Echoes & Resonance

We are living through a modern-day rennaissance of magic. We are watching the lost arts and techniques of long forgotten societies emerge from the annals of history and entwine themselves with the great people of today, both hero and villain alike. It matters not your moral compass; it only matters you have the Spark.
There's no questioning that magic is alive. It changes, it grows, it evolves, and while it may not always be present in ways we can observe, it's there. Alive, and wishing to be free. To be part of the story. Perhaps that's why this magic is coming back now, taking the shape of Echoes. Items capable of becoming just as powerful as the legends of yore, even the mythical artifacts that once inspired entire empires to war. Is this a good thing? Is it a bad thing? I don't know, but I fear as they continue to spread we'll finally gain some insight into what happened the last time magic became so potently widespread.
-Aumani Field Log, Unknown Author

In the worlds of the Chromanexus, magic is drawn from the stories and experiences our characters experience and share. As much as this is a metaphor for us in our world, it's also an indisputable truth in the realms our characters live in: every story has a little magic in it, and that magic is capable of doing great things. The more stories we tell, the more magic we make until we have something that is wholly and truly our own. Just like our stories, Echoes live and grow alongside us, reflections of the memories our characters make with one another through quests, events, and community rewards.
In layman terms, Echoes are "custom" magic items, at least in the sense that you won't find the finished products in any D&D handbook. To create one of these items, you typically need a craftsman or a ruby tear, something personal (whether that be a trinket, equipment, a magical item, etc), and a story to give it.

Quick Steps

1. Choose an item you wish to customize (any item will do, as long as it's an item, including but not limited to other magic items).
2. Find a master craftsman or obtain a Ruby Tear.
3. Let the craftsman do their job (spend 10x Chromatite of matching rarity per attempt). Alternatively, use a Ruby Tear to automatically succeed the crafting process, whether you're a craftsman or not.
4. If you haven't already, make a post in the Chamber of Echoes (located under Grimoire), referring to post guidelines for submission formatting.
5. Use the rules in Craft and Craftsmen to continue refining your Echo's Frequency until it reaches 15/15.
6. Use Pure Chromatite to start adding artifact properties (up to 3 minor and 2 major).
7. ???
8. Profit.

Preparation

As previously noted, you need to gather a few things before you can make an Echo.

Something Personal

First, you need something personal. Specifically, an object of some sort.
Your object of choice may be any item your character can use or wield, from a simple trinket to weapons and magic items. Even the stations installed on a vehicle are considered valid objects to becomes Echoes, although the vehicle itself does not count. The only exception is that you may not choose an item that is already an Echo, nor can you choose Stellar Armaments or Completely Restricted Items.
Your choice of item will determine the Echo's "base" property. For example, if your chosen item is a ring, then the Echo is a ring. If your Echo is a longsword, then it has the traits and properties of a longsword in addition to its magical properties. If your Echo is a suit of plate armor, then whenever you wear it, you get the benefits of wearing plate armor. You get the idea. No matter what other magical properties you end up giving your Echo later, the base item will remain the same.

Like many legendary items and artifacts of yore, the idea is that this item is something important to your character or your character's story. It may even have its own story independent of your character, like the Eye and Hand of Vecna. While Vecna may or may not appear in any given setting, the legend of these two powerful artifacts persists across time and space, leaving characters who find the items to wonder at and explore the rich lore behind them. The point is less abouve whether Vecna exists or not, but that the items persist even in the character's absence, and the story of those items has shaped their abilities and powers into the legends they now are.

A Craftsman or a Ruby Tear

With your personal item in hand, your next step is to either seek assistance from a craftsmen with a Colossal workshop, or get your hands on an elusive Ruby Tear. If you choose to go with a craftsman, you're going to want someone whose skills align with whatever it is you're trying to make into an Echo - for example, if your Echo is meant to be an amulet, seek out a jeweler. A sword? A blacksmith. A book? Get a Scrollbinder. Use your best discretion, and don't hesitate to ask in blame-a-gan if you're not sure.
A ruby tear negates the need for a craftsman, as the simple act of using it on the item completes the transformation into an Echo instantaneously.
So, what's the difference, aside from speed and expense? A ruby tear can record

So why would you ever use one over the other? Well, working with a craftsman gets the job done a lot quicker. An item can't be fully considered an Echo until its obtained all its Resonance properties (Creator, History, Minor Property or Properties, and a Quirk). That said, a ruby tear lets you capture or "link" moments in your RP as they happen, making your Resonance properties a reflection

