Finder

Finder magic deals with things which have become utterly lost and untethered from the normal rules of reality. Practitioners who concentrate on this school are called a Finder or Chaos Mage.<ref name="Docs" /><ref>Practitioners who delve into the realms beyond the established are known as Finders, often among one another or to friends, or as Chaos Mages, to enemies and the ill-educated. - FINDERS, document by Wildbow.</ref> They were once known as Dreamers, but that term has fallen out of favour and is considered misleading.<ref name=":0">Finders were originally known as Dreamers, working under the assumption that the realms they explored were dreamscapes or the dreams of now dead gods.  Many aspects of dreams run through the places and routes a Finder travels; time doesn’t necessarily have the same meaning, continuity is questionable, and areas and denizens of the far-flung realms can be sublime and fantastic in a way reality rarely matches. This notion of dreams and dreamers is something Finders have been working hard to dispel.  In reality, it’s a dangerous sentiment, because it leads some to let their guards down, and worse, it allows Others who dwell in the far places to hitch a ride back with the unwary. - FINDERS, document by Wildbow. </ref>

Methodology

These magi focus on interaction with the immaterial.<ref name="Docs">Interaction Schools [...] Immaterial: Finder/Chaos Mage
Finders work with lost and forgotten things, unpinned from the realms of the physical and even of the spirit. They tend to interact with the abyss in some form, but only in a tertiary sense - where the Abyss is where things settle when they fall through the cracks in the world, the Finder explores the spaces between realms, and the unformed void that lies beyond them. In practice, they stray from and explore places beyond the defined paths and spaces, and interact with desperate, nameless, and forgotten things. They mingle subtle transmutations, (especially of the abstract) with a collection of tricks and favors taken from nameless things that bear steep and unpredictable results. Monkey paws and granted footholds. - Pact Dice: The Practices - Wbow Version</ref> Unlike Scourges they deal with the spaces between realms and the primordial realm before it, rather then the underside of reality.<ref name="Docs" /><ref name="WDF">FINDERS, document by Wildbow.</ref>

One common practice is to use a Demesne as an anchor, connecting it to one or more Paths so that they can more easily leave and return to the same place.<ref>As a note on the kind of investment involved, many Finders will use their demesnes as a foothold and escape clause, picking an unexplored area and using their demesnes as an anchor or place they can automatically retreat to if things go south.  This enables them to make repeat visits to the same area and steadily explore it or figure it out.  A given demesnes may only allow for a set number of Lost places (a room with four sides might allow for one side to be an exit to reality, each of the three other doors opening to Lost places; a house might allow for more).  Families will often work together, with one practitioner securing the way from point A to point B, the next from B to C, and so on, to outline a longer way. - FINDERS, document by Wildbow.</ref>

The Paths

The Paths, also known as the far places or the Reaches,<ref name=":1">The places a Finder explores are typically categorized in two ways.  The first are termed the far places, the Reaches, or, most commonly, the Paths.  These are the places that have been explored and are mostly understood.  The key thing to keep in mind is that all have a logic, even if that logic isn’t yet known.  Finders work to codify the rules of a place, and the rules for interacting with Lost Others, and the Paths are more or less codified.

