Incarnation
An Incarnation is a sapient, though not necessarily sophont, embodiment of a concept.<ref>“The Lord is an incarnation of Conquest. He’s a sapient embodiment of a concept, and he’s been here for some time, in one form or another.”
[...]
“A living manifestation of conquest?” I asked.
“I would hesitate to say ‘alive’.”
“He’s the horseman? One of the four riders of the apocalypse?”
“Yes and no. There are other Conquests, who take different forms based on their history and the eras and events they drew power from. For all intents and purposes, you can consider incarnations to be powerful spirits, often ones with human hosts or an attachment to an object of particular design, an implement without an owner. Some agencies contrive to bring these incarnations into being to suit their devices. Is there an agency invested in the apocalypse and Conquest’s part in that? Yes, but not in the way you’re thinking.”- Excerpt from Collateral 4.1</ref> It is an idea given life and thus unkillable with weapons. It is supported and fed through certain ideas, and you defeat it by taking the strength from that idea. Most often, people simply accommodate them.<ref>“And nobody’s about to remove the local Conquest from the picture, to keep that from happening?”
“There are bigger things at play, and an Incarnation isn’t a monster you defeat with a sword or gun. It is an idea given life. You support it and feed it through certain ideas, and you defeat it by taking the strength from that idea. Most often, you accommodate them. But anything powerful enough to become sentient and sapient isn’t something that’s going away anytime soon.” - Excerpt from Collateral 4.1</ref>
An incarnation comes into being when a person summons and melds into it.<ref>Collateral 4.4</ref> Multiple copies/versions/emanations can exist concomitantly and even absorb the lesser versions of themselves for strength.<ref>Collateral 4.1</ref> They cannot go against their nature as incarnations with out a loss of power, which makes them somewhat predictable. They can absorb other people to gain power and evolve their concept, to be able to break from what they embody.<ref>Interlude 5</ref> They are a singular idea, they can not be as complex as a country<ref>
- Going off of incarnations, could a country be a incarnation? Would these incarnations engage in battle to save their own hide, or were they powerless to do anything?
A country could not be an incarnation, as an incarnation is generally an idea. Death, war, famine, faith, conquest, dream, desire, destruction, etc. - Wildbow on Reddit</ref> but there can be nuances to them, like the difference between conquest and war.<ref>“But if there’s no war-”
“He isn’t War, but Conquest. Massed forces, takeovers, forced change. He continues to find power in other ways. Yes, he prefers warfare and bloodshed, but he can draw power from the steady expansion of civilization into nature, from real estate, from business takeovers, government, law, and other small forms of tyranny. As an Incarnation, he can invest his power. Where Death might bring death to things by touching them, or Love might strike a couple through their hearts with a metaphorical arrow given form, Conquest can do the same.” - Excerpt from Collateral 4.1</ref>
They are the type of Other that can become powerful enough to affect the area they inhabit as a sort of pseudo-Demesne.<ref>“To be in Conquest’s domain is to be in a constant state of transition. Emotions rise and fall, there is fire and rebellion at first, then we make peace with the state of things. Broken things erode away, and then there is only defeat. But to be the Conqueror is not a simple thing either. They either take on a different role, which my lord cannot do, or they find new territory to seize, people to subjugate. The territory changes as he finds new ground.”
“I didn’t know a demesne could be this… out there. I mean, I read about apartments covered in flesh, but…”
“This isn’t a demesne, as you understand the term,” he said. “Some beings are strong enough to influence their surroundings simply by residing there.” - Excerpt from Collateral 4.2</ref>
Servants
There are a veriety of beings which are creations or, in some sense, extensions of Incarnations.<ref name=":0">As for the general Others that they'll run into & operate with, they're from the immaterial and interaction tracks. So...
Concept-driven Others - especially the riff-raff
surrounding things like Incarnations. The agents or soldiers of Dream,
Death, Fate, Nature, Ruin, Innocence, etc.
Envoys - These Others persist by making deals and
furthering the ends of the incarnation they represent/are. They may be urban legends or itinerant Others. The deals are usually tricky or
really loaded. "Did you hear? They say that there's a way to summon a little old man who will ask you for a name. He'll destroy a person you name, but he'll take what you cherish most from you in exchange. Everyone always regrets it." A girl with strangely colored hair finds people in enough torment that they've lost their senses- the sleep deprived, the maddened, the drunken, and she offers them a deal. She'll
take the memory of whatever it is that is maddening them out of their
head and the heads of everyone around them, but they're given the task of re-enacting or forcing that same agony on three other 'deserving' people, or she'll give them the memory she took from the last person she visited, and somehow it's always worse than (and somehow related to) what they were dealing with before. These Envoys visit our world and seek out targets who fit their schema and generally push deals
that net an overall positive contribution to [incarnation], but when
they aren't here, they're somewhere, and that's often the Paths. If
found or visited, they may offer similar deals, or barter with whatever
it is they've collected or done.