Craftsmen. To turn an item into an Echo, you need to own a Colossal workshop and have at least one Pure Chromatite on hand. In your crafting channel, declare you wish to create an Echo, then attempt a crafting check with a DC of 25. Whether you succeed or fail, the Pure Chromatite is spent; however, the original item is undamaged, allowing you to try again. On a success, the item becomes an Echo.
When you create the Echo in this fashion, you may choose the Echo's Resonance properties from the Ruby Tear tables:

• Creator. This should reflect your creature type or the type most commonly associated with your character's crafting techniques. For example, a dragon that uses the techniques of giants to forge magic items may use either the "Dragon" or "Giant" creator property.
• History. Choose one. You might want to collaborate on this with the item's intended owner, but that's between the two of you.
• Minor Property. Roll a d20 and consult the minor properties table. Magic is a fickle, capricious thing, and even the best smiths have a difficult time making it obey. It decides how it wishes to manifest once bound to an item. You are free to adjust the flavor of the property as you see fit, so long as the mechanical traits are unchanged.
• Quirk. For the same reasons above, roll 2d12 and consult the quirks table. Choose your preferred option between your two results. If both rolls are identical, reroll one of the dice until you get a different option.

A craftsman is any player character who owns a workshop in the Bazaar channel. You'll want a craftsman whose skills align with whatever it is you're trying to make (a jeweler for an amulet, a blacksmith for a sword, etc). Use your best discretion, and don't hesitate to ask in blame-a-gan if you're not sure. The craftsman uses Chromatite to forge the item, binding it with the power and potential to become something unique.
A ruby tear can simplify the process, negating the immediate need for a craftsman in the making of the item. In addition to this convenient boon, using a ruby tear in the crafting process adds unique traits to the resulting item that would otherwise only be obtained through the assistance of a Master Craftsman: Resonance properties, and the ability to function as a spellcasting focus while held.

A Story to Give It

You've gone so far as to gather the materials to create something of greatness, you may as well give it it's own story to tell. There's no hard and fast rule for this, and you can ultimately do as you please with your items, but always recommend putting together some flavor text telling the rest of the world about the origins of your item and how it was intended to be used.

In the worlds of the Chromanexus, the Orb of Dragonkind was created as a crystallization of the dragonsong, the hymn that all dragons hear and sing to help shape the primordial elements of the material realms.

What about your item? What do you want it to be? It doesn't have to be some legendary purpose; it can even be as simple as "I wanted a personal memento of this experience I shared with my friends that could help me on my adventures". It's up to you.

The Actual Instructions

You've got whatever you want to turn into an Echo. You've got yourself a ruby tear, however you managed to get one, or you've found yourself a master craftsman to make the item for you.
Begin by going over to The Chamber of Echoes (located under Grimoire) and creating a new post for your item. Give it a name, give it a little description and a backstory. For proper formatting, you'll need to refer to the post guidelines in the channel (tap the little book icon next to the post button). Once you've got the post in place, you can use this to keep track of your item's notes, abilities, and log its improvements or even if/when it changes hands to another player or character.
After this, see either Crafting an Echo for the nitty gritty steps, including if and when to add your Resonance properties.
Wow. Would you look at that. You're already done! Now take your shit and have fun!

Staff Note: D&D has hundreds of items available to players. Most items are novel, but what really makes them stand out in our memory is usually not the item itself, but how the character came to possess that item and how they end up using it to save the day or contribute to the greater story we're all sharing together. This sentiment created the Echoes system as we know it.
In a place like the Chromanexus, it's not only acceptable for a player to get their hands on several magic items through loot and crafting that they probably wouldn't at another table, but both expected and inevitable. The earliest versions of the system emerged because players were more and more frequently finding themselves forced to choose between either abandoning cool loot in favor of an item that was personal or had the "flavor" that character desired, or choosing an item that had new, cool, or neat features and abandoning something sentimental. Echoes made it possible to let players to not only pick both, but take those new, cool, or neat features and combine them with a personal item and in turn make something that was greater than either item alone would have been. We've been through a few iterations since, but this sentiment has remained a core thread of the system since its inception.
We say all this to highlight that Echoes were not designed with the intent to let players "min-max" (a type of power gaming where you intentionally pursue strong features with drawbacks you intend to avoid or ignore in play, all to make a character that's stronger than anything the game can reasonably expect). Some degree of min-maxing is expected (whether intentional or not), especially as that's fun for some people, but it's important not to let your super crunchy hyper-specific item overshadow or wash out everyone else's contributions to the game. We trust you guys to play nicely together, whether staff is immediately involved in your RP or not.

