Creating Characters - Elements Stage
The Wheel of Elements
Beings in Everway (horses, hippogriffs, heroes) are ranked from 1-10 in each of the four alchemical elements - Earth, Air, Fire and Water. On the Everway scale, the score of the typical human is 3, the highest a human is likely to obtain absent supernatural intervention is 6 (conceivably, 7) and a score of 1 indicates serious infirmity. Each one-point increase represents a rough doubling in ability - a character with a score of 6 is "twice as good" as a character with a score of 5, who is "twice as good" as a character with a score of 4, who is twice as good as Joe Average (3).On the Amber scale, the typical human score is 1, "Chaos level" is 2 and "Amber level," 3.
The Two Scales Compared
| Everway Scale | Amber Scale | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | ||
| 2 | ||
| 3 | 1 | Average human |
| 4 | 2 | "Chaos-level" |
| 5 | 3 | "Amber-level" |
| 6 | 4 | |
| 7 | 5 | |
| 8 | 6 | |
| 9 | 7 | |
| 8 | ||
| 9 | ||
| 10 | 10 | Oberon,Dworkin |
The elements in action - Many qualities depend on more than one element at a time. You're a great warrior if you have 7 Fire, but you're not a great general if you also have 3 Air. Contrariwise, a 7 Air, 3 Fire hero is destined for the pundit circuit rather than the field HQ - you lack the elan to command the respect of a body of troops. You're also a much better debator than you are a motivational speaker.
You may have a very high Water score but a low Air score. Thus you would have a very good sense of someone's motivations but have a hard time articulating that understanding to your colleagues. You might have such a high Earth score that you can shrug off sustained spiritual assault but such a low Water score that you have no idea you just walked through the Valley of Death. Your high-water, low-earth companion, however, knew just what was going on, sensing every nuance of the doom she was completely unable to stand against.
Specialties
For each element, choose a specialty - some aspect of that element at which you are unusually good. Specialties must not be overly broad - "swordplay" or "acrobatics" would be acceptable Fire specialties but "combat" or "athletics" would not. A hero can have "Sensing Pattern energy" or "Sensing magic" or "Sensing shadow energies" as a Water specialty but can't have "Sensing Energies" generally.
Specialties normally relate to an Element's "Everway sense" - Fire as action, not fire as superheated particles in other words. However, it can be possible to cross-specialize. Instead of taking Cooking as a Water specialty (the sense associated with the element of water is taste/smell) you could take it as a Fire specialty, since you have to heat the food, an Air specialty, if one approaches cooking as a matter of precise adherance to recipes and principles, or even an Earth specialty, since "all good things come from the earth." One would expect that, in play, the four cooks approach their craft rather differently.
More About the Elements
The Stages of Character Creation
There are four stages to character creation: