The Phosphoros
The stolen fire held aloft, already irrevocable — knowledge given before the world was ready to receive it, and burning the hand that carries it. Prometheus Brings Fire to Mankind, Heinrich Füger, 1817. The Liechtenstein Collections. Public domain.
Φωσφόρος: “light-bearer,” “bringer of light.” One of Hecate’s most ancient attributes: the one who carries torches at crossroads, who illuminates what the darkness conceals. The word is also the Greek name for the morning star: the light that arrives before the sun, that makes the world visible before it is ready to be seen.
Also called: the Illumined, the Seeing, the Burned. Common parlance: Kindled, Promethean, the Lit.
The Gnosis threshold is the one that does not look like a threshold.
It looks like insight. It looks like a door opening in your understanding of the world, light flooding through from the other side, everything suddenly clear and visible and known. That is what it feels like, in the moment. That is not what it is.
What it is: you were shown something you could not have found, could not have reasoned your way to, could not have arrived at through ordinary means. Something showed you. The showing changed you. The change is permanent, and what you can no longer stop seeing cannot be unseen.
The Phosphoros carry what they saw with them. Not as memory; memory is something you can choose not to look at, something that fades. This is closer to a permanent alteration of perception: the world is now visible to you in ways it is not visible to others, and the things that are now visible include things that would prefer not to be seen. The light you carry illuminates whether you want it to or not. What it illuminates is not always comfortable to look at. What it illuminates, once lit, cannot be put back into darkness.
You are not a mage in the sense of someone who learned to work magic. You are a mage in the older sense: someone who knows. The knowing came first. The capability followed. The cost is in the knowing: how much of it you can carry before it becomes too much, before the light that helped you see begins to burn.
Background Options
- The revelation came in a dream, and you woke up knowing things you had no business knowing. This was some time ago. You have not found a way to stop.
- You were present at something: a death, a ritual, an event, that shouldn’t have been survivable. You survived. The light came in through the crack.
- Someone who loved you gave you what they saw, as a gift, because they couldn’t bear to keep it alone. You accepted. They are at peace. You are still here with it.
- You sought it deliberately: followed the research, performed the ritual, opened the door with your own hands. You knew what you were getting into, or thought you did. The knowing part, you underestimated.
- You crossed the threshold as a child, and have simply always been this way. There is no before to compare it to. You are not certain whether this is an advantage or a loss.
- You were taught. A teacher recognised what you were before you did, and guided you through the threshold they had already crossed. The teacher is gone now, and they left no further instructions.
- The gnosis arrived in pieces, over months or years, slowly enough that you didn’t notice the threshold until you were already through it. By the time you realised what had happened, it was done.
Phosphoros Abilities
You gain all of the following benefits:
- Able to take two more minor wounds and one more moderate wound
- Add +1 to Speed Pool
- Add +3 to Intellect Pool
- Add +1 Edge in Pool of your choice (Intellect recommended)
- Cypher limit increased by 1 (to 3 total)
- Freely use light weapons
- Cannot freely use any armor
- At tier 3 and tier 6, choose an ability from the Sanctuary Genre Abilities list
Illuminating Sight: You perceive the hidden and the concealed as naturally as others perceive the visible. You gain an asset on tasks to notice things that are hidden, disguised, or supernatural in nature. Things invisible or obscured to ordinary sight may not be to you. At tier 3, this extends to perceiving deception: tasks to identify when someone is actively lying are eased. Enabler.
Dangerous Knowledge: You are trained in magic lore and in identifying supernatural creatures, objects, and effects. When you successfully gather information about a supernatural topic, you gather it as though one tier higher; more completely, more quickly, with less risk of missing the critical detail. Additionally, you can make an Intellect roll (difficulty equal to the subject’s level) to recall relevant information about any supernatural subject you have previously studied, as though consulting a reference. Enabler.
The Light That Costs (1+ Intellect): You cast illumination, literal or metaphorical, on one target within short range. The physical version reveals what is concealed in darkness or behind mundane concealment. The revelatory version exposes one significant truth about a person, object, or situation (the target may resist with an Intellect defense roll of difficulty 3). What you reveal cannot be unrevealed: the exposure is real. Using this ability advances the Geas by 1 state. Effort: Each additional level of Effort either increases the range to long, or reveals a deeper truth about the same target (raises the difficulty of any defense roll by 1 per level of Effort applied to this option). Action.
Phosphoros Equipment Bundle
A record of what you know; a journal, a collection of annotated materials, or an equivalent, and a way to add to it, because the knowing keeps arriving; appropriate clothing; something that protects your eyes on the days when the light is too much; and enough currency to maintain access to the places and people from whom things can still be learned.
Or assemble your own: appropriate clothing, one expensive item, five moderately priced items, six inexpensive items, and currency equivalent to a moderately priced item.
The Geas: The Blinding
You were shown. The showing accumulates. The Geas tracks the weight of what you cannot stop seeing.
Trigger: The Geas advances by 1 state when you use The Light That Costs, deliberately seek and obtain knowledge of something genuinely dangerous or hidden, or receive a revelation (in play or through GM decision) that fundamentally changes your understanding of a situation.
State 0 — Clear: The Phosphoros functions normally. What they carry is managed. What they see is navigable.
State 1 — Bright: The light has brightened. At the edges of vision, the Phosphoros perceives things most people don’t notice: traces, residues, the shapes of things that aren’t quite here. Social tasks with ordinary people who haven’t crossed a threshold are hindered; they sense something unusual. The Phosphoros gains an asset on all tasks to perceive or identify supernatural phenomena.
State 2 — Overexposed: The light is overwhelming. The Phosphoros automatically succeeds on tasks to detect hidden things, lies, or supernatural presences of difficulty 3 or lower, no roll needed. However, sustained focus on the mundane is difficult: all tasks involving ordinary social interaction, reading, or routine tasks are hindered. The revelation drowns out the everyday.
State 3 — Burning: Total illumination. For one scene, the Phosphoros perceives everything. All perception and identification tasks succeed automatically, regardless of difficulty. They cannot act coherently on any of it: all non-perception actions are hindered by two steps. When the scene ends, the Geas returns to State 2.
Relief: Darkness. Deliberate, voluntary limitation of perception. The Phosphoros must spend time in genuine chosen darkness. Not just absence of light, but chosen absence of looking. Sleep without attempting to understand or observe, or perform a deliberate act of unknowing: destroying a record, choosing not to investigate something they could investigate, returning something they learned to someone else and letting it go. The choice must be real. The Geas does not accept postponement. Drops the Geas by 1 state.
Cypher Manifestation Styling
Phosphoros styling for Cypher Manifestation will be detailed in the Sanctuary Manifestation Guide. Provisional: styling expresses as revelatory, radiant, and exposing. Effects illuminate. They make the hidden visible. They do not always make the visible welcome.
See also: The Axiomata, Character Foci, Character Types, The Pharmakis