Innocence

An innocent refers to a human who is unaware of the supernatural.<ref name=":0">“I do have a family,” Fell told Rose. “Conquest might try to use them against me as leverage.”

Family. Did that mean allies? “Can I ask who they are, or is it too personal?”

“You can ask. My niece hasn’t been inducted into this world yet. She benefits from the protections of innocence, and she’s in capable hands, but I’d still like to be sure.” - Excerpt from Subordination 6.9</ref><ref name=":1">“This will go more smoothly with her here. Everyone will have to carefully choose their words, and nobody will pull out weapons with a relative innocent in the way. Peace, after a fashion.”

Because cluing her into the world behind the curtain means taking on some responsibility for whatever happens to her.
[...]
Our meeting would take place with innocents in the room. Say the wrong thing, or use powers in an obvious, aggressive way, and we risked becoming responsible for those same innocents. - Excerpt from Void 7.9</ref><ref>He had [put] her in a situation where she couldn’t chase him. Where she was sufficiently distracted, pinned down in Jacob’s Bell, unable to leave out of concern that he would return, or that her fathers would fall prey to the goblins.

They weren’t quite innocent of Other things, but they did have protections.

She had to wonder if it was enough. - Excerpt from Signature 8.3</ref> The term is sometimes used for anyone who hasn't undergone Awakening, even those who know about magic's existence (Aware).<ref>I want a non-practitioner. There are benefits to having you with us, as a relatively innocent human. - Excerpt from Judgement 16.4</ref><ref name=":2">“I’m gonna step out, then,” Priss said. “Keep my eyes virgin and innocent.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Goosh? Joel? Go with her. She’s your model. Get advice from her on being the designated liar, what you can do, what you can’t, what to stay away from, and when to step in.” - Excerpt from Subordination 6.2</ref>

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?”

“It’s a little more complicated than that.”

“Far more,” he said. “Far, far more. Usual protections might not apply, but the universe will protect innocents in a roundabout way.

“Something like that,” I said.
[...]
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.” - 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. - 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.

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.”

“Okay,” I said. “And the seal?”

“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.” - 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
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.

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. - 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.”

“Yes,” Reid said.

“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.”

“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.”
[...]
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.” - 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. - 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.
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".
Without the centuries of precedence, is Innocence protected strongly, or even at all in these areas when compared to elsewhere?

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.
Less that it's 'less strongly enforced' and more that enforcing it is pretty easy. - 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.

“Different rules,” I told Evan. “Less layers separating you and them. Besides, I don’t know how much innocence you hold onto, here.” - 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.

“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.”

“This is natural,” Tiff said. “But it’s hers, in a way that very few things are anyone’s nowadays.” - 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.

The gutted underbelly had leaked gas, against all odds, and the Eye had ignited it.

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. - 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 items 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.

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.

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. - Excerpt from Signature 8.2</ref> Incarnations<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. - Excerpt from Lost for Words 1.4</ref> and Peddlars 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. - 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 Karmically deserving of punishment can be more easily targeted by Others.<ref>“Innocents?” Verona asked.

“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.”
[...]
“So you’re doing something good?” Verona asked, a bit skeptical.

“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.”
[...]
“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.”

“Dog Meat like…”

“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.” - 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>

Drawbacks of Innocence

Innocents are blind from a number of supernatural phenomena. They can't see people who are falling through the cracks,<ref>The blast was deafening in the relative quiet. She wondered if her lack of presence in the world would keep people from paying attention, or if they’d catch the shotgun blast all the same, but find themselves unable to place it.

They were ignorant and innocent, whatever the case. - Excerpt from Signature 8.7</ref> hear familiars talk,<ref name=":6">“I came back, kind of!” Evan said.

“The bird mo- he came back,” Green Eyes translated from ‘can’t be heard by innocents’. - excerpt from Duress 12.4</ref> see creatures in the mirror world, etc.

Much of this is a result of not being Awakened and so applies even once a person is informed the supernatural exists.<ref name=":6" />

Innocents also have a tendency to rationalize and forget supernatural occurrences.<ref name=":5" /> If they fall deep enough into this pattern they may become a Skeptic.<ref>There are many ways a Skeptic can come about, but these ways can include indoctrination or acclimatization.
[...]
When Innocents find themselves faced with the practice or with Others, they will instinctively reach for ways to soften the blow.  If there is room for doubt, they often capitalize on that room, then build on that capital.  Excuses are clung to, they question their own memories or accounting of events, and may liberally revise these memories and accountings, until they return to comfortable reality.  With enough repetition, they can form a comfortable bubble around themselves, where anything extraordinary is dismissed.

