Stray Outsider's Character Sheet

.Apologies that the photos are poor quality. Cheap camera.

These are Stray's Fortune Cards and Vision Cards:

This is a close-up of Spherewalker Source Card S1/78 (the first card on the second row) which is quite hard to see (which is also described in the Vision Cards section, below):

Virtue: The Defender - Safety
Fault: Autumn - Want
Fate: Summer - Energy vs. Exhaustion

Vision Cards:

• S1/78 - This is the second photo above. It is a dark skinned figure looking at Venus. The back of the card indicates this is Quetzalcoatl, which is interesting given that this is the Virtue on Whichway's character sheet. I chose this for Stray because the figure is dark and slender and potentially either male or female.
• S1/9 - This depicts a dark skinned individual of unclear gender. He/she wears a lot of jewelry, and has a golden rose broach. This card signifies Bromeliad, the trans Spherewalker from Emerald Savannah who is now Stray's adoptive mother.
• V31 - Three figures, two clearly male and one ambiguously gendered, are playing cards. This card evokes Stray's roguish life in Strangerside. The fact that he is playing cards also signifies that Whichway is Fate Blind with respect to reading him. He holds the cards there.
• V48 - Two figures dance about a fire. The one on the right with the drum appears to be male. That figure represents Stray as an initiate of the rites of Oxumare and Legba.
• S1/60 - A male figure kneels before a snake with a halo around it. The back of the card says the snake represents "Brighid, goddess of inspiration," who "teaches some of her followers to understand the speech of snakes. Snakes have many insights to share with those who listen and take heed." This card is an interesting synchronicity because legends say Brighid was born in a doorway. She is thus a symbol of duality. I chose this card because Oxumare is the Rainbow Serpent. In this image, we see Stray learning the Scales Drop ritual from Oxumare.

Stray's Story can be found here.

Elements:

• Fire 5 - Specialty: Keeper Fighting Arts
• Earth 5 - Specialty: Strong Stomach
• Air 3 - Specialty: Keeper Family Gate Lore
• Water 5 - Specialty: Sensitivity to the Orishas

Powers:

• Scales Drop Ritual (2 point power): This ritual allows Stray have a fully male physical body for up to six hours a day. He can choose any time of the day or night to perform the ritual; the transformation occurs immediately after the 30 minute ritual drumming and song is completed. For every year he performs this ritual at least once weekly, the total duration of the ritual's effect increases by one hour. 

OGL MECHANICS

Stray's Aspects:

• Once a Keeper
• Accustomed to privation
• Give me a reason to help!
• You can always find new friends
• The spirits have touched me
• My fate is not fixed

Where We're Starting

The results are in on the gate that will be the starting point for the One Branch Project, the series in which Whichway Crookstaff and Stray Outsider will go on Spherewalking journey and explore one branch on the tree of worlds.
Everway has 71 gates, and I invited readers to choose from among 12 gates to different realms. Two people cast votes. The votes were for:

• Bright Eyes, a mystical place of lush forests, populated by cats (great and small) who have special powers; and
• Round Stones, where receding glaciers reveal the ruins of an ancient civilization.

Last week, I wrote that I would roll for the outcome, if there was a tie between two finalists. I just did so, and the realm of Bright Eyes won the roll. So, Bright Eyes it will be.

Any thoughts about what our two Spherewalkers should bring along with them in their journey? Please share your ideas!

Whichway Crookstaff's Character Sheet

I apologize in advance that the photos are a bit blurry. Cheap phone.

First, let me share what is known as the Horne Spread in Everway:

When you get ready to create new characters, spread the Vision Cards out on your dining room table. That makes it easier to make fresh, surprising choices. Not all of the cards here are Everway cards. Some are art cards (such as the Jeffrey Jones art cards) or cards for CCGs including Shadowfist (the Feng Shui CCG), Hyborian Gates, and Mythos.

