Mess

Mess is any situation created by magic that most practitioners and Others would be expected to fix or ameliorate.<ref name=":0"/> Otherwise karma and related forces will negatively impact the perpetrators when innocents are affected.

Particulars

Harbingers generally have a storm that causes a mess that they have to suppress if they want to interact with innocents.<ref> - Pact Dice: Harbinger</ref> This can similarly come up with summoning practices and any calling of higher powers as they might bring a "storm" with them.<ref>Pills began to rain down onto the arena, only within the arena. With them came a shadow from above. A long-limbed woman, twenty feet tall, emaciated and covered with painted images that looked like they’d been drawn and lit up with blacklights. Her hair was dyed, her makeup garish, and she wore a cowboy hat.

“Bend to-”

The figure reached down, emptying a pill bottle over Talia’s head. The girl scrambled to get away from the downpour, ducked left, then darted right. She and her doll began moving in different directions.
[...]
“And clean up the battlefield of these pills, please,” Mr. Bristow said.

“That’s tougher but okay,” Jorja said. She looked around at the sea of multicolored pills that threatened to bury the grass. “It’s hard to avoid making a mess when I summon something big.” - Excerpt from Cutting Class 6.7</ref>

Rapacious practices that feed on the innocent can create such problems if the practitioner is not circumspect enough.

Greater Powers can easily make a mess through their actions. Emergent gods, as gods can be included under 'greater powers', not having the personality or experience to do otherwise, can use forces like Creation to make messes.<ref name=":13">Durocher looked up at him.  “And many are like yourself, others are, hm, what would we call them?  Raymond?  Glitches in the system?”  She looked to Raymond, who sat off to the side.

“Emergent gods,” Raymond said.  “Sometimes we’ll term them cosmic rounding errors.  Complexities of a deific scale?”

“Complex, in that case, being used in the same sense we talk about complex spirits, elementals, and such?”  Durocher asked, pacing, looking at the class and not Raymond.

“Yes,” Raymond said.

“You have to be careful with that lot,” Metaphaos said.  “Messy.  Interesting, but not fun.”

“Why?” Durocher asked, pointing at him, without turning around.

“They don’t always have humanity and humanity’s faith giving them a push from behind from the outset.  You can get less human forces, and that gets out of control fast.  They might not speak your languages, they might not have very good aim, or they might not care either way.  [...] Most gods get to be gods because they have that faith backing them and they have the tools to do that creating.  Sometimes it’s one and the other follows, other times?  We’re like this, right out of the tin.  Grown and gorgeous.” - Excerpt from Vanishing Points 8.1</ref> The death of the Carmine Beast made Kennet dangerous. The killing of a specific god was contraindicated because a death of hers' would spill all her energies around and not necessarily kill her for good.<ref>“More than that.  They were boasting to the Wild Hunt, and I got the impression they believed the boasts, because the primeval seemed to sense it too.  She has her feet in the Abyss and her head is up in… not heaven.  A place that rains blood, instead.  Power was funneled into her, she’s connected to and worshiped by forces in the deep Abyss, she’s connected up here and enabled by the Carmine.  If someone tries to kill or remove her, it’s going to make a mess. [...] She’s a conduit.  Divine things, abyssal things.  Blood.  Smash a branch, you get splinters and bits of bark around, right?  But if you cut a pipe?  Or me?  Or her?  Contents spray out.  Remove her?  If you even can, when the Wild Hunt and a primeval couldn’t or wouldn’t?  Abyss sprays up, along with worshipers, divinity empties its way down, along with a lot of blood.”

Avery thought of the death of the Carmine Beast.

“Putting us back to square one,” Avery said the thought aloud. “Probably a similar effect. Probably worse.”

“Her side seemed to think she could reform from near-total annihilation, if the Abyssal worshipers sprayed forth and prayed in her name. The Wild Hunt seemed to think to unmake or undo her, they’d have to retrace her steps, and they weren’t willing to go where she’d planted her feet. The primeval beast I was poisoning… its heart quickened as it recognized divine power.” - Excerpt from Crossed with Silver 19.13</ref>

In fact, one of Charles Abrams biggest failings is his reckless nature which created several messes: the creation of a Revenant,<ref>“You’re a scary man, Charles.”

“I was scarier then, even if I didn’t realize it.  Revenant came tearing through.  Horror movie stuff, custom endings for each of us, starting with the lowest rank guys, then moving up.  Attacked our business, our alliances, stock, money, revealed secrets.  Crucified one guy with rebar she’d hooked up to a heat source, took the bones out of a woman’s arms and legs and left her in a shallow hole in the rain, to drown.  She had a vendetta in the way only the vengeful undead can.  And the thing that got me was… we had no idea who it was.”

“Each death is a hint,” Alexander said.  “But you know that.”

“Yeah.  The revenants need to stay anchored in this world.  They do it with keepsakes, which means you’ve got to look for the places they hit before they start coming after people.  Reach the start of the trail before they get to the last of you.  And we couldn’t.  The guys I was working with cooperated, I told them to investigate and they did.  We contacted police, we were everywhere.  We narrowed it down to a certain neighborhood, a select few people, and couldn’t get any further than that.”

