By the rules as currently written, yes, disconnecting from Self should turn off your immortality.

Edit: Then again I suspect prolonged communion disconnection could lead to psychological problems like solitary confined people get, barring mental self editing being able to deal with that somehow. Could be almost as bad as getting Red spaced, being disconnected from Communion long term.

1. Weregilds/Blood Money/Blood Mana is totally a thing and people recognize that as a form of restitution.
2. Vendettas being prohibited I'm assuming means family vs family blood feuds are illegal.
3. Is legal dueling closer to judicial combat like here? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_by_combat
Is it closer to matters of honor/demanding satisfaction? Both? Something else? Or is it just something to interpret in whichever way lets you have the fight scene you want?

Basically, justice in the Great Basin has very pre-Christian sensibilities, assuming I understand the schemas implications correctly.

If so, I'm thinking it may be the rarest thing to disconnect from, that you only do if you have serious problems due to somebody else having a chunk of your soul.

You know, gender stereotype stuff, just with a fantasy gender instead of a real-world one.

Something I came across about Hearth-Kin gender I was wondering about. What does travel mean for Hearth-Kin Niha, which are known for that somehow in addition to their perception?

Edit: Or random encounters with strange beings on other bridges you can see from the bridge you're using?

Group-Minds are a fairly obvious explanation for infrastructure that's already been gone into, but what do things like Starships and Cities translate into in the Sorcerously Advanced setting?

The first route I can see is playing something like Howl's Moving Castle, or Castle Heterodyne from Girl Genius. Maybe they're an ancient awakened artifact, maybe they're a modern superweapon/mobile fortress, something like that.

The second route I can see is to go full anime/somewhat Xianxia-esque with characters that can radically reshape the environment single-handedly. They are powerful enough that they literally need to be outnumbered 100 to 1 by lesser foes for the fight to be balanced(Here's an update from Forge of Destiny where Bai Suizhen and Cai Shenhua, two characters powerful enough to potentially merit infrastructure ratings fight each other briefly(https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/forge-of-destiny-xianxia-quest.35583/page-2698#post-11060262)).

Here's a late series Naruto fight scene where two characters powerful enough to potentially merit infrastructure ratings fight each other for another example. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwusaXgOUFo

Things Infrastructure 1 gets a character(Sourced from Page 86 of Sufficiently Advanced 2e):

1. Teamwork bonuses if they have the largest infrastructure in the conflict(+4 for most conflicts, +6 for highly parallel conflicts)(Could be explained as War infrastructure level magic on the fly perhaps)
2. Complication magnitude reduction based on infrastructure level differences if they have the largest infrastructure in the conflict(Could be explained as utterly ridiculous defenses)
3. Their adversary experiencing advantage magnitude reduction based on infrastructure level differences if the infrastructure level 1 character has the highest infrastructure in the conflict(Seems like something that could still be explained by being that ridiculous, attack or defensewise).
4. +4 teamwork modifier in projects meaning all their project timeframes get divided by four(Could be explained as more on the fly infrastructure level magic?)
5. +2 timestep penalty to others attempting to target them with projects(Explainable as utterly ridiculous defenses still)
6. Resistance to being targeted by Themes. (Narrative protection for a Madara Uchiha tier monstrosity)

All you'd need to do is transpose the twist costs for effecting large scale groups onto the personal scale complication table. Multiplicity doesn't seem particularly essential for anything but the parallel conflicts unless I'm missing something. The character would still probably need to be Power: 10 to make sense though.

And your speculation about the Soulpact's actions seems fairly accurate to me. They're a small group, but they could still definitely have factions.

Thanks for the typo catch. Should be Empty Grave, will fix.

Consistency thing I noticed: It's Cult of the Open Grave on page 15, but Cult of the Empty Grave elsewhere.

Edit:Shadow Magic as necromancers use it, not elementalists.

1. Aiding in or launching murder and missing persons investigations.
2. Argue about the nature of ethics from a utilitarian standpoint where multiple hells exist(does that break the scale, making saving the damned the most important thing in the entire universe, no matter the cost? Are damning a single individual and damning the entire universe morally equivalent actions?)
3. Argue(edit: about) the merits of following the Sovereigns of Hell's example, subjugating or exterminating demons to save the damned
4. Plot the destruction of the red space
5. Research schemes for searching the red space for people safely and tracking down people who may be experiencing other fates worse than death.
6. Provide Resurrection assistance/canvas for benevolent mana donations
7. Provide communion healing/psychological counseling to torture victims.
8. Interrogate and in some cases torture people who may have red-spaced somebody to get the locations of their victims.
9. Attack organizations that own soul repositories to destroy the repos
10. Assassinate people who go around condemning people to fates worse than death.
11. Underground Railroad souls out of hells.
12. Stockholm monstrous people into working with them as a form of redemption.
13. Seeking apparently unowned soul repos so that they might be destroyed.
14. Attempt to mediate violent conflicts so they end with as little torture and suffering as possible, preferably none.
Edit: 15. Disseminate information on what draws people to which afterlife.