Skeptics are ignorant and ignorance is dangerous.  Practice struggles to find traction on a Skeptic, and Others suffer a heavy cost to their karma and Selves simply for stepping into the light when the Skeptic is present, even though the Skeptic is often so insulated that the appearance of a god in its full bearing could be dismissed one way or another. - 4.8 Bonus Material: Dossiers</ref>

Letting innocents see wounds on themselves and others, especially if those would are seen or "validated" by medical professionals, makes such damage difficult to heal.<ref>Taking Lucy to the hospital was a good instinct as a mom and a caring parent, but it also ties our hands a bit. Any bumps, scrapes, or soreness are validated by Innocents now. Which makes healing harder. - Excerpt from Wild Abandom 18.10</ref>

Childhood Innocence and such

The ability of young children to see through certain magical illusions is also sometimes referred to as "innocence".<ref>“Careful, my lad,” the bogeyman said, clapping a hand on the boy’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry, sir,” the boy said.

Then the boy looked up, and his eyes widened in fear.

The boy was still young enough to be innocent, it seemed.

No matter. The boy was already running away, releasing only a small, incoherent, frightened noise before he was gone from view. - Excerpt from 5.x (Histories)</ref><ref>Roxanne raised her eyes. I might have thought she was young enough to be innocent, but she looked right past me. At most, I might’ve been an odd shadow she wouldn’t notice unless she was looking for it.

James, at fourteen, was two years Roxanne’s senior. He saw me.

Why the difference? Was it that James was quieter, more studious, less exposed to the ugliness of the world? Or was it that James had never truly grown up or defined himself outside of the shadow of his parents and their desires? - Excerpt from Malfeasance 11.6</ref> Innocent children are sometimes attractive to Demons, and so useful in summoning them.<ref>Should another practitioner need to bait him again, know that this author used [...] an innocent and a virgin in the form of a one year old innocent, placed at the height of the pile. For more on the reasoning behind this methodology, please see my other work, Dark Contracts, chapter four.

This author cannot say whether he was attracted to the virgin aspect or the innocent, but this author was nonetheless happy to have an option at hand to serve both purposes. The child was unharmed and largely unaware of what occurred. - Excerpt from Bonds 1.7</ref>

It's unclear if this type of innocence has any connection to the "innocence" of uninitiated humans. But may instead be related to people who are near major events such as the beginning or end of life as in age or when one is really sick.<ref>“The very young, the very old, and the infirm, can sometimes see what others are blind to. This can be very unlucky or very lucky, depending. The kind of luck that changes the direction of lives, or the unluck that ends them.” - Excerpt from Blood Run Cold 0.0</ref>

Leaving Innocence

Transitioning to Aware or Practitioner usually involves a conscious choice on the part of the innocent.<ref> Wildow: Generally, yes. But note I said:

(which is generally by way of Awakening, whether it's the awakening ritual or a knighting ritual as is described in the Collector doc **or something more raw**)

I can imagine someone throwing themselves into a gauntlet or scenario with an intensity that punches through. Would have to be more intense, horrible, and focused than what Ted did, though, and I think making the active choice would be important, as well. - Conversation on Reddit</ref><ref>

• There's generally a 'crossing the threshold' moment to become Aware, as seen in 1.1, and a moment to lose innocence (which is generally by way of Awakening, whether it's the awakening ritual or a knighting ritual as is described in the Collector doc or something more raw). It's key to note this differs from person to person and circumstance to circumstance. A big part of Bristow's thing was utilizing innocence & the Aware so he helped them draw out their abilities without testing things.

[...]

- Conversation on Reddit</ref>

Examples

The Feorgbolds sent by the Briar Girl hunted Blake but did not pursue him when he fled into a gas station full of people.<ref>Was that a rule, here? No monsters after sunrise, or no monsters when others could see? - Excerpt from Bonds 1.2</ref>

Attempts to use practice in Kennet were dampened and halted due to the presence of innocents in an effect similar to skeptics, if much reduced and diffuse.<ref>Meaning she couldn’t stop it from littering her clothing, or falling onto the car.

A ward inside the car glowed faintly, pushing the paper away.  But again, there were bystanders.  The men on the sidewalk.  It couldn’t be too overt.  It couldn’t defy reality or expectations.

