The crone is the embodiment of the wisdom gained from experience. She is the honored elder, the one who stands between the youthful and the dead.
The Crone
The furies, the graces, whatever you call them. These three archetypes are among the oldest and most powerful.
The Maiden, the mother, and the crone. Together they have been the embodiment of femininity, the progression all women followed in life.
In recent times they their power has diminished, with newcomer like the flying women taking many of their followers. The value of maidenhood is almost gone, and many do women forgo motherhood. An entire industry has been developed around postponing the effects of age.
The crone is the embodiment of the wisdom gained from experience. She is the honored elder, the one who stands between the youthful and the dead.
Often tails of witches are actually avatars of the crone with a knowledge of ritual magic. Indeed avatars of the crone are more likely to practice ritual magic than any other archetype, save maybe the mystic-hermaphrodite.
Symbols: Wrinkles, black clothing, the cane and the lantern
Suspected Avatars: Many of English queens are believed to have channeled this archetype late in their lives, but most avatars are too cautious to become public figures
Taboo: Appearing or acting youthful or inexperienced. An avatars skill can never be higher than her age in years. No male can channel the crone.
Channels:
1-50% The crone is not easily fooled. An avatar can flipflop any skill check to detect the truth provide the result is under her avatar skill.
51-70% The crone holds the respect of the young. With a successful avatar check, the avatar can force a person to treat her and her advice with respect. This can only be used on someone whose age in years is less then the avatars skill level.
71-91% The crone no longer suffers from her years. Though the avatar appearance continues to age, after reaching this level they remain as healthy and strong they are until the day they die (or their avatar score falls below 71).
91-98% At this level an avatar can use an old injury to predict the future. With a successful avatar check they can gain an insight into one event per day per person.
(the classic example is off a blind women who can see the future with her useless eyes, but the old women who can predict the rain by “the old hips acting up again” works too)
(I’m not sure about the order of the 51% and 71% percent channels, and have switched them back and forth in my head lots)
Interesting idea. I have my doubts about the final channel. Firstly, the method seems a bit too narrow. An old injury could be almost anything and could lead to something really silly like, “My hysterectomy scar tells me that boy will cause you nothing but trouble!” Secondly, the exact nature and limitations of the insight learned need to be stated a bit more explicitly. Granted, it’s the final avatar channel so it’s got to be pretty damn cool, but without a more concrete definition the ability could be either severely limited or massively overpowered.
I like the idea of this Avatar, but I think I wil be the first to say it could work as a Unisex Avatar, probibly something like “The Elder” other than that I like the Avatar and its Channels. Maybe a little restriction could be made on the Final channel but other than those two tweaks I like it alot.
Makes me think of doing an Avatar like “The Old Master” vibeing off the idea of Old wrinckly Martial Arts experts, is there one that does that already on the site?
The reason I made it female only was to fit it in with the Maiden, Mother, Crone triad in mythology.
Rules and flavor wise it would work fine to make it as a male, just not in the campaign I am using this in.
The last channel should have a restriction, but I’m still working on making an appropriate one.
I’d say that, while what “one event in the future” may need to be defined better, it can also just be GMs choice. Guaranteed to be useful, but not to be necessarily what you want. Alternatively, the type of wound could limit what type of information. So, old-bones = weather prediction, possibly vague trouble, but not Love or Money. Blindness = any possible thing, but that’s typical and paid for by the fact that she’s, you know, blind. Even the hysterectomy scar makes sense (scars can itch or throb, even if only in a phantom manner). But your example works really well. Hysterectomy = no children (or no MORE children) = predictions about Kids (or people younger than her), but because it was due to a problem, maybe can only do Trouble or Bad People (because they Shouldn’t Have Been Born).
Also, there’s no reason there can’t be both a Crone and Wise Old Cuss (or whatever) archetype. Personally, I imagine that when a specific idea is particularly tied up in gender, a larger archetype can be “split” (possibly even to the point that an older, more generic Archetype gets deposed by two new Archetypes… which in this case means there’s some guy who embodies the Dumb Young Dude, maybe still alive… maybe just stayed looking young until he died.)
Thank you.
You said that better than I could.