“How’d you get out of it?” Raymond asked.

“I didn’t.  She got the third, second, and the top guy.  I pulled out all of my tricks.  A few of my monsters, and she still got me.  Decided I wasn’t directly involved enough to die, so she’d leave it up to fate.  Handcuffed me in the electrical room of an abandoned warehouse with a lot of the evidence.  Cops eventually came, and I got my first stint in prison.” - Excerpt from Gone Ahead 7.x</ref>, the creation of places like the Kennet Undercity,<ref>Verona said. “Because I’m not even sure [Charles]’s capable of building. Kennet below was a half-baked idea he spat out to get control over a town, and it was a mess we had to clean up. Your school is going to be worse, because nobody’s all that invested in cleaning it up or bringing it up to par. If you ever get it, it’ll be far from your dreams and I bet you’ll hate yourself for it.” - Excerpt from Hard Pass 22.6</ref> being toohands-offf on a minor level like a Cuimrech goblin,<ref>“Tracking the movements of us and his enemies. Possibly extending his power and influence into those territories.”

“Is he that reckless?”

“He’s reckless,” Verona said. She paused. “Probably not all that reckless. I don’t think he even anticipated this thing breeding, but the fact he sent it out and it did…”

“Sloppy,” Avery supplied.

Verona remembered talking a lot about how Charles was a fat sloppy cock, and repeating that a lot in hopes of getting Lucy to crack, and she had to fight to keep from smiling or laughing to herself. - Excerpt from In Absentia 21.2</ref> and a major level with his Bloody Lords.<ref>“You implied earlier you think I’m making mistakes.”

“The Dropped Call- I don’t know what you call it, it’s the name we gave it-”

“Works.”

“It’s gathering power, playing politics, extending influence. It wanted the Beorgmann.”

“I’m aware.”

“Are you okay with that? Just asking. You apparently cared enough to not want kids awakened back at our awakening ritual, you made some jabs at the Blue Heron students, gainsaying them. But you’re okay cooperating with an Other that’s kidnapped hundreds of kids?”

“Give me time.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Things will make sense in time.” - Excerpt from Crossed with Silver 19.12</ref>

Some use such situations offensively Found Kennet was set up so that in the initial stages any of the invading Musserite practitioners using magic around innocent kennet citizens would make those citizens Aware, with the karmic weight falling on the Musserites.<ref>There was a wheel in the sky, turning slowly. Like a wagon wheel, maybe, or an old fashioned bike wheel. It was hard to pin down, with the clouds beneath it. It was high enough to be above those clouds, but so wide that the one edge of it grazed the one ski hill to the east, and the other end of it was above the other, smaller hill.
[...]
Eloise looked.  And she saw connections reaching.

Tenuous, unsure.  On the bounds of registering something profound.  Three thousand or so connections extending skyward across this little town, looking up at the shadow in the clouds, trying to puzzle out what it was.

Bringing things to the very edge of Awareness.  Threatening it.
[...]
“Marlen,” Eloise said.  “Get to Musser.  Tell him not to make a move just yet. [...] We can’t afford it.  One wrong move and the illusion shatters, and we’d be the ones owning the consequences.” - Excerpt from Gone and Done It 17.b</ref>

Examples

The Girl by Candlelight caused issues when she was still fairly new.<ref name=":0">Edith said. “Practitioners have a responsibility to tidy up messes and keep ordinary people from being inconvenienced. Matthew followed a trail of small fires and sightings to me. The ghost of a girl who suffocated on smoke in a house fire. The emotions and spirits shed in a roadside, candlelit vigil for a teenage girl who died in a car accident. A child’s pyromania, manifested in anxiety and confusion, cast away as the child grew up. These things and other, smaller things found each other and were bound together.” - Excerpt from Lost for Words 1.3</ref>

The girl in the checkered scarf was given assistance with her situation because her destruction would have caused a large mess.

Nicolette while scouting in kennet used omens that caused Melissa injury.<ref>“Looks like it’s Melissa, from our class,” Verona commented. [...]“She hurt Melissa through her carelessness?” Avery asked.

“Hurt was set ta happen, see?” Alpeana said. “But the minging lass might’ve made tha situation worse, stickin’ tha particular nose into thins.” - Excerpt from Stolen Away 2.6</ref> It was enough of an issue that Nico had to go out of her way to make it up to Melissa.<ref>“I couldn’t do much more because I can’t set foot in or directly interfere with Kennet.  I pulled strings from the outside.  Giving her family that much money cost me.”

“Her life is still in shambles.  Because your omens destroyed her ankle,” Lucy said.

“Then… I’ll keep at it.  But I can see shadows of omens, and I don’t think she’s fighting for her own sake.  I can’t really give her better if she doesn’t reach out and take it.”

“Can you try?” Lucy asked.

“Okay,” Nicolette said.  “But past a certain point, I’ll have to argue I’ve discharged my duties.” - Excerpt from Leaving a Mark 4.3</ref>

Reggie formed partially from the holes that the Hungry Choir left in the world.

References

<references/>