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We are living through a modern-day rennaissance of magic. We are watching the lost arts and techniques of long forgotten societies emerge from the annals of history and entwine themselves with the great people of today, both hero and villain alike. It matters not your moral compass; it only matters you have the Spark.
There's no questioning that magic is alive. It changes, it grows, it evolves, and while it may not always be present in ways we can observe, it's there. Alive, and wishing to be free. To be part of the story. Perhaps that's why this magic is coming back now, taking the shape of Echoes. Items capable of becoming just as powerful as the legends of yore, even the mythical artifacts that once inspired entire empires to war. Is this a good thing? Is it a bad thing? I don't know, but I fear as they continue to spread we'll finally gain some insight into what happened the last time magic became so potently widespread.
-Aumani Field Log, Unknown Author

There are magic items, and then there are Echoes.
To us, the players, an Echo is not especially different from artifacts. The only real difference is that Echoes are built by you and I in respect to the stories our players enjoy. Making an Echo is not especially difficult in concept, but in practice, it is a labor of love. Like any craft, you start with something rough and unhewn but with time, patience, and persistence, you'll have something truly wondrous in your hands. We create Echoes with through the power of Resonance, a lost art form we've only just begun to regain understanding of.

Resonance

Resonance is the act of bonding important moments from your character's life and story (or even those of your friends) to a given magic item, provided you or the item were there in some capacity to witness it. This is achieved one of two ways:

• Obtaining a Ruby Tear. Every character obtains a ruby tear for free as part of character creation, with a Creator or History trait of their choice to represent your character's backstory. Otherwise, they can occasionally be found in the wild (as part of completing a quest, though not always guaranteed), but the most reliable means of obtaining one is to purchase a tear from the Bazaar for 500,000 GP. Discovered tears often have one or two properties already chosen; a purchased tear is always "blank". Once you have a ruby tear, with or without stored traits, you may choose to bind it to an item at anytime.
• Working with a Craftsman. Magic often springs forth in extraordinary places. Strong emotions are well known for attracting them, and there are few who draw from their emotion more potently than craftsmen. A craftsman can attempt to awaken an item's Resonance with a successful DC 25 crafting check and either 50,000 GP or one Pure Chromatite, which is consumed as part of the attempt. The craftsman chooses the item's Creator trait, then applies either one random Minor Property or Quirk. These properties come from the tables on the Ruby Tear page.

To indicate Resonance being achieved, take your initial result and bring it to the chamber-of-echoes channel. This channel serves as archive of all Echoes that are and have been, and will now include yours too.
When you make your post, name your Echo something personal. It doesn't necessarily have to be connected to your present character, but as long as the item has a story, it should have some kind of name


The only other means of obtaining a Ruby Tear is finding one while adventuring, purchasing a blank one from the Grand Emporium for 250,000 GP, or seeking out a Master craftsman to assist.

**Discovery.** Blank Ruby Tears can be discovered as adventure rewards. When found, there's curiously always enough for every party member present to get one... A discovered Ruby Tear may have one or two traits chosen by the GM (either chosen or randomly) that included it in the loot list. The trait(s) will often relate to something that happened during the adventure, but sometimes may feature hints or scraps of another story that was, is, or has yet to be.

**Shopping.** Lauren's always able to get her hands on all sorts of weird shit. That includes these precious jewels. A purchased tear is always blank.

**Craftsmen.** A Master craftsman can attempt to forge (or reforge) an item into an Echo with a DC 25 crafting check and an upfront investment of 50,000 GP or one (1) Pure Chromatite. If they succeed, the item gains a **Creator** property of the craftsman's choice, representing the craftsman's technique or art in

No matter which route you take, the Ruby Tear will typically have "empty" traits. You can fill these traits at any time by "resonating" with a significant moment your character experienced in RP or whenever you roll a natural 20 on your downtime check(s). Specifically, when one of these events happens you can save the link to that message or post and assign it a magic keyword from the list (you can only have one of each trait).
At any point, you can attach a Ruby Tear (yes, even an "incomplete") tear to an item in your possession. Make a post in <#1059152118252064778> to commemorate the occasion, using the post template to start the thread off. The item becomes magical if it isn't already, and gains the ability to be used as an arcane focus and transforms to reflect the Resonance Traits you've stored in it. Even after the item's become an Echo, you can still use Resonance to link moments to your Echo until it has one of each property. You may change the Echo's appearance to reflect the properties it's been given (for example, an item with the *metamorphic* quirk might be described as ever-shifting, or perhaps made of liquid that is solid to the touch; you're creative, it's your item).
Resonance isn't necessarily something that happens in real time. Magic is weird, and the universe is filled with unexplainable events. Just as readily as you can say your Echo didn't gain the traits until you made it an Echo, you are free to retroactively say the Echo "always" had that trait and perhaps has only just awakened, or maybe you've only just figured out how it works. The main point is that in becoming an Echo, the item has woven itself into your story for better or worse.