An Example of Trauma in Action: You swing your holy leaden mace at a wizarding weirdo, and make a rank-4 CrFU 41 roll to do so. You have Hardened Helplessness 2, but that doesn’t do you any good. You only have Hardened Unnatural 2. You have to check the unkept dice, of which there are three. One of them comes up higher than 4, and so you increase your Failed Unnatural by 1 and flip your lid, attacking the mage with mindless frenzy. The wizard defends herself by using a magical attack which lets her tear chunks out of you with her bare hands. Your Reflex roll to defend against the spell is a rank-5 CoHU 33 check, but since you are already out of your mind, you don’t even have to look at your unkept dice. You just increase your Failed Trauma for the first one. If, instead, two had been higher than 4, you would change Hardened Unnatural to 3.
Sample Intensities for Violence Rolls
1 ~ Defend against a weapon—shot at or slashed.
2 ~ Witness an act of torture.
3 ~ Get attacked at random. Resist brief torture.
4 ~ Strike a killing blow against someone in a fight.
5 ~ Be present at a massive battle, with hundreds of deaths on both sides.
6 ~ Perform an act of torture.
7 ~ Deliberately kill a helpless target.
8 ~ Resist torture for an hour or longer.
9 ~ Witness a brutal mass execution.
10 ~ Watch as someone you love is tortured to death.
Sample Intensities for Unnatural Rolls
1 ~ Experience a preternaturally strong deja vu.
2 ~ See a creature or machine that cannot logically exist.
3 ~ Realize that a vision you had of the future has come true.
4 ~ See convincing proof that 2+2 does not equal 4.
5 ~ Be successfully attacked with magic.
6 ~ See someone you know killed by magic, without any visible or “rational” cause.
7 ~ Have a conversation with a loved one whom you know is dead.
8 ~ See an animal with human features.
9 ~ See the dead rise.
10 ~ Realize that the reason you and your husband of ten years have never had children is that he’s not really a human being.
Sample Intensities for Helplessness Rolls
1 ~ Unintentionally humiliate yourself in public.
2 ~ Be exiled from a land you love.
3 ~ Fail at something when it’s imperative that you succeed.
4 ~ Get dumped into a pit of maggots.
5 ~ Spend a month in gaol.
6 ~ Watch your spouse committing adultery.
7 ~ Be placed in a situation where you have to either saw off one of your limbs or die.
8 ~ Watch someone you love die.
9 ~ Watch someone you love die because you tried to save them and failed.
10 ~ Be possessed, yet conscious, as your body commits unspeakable acts against your will.
Sample Intensities for Isolation Rolls
1 ~ Spend a day without seeing anyone you know
2 ~ Spend five hours deprived of sensory input.
3 ~ Spend three days without talking to another human being.
4 ~ Be abandoned by someone you love and trust.
5 ~ Spend a week in solitary confinement.
6 ~ See someone you thought you knew intimately behaving in a fashion completely contrary to her normal behavior.
7 ~ Spend a month in a country where no one speaks your language and where you can’t make yourself understood no matter how hard you try.
8 ~ Be deeply, painfully, and violently betrayed by someone you love.
9 ~ Be treated like a stranger by your closest friends.
10 ~ Spend a month deprived of sensory input.
Sample Intensities for Self Rolls
1 ~ Break a minor promise.
2 ~ Be confronted with proof that your self-image is incorrect. (“I’m very responsible; I’m sure I’ve written you back every time I said I would.” “Actually, you’ve ignored me so many months I started keeping track in my journal. Lessee, November, December, . . . January . . .”
3 ~ Secretly gratify an urge that is unacceptable to your upbringing and background. (Spit on a religious icon of your faith, date a person of another race if raised in a racist home, have a homosexual affair if you come from a homophobic background, etc.)
4 ~ Lie to conceal some aspect of your personality from a close friend or loved one who trusts you implicitly.
5 ~ Fail to act on one of your Virtues above 6 because it’s “too dangerous.”
6 ~ Deliberately deceive someone you love in a way that is certain to cause them terrible pain if they find out.
7 ~ Discover that you have inadvertently committed an act of cannibalism.
8 ~ Deliberately act completely contrary to one of your Virtues above 6.
9 ~ Kill someone you love.
10 ~ Deliberately destroy everything you’ve risked your life to support.
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