Redeem: A Savage Worlds Power from Scairy Tales by Brent Wolke

Scairy Tales is an unpublished Savage Worlds setting by Brent Wolke of Truckee Games.  Originally announced early in Savage Worlds’ history, something happened that I have no personal knowledge of and it has been delayed quite a bit.  Sadly, the setting prefigured the rise of such twisted fairy tale stories as Grimm and Once Upon a Time and it is a tragedy the setting hasn’t officially seen print. 

Weirdly enough, a PDF of the incomplete Scairy Tales (including place-markers for art and question marks for “Edited by”) has made its way online.  I could swear that the copy I found was linked from a site where Brent Wolke released it into the wild, but I just corresponded with Brent about that and he says copies found online may be pirated.  You have been warned.  I’m not going to link to anything here.

There’s some really good stuff in Scairy Tales – especially the arcane powers -- that fills in some gaps that bug me about Savage Worlds.  They could really come in handy for a GM interested in a gentler, more fantastical setting – something like a Miyazaki movie or My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic – and Brent Wolke has given me permission to reprint them at Wine and Savages.

My personal favorite is redeem, a power that allows the caster to undo the curse bespelling part of Wonderment, the fairytale setting of Scairy Tales.

Redeem (created by Brent Wolke)

Rank: Legendary
Power Points: 20
Range: Touch
Duration: Permanent
Trappings: Blinding light, chanting, rays of sunlight, warmth.

This is the most powerful of abilities available to those who use Good Magic. Redeem allows the caster to focus his own will, his belief, and part of himself to cleanse an area of Wonderment from the Nightmare, returning it in an instant to its once glorious state. This power may be used on corrupted fairy tale folk as well, bringing them back within the Dream.

To redeem Wonderment, an arcane skill roll must be made. If successful an area of land equal to 1 mile x Belief as a radius centered on the caster plus 1 mile for every raise is blasted of the Nightmare. Nightmare creatures or corrupted fairy tale folk in this area are all immediately shaken, but unharmed otherwise.

To redeem a corrupted fairy tale folk, an opposed Spirit [for the corrupted being] versus Belief [the arcane skill powering magic in Scairy Tales] roll must be made.  Success returns the fairy tale folk to its original state of being, free of the Nightmare. It will remain Shaken for one full day recovering. The freed being will have no memory of its time within the Nightmare outside of an overriding sense of pain and torment.

In either case, the caster will have had to imbue so much of himself into the casting of this power, that it leaves him with one level of fatigue. This can be recovered by a vigor roll made once per week until healed.

For other settings where the power of compassion can redeem even the vilest of spirits, I would suggest this as a power for AB: Miracles or even a Super Power.  Examples of redeem in play can be seen in Chihiro freeing Haku from Zeniba’s control in Spirited Away, the cleansing of dark spirits in The Legend of Korra, and the renewal of the land by the Holy Grail in Excalibur.