Meaning Soulpact operations could be divided into areas like research, black ops, charity, radical vs non-radical, etc.

The guidelines comment is not about precognition, it's about how these people realized that magic was an expanding field of study and instead of outlawing a specific blinding spell they wrote "thou shalt not deprive one of their senses" (for example). They didn't just write a code of laws, they wrote a set of principles as to what law was and how to write more of it.

Disconnecting from War only keeps people from hitting or maybe imprisoning you. It doesn't keep them from taking everything you own and shunning you.

Something like gold coins is easily conjurable. It takes mana out of circulation, which is fundamentally the real means of production along with being able to aspect it.. It's basically bitcoin efficiencywise and possibly deflationary compared to mana being inflationary.

That just leaves Barter and somehow making Fiat money too distinct to conjure, such as by incorpoating a rare and difficult to engineer aspect of mana into the creation of serial numbered banknotes(The first banknotes couldn't be conjured due to not being in the realm of ideal forms yet) taking measures to keep printing presses outside the public consciousness/realm of ideal forms, making serial numbers difficult to change via method X, etc. I'm wondering if there's a distinction between aspect backed banknotes and conjured coinage, in terms of the similarity to bitcoin. Non Aspect backed banknotes would probably be easier to fabricate given the existence of magic usable to change serial numbers after conjuring unless it leaves a signature that can't be purged. A serial number registry in a universal repo couldn't be used to verify another banknote with the same serial doesn't exist elsewhere.

Not sure if the particulars of Banknote production here is too pointlessly minute but here they are if my speculations help for conceptualizing economies.

Edit: I realized bitcoin comparisons are out of line considering the mana cost of conjuring coins doesn't increase over time.

Edit: Another Question. Is "Guidelines are given to determine what is and is not a future criminal act" a reference to using precognition in law enforcement/how it should be used?

1. Disconnection from natures such as war can turn enforcing sentences into an utter clusterfark. Especially if disconnecting can be done on a whim and considering reconnection must be voluntary.

2. It was meant for an age where everyone was basically a nuclear power, where enforcing judgments would inevitably lead to bloody, spectacular messes if somebody didn't come quietly.

Fire and Scale: You don't necessarily need to be in those forms, but you better damn well be ready to push a piece of paper off a desk at any moment, man. I'll add a note.

Proteans: fixed.

Shouldn't the one additional point to import be conditional on not being polymath?

To belong in Fire and Fang, do people need to take a draconic or feline physical form, or just behave like hedonists and in a stereotypically dragon-like or cat-like way? Text is unclear.

There is a typo in the text of the Protean Society: "Not only is it a crime to lock someone into a body just because they were born it it, everyone should be able to change their bodies the way they change their minds if they see fit."

Should CV5 be something like willing to face a combatant with access to their immortality flaw? Should fates worse than death be included, either at CV5 or a hypothetical CV6? You could possibly put them at CV4 with an overly legalistic reading of the rules but that would be ridiculous.

Edit: I just realized that Sufficiently Advanced probably had fates worse than death too that I didn't remember(along with a lesser version of immortality). So never mind?

Part of the reason that Belief is so common is because it's instinctual and inherent in a way that other internal Paths aren't. You have to train Discipline. You have to intentionally sacrifice for Blood Magic (even if you stumble into the nice version where it just feels like fatigue to you). Belief-path magic just happens. It's not that so many people intentionally turned to it, it's that strong beliefs are universal and people had to put in effort to turn away from it. The new version supports this better because there are fewer drawbacks for very-high-tech characters, and even people who are faking a belief in something (CV=0) can still do some small amount of magic.

And at least with this new rule, you do not necessarily have to be a extreme fanatic that values their ideology more than everything else (including self-preservation) if you wish to have maximized Natures. This is most welcome.

I agree with the other limitation that you cannot use the Path to make magic that contradicts its core ideology, it makes sense. After all, if you are a professional fighter you are not likely going to invest in a Tradition that is based on pacifist beliefs or if you are seriously interested in mind control (to the degree such a thing is still possible after the Gift) you are not likely going to invest in a Tradition based on individualist and libertarian CVs. At least, not without having multiple Traditions and being willing to divide and compartimentalize your magic practices between them and do mental gymnastics.

Each Tradition must be tied to a single Core Value. The believer's maximum Natures are equal to the CV + 2. If the CV drops, any Natures higher than the new value + 2 will drop to that rating. In addition, Traditions tied to Belief cannot be used for purposes that are counter to that CV. They can still be used for neutral purposes, but a pacifist could not use this Path to kill, and a believer in freedom could not confine someone with their magic.