This is just another close up of the city map, with a few cards associated with Whichway and Stray:

These are Whichway's Fortune Cards and Vision Cards. I will name/describe them below the picture:

Virtue: Truth - Knowledge
Fault: The Satyr - Indulgence
Fate: The Fool - Freedom vs. Lack of Connection

Vision Cards:

• V11 - A scene of children being taught by a mage. This represents Whichway's early education by Crookstaff tutors. She's the one just to the right of the tutor. No book; looks like she's sleeping.
• S1/23 - Image of someone reading cards from a Fortune Deck. This card represent's Whichway's discovery of her ability to read the Fortune Deck truly.
• V33 - A male and female youth engaging in shenanigans on a wall. Here we see Whichway and Stray up to pranks in Strangerside.
• V/15 - A scroll rack. Whichway has joined the Chamber Platinum. She is intrigued by the maps of spherepaths contained in the Library of All Worlds.
• V18 - Whichway begins to experiment with alternative ways of drawing spherepaths, such as mandala-like diagrams.

Whichway's Story can be found here.

Elements:

• Fire 4
• Earth 3
• Air 5
• Water 5

I want to think a bit more about the Specialties. Please feel free to make suggestions in the Comments.

Powers:

• True Reading (3 point power): Whichway can always read truly the Virtue, Fault, and Fate of a person place or thing, as long as she does not draw her Fault (The Satyr) or The Usurper card in taking the action. If either of the latter occur, she will be Fate Blind forever in reading that person, place, or thing.

OGL MECHANICS

Whichway's Aspects:

• The worst Crookstaff ever!
• Always seeing the cards
• Where IS she going now?
• Who IS she hanging out with?
• The Chamber Platinum might save me
• There are always other paths

Stray and Whichway

Stray and Whichway are two Spherewalkers. They are going to take a journey together in the One Branch Project.

Whichway Crookstaff is 16 years old. She's a bit of a free spirit, which has raised concern in the family. She wanders the cities of Everway and Strangerside at all hours. She does this to settle her mind, in which the trumps of the Fortune Deck are constantly appearing. Even when she dreams. Not surprisingly, Whichway has a knack for reading the Fortune Deck. Her readings are True. 

Whichway is a disappointment to the Crookstaff family. The family's reputation is based on their great mastery of the magic arts and related scholarly pursuits. Whichway is uninterested in book learning. She hasn't learned any other magical abilities aside from Spherewalking and True Reading. Whichway's mother recently pulled strings to get her inducted into the Chamber Platinum. She has told Whichway to "Make something of yourself." It remains to be seen what that will look like! 

Whichway's interest has been piqued lately by something she's been exposed to at the Chamber Platinum:  spherepaths. While some are very linear representations of the relationships and connections between the spheres, other spherepaths are quite subjective or coded designs - rather like mandalas. Piqued by these alternative spherepaths, and no doubt building on her intuitive mastery of the Fortune Deck, Whichway has begun to experiment with her own designs, based on the narrative accounts of other Sphererwalkers. This may prove very useful when she begins Spherewalking for the Chamber Platinum.

Whichway Crookstaff

Stray Outsider is 15 years old. He lives in Strangerside. Stray is a gender non-comforming throwaway child of the Keeper family, one of the most conservative (however cosmopolitan-appearing) families in Roundwander. As a Keeper, Stray knows how to fight and how to kill. As a Keeper, he also knows a great deal of lore about gates. Stray has been surviving on the mean streets of Strangerside for the last two years. He fled to Strangerside after being cast out by the Keeper clan's elderwomen. 

Stray (the figure on the right)

Ultimately, Stray ran afoul of Everway's gender system. Women in Everway have a great deal of social power, and they guard it jealously. They have seen what many other worlds are like where women have little or no power. In contrast, Everway has a matrilineal kinship system, and much more egalitarian gender roles. 

