Editing Innocence (section)

== Protections of Innocence ==
As part of the [[Seal of Solomon]],<ref name=":3">“I did.  The trick is to realize your strengths.  We’re newcomers.  The Solomon whatsit doesn’t apply.  We have access to anyone we want to go after, innocent or otherwise, see?”<br><br>“It’s a little more complicated than that.”<br><br>“Far more,” he said.  “Far, far more.  Usual protections might not apply, but the universe will protect innocents in a roundabout way.<br><br>“Something like that,” I said. <br>[...]<br>Innocents have some protections, the universe will contrive to shield them, but if you can leave a lasting ''mark'', that’s worth a fair bit.” - [https://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/2014/08/19 excerpt] from [[Mala Fide 10.2]]</ref> and possibly other centuries-old bargains,<ref>Men, women, children.  Humanity.  We’re beating back the Others.  [...] We’re ''reveling'' in a culture of relative innocence, and longstanding agreements put in place ''centuries'' ago protect people. - [https://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/2014/07/24 excerpt] from [[Signature 8.7]]</ref> unawakened humans are protected and shielded from the "true" nature of the world.

Over time, [[karma]] has reinforced this rule to the level of natural law. The universe will try and contrive to shield innocents, even from Others who aren't bound by the Seal of Solomon.<ref name=":3" /><ref>She lifted another book, turning it around so I could see a painting of a brown-skinned man with a funny little golden hat and a magnificent beard.<br><br>Rose explained, “Suleiman.  Sorcerer king.  He was the first practitioner who really worked for the betterment of mankind and actually made headway.  He established rules and contracts, and he systematically worked to challenge the biggest, baddest Others out there that he could, then used them to help get others.  It brought about an age where humans could stop being the playthings of Others and start developing as a civilization.”<br><br>“Okay,” I said.  “And the seal?”<br><br>“A formal acknowledgement on the part of an Other, that they won’t interfere with mankind without excuse, they’ll obey certain rules, and the practitioners will leave them be.  Typically an Other bears some symbol or token of this bargain.  Over time it’s gained a power of its own.  Being sealed physically alters the Other, but it also affords them certain protections against us.” - [https://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/2014/01/11 Excerpt] from [[Bonds 1.7]]</ref> Those who target Innocents with Practice or Other abilities will find karma pushing back against them and punishing them if they succeed.<ref name=":7">''Notes on the Aware''<br>''The Aware are human or human enough that they retain their natural Innocence.  Innocence, if not immediately clear from some of these entries, does not necessarily imply good, naive, or free of guilt or wrongdoing.  Rather, it means they are protected from the world of practitioners and Others.  Targeting the Innocent with practice or getting involved with them as Others, if not explicitly or tacitly invited in, can lead to negative karma.  If anything, this Innocence greases the wheels of reality, making it easier to skirt by on consequences or to keep going.''<br><br>''Not typically very strong, the Aware keep one foot in the world of the Other and one foot in the mundane, and can be said to enjoy the benefits of both, though many find that their mundane lives are limited or hampered in some way.'' - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2020/09/17 4.8 Bonus Material: Dossiers]</ref>

Further if an innocent get back to other innocents, drawing on the systems innocents have built,<ref>“You spread lies about being my estranged family.  You sent the child welfare people after me.”<br><br>“Yes,” Reid said.<br><br>“There are holes in the story.  We already found some.  It won’t hold up, they shouldn’t let you take me, unless you pull some heinous shit.”<br><br>“No,” Reid agreed.  “The systems of innocents can be pretty tough to beat, sometimes.  Turn enough eyes to any single case and stuff starts falling apart.  But that wasn’t the goal.  What we needed was for enough of them to believe that I could be in this room with you now.”<br>[...]<br>His father addressed him, “Rabbit Killer is telling me there’s an enterprising young woman who can shrug off his influence.  I’m going to intervene to prevent any child services workers or officers from thinking too hard about the fact we were left in here alone with a girl they’re not sure we’re related to.” - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2021/07/31 Excerpt] from [[False Moves 12.z]]</ref> the link can cause a backlash that can destroy anyone who targeted that innocent.<ref>
* Shedding one's innocence generally requires that you take on a responsibility and power. The Seal of Solomon largely protects you up until that point. This protection can take a lot of forms but a big one is that if someone or something tests your innocence and both injures that innocence and fails to remove all witnesses (often you included), it costs them. Sometimes getting away from the big bad Other and living to tell the tale means it costs the Other everything they have and they disappear, just in time for people to come to see the monster you talked about and find nothing there. - [https://www.reddit.com/r/Parahumans/comments/q6pleh/_/hgdwjz1 Conversation on Reddit]</ref>

