Mutations
What a mutation is
A mutation is a permanent change in your body and pattern -- a change in matter, not in training, belief, or what you happen to be carrying. The miasma drives most of them: long exposure, a mutagen, a bad zone, a lucky inheritance, an injury that healed into something new. Some are present at birth. Some surface under stress and never recede.
Every mutation in this chapter is written so that it depends on nothing but the organism that carries it. It needs no weapon, no tool, no armor, no language, no culture, and no mind capable of speech. A claw is a claw whether it grows on a person, a beast, or a walking thicket. A mutation that lets you spit a stream of corrosive sap is just as at home on a mutated plant as on a human.
Mutations are traits
Mechanically a mutation is a trait -- the atomic unit of capability (see Psionics and Traits). It is a Mutation Trait: once acquired it is always active, with no Wind requirement, though a few are restricted to certain biomes.
You cannot hold two copies of the same mutation. A mutation marked Repeatable is the exception: you may take it more than once, each time choosing a different option (a different color, a different ability, a different field).
The three families
Mutations sort into three families by where the change lives. Most characters draw from all three over a career.
| Family | Where the change lives | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Physical | The frame: limbs, hide, organs, gait, recovery. Works in a dead zone; cannot be Dispelled. | Speed, Natural Weaponry, Dense Carapace, Hardy |
| Mental | The nervous system: instinct, reflex, memory, display, influence. Mundane biology, not channeling. | Hairtrigger, Beguiling, Hyperawareness, Improbable |
| Psychic | An innate channel to the Winds, grown into the body rather than learned from a codex. | Wind Power, Far Channel, Mindlink, Blink Step |
The split matters at the table. Physical and Mental mutations are ordinary biology: they keep working in a miasma-dead zone and cannot be Dispelled, Countered, or shut off by a silence field. Psychic mutations tap the Winds, so they answer to the same rules as any Protocol -- the local color levels gate them, and they go quiet where the miasma does (see The Winds of Change).
How to read an entry
Each family page is a catalog. Every entry lists:
- Mutation -- its name. All are written as "Mutation: Name" in play.
- Effect -- what the body now does, in its own terms.
- Notes -- any threshold to grow it (a minimum level or ability score), and whether it is Repeatable.
Where an entry gives a number -- a die, a range, a bonus -- that number is the table-facing summary and the working reference for play.