Karma

Karma, also known as Right and Wrong (as distinct from the conventional morality of Good and Evil)<ref name=":1">“Karma has very little to do with good and evil,” the blonde woman said.  “It has a great deal to do with right and wrong.”

“Can you have a surplus?” I asked.

“You can.  It’s equally problematic, in many ways,” the woman said.  “Such individuals have good fortune, find life conspires to do them well, all leading up to a moment where an opportunistic Other manages to work around this good fortune and brings about their downfall.” - Excerpt from Damages 2.4</ref> or Balance<ref name=":0">At the time, I weighed morals.  These days I debate questions of Balance.  Some call it karma.

I remain a careful man, these days, but it is human nature to make mistakes in youth.  I remember classmates racking up credit card bills in the tens of thousands, before reality caught up with them.

For a practitioner without parents to watch over them, it is easy to do the same with one’s Balance.
[...]
My agreement to join them was a cautious one.  I spent a full night and two days awake, writing and revising the written contract.  Jeffrey barely skimmed it before agreeing.

Among those terms were measures meant to protect my Balance in the universe.  I’d come from a good home and an honest life, I’d been generous and given back more than I’d taken, and I held to the rules that God gave to mankind.  It was in holding to those rules that I bettered my Balance, rather than God himself, but I remain thankful for opportunity He gave me.
[...]
Many diabolists maintain some means of tracking their Balance.  I use a wooden ring.  For a long time, the changes in that ring and the perpetual reminder that I was in debt bothered me.  A lifetime bringing up my Balance, a few moments of outraged stupidity to spend it and subsequently plunge myself into debt.

My first big question, then, is whether we can manage the karmic balance.  Is it possible to walk away free and clear?

Most will say yes.  There is the slow growth.  Regaining an even or positive Balance by fits and starts, small oaths and large ones, through Right, maintaining and keeping to a code.  The Universe will periodically seek to re-establish balance, and the practitioner, succeed or fail, will find a portion of the debt spent to bring this about.  Bigger oaths and restoring balance to reality can counteract the karmic weight that burdens the practitioner. - Excerpt from Black Lamb's Blood, quoted in Gathered Pages: 4</ref> is an intangible force in the world of Pact. One's karma determines their luck, for lack of a better word, with those having good karma finding things going their way and those with bad finding everything that can go wrong going horribly so.

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.”

“The universe,” the young man said, “conspires against you.”

“Ah, hell,” I said.  “That would explain a few things.”

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.”

The young man said, “It’s a stopgap measure.  Sufficient for the non-practitioners who stumble on ways to give themselves bad karma.”

"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.”

"Survivors?” Rose asked.

"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.”

"Problems being?” I asked.

"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.” - Excerpt from Damages 2.4</ref> Practitioners such as Mason the Benevolent are known to focus on building up good karma; those who specialize in karma are generally a Law Magus. Conversely, Diabolists 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.”
[...]
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?”

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 nextguy 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.”
[...]
“Why would I want to open my mouth?  To give you hints?”

“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.”
[...]
“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.”

I glanced at Rose.  It had been 'her idea.

"To be entirely honest, I wasn’t aware that was actually a thing,” I said.  “Deferring responsibility.”

“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.”
[...]
“Don’t tell me you did the monologue, explaining things.”

“I did, kind of.”

“Damn it, Blake,” Ty said.

“It makes sense in context, the karma gain for fair play-”

“You’re telling me the universe encourages being the Bond villain?”

I hesitated.

“It does, doesn’t it?” Ty asked.

“Kind of?  Convoluted traps are generally better than just shooting the bastards, apparently.”
[...]
“It’s part of why we’re here,” Fell said. “Helping him out.”

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. - 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.”

"He practices using Karma?”

“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.”
[...]
“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?” - 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. - Excerpt from Left in the Dust 16.2</ref>

Rules

Sources of good karma:

• Keeping to a code.<ref name=":0" />
• Being generous and giving more than you take.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":2" /><ref name=":5">The old man continued, “I’ll explain, then, so there are no mistaken

assumptions.  The world seeks balance in all respects.  Whenever a practitioner works, they pay a price.  Sometimes the price is overt.  A soul for someone’s love.  An eye for the service of a powerful spirit.  The life of a companion to triumph over one’s enemies.  Sometimes the price is less of a direct transaction.  A favor to be paid later.  Conversely, an oath given, with nothing expected.”

“Which raises problems, hm?” the young man said.

The old man met my eyes.  “What happens when a debt isn’t paid?  If you take, then die before you can give?  Or the inverse?”