The Leftovers - these are like incarnations, but
writ small. Isolated bits of 'incarnation' that splintered off or exist
in isolation. Especially common in the Paths because there's a whole
lot of isolation there. Characters (and 'character' is the operative word here) that are defined by single attributes and personalities. Shored up by spirits and other things. A fragment of Regret splinters off due to circumstances, gets isolated in the Paths (where it naturally
ends up), and gathers up enough pieces of other things, like a mask of a mouse and a party dress, picks up on ideas and the tatters of echos
surrounding those things, and builds up a persona as the Cringing Mouse,
a girl with a mouse head and a garish dress, who can't help but do
cringeworthy things at the worst moments and then agonize over them. Once they solidify as such, they tend to resist being absorbed elsewhere. Leftovers love to attach themselves to others as traveling companions, or recur on the paths. These form some of the 'wildlife' in
the Paths. Not all are sentient or sapient. Unwittingly, they tend to further the cause of their parent Incarnation.
Pawns & Playing Cards - The forms these guys can take is impossibly varied. Extensions of an Incarnation with some power that wanted soldiers, messengers, servants, builders, or whatever else, they end up in the Paths if their parent Incarnation dies and they
don't go with it. Tend to congregate in groups, all with a theme. The Victims of Innocence, who are wide eyed children, beautiful, all
dressed in pristine white clothes, with a penchant for hurling themselves into the most horrible fates available, if there's any chance
it'll break people's hearts to see it. The Rats of Plague, who wait
and multiply in anticipation of a chance to deliver a plague worse than
the Black Death upon humanity- except they're quarantined. All they
need is an open door or for one rat to sneak through and they can do
just that. Tend to be really, really stupid, however, while appearing in great number, leaving diplomacy as the key to dealing with them.
Echoes & remnants. Ghosts, vestiges. Because they intersect with the Paths, they might deal with other kinds of echo.
Wild Echoes - Overlaps with Incarnations, above.
Echoes (ghosts) of humans who were done away with by very dramatic
Incarnation-type events. Tend to be flavorful, hard-to-deal-with echoes
who don't follow the usual tropes or tools of necromancers, so most
necromancers won't bother. Tools and approaches with Death in mind
don't apply if we're talking about an Other who was done away with by
Ignonimity or Lust.
False Echoes - Echoes of people who didn't exist,
except by rumor. A real pain in the ass for necromancers, but not so
much a problem for Finders.
Spirits - Spirits are bread & butter, and not exclusive to the Paths, but frequently found are...
Petitioner Spirits - Spirits consolidated around a
question or set of questions. They often ask people they see and then
may get power to act if the answer is right or wrong. Can be hooked
into echoes or have echoes as central points, depending.
Abstract Spirits - Spirits of consolidated
Path-trash, may be even less defined or consistent than usual spirits,
but can be useful as a kind of wet clay for those looking to mold them.
The problem is that if these guys are a blender of weird, well,
sometimes that blender has blades inside. The trick is finding out what's at the center, holding them together. - Wildbow on Reddit</ref>
Envoys
Messengers which make deals, usually following a pattern and inevitably skewed so that they further the Incarnation. May reside in the Paths when inactive.<ref name=":0" />
Leftovers
Scraps of concept-stuff that fall onto the Paths and pick up concepts and symbolism, becoming a sort of weak and alien Incarnation. Unwittingly tend to further their "parent".<ref name=":0" />
Pawns & Playing Cards
Extensions of an Incarnation who wanted a servant for something. Generally a group of similar beings, and not very intelligent. Tied to the Incarnation and will be Lost to reality if it dies.<ref name=":0" />
Ritual Incarnates
Possibly some overlap with Nex Machina.
These are rituals which are created by Incarnations and leaked to Innocents to entrap them, or occasionally formed accidentally. The clear warnings and a possibility (if slim) to fairly "win" the ritual and be rewarded help to temper the karmic backlash. Some Practitioners will find the way to win the ritual, then repeatedly do so until it's drained of power and destroyed.<ref name=":1">Lost for Words 1.4</ref> Some can manifest what appear to be Others, but these are merely a person-shaped symptom of the ritual itself.<ref>"Choir knew already. Could smell ’em coming.”
“You could smell them coming, or they were already there?” Lucy asked.
“Couldn’t say, dearie,” Toadswallow said.
“Why not?”
“Because they’re not a group or anything like that. They’re like a storm or a clog in the sewer. The kids you see? They’re just the raindrops or the bad smell that comes with. The whole thing? Bigger and vaguer.”
“The storm was already there? Gathering? On its way?”
[...]
“We need to check in with the Choir. Figure out what they are, try to interview them.”
“Even if those kids are raindrops from a storm,” Verona added.
- excerpt from Lost for Words 1.5 </ref>
Cursed Items
Similar to Incarnate Rituals, some Incarnations create items which - when some attatched warning is ignored - inflict a fate on the Innocent victim which furthers the Incarnation.<ref name=":1" /> This behavious is not exclusive to Incarnations, e.g. Faeries have been observed doing this for amusement.
Notable Incarnations
References
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