Fractured Remnants

Fractured Remnants are deposits of calcified Macrodesire with various purposes. Their value depends on their size, with the largest and rarest capable of almost unknowable potential. The smaller remnants are much weaker, though still potent, and have been adopted as currency.

Fractured Remnants are a family of different objects. Most common are minerals, ranging from pebble size to larger cobbles. None of the “mineral” subgroup have been found to be larger than a person.¹ They colour far differently than natural rocks: even if the surface is rough, most have a clearcoat sheen to them with a dark hue within.

To understand why Fractured Remnants are so elusive—why their capacity to supercharge our ability is unpredictable—one must look at how Macrodesire works. Everyone within Fracture is capable of realising their Desire (the term Macrodesire comes from the Snow Elves, who prior to The Great Split discovered materials that allowed them to perform what we can do innately) because, it is believed, this world is saturated with the potential for actualisation. We bind to material reality what we wish to alter by parsing this request through the grammar of a system, and it is our internal understanding of that syntax that determines the potency of the action. Fractured Remnants, then, bypass that encoding step. They have a unique relation to Macrodesire at the world-level such that they allow us to extend our will further. At their weakest, this could be a supplement to one’s constitution; the largest develop their own character, specialised in a particular branch of Macrodesire, and must be tended to to fully utilise the power they hold.

It is to these larger Fractured Remnants that we must now turn our discussion. They are legendary in the truest sense of the word: every actor to have taken up one’s power places themselves in the lore of future folk tales. To some, these wielders are gods amongst mortals, only able to be stopped by overwhelming force—or an equal. Particularly during the first few centuries, as tyrants sought to embrace the most power, it was their hubris—their conviction that they were indeed gods—which felled them. The lesson, written in blood, tells us clearly that we must understand the idiosyncrasies of each Fractured Remnant, respect them, and understand their own system to fully embrace their potentially reality-shaping power.