# Remnants ## *god-power with a price* Some things in LoreFell were never meant to be found. Relics carved from shattered thrones. Crystals lit by dead suns. Blades that murmur in languages no living tongue remembers. These are Remnants, and they do not belong in mortal hands. Sometimes they are found anyway. A Remnant is not an ability, a talent, a weapon, armor, or a spell. It is a world-altering artifact pulled from the deepest veins of the Sphere, buried or chained or broken in the hope it would never be used again. A Remnant changes how the world works around you. Find one, and it changes you too. ## The principle: priced, not balanced A Remnant is not a strong item. It is a god-power with a price. You never ask whether its power is too much, because too much is the point. You ask what it costs to hold. That cost is the only thing holding it in check, and it is also the horror of the thing. Every Remnant is a **Boon** and a **Bane**. The Boon is the world-altering gift. The Bane is what it takes from you, constantly, the whole time you bear it. The greater the Boon, the worse the Bane. You cannot enjoy the one and dodge the other. But the Boon always wins. A Remnant leans toward its gift, so the bearer comes out more powerful for holding it, never less. The Bane is a sacrifice, not a counterweight that cancels the gift, and it must never undo the Boon's own work. If the Boon raises the dead, the Bane does not quietly take them back. It costs something else, and the sharpest Banes cost something personal: the power keeps working while it strips away the bearer's peace, their certainty, or the trust of the people who once stood beside them. ## Loose on purpose Remnants are the one part of LoreFell that is not nailed down to a number. They are written as what they do and what they cost, not as costs you can pay from a sheet. A Remnant does not spend the LoreMaster's resources and it does not run on a player's. When a Remnant comes into play, the LoreMaster and the player settle the specifics together: how far the Boon reaches today, what the Bane takes this time, where the line sits. That ambiguity is the feature. Pin a Remnant down to hard rules and it stops being a legend and starts being a spell. Leave it open, and every table makes it their own. ## The four parts A LoreMaster builds a Remnant from four decisions, not from nothing. - **Boon.** The world-altering thing it does. Do not cap it. This is the one place in the game built to be unreasonable. - **Bane.** The price, paid always, while it is borne. It scales with the Boon and it cannot be switched off. This is the balance and the dread at once. - **Form.** How the Boon is used: passive, where the world is simply different around the bearer, reactive, or an Act. - **Binding.** Where it comes from. Most Remnants are **bound** to a single world, their form and function shaped by that world's terrain, culture, or myth, which keeps each one themed rather than limitless. The rarest are **unbound**, tied to no world at all, and those are the most dangerous things in existence, because nothing anchors them. ## Slots and ascension A Remnant's presence is more than even the strongest Fell can freely carry. They are equipped like utilities, into dedicated Remnant slots, and those slots open only at the highest reaches of ascension, far past ordinary limits. A bearer earns them one at a time: one, then two, then three. Each Remnant fills one slot and exacts its Bane the entire time it is equipped. Two Remnants means two Banes paid at once, every moment. That is the ceiling for almost everyone. ## Godhood Carry more than three and you are no longer called Fell. You are called a god. Godhood is not a number on a sheet. It is how the world and everyone in it treats the bearer from that point on: feared, worshipped, hunted, or all three at once. Three Boons make you unstoppable. Three Banes mean there is almost nothing human left to stop. The LoreMaster runs what that does to a campaign, and it should reshape the story, not the dice. ## Bound, and unbound A Remnant draws on its origin world. That tie is what shapes it, what themes it, and, quietly, what shares its weight. While a Remnant is bound, the world it came from carries part of the Bane alongside the bearer. The cost is real but split. The trade is that a bound Remnant keeps the bearer close to its world. Some merely pull. The worst, like Sunderbane, bind outright and will not let go. This is the problem with a god who cannot leave home. Reach the height of ascension, carry world-altering power, and still be stranded on one world because everything you hold is rooted there. That is not a story anyone wants to play for long. So a Remnant can be **unbound**, but never cheaply and never alone. Unbinding means severing the Remnant from its world's resonance and re-anchoring it to the bearer. That is dimensional work, the same kind the Smithlocks studied beneath Valoria and the same kind a Keystone Blade performs at a threshold. It takes a rite, a price, and usually a quest to reach the means. The LoreMaster builds that the way they build the Remnant itself, loosely, together with the player. And it costs more than the rite. Once the world no longer shares the burden, the Remnant has only the bearer to draw on. **The Bane deepens, for good.** Whatever it took before, it takes more now, everywhere you go. This is the bargain of the traveling god: the whole Sphere opens to you, and you carry the full weight of every Remnant alone, forever. A few Remnants cannot be unbound at all. Sunderbane is the warning there. It binds not to a world so much as to a person, and severing it may unmake the one who tries. ## Who makes them Only the LoreMaster. Remnants are not forged, not submitted, not validated. There is no Temper for them and no parity table. They are found, world-bound or worse, and revealed when the LoreMaster chooses. They are legend, not gear. ## Authoring a Remnant 1. **Pick the Boon.** Decide the impossible thing it does. Be ridiculous on purpose. 2. **Set the Bane.** Price it against the Boon. The bigger the gift, the steeper the toll, and the Bane is paid constantly, never by choice. Reach past the body for it. A Bane can warp flesh, yes, but the better ones take the mind, the memory, or the will, turn the bearer's own power against the people beside them, draw danger or worship or the hunt toward them, erode them toward Discord, or simply slip the leash so the Boon goes off when it is least wanted. The most frightening Banes are the ones the LoreMaster can steer, pulling the bearer toward acts that serve the story and not the bearer. 3. **Choose the Form.** Passive, reactive, or an Act. 4. **Bind it.** Tie it to a world and let that world shape its face, or leave it unbound and far more terrible. A Remnant with a Boon and no real Bane is not a Remnant. It is a mistake. The Bane is what makes godhood a sacrifice instead of a shopping trip.