“You pass it on to your kids?”

“In some cases, yes.  But those children might incur more of a debt. Over time, the debt accumulates.  Perhaps two generations improve matters, working it off, and then the third undoes their hard work and adds more to the burden.” - Excerpt from Damages 2.4</ref>

• When the universe inflicts a punishment on someone with bad karma, some of the debt is discharged.<ref name=":0" /><ref>“I’m not lucky, though,” I said.  “And Molly wasn’t lucky either…  She…”
  
  I trailed off.  They waited, apparently content to wait while the gears fit together in my head and started turning.
  
  

I finished my sentence, along a different line. “… Eats a bit of the karmic backlash, pays a bit of the price for the universe not getting what it was supposed to, and the baton gets passed to me.  If I die, the same thing happens.  Each of us absorbs a bit of the brunt of it, until one of us finds our footing and carries on.” - Excerpt from Damages 2.4</ref>

• Making and keeping oaths<ref name=":0" /> or other declarations.<ref>“I want to do more good.  I gotta act my most awesome, and the spirits can recognize it and make me more awesome.  I’ve already worked it out.  I gotta be honest and true to myself and I have a game plan that I’ve declared a lot of times.  I gotta stick to the plan and the spirits will reward me with sweet, sweet karma." - Excerpt from Duress 12.7</ref><ref>That deck.  It was his implement, I was almost positive.  It was at

least part of how he professed to know everything that was about to happen, or at least narrow things down enough to make a good guess.  So long as he could, he could make confident statements, the spirits would be happier with him, and they’d help the statements come true out of goodwill, just like bad karma had been dragging me down and introducing problem after problem for the entire time I’d been human.

That deck was at the center of his ability to perpetuate an upward spiral.
It dawned on me that I’d been walking into trouble this whole time.

Not walking into his prophecy, but something else entirely.

By giving him chances to show off the cards and make predictions, I was letting him score points.  Every spirit that was nearby, maybe excepting the spirits inhabiting me, was getting to be very pleased with this young man who made it all simple for them. - Excerpt from Malfeasance 11.4 </ref>

• Punishing someone who has done you or your community unprovoked harm.<ref name=":6">“Okay,” I said, thinking.  “And… if it has to do with right and wrong… then can you get bad mojo for, say, going after a local practitioner’s livelihood?”
  
  “How?” the young man asked.
  
  I started to reach for the note, then realized I couldn’t without

moving the hatchet.  I did it awkwardly with my other hand, handing it to them.

While he read, the woman asked, “Has he acted against you?  Done unprovoked harm to you?”

“Directly?  No.  Indirectly?  He tricked me and left me for the monsters to eat.  We’d only just met.  Unless the whole history of my family counts as a provocation.”

“You’d be secure.  It would even benefit you.  You should be able to find all of this information in the textbooks of the library.”- Excerpt from Damages 2.4</ref>

• Being honest, the more honest and forthright the better.<ref name=":7">“I promised it I’d keep it warm,” I said.
  

“Not exactly true, is that?” she asked me.

I frowned.

“I’m fairly well versed in seeing the nuances of karma at work.  You’ve come very close to lying a few times in a short span of time, and

you’ve each outright lied at least once in the half hour prior to our arrival.”

“Oh hell,” I said.

“It’s easy to slip, at first,” she said.  “In this case, you’re bordering on a lie, but you’re still telling the truth.  Rose here promised you’d keep it warm.  Your promise was implicit, and because Rose is an extension of you…”

“It’s borderline,” I said.

“Being more honest means you stock up more goodwill with the universe and any others you meet.  Borderline dishonesty is useful, lying by omission is better yet, and unvarnished honesty is better still.  I can’t quite interpret it, but perhaps you were joking?  Sarcasm?”

I thought back.

“Shit,” I said.  “So… what?  I lose my power?”

“You lose some.  And a mere ghost gains more influence over you, even through a circle, or when bound into an object.  It’ll take at least a week to wear off.  Luckily, there aren’t many things in this house to hear, hm?”

“And me?” Rose asked.

“It matters for you too,” Ms. Lewis said.  “For the time being, you are connected to Blake.  Tell me, Blake, did you feel weaker?  More vulnerable?”

“I felt tired,” I said.  “I wondered for a moment if Rose had done something.”

“A vestige is fragile.  Defy the natural order, and the vestige suffers.”

“And a damaged vestige drains energy,” I said, glancing at Rose.

“Just so.”

“I’d kind of expected a… clap of thunder?” I said.

