Editing Karma (section)

== Effects ==
Karma rarely builds in surplus or negatives for humans, because it corrects itself, but some [[practitioners]] are able to monitor it and incur both good and bad karma in hefty amounts.<ref name=":4">The old man answered, “The cogs that operate in the background take to grinding you up instead.  Funds, treasured belongings, friendships, love, they are all harder to find and easier to lose.  Enemies, danger, 
chaos, and disruption find you more readily.  In looser terms, all Others, spirits and practitioners get the sense, innate or otherwise, that they can and ''should'' work against your interests.  Things start to fall apart, and the pieces fall down in the least convenient arragements for you.”<br><br>“The universe,” the young man said, “conspires against you.”<br><br>“Ah, hell,” I said.  “That would explain a few things.”<br><br>The old man continued with the explanation, “It would cause as many problems as it solve if the universe did it in an obvious manner.  It would raise suspicion and ''disrupt'' the smooth operation of things if every coin you flipped turned up with the unwanted side, if every corner held an enemy.”<br><br>The young man said, “It’s a stopgap measure.  Sufficient for the non-practitioners who stumble on ways to give themselves bad karma.”<br><br>"But,” the old man said, “In cases where the debt continues to accumulate, or it reaches a size that one person can’t pay off, we sometimes see survivors carry on.”<br><br>"Survivors?” Rose asked.<br><br>"Some dynasties manage to thrive despite the ill fortunes that are visiting them.  There are individuals who are reclusive enough or tenacious enough to carry on.  The universe doesn’t like to act overtly, so it might give you the coin flip that serves you the least, until you start counting the number of times the coin turns up head versus the times it turns up tails.  In any case, the practitioner can live if they’re attentive and clever, and the debt can keep growing.  ''This<'' is when we start running into problems.”<br><br>"Problems being?” I asked.<br><br>"Being the dice all turning up snake eyes, or enemies appearing behind every corner.  Once or twice, generally, but that’s all things typically need.  The universe is elastic.  If you push, it bounces back.  If you pull, it pulls against you.  If you pull too hard, too long, and it snaps, with violent consequence.” - [https://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/2014/01/28 Excerpt] from [[Damages 2.4]]</ref> Practitioners such as [[Mason Hall-McCullough|Mason the Benevolent]] are known to focus on building up good karma; those who specialize in karma are generally a [[Law Magus]]. Conversely, [[Diabolist]]s are frequently in extreme karmic debt, especially if they evade karma for multiple generations.

Bad karma generally causes small, deniable bits of bad luck, with the occasional piece of extreme bad luck to balance out large amounts of bad karma.<ref name=":4" /> People with bad karma find it harder to convince others they are trustworthy.<ref name=":2">“That’s pizza.  Pepperoni and onion.  The coke might have gotten a 
little flat since we poured it.  You took a few hours to wake up.  I was almost ''worried.''”<br>[...]<br>Laird interrupted, “-I don’t need an explanation.  I know what shot shells are.  You’re offering hospitality with one hand and threatening to shoot me with the other?”<br><br>It was Maggie who spoke up, “The tried-and-true rules have a firm grounding in ''history'', officer Behaim.  The roads were dangerous at night, food was hard to come by.  You couldn’t turn away someone at your door, and you couldn’t 
refuse a guest amenities, or you were sentencing them to death.  You couldn’t abuse hospitality given for the same reason, because you’d be sentencing the ''next''guy to death.  But, all that said, nobody’s going to begrudge a man, a peasant, or a king their right to keep a weapon on hand if they know their guest is a potential threat.”<br>[...]<br>“Why would I want to open my mouth?  To give you hints?”<br><br>“You don’t ''need'' to, but you can give me answers for the same reason you’re giving me food.  I can’t reciprocate your generosity, really, unless I give you ''answers''.  It’s a win-win situation for you.  You get karma by playing by the rules, or you get answers.”<br>[...]<br>“It’s torture.  Psychological torture.  You’re setting me up to fall into the imp’s clutches, but by doing it like this, you defer responsibility for it.”<br><br>I glanced at Rose.  It had been 'her'' idea.<br><br>"To be entirely honest, I wasn’t aware that was actually a thing,” I said.  “Deferring responsibility.”<br><br>“It is,” Laird told me.  He’d gone very still, and looked very grim, the lines in his face making his age and stress obvious.  “You leave a man standing on a chair with a noose around their neck.  The powers and 
spirits that would decide where responsibility for the death rested don’t necessarily have the wits or the long memory needed to figure it out.”<br>[...]<br>“Don’t tell me you did the monologue, explaining things.”<br><br>“I did, kind of.”<br><br>“''Damn it'', Blake,” Ty said.<br><br>“It makes sense in context, the karma gain for fair play-”<br><br>“You’re telling me the universe ''encourages'' being the Bond villain?”<br><br>I hesitated.<br><br>“It does, doesn’t it?” Ty asked.<br><br>“Kind of?  Convoluted traps are generally better than just shooting the bastards, apparently.”<br>[...]<br>“It’s part of why we’re here,” Fell said. “Helping him out.”<br><br>That seemed to be the qualifier the woman at the desk needed.  The joys of having buddies with good karma.  ''I'' gave people the wrong impression, led people to expect the worst.  The goblin queen in training gave off a better vibe, and the hitman in 
service to the secret lord of the city was the ''pleasant,'' convincing one. - [https://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/2014/05/29 Excerpt] from [[Void 7.1]]</ref>

Good karma leads to events going in your favor. People find you likable, at least in person, and those who have reason to dislike you are unlikely to compare notes. You tend to live to a ripe old age.<ref>“Longevity goes hand-in-hand with good karma,” Joyce said.  “Which he has.  In abundance.”<br><br>"He practices using Karma?”<br><br>“Yes.  I can see why people would be unhappy with him.  He made his 
wife miserable.  Tricked our family, even.  Neglected to mention that he already had three wives, making his Duchamp wife the fourth.  Likeable in person, but less so from a distance, and those of us who realized that kept our distance, myself included.  We never had an angle or clear excuse to retaliate for his deception, but that’s how he operates.”<br>[...]<br>“If it helps,” Lola said, “He’s probably done far worse than what we just described.  But events play out in a way that supports him.  There’s rarely enough people in the same place, talking about him in a way that would let them put the pieces together, at a time that we’d be free to do something about it.  If someone named him, maybe they have a stronger suspicion, but aren’t in a position to voice it?” - [https://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/2014/11/15 Excerpt] from [[Execution 13.5]]</ref> Some consider good karma to be more trouble than it's worth, however, as the constant good luck can lead to complacency only for you to be killed by someone who finds a way around it.<ref name=":1" />

It's also part of the system that gets in the way of greater [[Aware]] and practitioners from getting into positions of power in innocent society.<ref>Tomas Whitt worked with some family and friends, with the friend heading the business, apparently, possibly giving a non-practitioner core to it that would mean it wouldn’t face general karmic resistance- the sort of thing that kept Aware down and out and kept practitioners from becoming president. - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2021/12/14 Excerpt] from [[Left in the Dust 16.2]]</ref>