a toa has six heads
A toa has six heads.
One head is on the top of the toa's neck, like anyone else's. The other five are inside dedicated toa temples, built by the Great Spirit himself, hidden beneath ice, the sea, or who knows what else, and known only in prophecy.
Each of the temple heads serves an audience chamber within the temple. Visitors can speak with the toas in these chambers, regardless of where the toas might be. And each of the temple heads may also wear a mask, allowing each toa to wear six masks simultaneously, and harness the powers of all of them. (The Temple of Levitation was made to contain all the Masks of Levitation, for example: one for each toa.)
This is not without its drawbacks. A toa's personality bleeds when they are maskless, just like a matoran's, but where a matoran requires only one mask, a toa needs six. And the masks are missing.
PERSONALITY BLEED: Matorans and toas alike have mental inventory in which they keep their Technologies, Bonds, and Moods. This inventory is the result of an interface between their mask and their head, and if that link is broken, the data escapes. Characters have 9 mental inventory slots, and masks have 1. Each turn a character ends without a mask, they save or lose 1 item of their choice from their mental inventory. Items in the mask's own inventory are safe from this, though they can't be used until the mask is worn again. Masked characters can freely choose which of their items are in which slots. A character with an empty mental inventory is like a newborn child, though one who will learn quickly.
- Technologies can be written down, creating items that can be held in a physical inventory instead, and vice versa. They can be used in either form. Ex: secret code, crafting instructions, song composition, fighting technique, etc.
- Bonds can (but don't have to) exist between any number of characters who share debt with one another, and can (but don't have to) be broken by settling that debt. Bonded characters can save to act right before or right after something bad happens to their bonded partner (not both before AND after, though).
- Moods each apply a bonus or a penalty to something, and they usually have a duration of 1 day. If you get a mood and you don't have a free inventory slot for it, the mood instead suppresses an item of your choice for its duration. Ex: angry (+1 initiative, but save to resist provocation), hopeful (spend this to reroll a save), depressed (save to be useful in any way), etc.
Expect a fuller list of mental items in the future.
Toas and matorans also have issues. They begin play with one, and get another one if they should ever be taken by the Master of Shadows and released. Here are some possible issues a child of the Great Spirit might have.
- Your strength exceeds your control. Whenever you fail a roll, you or a friend within range puts an injury into physical inventory.
- You're insecure about your identity. Get angry if you have to do the same thing as someone else, or if someone successfully copies you.
- You think you're better than everyone else. Save to accept any kind of help, and save twice to ask for it.
- You always feel like an outsider. Save to not settle every debt the moment you have the chance to. Break your bonds when you can.
- You focus too much on imaginary things. Get distracted (-1 to everything, you can have multiple of this) every hour of every day.
- Your curiosity exceeds your good sense. Save to not take a risk for even the slightest benefit.
Humans have a mental inventory with 3 slots. The humans who can be trusted not to hand over the Great Spirit's children to the United States military for dissection in a lab, which is to say, kids ages 8-16, use their mental inventories a little differently.
- Technologies include answers to their test questions for Friday, directions to the post office, and what they remember from what Jesse told them about the video game walkthrough they read in the latest Nintendo Power.
- Bonds are the same, but many of these kids have cellular phones now, meaning they can send SMS messages and call each other, and use their bonds over long distances! How cool is that?
- Moods are a real big problem for this demographic. If you want them to actually be able to use any of their mental inventory space, you're probably going to need to clear out some moods first.
More to come.