In a different thread, it was brought to my attention that if a human comes to your celestial abode, you can make a free hero... so as was stated, Miracles cast within your home are FREE...nothing is to stop us from making an artifact that can whisk people to our homes...so if we make this object while in our home..the artifact is free...so all we have to do is pop down to the human world, give it to our followers, then have them pop up to our home for free...make them heroes, then send them back...all of this for just 1 beliefe point...

I swear I didn't mean to do it...but I think I just broke my first game...

So here is my question, I have two of them...: If, expressly by the rules, is this allowed? ( i just want a yes or no on this). and two, why not if it isn't, and will you be fixing this little oversite?

I know this porbably was not meant to be exploited, and I will refrain from doing so within the campaign i am in...but I found it damned funny...

Hi Nedako,

You forgot one thing, upkeep. If your hero or artifact is used in the Known World there will be upkeep cost. You can do what you said for free, creating the artifact in your home and bringing your follower up there but since both items will be used in the Known World there will be an upkeep cost yearly.

There is no definition of how long you have to be in the Known World, so long as they are used in the Known World there is upkeep. Upkeep cost is 1 less on the mutiplier chart than the cost for the original miracle. Even though the initial cast is free you have to calculate what it would cost originally. Then take that cost and reduce the multiplier by one (with a minimum of 1).

So unless you plan to never use the artifact (which you have to in order to get the humans up there). And the hero if he never leaves your abode then there are no upkeep costs.

so you must pay the upkeep even if the powers on the artifact, the powers on your followers fade at the end of the year? I thought you were only forced to do that if it was eternal...

Heroes are Artifacts are Permanent in their creation. Even if you power a hero for just one season after they come to your abode, you would still have to pay upkeep for the artifact used to transport heroes.

From chapter 5 of the rule book:


Permanent Duration

Creating a hero or artifact is a permanent-duration Miracle. If you want a hero who remains a hero for only a little bit and then turns normal again, he’s not really a hero (at least, not in game terms);he’s a mortal you temporarily empower with divine energy, and you use the normal Miracle rules for that.

Wait. Now I have a problem with what is said in the book. That makes Hero and Artifact generation require that the limitation Eternal be built into the creation of said Hero or Artifact. Otherwise you shouldn't have to maintain them. Unless the limitation Eternal requires you pay upkeep even if the hero or artifact gets destroyed.

This is a sticky (as opposed to a sticking) point.

I do agree that a hero or artifact you allow to wane from glory should not be considered a Hero or Artifact by definition (note the use of capitals) however for all purposes a year long miracle on a person raises them above the mere commoners of your people, and sometimes above your own elites as well, even if only for the duration of a year. Likewise an object similarly empowered becomes a "magical item" of immense power, which is the definition of an artifact by most standard roleplaying terms. If you force an upkeep on all heroes or artifacts, then you have no purpose for the Eternal limitation, as it is automatically inherent to all heroes and artifacts.

Unless Eternal is something else entirely and I have missed the purpose of it.

So does Hero/Artifact creation automatically cost one belief scale shift less (Eternal built in) or does Eternal force you to pay upkeep even after the hero/artifact is destroyed/dead?

I'm going to try to play "interpreter" here.

I *think* Nedako's idea is "Create a doohickey that will transport a mortal to my celestial abode. Do that *in* my celestial abode, so it's free to create. Take it down to my tribe--physically carry it via Incarnating with it. This will cost 1 Belief point. Use it to transport one or more mortals to my celestial abode, and Miracle the mortal(s) there--power 'em up as much as I want, laying on the Miracles just as heavy as I feel like, at no cost. Then send 'em back." (n.b.--I presume this might require another teleportation doohickey; this shouldn't be a problem as it's effectively a duplicate of the first one...and can be constructed for free in the celestial abode.)

And *as long as he doesn't care if it all expires at the end of a year*, the whole process only costs the 1 Belief point required for Incarnating once. If he doesn't bother paying maintenance on anything, then the teleportation doohickey will stop working at the end of a year and the supercharged mortals will revert to normal a year after their enhancement. This might meet all his required needs--it'd give him enough time to, say, supercharge ALL of his followers into Continent-Scale d12+6 combat/magic/etc. behemoths with the ability to fly between landmasses at supersonic speeds (and whatever else he happened to think of) as part of a master plan to stomp all of the Elder Races to extinction (with the rest of humanity and other minor races obliterated as an afterthought, if they didn't all die off as mere collateral damage). After which, he'd have no NEED to keep 'em supercharged *or* keep the teleportation doohickey around, and just wouldn't bother paying maintenance on them. So the mortals revert to normal, and the teleporters vanish. He doesn't care at this point.

