Topic: Handling of Essaence Flows

[Walt]

Hi folks,

can anybody give me some idea how you handle and describe essaence flows on a more operational base? Does anybody use the as real physical barrier in "civilized" lands? And concernig the aspect "physical barrier", what´s your approach to describe them to non-essence users? Visible, invisible, how do they feel, smooth, soft, gum-effect or hard and tough?
Did anybody make up his mind with what kind of tools a pretty good essence user could pass them, using for example power projection or similiar skills?
Even after many years of campainging in Shadow World I still have problems to describe and integrate the great concept of flows in the daily life, so I would be happy for any comment or suggestion how you used them in your campaigns!
Thanks

[Tommi]

I have my own way to describe physical barriers. (For more than ten years I've been running game in Gaalt with this interpretation.)
I rule flows as very powerful ground level jet streams (curtains). Tornado like power (F4+) 100m/s winds in case of minor flows and +200m/s for major flows.  Minor flow is from meters to tens of meters wide and major are up to some hundreds meters wide. One side wind runs in one direction and another different - there is huge shearing force in the middle but there is 50% possibility to encounter calm "eye". Flow focuses are basically tornados. Visually flow is white on water and very dark on ground. If one tries to just run into flow to reach other side I rule based on speed if they have even chance to get to other side. At best there is 50/50 change  (roll) to reach other side live or dead.  If one is in flow he gets E-crit every round and has varying change to be thrown out based on the depth that she reaches. One can learn to recognize flow disturbances that will slow wind speed for a moment to just hard wind. At that point one may pass the physical flow. Flow disturbances last about one minute and occur every few days. In practice major flow is not passable.

In a few locations where physical barrier is quite stable people have dug deep tunnel in hard stone below the flow and charge heavy toll for "crossing" the flow.

[Voriig Kye]

Until this year, I had not used physical Essaence barriers in my adventures, they were more the excuse I used when I decided to block/deviate the effects of a long range teleport.
Now that we are playing in SE Emer using the last sourcebook, I had the players travelling through the Cloud Pass. They encountered the barrier there and I think I described it as some sort of colored hard mist, that reflected the energy thrown at it. So they tried with rocks and they came bouncing back at them. When it opened, the air just cleared as if nothing had been there before.

[brandivil]

@TKA: do you plan to release a Kulthea wide map showing all major and significant essaence flows and foci?

[Walt]

Thanks Tommi, thanks Voriig, pretty good input!
So you also use Flows on gound level, I never had the idea of a ground level jet stream, I used more Voriig interpretation of mist or, in my case, something like a heat reflection, some hinderance starting soft and becoming in few steps really solid.
I´m not sure if you know the old Jaiman Flow Chart, there are a lot of flows put in with the forge in Arion etc. This was the reason why I had to give my players after years of years of playing some encounter.

I pretty like the idea of people trying to make money out of digging tunnels under stable flows!! In my own campaign my players have the option to use the skill power projection to pass a essaence flow, but even the easiest test is already a sheer folly, and becoming harder with more energy of the flow or trying to let more people pass etc

[kyussopeth]

I pretty much use few physical barriers & I only locate them along major flows. However even lesser flows block teleportation in my game. Therefore physical movement is easier, but (non-Navigator) magical travel is extremely rare.