Jump to content

Pragmatic Vengeance - a Headcanon Cosmere World


Halyo_Alex

Recommended Posts

Hey all! Back again with another world of my mind.

This time, it's from a dream induced by quarantine and riots! :D Fun.

The tl;dr for my dream is that it took place on a semi-futuristic planet inside a city that had a government and police force that was prejudiced against people with Powers, the common term for the supernatural abilities. I know, I know, incredibly imaginative. But it somewhat ties into the magic system itself.

Powers originate (typically) from the Shard of Pragmatism. Pragmatism has a Vessel, is not Splintered, and isn't bound to the planet like Odium is to Braize. In fact, he's probably what we would call one of the Good Guys when it comes to Shards. No special modifiers, he's very much in a similar state to Cultivation, shardically.

Attached to this post will be a chart I made detailing the known Powers and what they're like, categorized into 10 different sets. Internal/External, and Physical/Mental/Temporal/Spiritual. Very similar to Allomancy, yes. But you might have already done the math and realized "wait, that's only 8 sets, where's the other 2?" Well, the last 2 sets are the Internal/External sets of the Void Segment of the chart. Void powers originate from the second Shard of the world, Vengeance. Vengeance was Splintered by Odium in a struggle not unlike his battle with Ambition, but with Pragmatism stepping in to drive Odium off just after the Splintering of Vengeance. Vengeance's splinters settled onto the world (which, I still need a good name for, suggestions for that are welcome) and Pragmatism decided to oversee the Splinters to make sure they wouldn't wreak havoc on the planet's CR and PR. Thankfully, they remained mostly dormant, and time passed with Odium moving on and getting locked on Braize some time after the battle.

Unlike Allomancy, these Powers do not require a physical key in the form of Metal. Instead, each person with a Power can only use so much Investiture per day. This is a result of Pragmatism's Intent. He only allows a certain "budget" of Investiture per person per day, and using it pragmatically is key to getting the most out of your Power. It's a bit like if a Surgebinder could draw on a certain amount of Stormlight per day without needing filled gems to breathe in from.

However, the Splinters of Vengeance are not as dormant as once thought.

Under the oppression and genocide of Powered humans by non-powered law enforcement and government, the Splinters of Vengeance are stirring, drawn towards Void Powered people with an intense desire to exact, well, Vengeance upon those that wronged them or their loved ones. When this desire, this Intent you could say, reaches a critical point, a Splinter can bond to the Void Powered individual, granting them an Ascended Form.

Ascended Forms are not full, Shardic Ascension like Sazed to Harmony. Instead, these forms are like mini-Avatar ascensions. A large reservoir of Investiture to be sure, but nowhere near as massive as a full Shard. However, a key difference now is that the Ascended Void user can draw on their reservoir with much less restriction. It's not artificially gated like Pragmatism's Investiture supply. This empowers the Ascended Void user to enact their vengeance upon the world, whatever it may be. And for many, this would be the extent of their power.

But for some, there is yet more to achieve. By remaining pragmatic despite their limits being relaxed, an Ascended Void user can earn a Splinter of Pragmatism, much like a Divine Breath from Endowment, doubling their capacity for power usage. This only takes place after proving their responsibility with an expanded Investiture pool, and the Intent of Pragmatism inside the Splinter will reinforce that slightly, much like how a whole shard warps the mindset of whoever the Vessel is. This way, Pragmatism can be reasonably certain that the Ascended Void user will remain responsible with their power. Often, when he grants this Splinter, he will tell the recipient of the greater Cosmere, and the battle between Odium and Vengeance, telling them of how dangerous and destructive Odium is, and entrusting them with the task of Worldhopping off of the planet to find some way of making sure Odium stays a non-issue for as long as possible. Some will take on this task, seeing how it's so important to not only this world, but many others, and some will decide what's more important is getting things sorted out on this world before tackling that much bigger issue. So few people have truly Ascended in this manner and Worldhopped that they're effectively unknown in the greater Cosmere, electing to stay hidden and plan things out in secret, pulling the strings from behind the scenes to orchestrate a true defeat of Odium.

An interesting other parallel to Mistborn is that what's happening with these Double Ascensions is that this is basically a slow-burn version of the mixture of Ruin and Preservation into Harmony. Now it's Pragmatism and Vengeance slowly blending into... Something. What would be a good combined Intent name for these?