In a way, it was like the skeptic effect that had followed Sharon around, when the Aware had come.
[...]
The Hennigar ignored the cops, following after Lucy, but the same environment-claiming effect he’d been using didn’t work on an area as wide-open as the road.  Lucy avoided going into the hedges, and when he walked forward a few feet, she crossed maybe ten or twelve feet on all fours, before looking back.
[...]
The same All-Innocents-are-a-bit-skeptic level of stuff applied.  Even mid-rage, the Hennigar seemed to know enough to hold back, or the practice forced him to, getting weaker. - Excerpt from Gone and Done It 17.y</ref>

Fell hoped that Conquest would leave his niece out of their conflict because she was an innocent and therefore protected, but wasn't sure.<ref name=":0" />

Midge's rampage in the Spirit World was interpreted through innocence.<ref>As a group, Fell, Rose, Maggie and I stopped by a store display. Televisions played, showing surveillance camera footage and cell phone video. A crazy obese woman in the middle of a city street, flinging glass at fleeing shoppers. The news caption on the bottom read ‘Drug-fueled rampage?’

The pattern was the same, the path she took, amid cars that had stopped in the middle of the street.

Until she was gunned down. In the same spot where Rose had banished Midge.

We watched as the screen changed over. Changing topics. Arson, fires throughout the city. Car accidents. Property damage. Deaths. - Excerpt from Subordination 6.8</ref>

Isadora brought Paige to a meeting to force people to watch their words around her and refrain from violence.<ref name=":1" />

Blake noted that the innocent Thorburns would provide complications for their enemies while they were in the Thorburn House.<ref>Stay out of the way of the innocents on the ground floor, and the one we’ve got in the bedroom across from you. They’re… complications for the enemy. - Excerpt from Histories (Arc 11)</ref><ref>“Well,” I said. “As last-minute defenses go, filling the house with innocents, if that even works for these guys, it’ll slow down a lot of the stuff they could throw at us.” - Excerpt from Malfeasance 11.6</ref>

The presence of sleeping innocents anchored Jacob's Bell in reality while it was trying to slide into the Abyss. However, they would "suddenly decide" to evacuate as soon as they woke up.<ref>Jacob’s Bell is on the way down. The only thing keeping it here are the innocents, snug in their beds. No innocents in this house, so nothing to keep it up. Now, if I don’t keep the locals from suddenly deciding to evacuate this town, which they will, shortly after waking up, Jacob’s Bell is going to become a new attraction in the Abyss, complete with a spiteful lesser god and a perpetually tolling bell. - Excerpt from Sine Die 14.1</ref>

Witch Hunters<ref>*One Nightmare-type monster was invading dreams. Targeting normals. Not affiliated with Johannes or Sandra. Found wandering the streets in a human guise, spotted through the trickery with innocence, cut down with katana. - Excerpt from Interlude 10</ref> and Blackguards receive training on how to use Innocence to their advantage. Unlike supernatural beings, they could kill innocents without consequence,<ref>“If they don’t kill the others,” Ty said. “Because Witch Hunters can kill people. Even innocents.” - Excerpt from Malfeasance 11.7</ref> ignore supernatural edicts such as the enforced neutrality around Jacob's Bell council meetings, and enter warded Demesnes without issue.<ref>We turned down that street, and were soon joined by Andy and Eva.
The witch hunters.

“I assume they aren’t bound by any neutrality rules,” I said.

“No,” Laird said. “But if they wanted to kill you, they could enter your home and murder you in their sleep.” - Excerpt from Damages 2.1</ref> They had some resistance to "trickery" that altered memory or perception.<ref>When I asked Eva, Eva reminded me of the techniques we learned. Right off the bat, she found the discrepancy.

When we ask, “How did Rose manage?”, we struggle to answer.

When we ask, “How did the second Thorburn heir manage?” we can mutually agree that the heir was almost eerily in step with this world.

As witch hunters, free of any vows or ties to the world the monsters and practitioners inhabit, we’re protected against the trickery. A measure of innocence can challenge that reality, and clearly see the emperor without his clothes. - Excerpt from Interlude 10</ref><ref>One Nightmare-type monster was invading dreams. Targeting normals. Not affiliated with Johannes or Sandra. Found wandering the streets in a human guise, spotted through the trickery with innocence, cut down with katana. - Excerpt from Interlude 10</ref> Some Blackguards would deliberately avoid watching supernatural things to keep their eyes innocent.<ref name=":2" />

Trivia

• While there can be Incarnations of Innocence it is unknown how related they would be to this phenomena.<ref>"There are ways you can ask to play chess with Death, or one Death.  War, Innocence, Pain, Hope, Mischief… all are forces that can take form in this world, you can meet them, you can deal with them." - Excerpt form Lost for Words 1.4</ref>

References

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