Giants of the Realms

Games Discussion Ars Magica
1

I am currently working on a companion character for our current saga, and I have come to the conclusion it works best as a faerie realm-linked giant. Now, the rules for giants in RoP:M are pretty clear, and explain that there's giants of all the realms - but the rules for faerie giants were never published, as far as I can tell.

"Luckily", the character is cursed, so that gives a good excuse for a transformation into a Magical creature somewhere in the past. Should the curse (Malediction) ever be lifted, how would you go about reversing it into a faerie creature, if it was designed as a Magical one for rules purposes? I'm not trying to cheese anything, but I like making sure that the story and the rules are at least on speaking terms. :slight_smile:

2

Faerie giants are described on pages 98-99 of Realms of Power: Faerie.

For what it's worth.

3

Thank you. I'm not sure why I had overlooked it, since I was browsing the book not that long ago.

Still, does anyone have ideas on how to convert already-existing creatures from one Realm to another?

4

This is a task made much more difficult by the fact that Ars Magica treats characters of different realms entirely differently. Not only are their powers all unique to their realm, even the manner in which they are constructed is unique. Magical creatures get Magical Qualities, for example, which Faeries do not. But Faeries get a number of intrinsic advantages due to their Faerie nature (like the fact that their armor and gear are made of their own bodies, so do not need to penetrate and bring no load, or the fact that they, you know, CANNOT DIE).

It sounds like your PC concept is "a Faerie Giant who was transformed into a Magic Giant." Start with the character's Might. It's probably going to stay the same, probably around 10 for a companion level PC. You can buy him the Virtues to be a Giant, and since he doesn't have any special powers beyond being big and strong, his Virtues and Flaws will probably be mostly the same.

As a Faerie, he could have had a Pretense like "Giant 6," which let him do everything a Giant could normally be presumed to do, but as a Magical Giant he will need to buy Abilities like everyone else. These will depend on Season, which will probably be Summer.

As a Faerie, the Giant could wear and use any equipment, since these items were actually all made of his glamour. But as a Magical Giant, armor will suddenly have weight again. Even an ordinary, non-Giant, warrior can end up with a very high Soak from armor. When you combine this with the Giant's huge Wound Levels, he should be far and away the most durable fighter at the table, though because his Defense is penalized by his low Qik, he will be vulnerable to high-skill champions.

I guess this is all a long way of saying, "pretend the character kept his Might from his original realm, and then rewrite him from the ground up in his new realm, sticking more to the spirit of the original creature than any strict conversion." The fact that creatures of each realm are made using entirely different rules makes any conversion a once-in-a-campaign story element.

5

It's very tricky, like converting a holy hermit into a diabolist or a hermetic mage. Or a black swan into a black sheep or a black wolf. The main problem is that Realm affiliation is such a huge part of concept that similarities between the two versions of a creature are inevitably very superficial, both in terms of "role" and in terms of mechanics. A Faerie Giant is far more similar to a Faerie Dragon than to a Magic Giant.

6

Faerie is the easiest to convert from, as their roles can lead them close to another realm to begin with, and infernal is the easiest to convert to, as it is in its nature to pervert and corrupt. In my campaigns there is also a natural path from divine to magic, but most people would not agree with me there (Basically the idea that anything that falls from the divine realm and is not corrupted by the infernal is inherently magical), at least not in terms of what led me to that point...
a magus can become a holy mage, but Magi are only associated with magic, not fully a part of it, though historically there is the divine taking over magical forests in the Rhine... and of course the whole Titanomachy storyline by which Faeries bind and claim the power and role of magical beings... which could easily lead to powerful faerie giants based on magic giants. The mechanism for a transition the other way would be unusual, but I suppose if a faerie opened their story and a mortal gave them a virtue which defined them as magical... it might require an exceptionally talented mortal to create such a change and possibly only possible if they were already a close fit, but...