Many of the protections of innocence come from being able to contact and compare with other innocents.<ref>''' Toucan_Based_Economy''':I have been wondering, if Innocence is less strongly enforced in "uncharted territory", because there is not the precedent of Innocent occupation or Others hiding their activity from human eyes in that area.<br>To be clear, I am not talking about Knotted Places. I am specifically talking about otherwise mundane places without any history of human habitation or visitation. Places like "the bottom of the Mariana Trench", "the upper atmosphere" or "the sealed, lightless tunnel complex inside a mountain".<br>Without the centuries of precedence, is Innocence protected strongly, or even at all in these areas when compared to elsewhere?<br><br>'''Wildbow ''': But yes, because Innocence is partially enforced in the sense of "you can get away with more as an Other/practitioner if there are no witnesses", and because a remote region has [virtually] none, it's a lot safer for strange Others to show themselves. It's also easier for the spirits/powers that be to distort a call back home than to deliver the consequences if a call goes through.<br>Less that it's 'less strongly enforced' and more that enforcing it is pretty easy. - [https://redd.it/qll0oe Conversation on Reddit]</ref>

Anyone who clues an innocent in on the existence of magic takes some responsibility for them.<ref name=":1" />

=== Limits ===
The effects of innocence are severely weakened certain realms, like in the [[Abyss]].<ref>“You can hear me?” Evan asked.<br><br>“Different rules,” I told Evan.  “Less layers separating you and them.  Besides, I don’t know how much innocence you hold onto, here.” - [https://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/2014/10/18 Excerpt] from [[Duress 12.5]]</ref>

Many Others, such as [[Dragons]], [[Giants]], and [[the Eye]], were quite capable of killing the unawakened through sheer destructiveness.<ref name=":4">“Oh, great,” Peter said.<br><br>“Innocents are protected, they say.  It’s good to have some innocents along.  Innocents are harder to affect with magic.  You aren’t entirely magical, but you should go along.  You’ll help the group just by being there, an extra set of skills.  What happens in the first half hour?  Dragon, giant, now falling trees.  Are we protected?  Noooo.”<br><br>“This is natural,” Tiff said.  “But it’s ''hers,'' in a way that very few things are ''anyone’s'' nowadays.” - [https://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/2014/12/13 Excerpt] from [[Sine Die 14.5]]</ref><ref>The Eye didn’t give me a chance for a sudden rescue.  He touched the car before I could grab the driver and pull her out of the window.<br><br>The gutted underbelly had leaked gas, against all odds, and the Eye had ignited it.<br><br>The rolling eruption of flame knocked me over.  I could hear the screams.  The driver and many of the bystanders who’d tried to help were caught, and onlookers experienced pain of another sort. Horror. - [https://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/2014/05/13 Excerpt] from [[Subordination 6.7]]</ref>

Similarly, innocents are not protected from purely natural phenomena that had been shaped by Others or Practitioners, such as [[Crone Mara]]'s forest which had been pruned over centuries to form a death-trap.<ref name=":4" />