The other places are entered either by misstep or after exhaustive preparation and the collection of an assortment of tools and allies.  They are known as the Lost Rooms, the Forgotten Places, the Dark Reaches, or the like.  Once a path has been walked three times three times, by at least three separate practitioners, using the rules outlined, then the greater finder community will generally allow them to be entered into record and distributed, often to the great benefit of the Finder in question.  Until this point, they are considered exceptionally hazardous. - FINDERS, document by Wildbow. </ref> are realms which have become untethered from pretty much everything - unrecoverable even by the Abyss. They may once have been a part of the Abyss, ordinary reality, or even the collective unconscious.<ref name=":2">The reaches are realms which may have been a part of reality, a part of the abyss, or a fragment of collective unconsciousness, which has come untethered from just about everything.  Without history, human attention or human logic to help pin them down, these places and their denizens unspool.  A lesser god with no connection to reality will fall to the Abyss.  When she is entirely unrecoverable, she may find herself drifting across the Paths, where sustenance is so little and so far between that she is forced to hibernate for centuries at a time, insofar as time has any meaning in those places.  Beings such as this once-god often wake only when practitioners approach. - FINDERS, document by Wildbow.</ref> They are dreamlike in nature, with fluid reality and passage of time, and filled with the sorts of wonders rarely found in the real world.<ref name=":0" /> Every Path has it's own rules, but even knowing those rules, it's easy for them to shift and trap a Finder.<ref>The Paths are exceptionally dangerous, and for the majority of Finders, new areas are only explored by accident or with heavy investment.  Even with a set of instructions, the intersection of two areas or the passing of a Lost Other can throw one far place into upheaval.  Many a Finder has misstepped and found themselves trapped on a staircase that has ceased to have a beginning or end, in a room with no exit, or turned around to find the path had changed behind them, and that they had no way home. - FINDERS, document by Wildbow.</ref>

Newly-discovered Paths are known as the Lost Rooms, the Forgotten Places, the Dark Reaches etc, and are considered especially hazardous. To be considered among the known Reaches, a Path must have been walked at least 9 times by at least 3 Finders.<ref name=":1" />

New Finders will often be escorted on several trips by their family or circle before walking the Paths alone. A common first Path to walk used for inductions in North America is the Forest Ribbon Trail.<ref>A family or circle that is inducting a new Finder will often escort that Finder on several trips before sending them on their first finding alone. This typically involves walking a path the family has thoroughly worked, or walking one of the more commonly traveled paths. The most commonly recommended path to new North American Finders is the Forest Ribbon Trail, as it is the least hazardous, is very commonly traveled to the point it is well proven, and it is, by the logic that serves it, relatively straightforward. - FINDER document, The First Finding: The Forest Ribbon Trail</ref> This can help to mark them as a Finder and improve their ability to interact with the Lost.<ref>Because it is a beginner path, there is a degree of inclusion or indoctrination that comes with walking it.  Walking the path as one’s first true ritual as a practitioner is common for a North American Finder, and being a Finder makes interaction with the Lost and Lost things or places easier.  Landmarks will be clearer, the Lost may be less hostile or more open to communicating, and journeys may be shorter or less taxing.  Successfully walking the path on one’s first visit without using the prey animal escape clause for something other than the conclusion of the ritual enhances this effect. - FINDER document, The First Finding: The Forest Ribbon Trail</ref>

The Lost

The Lost are beings which have become utterly lost and can be found on the Paths. Such beings are often the last of their kind, and are never bound to the Seal of Solomon. They include Finders who have been lost on the Paths long enough to no longer qualify as Practitioners; whatever they once were, they are no longer considered Practititioners or even Others.<ref>The Lost Others and Finders who’ve lost their way to an extent that they are no longer practitioners (Others and Practitioner being included under the umbrella term ‘The Lost’) have ceased to have an easy classification or categorization.  If they were once part of a more diverse breed, they are often now the last of their kind.  Dealing with them is often high risk and high reward - it is impossible to know these Lost, they’re never bound by the Seal of Solomon (such a tie would keep them from being lost) and can thus lie or cheat, and they have nothing to lose.  On the flip side of things, they are often prepared to give over the entirety of themselves or their power in a gambit to re-enter more material worlds. - FINDERS, document by Wildbow.</ref> They often only awake when Finders approach, to conserve energy, sleeping for centuries at a time.<ref name=":2" />

History

It used to be believed that Finders dealt with dreams, perhaps the dreams of dead gods, hence the term Dreamers. However, it has become clear that the places they deal with are very real, and there has been a concerted effort to abandon the old term lest it mislead people into believing that e.g. the Others they meet on the Paths cannot manifest in reality.<ref name=":0" />

References

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