Dances Up Earthquakes

very high Nature Incarnate

Dances Up Earthquakes

Growth (Pick One)

1

Reclaim All + 2 Range

Add Presence Range 2 or Gain Major (Forgetting)

2

Gain Power Card +

1

Add Presence at Range 1

3

3

Add Presence at Range 3 +

Gain Energy per Impending Card +

Reclaim One

Presence

Energy

1 +Impend

2

Impend

3

2 +Impend

4

4 +any

Gather 1 Dahan

Cards

2

moon+fire

Impend

earth

3

4

Special Rules

BEGIN A DANCE OF DECADES
Whenever you would play a Power Card, you may instead pay any amount of Energy onto the card to make it an impending card (), setting it aside out of play for use on a future turn. (It doesn't provide Elements. It's still your Power Card, so it can be forgotten while it's impending.)

RHYTHMIC POWER BUILDS TO A CATACLYSMIC CRESCENDO
When you gain Energy from your Presence Track, also gain Impending Energy (blank) Energy onto each Power Card made on a previous turn. If any now have Energy on them at least equal to their cost, discard that Energy and play them. (This costs no card plays.)

Innate Powers

LAND CREAKS WITH TENSION

Speed fast | Target You

1

If you have at least 1

, Add 1

in one of your lands.

1

In one of your lands, Defend 1 per

(max. 3).

1

2

If you have at least 3

, Add 1

in one of your lands.

2

3

In one of your lands, Defend 1 per

(max. 3).

EARTH SHUDDERS, BUILDINGS FALL

Speed slow | Range 0 Range

| Target quake

2

3

2 Damage per

, to

/

only.

3

4

1

. In any number of lands with

: 2 Damage per

, to

/

only. Remove 1

.

4

5

2

. In each land where you removed

: 1 Damage to each Invader.

Setup

Put 1 on your starting board in the highest-numbered land with .

You start with your 6 Unique Power Cards and 0 Energy. Set the Quake Tokens () nearby.

Play Style

Very much about tempo and timing: Can play high-cost Powers extremely easily, but they won't take effect until later in the game. Faces a constant tension between solving problems now and carefully planning ahead for big turns in the future - neglecting either one can be disastrous.

Despite starting with 6 Unique Powers, benefits greatly from gaining more.

Power Summary

5

offense

2

control

2

fear

3

defense

4

utility

Unique Power Cards

Lore

From the Spirit Panel

A traveling Spirit of movement and movement's deep power, circling a bright leap of flame, dancing atop dark mysteries of night and earth. It roams the island as its visions and will to motion bid, dancing with and among whomever it finds: the waves on the shore, the animals of the jungle, the Spirits, the trees, the Dahan, and - especially - the earth itself.

The Dahan learned long ago that if the land-dancer was aware of them, village-wrecking earthquakes became much rarer. Through this, they found that many Spirits appreciate - and gain power from - various patterns of dance and rhythm, in addition to those of line, shape, and word.

=

Design Lore=

Dances Up Earthquakes is a Spirit of rhythm, inexorable crescendo, and the earthquake - a sudden unleashing of ground-shaking energy. It is patient, but nearly always in motion; it exults in movement, movement grounded in the earth, but so powerful that eventually the earth itself also moves to the dance, becomes a dancer partnered with Dances Up Earthquakes.

The earth is hardly the only thing it dances with: it will dance with the swaying trees, with the pounding ebb and flow of the surf, with the flickering flames of a wildfire, with humans who shuffle and stomp leap to the beat of drums and hands. It may leap atop a cliff's edge as gulls cry overhead, or pound across sand dunes under starlight. But the living earth and stone beneath seem to be the partner it circles back to, time and again.

It is rarely not dancing.

The Dahan observed long ago that where it went, earthquakes tended to follow - but that if it was dancing with things upon the earth that its devastation rarely touched the area. (It would be a poor dancer that harmed its partner or bowled them over, and Dances Up Earthquakes does not dance poorly.) So if it approaches one of their villages it is made welcome; if it is observed nearby then fires are lit and a dance started in hopes of attracting it - and if that does not work, preparations are made equally swiftly for the quake which will quite likely follow.

Dancing with it is exhilarating, wild, and exhausting; a physical meditation of motion where nature is experienced-but-not-contemplated as movement drives out conscious thought. Its presence may allow humans dancing with it to surpass their usual limits of endurance and grace, though even so, no flesh-and-blood being can hope to match it for sheer indefatigability.

It does not (or will not) command others to the dance, only inspire them. It has tried to dance with the Invaders, multiple times, and has found that as more of them gather together, the less they heed the call to motion. After being fired upon by guns as it approached an Invader City, it has decided that they no longer belong in the dance here.

It has a much more nuanced view of what may be meant by "dancing" than many Spirits (or Dahan) might realize. Even though most of its dancing is the direct, individual, physical sort, it sees greater dances in all aspects of life. There's a story among the Dahan about a time it was found standing perfectly still, limbs outstretched, speaking, and making a dance of its words and its stillness, with the same sense of timing and grace and rhythm and crescendo that it usually has for the physical. The story may or may not have actually happened, but it rings true to the Spirit’s nature.