[Nine Worlds] Talismans, Narration and Theft

[Iskander]

How do I steal a talisman?
Can I give a talisman away, or be given one?
Suppose I've created my aethership as a talisman... can it be taken away from me narratively without reducing its Power to zero?

This has come up once or twice in the fringes of my play, and came up again at the weekend, Camp Nerdly, where one of the players was bent on taking out Pan - a Vegas jazz-man, seducing a different audience member every night with his stylin' sax - talismanic pipes. To what extent can the PC hamper another's use of their Talisman, and is it even possible to take it away without (mechanically) destroying it?

[Matt Snyder]

It is possible to steal a talisman without reducing its values. But, the actual effect of that takes away nothing from the player, who still has mechanical control of the talisman, despite not having it "with" him.

You cannot give away or gift a talisman in any real, mechanical sense (in the game's fiction, however, you could have Pan giving away his saxophone to a pal, but it's still "mechanically" his).

This is very similar to being able to "kill" an opponent without actually reducing his virtues or Power to 0. So, you could send someone to the underworld, or have them in the belly of a titan beast. But, they're still able to act in conflicts (and probably trying to get themselves un-killed fictionally speaking).

So, for example, someone takes away Pan's swingin' saxophone and carts it off to Sol to make a million drachma. Pan can still enter conflicts and use the talisman, but how it affects things becomes a fictionally constrained thing. Maybe every time someone plays the thing, or sells it in a pawn shop, they find themselves doing what Pan wants anyway.

And, as should be obvious, people can "steal back" their own talismans by means of a new, successful conflict to remove any fictional constraints.

Finally, as should already have been obvious, reducing a Talisman's Power to 0, and then "stealing" the thing by actually creating a new Talisman YOU control is the main way to ACTUALLY "steal" a Talisman. Basically, you're transforming ownership, but you've got to earn the thing.

[Iskander]

That's pretty much how I expected it all to work - thanks for the exposition!

-A