Vestige
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Vestiges are Others that can occur naturally, but are usually artificially created through the actions of a Practitioner.<ref>Vestiges can arise naturally. In fact, you could make the argument that ghosts are a subset of vestiges as a whole - they're just really reinforced by the ongoing and complicated pattern of life and death, arising from things that push beyond the boundaries of that pattern. - Excerpt from a Wildbow Comment on Reddit</ref> Usually seen as a middle-point between a simulacrum and a ghost and compared to shadows. In other words they are something that can be seen as either a flawed simulacrum, or a ghost that left a deep enough impression in reality that you can use that impression as a mold capable of memories and complex thoughts.
Though this makes them flexible and capable of being molded and altered, they are impermanent. Given time and external pressures they started to degrade and the degradation grows worse over time, to the point that it takes more and more effort and energy to keep them intact. Eventually they break down, but they can be shored up with other spirits and Others to become more Wraith-like.<ref name=R1.1>Vestiges can arise naturally. In fact, you could make the argument that ghosts are a subset of vestiges as a whole - they're just really reinforced by the ongoing and complicated pattern of life and death, arising from things that push beyond the boundaries of that pattern.
You're otherwise right, though I'll note only some vestiges have a self. Vestiges are essentially the equivalent of tracing existing work, creating mock replicas of some or all of something already in existence, or taking the stuffing out of X and leaving only the husk. They resemble the original but something is missing and they're often very fragile. They're not all alive.
A faerie using glamour and trickery to steal your shadow and create a shadow you would be creating a vestige. A mockery of you shored up by expectation, by spirits, by the fact it's acting like you and getting away with it (the wheel is still spinning but the hamster is long gone). Depending on how that situation played out, the shadow could gain strength enough to become something else while depleting you, and you'd be the vestige instead.
Curses and magical attacks that hit you on a level beyond the physical and the real could also leave you on the brink of... not death, because your heart beats and you breathe, not being emotionally or mentally dead because you think and feel, but being so less that you're barely not there. The effect might be like Bart when he sells his soul or Gollum with the one ring. Practitioners might put too much personal power into a created item or demesne and lose the power to affect the real world, making them very close to being that husk.
Most don't stay in that state for long. It's either the last phase before utter destruction or other things will jump on it or capitalize on it, because a vestige is a pretty valuable resource, a nice home for something parasitic, or a 'stock' that could quintuple in value in a matter of days, as things return to normal.
It's like taxidermied animals, sculptures, or those models of people with the guts and internal organs on display, but its practice that gets them there and practice that keeps them going, playing off of the fact that you can look at them and you can say "that's a human" or "That's clearly Chad", but they're not, there's obviously something missing or gone. - Vestige suff</ref>
The book Vestiges: Glimmers and Gasps contains a wealth of information on the subject.
Uses
Rose Thorburn Sr. created a vestige for her grandson Blake to help him fall into the roll of a practitioner and possibly to secure a heir. Because of this they count as one person as she now serves as his reflection and her voice carries the power to influence Others, as their family line are typically female. Because of their connection she draws power from him. Then it turns out she created Blake as the vestige rather than Rose to act as her protector.
Johannes uses them in his territory as playthings for Others, who wish to return to the days before the Seal of Solomon, at the admission of gaining power from them. He shores them up with mouse and dog spirits to affect the with his implement.
Variants
- Bartisch<ref>Bartisch
The Bartisch are vestiges resulting from certain cruel practices that prey on human victims. The practice would target wrongdoers, often adulterers and keepers of secrets, and distill a symbol within their eye, which could then be extruded. The eye would tear open and spill forth things such as hot coals, moths, apples, and feathers, often symbolic of the secret or a particular scene of the adultery. So long as the item was kept by the practitioner, the Bartisch was kept enslaved, a creature that could stand watch or lurk just beyond the existence of innocents, collecting and penning down secrets. In areas where this ritual is done with any frequency, they can start emerging on their own, when silences are kept about things seen or when a very good individual is done a wrong by a partner who maintains unerring eye contact for too long.