There. Idea (or at least my interpretation of same) explicated without use of the apparently-problematic jargon terms Hero and Artifact.

Now, *my* take on this is to apply the basic "sanity check": "Assume the Elder Gods are not utter drooling idiots. Why didn't THEY do this thousands of years ago, if it's so simple?"

And the usual answer would seem to be, "Either they did, and they discovered it wasn't that simple--or they didn't...because they already knew it wasn't that simple." (Sure, they might have been wrong in *assuming* it's not that simple, but that's going to be *rare*. Traffic here would seem to suggest that it's an everyday occurence...which implies that the Elder Gods are, in fact, blithering idiots. Which they're not, or they wouldn't *BE* Elder Gods...rather, they'd be extinct.)

I'd suggest that there's a "meta-rule" regarding casting Miracles in one's celestial abode: it costs nothing to cast there, *as long as it has no effects on anyplace else*. if it affects the material world (or someplace in the celestial realm in which the deity must spend Belief to cast Miracles), then it's going to cost *something*. Thus taking the teleporter doohickey down to the material world would cost Belief (maintenance, perhaps?), ditto the supercharged mortals.

Or alternately, perhaps taking mortals to one's celestial realm is a matter that Fate takes a personal interest in, and thus deities can't do it without getting Fate's direct previous permission...which is not given lightly.

Hmm...what exactly is entailed in manifesting physically? I get the idea that the material body is *created* in the material world, and the Deity's spiritual essence (or whatever) "gets into it" like we'd climb into a pair of trousers. This could make for some difficulty carrying items back and forth that aren't part of the god's commonly-visualized form.

In short, I guess my position is that "if it's not already on the Short List of 'free or nearly-free ways gods can interact with the material world' (i.e., hear prayers, use Divine Sight to look in on followers, manifest physically, etc.), then there's some reason a god can't do it for free remotely by casting miracles in his abode." (If you could create a Scrying Mirror in your godly bedroom and use it to look anywhere in the Known World for no expenditure of Belief, there wouldn't be special mention of Divine Sight *in the vicinity of followers* in the list of godly attributes, yes? Instead, there'd be a generalized "gods can see anywhere in the Known World while in the celestial realm" ability.)

But maybe I'm just thinking too small....

(This got *way* too long. Sorry 'bout that. I get verbose sometimes.... *blush*)

Hi guys,

Tygerr did an excellent job explaining everything. The only thing I might add is that mortals in the Celestial Spheres are a problem for Fate and others. It does upset the "natural balance" and there would be problems. It does happen every so often, but its one of those things which should be a rare occurance, not to be abused.

Fate/ GM is there to give balance to these types of situations. I am sure the Elder Gods have tried it several times long ago and got slapped on the hand for doing that. Mortals crossing into the spirit world should not be a daily occurance.

I will try and look around to see if there is something written on this. I know there is a shop in the Celestial Gardens Viril's shop that has a few items from the mortal world. But there is only a few.

If something more concrete needs to be written on this and there is no guidance, I am sure we can work something up.

But that is what Fate is for.

I think the point of the rules are:

1) You pay upkeep on 'permanent' stuff if it's used that year outside your Celestial Abode.
2) You may THEN allow the effect to expire UNLESS it's Eternal.
3) Even if the item/hero is destroyed, you MUST re-create an Eternal artifact or hero. (Unless you have no followers, in which case you have OTHER problems.)

In any case, too many Eternals means that your income is not only committed for this year, but FOREVER. And with free immortality, that's an awful long time...

I'm confused now as well. In the PDF I have, it says very plainly on page 51 that,

"Past the Celestial Gardens are four spheres circling the Known World: the Four Seasons of Heaven. Only the gods and their chosen souls know of the Celestial Spheres. No mortal being has ever set foot into these realms. Mortals cannot look up to the heavens and see the Spheres; they exist in a different space and time, and only a spirit may travel to them." (Emphasis mine)

So transporting a mortal to your spiritual home and beefing him up wouldn't work. Also in that section and others it says over and over again that things created in the celestial spheres have no real substance, and eventually melt away. If I was the GM I would rule that an artifact created and imbued with great power for free in the spirit world would stream away into nothing if pulled down to the real world, unless the god pays the appropriate belief cost.