Holds What Cannot Cross
You build walls that do not show in the architecture. Your particular relationship with magic is structural and protective: you construct barriers, seal passages, and identify the vulnerabilities in the defences of others. Where another practitioner might reshape reality or move through its seams, you attend to what should and should not be permitted to cross. The Sanctuary’s own structural wards are legible to you in ways they are not to most residents, and the House has noticed.
The cost is a different kind of attention. Every ward placed is a promise made, and what tests your wards finds you — not the ward, you — and the distance between you and what is pressing from the other side is only as wide as what you have built.
Connection: Choose one of the following.
- Pick one other PC. You placed a ward on them without asking, for reasons you believed were good. It is still there.
- Pick one other PC. Something they carry has already tested one of your wards. They may not know it.
- Pick one other PC. They know where a ward you placed has failed. They have not told you what got through.
- Pick one other PC. When they are within the boundary of a ward you have placed, it holds at one step higher difficulty to breach. You do not know why.
Additional Equipment: A set of materials suited to your particular warding practice: chalk, salt, specific inks, iron filings, or equivalent substances assembled to support the physical anchoring of protective workings.
GM Intrusion: A ward fails at the worst moment. Something walks through your protection as if it is not there. What you sealed in is now confined with you. The things you have kept out have been patient.
Geas: Every ward placed is a responsibility accepted. If a ward you have made is breached, tested, or begins to degrade, you are aware of it wherever you are — the knowledge arrives immediately, without detail, like a door slamming in a room you cannot reach. You cannot fully disown what you have protected. You have an inability on tasks involving abandoning or deliberately dissolving a ward while something is actively depending on it for safety.
Minor Effect Suggestion: The ward pulses once, visibly, and anyone nearby with the knowledge to read it understands the quality of what they are looking at.
Major Effect Suggestion: The ward holds against something that should have broken it, and the force rebounds against whatever tested it, inflicting 4 points of damage.
Tier 1
Ward the Place (2 Intellect points): You place a protective working on a defined location you can touch, up to the size of a large room. While the ward holds, the difficulty of any task to enter the space through supernatural means is increased by two steps, and the difficulty of any task to affect the space or its occupants supernaturally from outside is increased by one step. Practitioners and spirits sense the ward before contact. A ward placed somewhere you cannot visit regularly may degrade over days at the GM’s discretion. Action to place; lasts until broken, dissolved, or degraded.
Warded Self (1 Intellect point): You extend a brief protective working over yourself or a willing creature you touch. For one hour, the target’s defence tasks against supernatural abilities are eased. Enabler.
Read the Breach: You always know immediately when a ward you have placed has been tested, weakened, or broken. You learn the approximate direction of the nearest breach, though not what caused it. Enabler.
Tier 2
Seal the Threshold (3 Intellect points): You seal a single doorway, passage, or barrier against supernatural transit. No creature or supernatural effect of level 4 or lower can pass through the sealed threshold while you concentrate on it. If you cease concentrating, the seal persists for ten additional minutes before fading. Action to initiate.
Tier 3
Ability Choice. Choose either Hardened Ward or Extended Ward as your tier 3 ability.
Hardened Ward: Wards you place with Ward the Place degrade at half the normal rate and are two steps more difficult to break than they would otherwise be. Enabler.
Extended Ward (3 Intellect points): You extend a ward to cover an area as large as a substantial building or a meaningful outdoor space. The ward functions as Ward the Place but encompasses the entire defined area. Action.
Tier 4
Ward Another (3 Intellect points): You place a protective working on a willing creature you touch. For 24 hours, that creature is immune to supernatural effects of level 3 or lower, and all supernatural attacks against them are hindered. Action.
Tier 5
Standing Ward: A ward you place with Ward the Place no longer requires maintenance or regular visits to remain effective; it persists indefinitely until something breaks it or you dissolve it intentionally. It continues to inform you when tested or breached. Enabler.
Tier 6
Ability Choice. Choose either Absolute Seal or The Ward Holds as your tier 6 ability.
Absolute Seal (7 Intellect points): You seal a defined space — a building, a block, a bounded outdoor area — completely against all supernatural passage, effect, and communication for 24 hours. Nothing of supernatural origin can enter, leave, or affect the interior from outside; nothing inside can reach outward supernaturally either. Action.
The Ward Holds: Your wards can now only be broken by creatures or effects of your own tier or higher. When any ward you have placed is broken, you may spend 5 Intellect points as a free action to immediately reconstitute it at full strength. Enabler.