Bartisch are eyeless and fragile, and often collect their personal motifs (example: apples) around them, either by way of the spiritual energies around them or because they actively collect the things to salve the gaping hole in their Self. They wander, lurk, appear to those going against convention, and if one is seen, invariably it serves as an omen that that person has been found out, if only because the Bartisch must tell the one who owns their 'tear' what they discover. Tears of a Bartisch (particularly those of one who emerges naturally vs. being made with practice) are often hard to hold onto but will grant whispers of secrets, dreams of the same, or visitations with the Bartisch, who will tell the holder things. Losing the tear, however, may mean becoming a Bartisch oneself, a process that starts slowly but comes to a violent climax if one cannot rid themselves of their own secrets and wrongs before the object in their eye spills forth. - Wildbow on Discord</ref> - Glimmer<ref>Glimmers
Vestiges that tend to come about specifically from science that verges on practice (mad science, for lack of a better way of putting it), or from technomancers who fuck up. They'd be called shadows of their former self, but they tend to be the opposite- light. They lead pretty frantic, frenzied existences trying to keep themselves going while maintaining traces or bastardizations of their former scientific knowledge or practices. Can become what they work with for brief periods - an ex-virologist can become disease. A Tesla-like mad scientist can become electricity. An ex-technomancer glimmer can create and become his ritual, coming out the other side. Very smart, very reckless. - Wildbow on Discord</ref> - Husks those burnt out by Harbingers of Greater Powers, much tougher then a standard vestige.
- Promethean<ref>Promethean
Typically the result of an accident with elementalist practice combined with a high-price school, that results in a vestige with an ember of fire within them, filling in the gaps created. Other varieties exist, tied to other elements, but fire is common due to its propensity to burn, consume, and burn away.
Prometheans are drawn to the insubstantial, spirits, echoes, and places with meaning, trying to fill the void in themselves, but will instead feed these things with elemental power. Because of their propensity to act out patterns as vestiges of their former lives, and the power at their disposal, they can become pseudo-practitioners with an elementalist bent. The ones who don't flame out or get dealt with immediately (often due to being rural) will gradually build up a collection of fiery wraiths, spirits, and husks, before gradually finding their way to civilization, as that is the next best source of echoes and other things to feed on.
In rare circumstances, Prometheans can be be found in the deep wilderness, fed with echoes and spirits by ritual while being worshiped as living goddesses or gods. This tends to go to very bad places when it inevitably collapses, though this collapse can sometimes take centuries. - Wildbow on Discord</ref>
Notable Vestiges
- Rose Thorburn Jr.
- Natives of Johannes' Demesne
- Dreg<ref>“This is Dreg.”
Right. They were the callers of these great spirits of drugs or whatever.
Maybe not boyfriend material. They’d been told to be careful and steer clear.
“Is he the spirit you call?” Lucy asked.
Tymon laughed, suddenly enough it startled her.
“No,” Dreg rasped, speaking with an adult’s voice. “A good familiar is a partner, something you can control, or something you’re willing to be controlled by. Things as large and wild as Black Gutter do nothing except drown you out.”
“Dreg is a vestige. Was Aware enough to dip into some Jekyll and Hyde type alchemy, eroded away a good chunk of his Self. Only a fragment of the person was left, other stuff took up residence.”
“I was almost a doctor,” Dreg said. “A sip of this, a drab of that, to bring out the sharpness of my mind and my attention to details and diagnosis. I was an angel to hundreds of people who had nothing. But the same drug made me frail, and some people broke me to pieces so they could take my stash of herbs and chemicals. Then I had only the frailty, a shattered body, an old self I’d forgotten, and dashed dreams of what might have been.” - Excerpt from Leaving a Mark 4.6</ref> - Yellowston Apprentice<ref>Gone Ahead 7.a</ref>
References
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