“Barring the exceptional moments of idiocy, such as the breaking of an oath, you typically only discover what you’ve done when you reach for power and find it gone.”- Excerpt from Damages 2.4</ref>

• Maintaining a Demesne.<ref name=":8">She notes, in a matter of fact way, that simply holding a demesne

generates good karma, bettering her position in the world so long as she

tends to the space. - Excerpt from Demesne, quoted in Gathered Pages: 2</ref>

• Providing for guests, in accordance with Hospitality.<ref name=":2" />
• Announcing your intentions and "playing fair" by warning, and explaining your actions to, your enemies.<ref>Ms. Lewis said, “Individuals like him, typically, have effectively stocked up on good karma, so they might spend it in times of crisis.  I have a good idea about what’s happened, even if my information is

incomplete, and I think he may have been holding back.  Acting upfront, informing you as to why he’s attacking you, being honest and helpful.  Inviting compromise.  Tempering himself.” - [https://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/2014/02/04 amages-2-6/ excerpt] from Damages 2.6</ref><ref>“I’m not trying to reap any extra karma by sharing details with you,” Andy said.  “Those other guys are doing the whole ‘play fair’, ‘see the whites of your enemy’s eyes before you doom them forever’, and that ‘announce your intentions before seeing them through’ garbage.  If and when I come after you, Thorburn, I’m not doing any of that.” - Excerpt from Breach 3.5</ref>

• Some Others like Isadora are able to endow excess good karma onto others.<ref>“Sphinx is old, and maybe it’s more personal for old things.  Teaches at the University.  Periodically goes for the kids who can’t hack it.  Once every decade or so, maybe.  Failing grades, depression, panic, a downward spiral everyone recognizes, and then their rooms are cleared out one night and they’ve up and disappeared.”
  
  “Didn’t know that last part,” I said.
  
  “She is what she is.  She occasionally takes a student under her

not-so-proverbial wing.  We’ve talked it over, and the general consensus is she finds the stragglers and tests them.  Winners get mentored.  Get a natural glow about ’em, you know what I mean?”

“No, not so much.”

“Stuff starts going their way.  Lucky.  The right people start gravitating towards them.  Things falling into place.”

“Good karma,” I said.

“Yeah.  That.  Girls stick around for two or three years and then take their leave, wiser, talented, brimming with confidence.  We’ve seen, what, two?”

“One left a few weeks after we first joined the council,” the woman sitting under the window said.  “Another one wrapped up earlier this year.  Left before Summer.”

“I could do with some of that good karma,” I said.  “But I don’t think even the Sphinx’s ministrations are about to help me with the massive debt my family’s incurred.” - Excerpt from Collateral 4.10</ref> Sources of karmic debt:

• Lying. This even affects Innocents to an extent.<ref name=":3">The Bane turned on Peter.
  
  “Why me?” Peter asked.  “Third fucking time.  The fuck?” “Karma,” I said.  “Apparently you’ve racked up more bad karma than any of us, except maybe me, and I’m inside a mirror.”
  
  

“Karma?” Kathryn asked.

“Lies,” I said.  “Lies are one.  Even if you’re not a part of all this, it adds up.  Wronging people, breaking your word…”
“I’m fuuuuucked,” Peter said, backing away from the Bane. “Fuck me.  Kicking myself for ever thinking this stuff was cool.  Even with the scary stuff… if there’s karma, I’m so completely and utterly fucked.”

"More than you know,” I said.  “You inherit the house, you inherit all the bad karma dating back generations.  We weren’t good wizards, in case you weren’t aware.” - Excerpt from Duress 12.3</ref> Karma will also drain a Practitioner or Other of some of their power and structural integrity for lying.<ref name=":7" />

• Some Others like Isadora are able to inflict bad karma onto others, while things like Demons incur a heavy debt because they poison the world with their very existence.
• When a person with an outstanding karmic debt dies, the debt can pass on to their heir(s).<ref name=":5" />
• Wronging someone without cause.<ref name=":6" /><ref name=":3" /> This even affects Innocents to an extent.<ref name=":3"/>
• Recieving "free" magical power.<ref name=":5" />
• Punishing someone unjustly, i.e. if they're innocent and you gave them no chance to argue in their defence.<ref name=":9">“I looked,” I said.  “We looked.  There was nothing about what justifies an execution.”
  
  “Executions are a formalization of what we just talked about.  You’ll find more on them in books relating to karmic debt and the manipulation thereof.”
  
  I groaned a bit.  Looking in the wrong place.
  