One of my next tasks for myself is writing more detail for the Traditions, and that'll include what sorts of Core Values the Belief-oriented Traditions are usually based on. I feel like they should be based on one of the civ's CVs, so that might mean either altering the Tradition or altering one of the CVs in some cases. (Hooray for Alpha editions!) Nearly everyone who uses a particular Belief-based Tradition should have the same or similar CVs powering it, with a few people using an "ironic" or "perversely appropriate" CV instead.

Mana is Tradition-agnostic. If you can uncork the jar with one particular Tradition without aspecting it in the process, feel free to use that mana for another Tradition's spells. If, however, you've got a bunch of color-shifting Wild Magic "gemstones" that gush chaos when destroyed, that might mess up your carefully constructed Geometry patterns that would prefer more orderly mana. "It depends" is a pretty common answer here.

Having multiple Traditions does not increase your personal mana storage capacity.

Description of Polymath on p. 33 is missing a 'with' in the line "Arete, Necromancy, and Oneiromancy open up access to Polymath Communion 3+."

In the case a Belief Tradition is tied to a canon Civilization or Society, I assume the involved CV might either be one typically tied to that group (e.g. Hedonism for the Languid Art of Fire and Scale, Love Your Family or Build a Just World for What Defines Us of the Hearth-Kin, Let None Rule You or Shine Brightly for The Key of Courage of The Unroyal), or something personal, according to p. 113. It states What Defines Us typically works with personal or societal CVs, but what about other cases? How common or uncommon are the two options (sticking to party line for empowering your magic, or tapping personal ideals) in the population?

If you have multiple traditions, how difficult is to tap mana in jars made by a different tradition of yours? Is it more efficient to have different 'jars' for every tradition of yours? Do high levels of Industry from your multiple Traditions that increase the mana-storage capability of the body stack up, or just the highest matters?

It's pretty much obsolete. Before, an experienced mage could pretty easily murderize people with the Dominion-Nature (the thing that existed before War). Now, throwing around the equivalent of D&D's Finger of Death or the like will just get people laughing at you. It's like going up to someone in mechanized power armor and shoving a steak knife at them. You can still kill children with it, but, uh, big deal, you can kill children with lots of stuff and it's not like you found some secret to power there.

Industry 2 is where Conjuration starts, so that's the "replication" part. "Enhancement" is things like making glass clearer, making wood lighter and stronger, making cloth softer and dye brighter, etc.

Spotlight: Courage and Service

Being Unroyal requires a certain amount of grit. Their children learn it at a young age - along with the difference between tenacity and just plain stubbornness. They also learn the importance of service. There's no way that the Unroyal are going to rid the Basin of tyranny without everyone working together. While the gigantic Nova Commonwealth scatters its seeds far and wide, and mighty Diadem wastes the majority of its citizens' talents, comparatively tiny Unroyal makes sure that everyone's pulling in the same direction.

Children among the Unroyal are taught teamwork as a means to an end. They don't have to love it, but it's how you get things done. One common metaphor is that when you want to shine bright, teamwork is the only oil for the lamp.

Most teams amongst the Unroyal don't have a single leader. With people taking on new personae on a regular basis, you can't rely solely on strong or compatible personalities to hold things together. Instead, they have experts for various situations. Being an expert is considered its own kind of service: when people need what you know, you can't stubbornly hang on to a personality that's counterproductive. You need to step up now, and if you need to bow out gracefully, you wait for the danger to be over.

Another thing: Industry 2. Replication and enhancement of raw materials. Does that have anything to do with conjuration? What does that entail?

The Rage(Cult of the Open Grave)(C3 I5 M3 S5 T4 W5)
The Mad Power(Glimmermere)(C5 I3 M3 S5 T5 W5)
What Defines Us(Hearth-Kin)(C3 I3 M5 S5 T5 W3)
The Key of Courage(The Unroyal)(C3 I5 M5 S3 T5 W3)
The Languid Art(Fire and Scale Society)(C4 I5 M5 S5 T5 W3)
The Power(Bight and the Brand)(C3 I4 M4 S3 T5 W5)

More thoughts to come as I realize them.

• PDF format, 1.25 MB download.
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Old links have been updated.

I've added a changelog on page 3 for those who want to know the major updates. Much of the added pagecount this time is actually new material rather than just layout slips, especially in the "Spotlight" sections for civilizations and the addition of Diadem and the Worldbuilders.

I am expecting to rewrite some of the spotlights. Some of them might be uncomfortable together (or with other parts of that civilization) and might need to get shuffled around. I may also have accidentally made the same sort of boneheaded move I did when writing the original version of the Roamers - that is, playing into harmful stereotypes that I didn't realize at the time. I try hard to avoid that, so if you see me doing that, let me know.