Greater Powers

A Greater Power is a general term for one of the most potent Others. It includes Deities, Primevals, Angels, Greater Spirits, possibly Demons,<ref>Greater Powers
–Worship – Prayer, tapping into the well of divinity, serving divine forces.
–Labeling Greatness – Identifying gods, primevals, angels, great spirits, et al.
–Capricious Power* – Management of the uncontrollable and unpredictable.
–Overflow and Excess* – When measures to contain greater powers fail.
–Heartless Practices* – Breaching the bounds of mortality and humanity.
–Hollow Others* – Vestiges, hollows, stains, and other remnants of excess power.
–Others in Excess* – Others of unrestrained power; god-cursed, wishful, oroboros.
–Counter-Diabolism* – Mitigating harm, best practices for self-preservation.

- Blue Heron Institute class list, 4.1 Bonus Content</ref> Incarnations and Judges,<ref>“Major powers.  Are these gods?  Great spirits?  Incarnations? [...] What would you say if I asked if these greater powers are judges?  Carmine, Alabaster, Sable, and Aurum?” - excerpt from Vanishing Points 8.1</ref> among others. Karma and the spirits as a whole can be considered a Greater Power.<ref>Protection x Divine: Law

Practitioners who deal with law work with karma, balance, and the greater, more fundamental architecture of practice in general.  They gain exceptional power over those with low karma, their power is dependent on their own karma, and they can impose barriers, restrictions, and conditions that manipulate or alter an individual’s karma.  Law mages work with a soft hand as they work with the spirits, but where the spirits a shaman deals with might be, metaphorically, spirits of a single color or type, Law Mages work with the blurred sum total of spirits as a whole (and as a greater power). - Pact Dice: The Practices</ref> Practices which deal with such things are often known as Divine practices.<ref>Divine practices and those from greater powers are better for the changes to the rules, and for those who wish to create life, the divine breath is adept at doing so. - excerpt from Demesnes, quoted in Bonus Material: Demesnes Text</ref><ref>With many of the practices in the Divine line, you're dealing with greater powers (not necessarily gods) and forces that are essentially at the 'ground level' of the universe, fabricating it, taking a broader hand in events above human affairs, etc, but the vast majority of these are capricious. - /g7gkpq7 Wildbow on Reddit</ref>

Some types of Other or Practitioner (Cultist, Harbinger, Chosen) can generally only serve or be created by a Greater Power. Some Practitioners, such as Ms Durocher, have a general interest in or focus on Greater Powers.

Greater powers have a tendency to naturally create pocket realms as their weight warps the world.<ref>Raquel’s eyebrows went up.  “Oh, you missed that one.  Uhhh, so like, the biggest, most serious Others, including Incarnations, gods, great spirits, and whatever.  They have a weight to them.  He had this visual demonstration.  Put something heavy down on a sheet of fabric, and it creates this dip.  I might be explaining this badly.”

“Finish explaining and we can tell you if it’s a bad explanation,” Lucy said.

Yadira jumped in.  “Big things, metaphysically, can create their own realms, just by being.”

“Like gravity?” Avery asked.

“More like the world’s a plastic bed,” Raquel said, “and you sit on it and it makes a dip, and if you pour water onto the bed it’ll settle in around your butt where the dip is.” - Excerpt from Cutting Class 6.3</ref>

References

<references/>