height of the scene, name what is being played, in two clauses:

• one says what fate takes;
• the other says what happens if it does not take it: sometimes nothing more than getting past the cape, sometimes a door that opens and did not exist, sometimes the wiping out of a mark left by an older fate (see below).

What you wager must be large. The wager can bear on you — a friendship, an object that counts, your body; on someone close — he is disowned, he turns against you, he falls; or on what surrounds you — everything catches fire, a war breaks out, the city closes.

One test only, without judgment: does the effect fade by the next scene, or does it change the story for good? What is forgotten by the next scene is no wager of fate.

An actionActionwhat you play when an attempt is uncertain: two poles stretched, the coin cuts, and a card may explain it afterward. It is played once.part 5 stretches two polesPoles (the two)the two worlds you set down yourself before tossing the coin: never a yes and empty air. It is by them, too, that an action is resolved.parts 1, 5 for a single move (part 5); fate wagers, and what it takes comes back only through it. The same coin; not the same price.

◆ Nera at Heartshadow, the wager

Death is acting now. Aphtaï has to finish something in me; that is how I read her. I imagine what comes next: she is going to repair my mistakes by taking from me what I hold dearest.

I lay down the two clauses:

• fate takes — Aphtaï confiscates my skyglider and banishes me from the sisterhood;
• fate lets it pass — Aphtaï forces me into her clan, and under her orders, until my mistakes are repaired.

The first makes me a fallen skyfarer; the second leaves me standing, and free of nothing.

◆ Resolving with the coin

The wager laid down, toss the coin. It compares nothing and rewards nobody: it cuts. Heads, fate lets it pass; tails, it takes. Then you write what arrives.

You are not being subjected to anything for all that. The two worlds are yours, you wrote them. You only chose not to decide which one arrives.

◆ Nera at Heartshadow, the toss

The wager is made, I toss the coin.

HeadsI join Aphtaï’s clan

Tailsthe folded skyglider, and the sisterhood lost

The wager under Death — fate takes.

Aphtaï points out a folded skyglider with a movement of her knee. “That one is yours.” She goes on: “They called me in to calm what you stirred up. My method is simple, and it is always the same: you will never fly again.”

On the standing page: Struck off the sisterhood, skyglider confiscated — closed by fate.

◆ Fate’s mark

What fate closes, only fate can open. Taken prisoner under fate, you will not be freed and cleared in the next scene. The thing is not damaged: it closes, and fate alone holds the key.

This is fate’s mark. Note it on the standing page (part 8), one line, or nothing will say it is there. To wipe it out, it will take a major taken at the opening, and a wager that names its undoing.

That does not mean nothing moves in the meantime. A prisoner, you may well escape in the very next scene — but the mark stands, and stands otherwise: they hunt you now, and the standing page says so. In the same way, if fate has put an end to a friendship, you may be reconciled; the mark soaks into that reconciliation, and leaves a bitterness between you.

◆ Facing or enduring

You know how to play a scene of fate. One nuance is left: it does not change the resolution, it changes what you write. Look at what you have just laid down, and ask the one question that divides: can your character do something that changes the outcome?

• If he can, you face it. Regiord watches the barque cast off: he can shout, run, cut through the crowd. It may not be enough, but there is something he can do, and that is all we ask.

• If he cannot, you endure it. Nera is sitting across from a clan mother who has already decided, already negotiated, already arranged everything. Nothing she says will change what is about to fall.

The coin cuts the same way in both cases; it is the wager that does not take the same form. When you face, the two clauses are played on what your act obtains or misses. When you endure, they stretch two worlds that nothing in you can bend. Facing puts you on your feet, enduring leaves you seated.

◆ The Sun, played twice

One and the same card, two forms. You watch what the scene lets you do before you know what you are wagering.

Nera is in flight. At the opening, The Sun: vitality, clarity, pride. I take it, and I read it as an actor: the Dead Sun, flagship barque of the western empire, the one that hunts pirates and makes the pride of the decks.

The Sun, read as an actor — the Dead Sun.

She comes out of the white, straight into my line, and she has me.

What follows I no longer choose: I read it in what I have just written.

If I can act. My hands are still on the controls.

The belly turrets swing around, without a word on the radio. I am a threat, and nothing else. I have three seconds left and a skyglider that turns better than an armored barque.

If I cannot. My hands are already empty.

Fighters draw level with me and order me to put in. They bring me down. On the deck, two men are taking my skyglider apart while I am led to General Armand, who has my name in front of him and has not looked up.

◆ Play your first fate

The evening a major tempts you at the opening, and you take it, you are there. Decide whom it brings in, and play your scene letting it climb. At the height of the scene, look for the act: if there is one, you face it; if there is none, you endure it. In both cases, name your wager in two clauses, large enough for the story to remember it, then toss the coin. One line on the standing page for the mark fate has left. It is here, and nowhere else, that your character risks becoming other.