Fold Magic

Overview

Fold mages crease, bend, and fold the fabric of the universe, allowing them to reshape space in ways both baffling and mundane. They are limited only by their skills and the inadequacy of their mind, as mortal brains are not made for gazing at spacetime from the outside.

Self-damage

Several Fold Magic features directly cause you to take mental stress to represent the toll of compressing higher-dimensional geometries into a mortal brain. For the purposes of this damage, you have an additional number of stress boxes equal to your Fold Magic Aspect Bonus.

Skills

Fold magic

Single-cost skill. Determines how skilled you are at sensing the layout of space-time, as well as your ability to tug at the fabric of reality and rearrange it into different shapes.

Features

Step Outside

You may use an action to step partway out of your current plane of existence. While in this partially Outside state, your presence in this world is lessened, and you gain a bonus equal to your Fold Magic Aspect Bonus to Stealth as well as to defensive rolls against physical attacks. However, you cannot use nonmagical attacks and interacting with physical objects becomes more difficult. You can leave this state with another action.

Being (partially) Outside is a necessary prerequisite for most Fold Magic workings, as it is difficult to observe or manipulate the fabric of existence if you are currently stuck to it.

Spatial Bubble

While at least partially Outside, you push on a nearby volume of space over the course of a minute, causing it to expand. The volume must fit inside a sphere with a radius equal to (Fold Magic Level * 10) centimeters (see table), and its shape must be smooth and convex (e.g. a spheroid, a cuboid with rounded corners and edges, …). The boundary is visible as a shimmer or distortion in the air, depending on the amount of warping you choose to perform.

From the outside, the volume of your bubble appears unchanged. From the inside, however, the bubble becomes larger: it can fit objects up to (1 + Fold Magic Level / 10) times the length it normally could. You may choose to produce a lesser effect instead. Its effective volume is multiplied by that number cubed. For example values, see the table below.

The warping effect stays stable for a few minutes and slowly decays back to normal afterwards. As long as you are Outside, and you are touching the volume, you can push on it slightly to maintain the effect (extending the duration), and slowly change its size, shape, location, and the magnitude of the effect.

Table: Spatial Bubble Sizes

Stunts

Alien Mind

• Prerequisite: Fold Magic 20
• Cost: 50 XP

Your mind is filled with incomprehensible geometries and images. Furthermore, its structure is not like that of other minds, and hard to grasp for other mortals. You may add your Fold Magic Aspect Bonus to rolls made to resist any form of mental intrusion. If you win the roll, and the attacker was attempting to gain information to your mind, you inflict mental stress on your attacker equal to the number of success shifts.

Warp Anchor

• Prerequisite: Fold Magic 20
• Cost: 75 XP

You have learned to anchor your Spatial Bubble to specially-prepared physical objects. These objects typically consist of precisely-shaped metal or crystal, which are best for creating a precisely-controlled distribution of mass to interact favorably with your bubble. After you create a bubble, you can attach it to one of these anchors or an arrangement of several anchors, causing the effect to become permanent and move with the anchor(s).

When initially attached to an anchor, the bubble’s effect weakens over the course of a day to a month (depending on the size of the bubble, amount of warping, and quality of the anchors) before reaching its final set point, which is typically around a tenth of the initial effect.

Reinforced Anchors

• Prerequisite: Fold Magic 30, Warp Anchor
• Cost: 50 XP

By reinforcing an anchored spatial bubble regularly (2-4 times a day) during its settling period, you can achieve a greater final effect, up to a third of the initial effect.

Walk the Outside

• Prerequisite: Fold Magic 30
• Cost: 100 XP

As an action, while partially Outside your plane, you step completely Outside, further away from your plane. You move into the void between spaces and are attached to that plane only by the smallest of margins. In this form, you cannot be detected by any senses that do not reach between the planes, and you can only see the barest hints of objects and events on any nearby plane.

Observing the void directly slowly frays your sanity. Take one shift of mental self-damage for each minute you spend in the Outside.

While in the Void Outside, you can move unimpeded in any direction by tugging on the fabric of space around you. Use your Fold Magic skill instead of any other skill for movement.

You can step back into partial alignment with a plane you are connected to (typically the plane you just left) with another action, so long as there is space for you to occupy.

Gate

• Prerequisite: Fold Magic 40, Walk the Outside
• Cost: 75 XP

If you step fully Outside while holding a Spatial Bubble, you may choose to drag the bubble with you to the Void Outside. You may continue to drag it with you as move through the void; if you do, use only half your Fold Magic skill for movement as it slows you down. You may leave the bubble behind; it will slowly decay as normal, or you may pick it up again before it does.

In this state, any physical objects inside the bubble and especially objects crossing its boundary are exposed to extreme dimensional stress.

You may push the bubble you are carrying back “down” into a plane you are connected to (typically the plane you just left, and where the bubble came from). The bubble is still attached to its location of origin, and merges with the location you push it into; this causes these locations to become connected by a two-way traversable gate (a wormhole). Roll Fold Magic against a TN based on the size of the bubble and the distance between the endpoints. The result determines the duration of the gate: the default duration is a few minutes, and each shift of success or failure moves it one step up or down the time ladder. Over the course of the duration, the gateways at both endpoints shrink at an accelerating rate, and explosively collapse at the end.

Gate Anchoring

• Prerequisite: Fold Magic 40, Gate, Reinforced Anchors
• Cost: 125 XP

You have learned how to anchor gate endpoints as well, allowing you to create permanent gates.

Planar Severing

• Prerequisite: Fold Magic 40, Walk the Outside
• Cost: 100 XP

You have learned to sever your connection to a plane, allowing you to drift and wander freely through the Void Outside. Severing a planar connection takes only a few seconds and is frighteningly easy.

You can also sever others’ planar connections in this way, if you are in the same zone. As an action, roll Fold Magic vs. Fold Magic. If you win, the target’s planar connection is severed and they are unmoored from their plane. If you lose with more failure shifts than your Fold Magic Aspect Bonus, instead your planar connection is severed or moved to another adjacent plane.

Soar through the Void

• Prerequisite: Fold Magic 40, Walk the Outside
• Cost: 100 XP

While not connected to any plane, you can move through the Void Outside at great speed, continuously accelerating in what passes as a straight line. You can move in parallel to an adjacent plane, allowing you to rapidly reach other locations on that plane, or you can cast yourself away from adjacent planes in hopes of reaching other planes.

While Soaring near a plane, you can latch on to that plane superficially to quickly stop yourself.

Planeswalker

• Prerequisite: Fold Magic 50, Planar Severing
• Cost: 200 XP

You have learned to connect to any adjacent plane while fully Outside, allowing you to enter it from the Void Between. This process takes a few minutes to perform.

Void Attunement

• Prerequisite: Fold Magic 30, Resolve 20, major trauma from Void Magic-related mental stress
• Cost: 500 XP

After staring into the void for too long, your mind has shattered and reformed anew. You no longer take self-damage from any Fold Magic features.

Note: This may seem overcosted, but this is only true if you are thinking on a “combat” timescale. Normally, a fold mage can only stay in the Void Outside for a few minutes at a time and faces risk of incapacitation if they stay too long. With this stunt, one can stay Outside for hours, days, even weeks at a time - this is a crucial prerequisite for activities such as rapid travel through the void, the creation of long-distance Gates, or visiting other planes.