Group Cohesion
This game is intended to be a Group game. The PCs as a whole are all necessary for The Prophecy (perhaps just in terms of numbers, perhaps individually) and various threats - such as the Hands of Bremen who a) hunt down gifted and b) are immune TO gifts - necessitate working together. There may also be Politics. Playing your PC as a loner/prima donna is not advisable and will lead to PC death.
Dice Rolling, Combat, and Crunchy Bits
While the use of Inappropriate Cliche is, technically, not allowed, it does count as surprising your opponent, and works in that regard. Surprise != stupid in this regard. Having someone grossly underestimate you doesn't count, unless your PC is, say, acting and such. There is a quasi healthy system, based on "okay, you lost, he hit you. A few hits, and you go down," modified to situation and such. The ideal method is for you, the player, to have some idea how much damage your PC could take and RP the results without being msged with: "You are scratched. Wounded. Incapacitated. Inebriated. Dead." etc.
Keep in mind that the game is anime-style, at least in the Gm's head. While there are no healing magics, Gifts are strong and the gifted tend to take a bit more punishment than the average person and heal quicker. (This is mostly because Rping lying in a bed is boring; in general, if a PC gets the snot kicked out of them, expect them up and about in 1-2 days unless it's really bad.
Money
I'm not going to worry about this. I will add a section on currency to the World part of the site eventually. but in general people use gold coins (often called stones, but seldom in Estavia) and bits, which are broken pieces of coins. 4 bits make one coin, one bit = 1 meal, one coin = 1-2 nights of lodgings. Actual rubies, gems etc. count as larger coins, and silver and iron as currencies also exist, though are often only half the worth of gold. Larger coins exist for larger transactions (generally work 5, 10, and 20 coins each), and for anything larger credit sticks bought from bankers and the like apply.
Most of the PCs are fairly wealthy, so I don't think the lack of funds will be a problem. (The kids can either sponge off of the others or procure money through other means.) In general, PCs can afford their living expenses + bribes etc. without any trouble. If they want to buy a home or expensive services like an alchemist they'll need to pool resources.
Hands
The Hands are, essentially, the nightmares of the gifted. While wizards have their own fears based on power and the forces they often are obliged to bargain with, the gifted have more obvious ones. The Hands have been around for a good 700 years, though stories of them exist from further back, mostly as tales of some forgotten time. The kingdom of Bremen either found out how to make them again or learned on its own.
In appearance, they tend to be thin and wasted looking but inhumanly strong with sharp fingers and teeth, scuttling about quickly more like spiders than humans. Sometimes they are armed, sometimes now. A full Hand is, of course, five of them, though they can be found in as small a group as two from time to time. No gifts work on them, at all.
Using a gift to harm them, vis a vis using earth to open up the earth under them in a pit, almost always fails: they seem to have a sixth sense about such things and are astonishingly resistant to any harm caused by gifts. Powerful enough gifts CAN kill one, but the remaining members of the Hand get strong as each part dies.
No one is certain as to Bremen's goals in making them; they've been sent after expatriates with the command Gift as well, after all. However, 50 years ago the Nakai Empire independently developed Hands of it's own. The major difference between them is that the Nakai ones don't function as well as cohesive unit though there are a lot more of them.
Hands also display some resistance to other magia and can sense the use of powerful gifts, honing in on them. There is seldom more than 1 hand within a 3 day range, however, and most families tend to learn other skills besides gifts, since swords kill the Hands as easily as other men.
