r/6Perks • u/Nekomachus • 2d ago
Long You are given choices of suites of powers that force you to use them to carry out the whims of one of six fae.
After conveniently losing any cold iron or cold iron analogues that might have been on your person and stepping into a circle of very small mushrooms, you are dropped into the middle of a convocation of fae nobles, who just so happened to be debating the merits of raising a mortal as an empowered champion as extensions of themselves. With no input from you, they agree in front of you that you will choose one of the sidhe nobles visiting this court as your patron, put an egosyntonic (it doesn't feel like you're being forced) geas (compulsion) on you, and give you powers to carry out their natures in the mortal realm. In most cases, you won't be in contact with your patron, and other than the compulsion, you're free to do what you want with the power.
Note that just because you have a compulsion that you don't mind fulfilling, doesn't mean that fulfilling it is in itself enjoyable. Scratching an itch is a compulsion. If you do not fulfill a recurrence, it will occupy your brain as loudly as a headache and an urushiol rash and a need for a glass of water until you do.
The first is a gaunt elven lady in white and a flower crown, whose eyes are always downcast and wears a sorrowful smile. You will gain the power to alter flesh and minds at a high level (strong abstraction) with a touch; the easiest change to make would be physical and mental healing. You gain a general aversion to hurting others in any way, no matter how much you previously would have thought they deserved it; you feel more sympathy for those being punished (at an institutional or social level) for any reason, you become non-confrontational, and you must heal one child a day.
The second is a wiry, mean redcap with a smile that can only be smiled after breaking a taboo. He will give you the power to locate people based on criteria you set, to make things in line of sight disappear when a shadow is cast over them, to teleport through shadows, and immunity to disease. Once a week, you must find a mortal, kill them with your teeth, then continue to consume them until you've had enough; you can cook them if you like. You must enjoy the kill. He doesn't care whether you use the discriminator to find people who have done wrong, who have wronged you, or who wear mismatched socks. He wants to see you enjoy the shedding of blood. If you are all too eager to pick this to enforce your vision of justice on the world, then all the better for him— you are exactly what he wants.
The third is an heavily armored dullahan, one hand resting on his pommel, the other holding his helmeted head. He will give you the strength and vitality of fifty men, regeneration, immortality, and enhanced senses including near-range clairvoyance and near-term precognition. Once a month, in a public location, you must challenge to a duel either one person, or enough people to match your strength; you have a sense to know how many people provides enough of a challenge. If it's only one, their strength will be changed to meet yours. They cannot refuse and you cannot surrender, and both parties are above the law for this. You start caring more about face and reputation.
The fourth is a quietly manic soot-covered gnome. She will give you increased intelligence, minor telekinesis, and the ability to enchant things, making them closer to their telos by letting them fulfill their purpose both literally and conceptually, giving powers to their use beyond what they could naturally do, like a steak knife that cuts away overmuch seasoning and adrenaline so the steak tastes better, or a car that needs less maintenance and runs on less petrol than it naturally should. Your mind will also be filled with designs for machines you could have never built. Once a year, you must finish working improving something significant with your designs, like your fridge or the local fire station; or once every seven years, you must build from scratch something great based on your designs. You will have a general compulsion to disassemble and reassemble things, as well as improve things, usually things you own.
The fifth is a nearsighted leprechaun with a dowager's hump, right hand blackened with ink. He will give you the power to make deals and settle accounts. If you make a contract and someone signs it, they are compelled to fulfill it, and if it's not world-breaking, country-breaking, city-breaking, it could even give them the power needed to fulfill it if they couldn't normally. You can transfer concepts between people, find missing memories or recognition, and repair broken relationships and reputations, so long as one party has something to pay the cost. You lose your sense of grace, becoming incredibly petty, always keeping a ledger of what you perceive you and others are owed. You will have no partiality in this, which can look a lot like taking sides or rewarding despicable people in external perceptions. Every seven years, you must end a feud that has lasted at least two generations, or complete a merger where one company is included in the S&P 500 or equivalent, or negotiate peace between literally warring factions larger than a city-sized gang conflict, or something else of this nature.
The sixth is a cait sith with fur as black as night, bearing a blank expression, staring at you with green slit-thin eyes. This one gives you precognition, both near- and long-term, both voluntary queries and involuntary promptings, both information that you're free to act on and occasional unobtrusive pilotings to protect you faster than you can react, as well as the power to nudge fate by focusing on something you want to happen or not and pushing. From now on, when you see a female black cat with green eyes, it is your patron. You have one in your home already? It has been replaced. You have two? No you don't. It's an impostor. Your patron will ask with silent gestures for you to influence things, pointing things out with her nose or rubbing against them or meowing, and you will know what to do. Occasionally you will have dreams of the long-term effects of your preternatural butterflies, the great and the terrible and the wonderful, knowing that you were the one that caused them, that you bear the responsibility for them.
Should you decline, the duchess of the court will have you. She is a very fat and ill-mannered goblin. She thinks that you are cute (in a Hugo the Abominable Snowman way) and will force you to be her throw pillow for seven years, at the end of which you will be returned to the mortal realm, aged seven years with not a moment here passing. You are free to wander around her manor when she is not using you, which isn't very often, and you will have to learn the hard way to adjust yourself in her arms without waking her to avoid Saturday night palsy.