  
  “Damn it,” I heard Rose muttering.
  
  “You offend the community, the community retaliates, and the balance is maintained.  If the community acts against you and it’s unjust, then there is imbalance, and this weighs heavier than matters between individuals.   Clever individuals with some knowledge on how to use and manipulate karma could theoretically survive and ride the backlash to a position at the top.”
  
  I rubbed my chin.  “And if I contrived to get them to punish me for a crime I didn’t commit?  Get an order of execution against myself?”
  
  “Blake!”  Rose said.
  
  “Theoretically,” I said.
  
  

“There are any number of factors to consider,” the older man said. “If they offer you a chance to speak for yourself and you don’t, they would face little backlash.  Are they brash?  Too stupid to do so?” - Excerpt from Damages 2.4</ref>

• Introducing an Innocent to the existence of magic,<ref>“Telling people about this stuff is a fast track to getting more bad karma.  Getting involved with the sort of things Grandmother got involved with is a faster track.  The lawyers are a part of that.  Those are the bullet points for what you need to know about why this is happening.  Rose is gone, and you guys are… like I said, nobody wants to be the one to tell you ‘hey, magic is real‘, so you’re-” - Excerpt from Duress 12.4</ref> only for them to suffer harm.<ref name=":10">“And… I haven’t read anything explicit about the reason this is all secret.  There are rules Others follow, with stiff penalties, and they generally keep to hunting what they’re allowed to hunt… but what’s to keep me from appearing on TV tomorrow and showing off my magic?”
  
  “Responsibility,” the old man said.  “It started as an ethic; you don’t initiate someone into this world without teaching them the proper way things are done.  That ethic became a rule, and the rule became a part of the fabric of things.  If you introduce someone to all of this and they make a mistake, then some of that karma weighs on you.” - Excerpt from Damages 2.4

</ref><ref>“If it comes down to me, then that’s it,” I said.  “I’m responsible for you.  I’m pretty sure that if you die, then I take on a bit of that misfortune.  I go too.”

“No,” she said.  “Your connections moved to Rose, right?  Rose is responsible for us.”

I frowned.

What did it say that that bothered me?  I wanted to be responsible for them.  I wanted to have that tie to people I cared about.

“I’ve been thinking about it.  If we die, or if something bad happens to us, Rose is probably going to suffer, because she adopted that responsibility.  The council members might have even figured it out,” Alexis said.  “It could be the advantage they need to get control over her, to defuse the dead man’s switch.  Or they call it a win and rely on the karma swing to screw up Rose’s plan.  The dead man’s switch might not wind up working at all.” - Excerpt from Malfeasance 11.8</ref>

• Damaging things in the Spirit World, forcing the universe to break their counterparts in the real world.<ref>“Your other friends are occupied or caught in traps by Duncan and his sons, Rose is bound indoors, and I’ve broken most of the available and useful reflective surfaces in the spirit world.  Things are going to find an excuse to break in the real world in the coming days and weeks, but we can cross that bridge when it comes.”
  
  “Sounds like bad karma,” I said.  “Giving the universe a lot of menial work to do to keep everything coordinated.”
  
  “Well,” Laird said, “I’m hoping to make it up to the universe.”
  
  “Borrowing against the future for the sake of the present?” I asked. - Excerpt from Subordination 6.12</ref>
• Stealing,<ref>Theft was bad, karma-wise. - Excerpt from Execution 13.7</ref> unless it's balancing something they stole from you.<ref>I retrieved the little stonehenge charm bracelet and held it up.  “Credit goes to Evan, for collecting this.”
  
  “You stole it?” Fell asked.
  
  “Evan did.  So yeah, I guess we did?”
  
  “Bad karma, depending on how you do it,” Fell told me.  “Especially if the possession has power.”
  
  “We were fighting,” I said.  “Going head to head.”
  
  “Even if you’re fighting, certain objects belong in certain hands.  The universe doesn’t like that kind of disruption.”
  [...]
  “Look.  If that’s the case, then how come Duncan didn’t get bitten by karma when he took June, my hatchet?”
  
  “Ah,” Fell said.  “If he did, then it’s only fair if you took something of his in return.” - Excerpt from Subordination 6.9

</ref> Worse karma if it's powerful, especially an Implement; less bad if you don't keep it.<ref>“Stealing is bad karma, right?”

“Yes.  Implements more than regular things,” Fell said.  “But even stealing a regular thing is bad.”

“What if I throw it away?  Still bad if I don’t have it?”