The second attached picture is a drawing I made of the Void Spark Ascended Form's arm, with Spark Blades manifested above each fingertip. I'll eventually do a full-body drawing of it, but for now, this is all I could get to look reasonable. (plus it was alright practice for hand anatomy. I cheated a little by making the fingers spiky triangles.)

Power Chart (colored, nontransp).png

Void Spark Ascended Arm.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Very well, I have to make a basic criticism of the X-Men trope basically. How does this culture stay stable and how does it develop? You have provided no mundane way (aluminium may do it - this being in the Cosmere) of depowering the Powered. Why would they take being disadvantaged? The powers you have designed are considerable. I can see no way without extreme technology and ruthlessness how mundane forces would prevail in a conflict.


How do you jail a teleporter? And this is just the most obvious issue. X-Men works because there is already a high-tech society that is extremely powerful. But how would this work on a lower tech setting? How would any government enforce laws on the Powered without using Powers itself? And if you do that how do you make sure the Powered keep taking orders instead of giving them?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

17 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

Very well, I have to make a basic criticism of the X-Men trope basically. How does this culture stay stable and how does it develop? You have provided no mundane way (aluminium may do it - this being in the Cosmere) of depowering the Powered. Why would they take being disadvantaged? The powers you have designed are considerable. I can see no way without extreme technology and ruthlessness how mundane forces would prevail in a conflict.


How do you jail a teleporter? And this is just the most obvious issue. X-Men works because there is already a high-tech society that is extremely powerful. But how would this work on a lower tech setting? How would any government enforce laws on the Powered without using Powers itself? And if you do that how do you make sure the Powered keep taking orders instead of giving them?

Alright, excellent questions.

1. Yes, this society has already discovered that Powers are suppressed by Aluminum. Imprisoning someone with teleportation is actually fairly simple considering the ability; if you can get a decent amount of Aluminum to touch their body, they can't teleport away, a bit like a Surgebinder trying to use Transportation. The Investiture from Pragmatism is sucked away from them faster than they can use it to teleport. So, cuff them with thick Aluminum handcuffs. Same with other powers.

2. The whole "powered people genocide" is relatively new, but unpowered people have been wary of powers for a long time, worried that they would try to seize power or something. The government has been funding projects like artificial Power Seeker machines in secret for quite a while before ultimately declaring their stance on Powereds and allowing law enforcement to use lethal force against them. Fear was always a problem, but the Powered people didn't make the first move. Or, so they claim. History books are all too happy to pin the reason for the genocide on a "historically factual" attack by powered people on unpowered people.

3. "how does the government enforce laws on the people with powers without using powers itself" short answer... They're massive hypocrites, and some law enforcement individuals are actually powered. These are the ones who actively agree that powered people are too dangerous for society, and when they're in public and not on the job, they choose to wear a thick Aluminum band on their arm, visibly, to suppress their own powers in a public fashion.

Of course the government should offer this to every powered person, but they're too busy worrying about "oh but what happens if they take them off and start killing people all of a sudden". They're not very smart, I admit.

Things probably will need to be altered to make it more "balanced" in favor of the unpowered.

Edit: One possible concept for how the unpowered people became the ones running the government in law enforcement is that they were the ones that ended up inventing things like guns and stuff BECAUSE of Powered people, out of fear and the need to feel like they could defend themselves. And when they found out they COULD, well... It was only a matter of time before unpowered people started to take over roles of governance and the like, almost like the reverse of what's happening now; rising up and overthrowing the ones that were stronger than them. And then, to keep themselves in power, they started tinkering with biological sciences and stuff to try and make machines that could use Powers, or resist them, such as the hand-held Power Seeker machine, which uses a piece of cloned tissues from a real Power Seeker to take signals from. Obviously these devices would go through a bunch of prototypes and future revisions to, for example, the nearly-perfect Power Seeker machines that were in my dream. This would probably be when they really learned about Aluminum's anti-investiture properties. Aluminum-alloy bullets would probably be almost mandatory when fighting Powered people of any nature, and aluminum-alloy guns would be immune to Gravity, for example.

Edited by Halyo_Alex
Added new information
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...