Exiled [[Faerie]] were forbidden from attacking innocents directly, but not from giving them [[magic item]]s as "gifts".<ref name=":5">She was pretty certain that presents and boons like the ones Keller was giving out were traps.  That they’d be wonderful and fantastic up until the point that things turned sour.  Maybe they became too much of a good thing, maybe there was a rule that had to be followed, with some horrific backlash if it wasn’t.  Maybe there was a catch.<br><br>Exiled Faerie weren’t allowed to go after innocents, not directly.  But, Maggie was fairly certain, they weren’t forbidden from doing something like giving a kid a flute that would summon a sprite to do their chores for them, with the caveat that the sprite would blind them if they ever tried to watch it while it worked.<br><br>End result?  The kid would be stupid, the sprite would eat the kid’s eyes.  People, the kid included, would rationalize it away as an accident, an infection, or just a freak occurrence.  Life would go on as normal, and the local Faeries-in-exile got their jollies without breaking the rules. - [https://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/2014/07/12 Excerpt] from [[Signature 8.2]]</ref> [[Incarnation#Cursed Items|Incarnation]]s<ref>An Incarnation of Poverty might try to spread poverty.  Sometimes that would be with a cursed item; innocents handle it, they ignore the warnings printed on the item or shared by the seller, they lose their earthly belongings and fortunes, they die or suffer a dark fate, the item gets passed on, having strengthened Poverty, until someone figures out a way to deal with it.  Other times, it’s a ''ritual'' that finds its way to people’s hands. [...]  that’s the gamble, of sorts.  Will the ritual pull in enough to be worth the cost of inducting an innocent?  If the ritual brings in enough poverty, for example, or brings in enough other people who fail, it may be worth paying the penalty or assuming the karmic responsibility. [...] Often, the karmic cost of bringing in innocents is tempered.  If it’s just, if someone must opt in, and if there’s a possible way out, it’s less costly.  Remember what I said earlier about the warning given with full expectation that the warning would be ignored?  One such example. The Ritual Incarnate may be a game, or a pattern people willingly participate in, with enough traps or enough of an uphill climb that failing at the game is expected, and they may be difficult enough that by the time the participant is done, they are no longer capital-I Innocent, or even no longer human. - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2020/05/19 Excerpt] from [[Lost for Words 1.4]]</ref> and [[Peddlar]]s often follow a similar pattern.<ref>Peddlers - A broad grouping of Others with a knack for making or finding objects that have some power to them, which they then distribute.  They may make, curse or tweak the items or manipulate the subjects so they destroy themselves in a way that is karmically just (often violating a warning given with the item), then sweep in to reclaim the item and the power it gathered.  Collectors may deal with or trade with Peddlers, who are often skilled at transubstantiation, or who can point them the right ways. - [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Od3iu2TXe5r677wHEMCudG5hDUrlM6-E0kgiuvlkuuw/edit# Pact Dice: Collectors]</ref>

If an Innocent (especially an [[Aware]] one) tacitly or deliberately invites contact with the supernatural, ignoring warnings and so on, the karmic backlash may be lessened or absent entirely.<ref name=":7" />

Innocents, who are [[Karmic]]ally deserving of punishment can be more easily targeted by Others.<ref>“Innocents?” Verona asked.<br><br>“Sometimes.  More when there’s a quick opportunity, see?  It’s easier to do stuff when they deserve it, and for the little stuff, it’s a moment of carelessness, not watching a bag.  I specialize in the ''big'' stuff.  The ones who really deserve it.  Think heists, but the stealing is only a bonus.”<br>[...]<br>“So you’re doing something good?” Verona asked, a bit skeptical.<br><br>“No, kid,” Munch said.  “A lot of the bad lands on the bad people, that’s the way it works, and that’s an easy thing to facilitate.  But the police are left wondering if they had accomplices who took the data and recordings.  Wild goose chase, and the couple gets a harder time with the law because they can’t and won’t name their accomplices.  Victims are freaked.  Those who are low are brought a little lower, see?  A bad situation gets badder and messier.  And us, we reap profit.”<br>[...]<br>“I’ll get you a gift soon,” Munch said.  “Been thinking, but I don’t have much.  Got a thing with some goblins this summer.  Guy and his gun nut buddies are getting spare animals from shelters, using them as moving targets for practice.  It’s like the Bedsurf camera couple.  Universe doesn’t like it if you invite someone or something into your home and mess with them.  We were going to try to make some Dog Meat.”<br><br>“Dog Meat like…”<br><br>“Like we get enough of them together, they invite their friends in from the States, including some who can maybe make some fostering and adoption paperwork disappear for kids.  Then we see if we can’t kill enough of them in a messy enough way that there’s a Dog at the end.” - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2020/06/30 Excerpt] from [[Stolen Away 2.7]]</ref> An individual who accumulates enormous bad karma may be judged deserving of more blatant fates, such as being kidnapped and tortured by [[Goblins]] in the [[Warrens]], to the point where someone trying to defend them will suffer karmic backlash themselves.<ref>[[Poke 3]]</ref>