Female elders there take a dim view of women whom they see as "throwing away" their social power to express a male gender identity. Stray, who was born a girl, has been disowned. But in Strangerside, Stray found friends. There are other Everwayans there who have broken rules around gender and sexuality and been pushed out of their families. There are also all sorts of Outsiders with different beliefs, identities, and practices. Strangerside can be rough, but there is a lot of room to be who you are, as long as you keep your wits about you.

Stray has been adopted by Bromeliad, a Spherewalker from the realm of Emerald Savannah. He has also been initiated as a layman into the rites of Oxumare,the Rainbow Serpent. By being ridden by Oxumare, Stray learned the Scales Drop rite, a personal ritual that gives Stray the power to temporarily bring his outward gender expression into conformity with his soul-gender. The mambo of Oxumare has told Stray that if he continues using the rite, eventually his gender will change permanently. Through the ceremonies led by the mambo, Stray has also been ridden by Legba. Legba told Stray that he is a Spherewalker.

Oxumare
http://dofonodelogum.sites.uol.com.br/oxumare.html

Joining Forces: In recent months, Whichway has become fast friends with Stray. They when Stray befriended Whichway on one of her many visits to Strangerside. The Outsider city can be a bewildering and dangerous place for naive visitors who lack street smarts. In their first encounter, Stray saved Whichway from harm. Stray now often accompanies Whichway on her wanderings, mostly to make sure she doesn't get in trouble that she can't escape. 

Curiously, Stray is one of the few individuals whom Whichway cannot read using the Fortune Deck. He is consequently a bit of a mystery to Whichway, but one that she likes. Whichway knows she is safer when he's around. Whichway has recruited Stray to accompany her on a Spherewalking expedition for the Chamber Platinum. Together, they will explore one branch of the tree of worlds.

One Branch on the Tree of Worlds

This is the first post in the One Branch Project, in which I will detail out a branch on the Tree of Worlds. The branch that I will be detailing will start at the center of things, in the City of Everway. Everway's realm of Roundwander has more gates than any other known realm, and we will select one of these gates from which to depart.

So, Where Should the Journey Begin?

http://travellingcheapwitheva.wordpress.com/2010/05/25/travelling-the-silk-road-part-1/

Here are the adjacent realms that I am considering as the point of departure from Everway (text set out in bullets here are direct quotes from the Everway Playing Guide, pages: 23-27. Numbering is mine. Titles in Bold are my emphasis):

1. Alabaster, where men and women live separate lives, meeting only behind families' closed doors
2. Archways, where several tribes live among the gargantuan skeletons of strange, ancient beasts
3. Bright Eyes, a mystical place of lush forests, populated by cats (great and small) who have special powers
4. Canopy, an enormous ancient tree whose interior houses a human civilization and among whose roots exist hundreds of miles of miles where fantastic creatures live
5. Delta, islands at the mouth of a great river, where fish-people enlist the help of islanders in their wars and constantly shifting alliances
6. Glint, where towering brass cities house only vermin
7. Healertown, a bustling city founded generations ago by the suspect Healer family of Everway; the descendants have kept the name "Healer" but not the profession
8. Nature's Touch, where all the sentient beings are half-human and half-animal: centaurs, satyrs, mermaids, nagas, sphinxes, harpies, and so on
9. Roundhome, a coastal region where tsunamis toss up the giant snail shells that the inhabitants use as houses and as building material for beautiful faerielike fortresses
10. Round Stones, where receding glaciers reveal the ruins of an ancient civilization
11. Sepulcher, a seemingly endless tomb-complex honoring an unknown, ancient queen. Those who steal from this tomb or even step into forbidden areas, meet with gruesome ends.
12. Serpent's Coil, where the Dragon Lords are said to live. No such great beasts are ever seen, but spherewalkers report an eerie feeling of being watched.

So here's the deal. 

Please consider casting a vote to recommend the realm that will be the point of departure for the One Branch Project. 

You have until 12 Noon CT on Monday, July 9 to cast your vote in the Comments below. 

The largest plurality wins. In a tie, I'll roll for it. 

No responses, I'll roll a d12.