“You moved it from where it’s supposed to be.  A little bit of a problem.” - excerpt from Void 7.2</ref>

• Violating Hospitality, i.e. harming your guest/host, or refusing someone deperate entry.<ref name=":2" /><ref>What was S.O.P. for being a guest?  If I couldn’t poison them, what was I allowed to do when they were trying to fuck with me?
  
  I might have to bite the karma bullet, I thought.
  [...]
  “Destroy the books,” I said.  “Destroy the treasures.  Do it quietly, and you’ll manage more destruction.  Start with the oldest things, you’ll hurt them more.  Run if she takes notice.  Under no circumstances are you to harm anyone before returning to the flute,” I said.
  
  Dickswizzle eyed me warily.
  
  “Blake.  If you’re inside her house, because of hospitality-“
  
  “I’m repaying their hospitality by sparing them.  They were… not unkind,” I said.  “But their family attacked our house and possessions.  We can attack theirs.  Eye for an eye.”
  
  “If we took some of it, we could ransom it back?”
  
  “It’s not quite an eye for an eye, and I don’t want them using it to track me.”
  
  “This feels wrong.”
  
  “But it’s fucking right.  Two very different things,” I said, my voice a harsh whisper. - Excerpt from Breach 3.4</ref><ref>“You’ll take nothing of ours unless you have express permission, and take nothing you learn inside these walls to our enemies?”
  
  “Heck with those guys, your secrets are yours, and I’m not stupid enough to tank my karma by betraying hospitality and stealing.  No, if you need me to actually say it, I won’t steal and I won’t tell anyone.” - Excerpt from Damages 2.6</ref>

Techniques for Karma Management

Executions, ordered by local councils and carried out by Witch Hunters, are a common way to formalize karmic punishment. Those who aren't foolish generally include an opportunity for the accused to defend themselves; in which case they're unlikely to suffer karmic backlash for ordering the execution.<ref name=":9" />

Circuitous methods of murder, where the attacker isn't personally present or involved, can help evade karmic responsibility as the Spirits may not be bright enough to make the connection.<ref name=":2" /> Conversely, the more directly you are involved in a Right act, the better for your karma.<ref>“If you were to take it yourself,” the woman lawyer said, “Or have a more direct hand in it, you reap a greater reward.”

“Personally restoring balance to the grand scheme of things… I can’t help but feel like this is dangerous.  Karmic retribution.  Promoting eye-for-an eye thinking.  How do you know if things are balanced?” - Excerpt from Damages 2.4</ref>

Many Diabolists will maintain an item which reflects their karma so they can track it.<ref name=":0" /> This can also occur naturally when Awakening, as it did for Blake Thorburn's tattoos.

In addition to passively gathering karma for holding it,<ref name=":8" /> a Demesne's reality-warping powers can be used to change karma for raw power or vice versa.<ref>Whilst outside of her place of power, Fionna finds the connection to the location remains strong, wherever she is.  She can deposit power there and rest assured it is untouched.  She can also use the location to transmute power, turning personal power into karmic assets, draw from one kind of power to better influence a connection.

As one can determine the rules within their realm, they can use the place as a form of esoteric moneychanger, changing one kind of power for another. - Excerpt from Demesnes Chapter Nine, quoted in Interlude 4</ref>

History

Rose Thorburn Senior speculated that Karma originally arose from the universe's attempts to heal the harm caused by Demons.<ref>I believe that the ability to practice comes from demons.  I believe the world’s attempts to balance itself are a response to this.  A response to us.  We practice, the spirits judge as a proxy for all of existence, and the spirits right the wrong. [...] I can’t hope to fix things. The universe seeks to maintain its balance, but this makes it hard to change things.  As I said, it pushes back. - Excerpt from Interlude 12</ref> Some believed that the commonly-held idea that doing good brought good things originated as a bastardized version of Karma.<ref>“The spirits might not reach us or affect us with the same strength down

here, but I believe in truth and honesty,” she said.  “I believe in the bastardized notion of karma that suggests that if one is just and good, then justice and goodness will find them.” - Excerpt from Null 9.3</ref>

Taking responsibility for people you inducted into the Practice began as a matter of courtesy, but repetition made it into part of the natural karmic laws surrounding innocence.<ref name=":10" /> Similarly, the law of Hospitality arose from the historical need to ensure travellers could stay in other people's homes.<ref name=":2"/>

Trivia

• Karma is an Sanskrit word; one of its meanings is "action". It is a concept reflected across many cultures with things like good and bad luck.

References

<references/>