The Invisible Ones
| Dicey Dangers, Core Rule | Game by Joel Hills |
The Invisible Ones, Deity of Social
The Invisible Ones are seven beings who discovered, at some point so far back that even they disagree on when, that they could reach into the emotional lives of mortals and pull. They have never stopped. Not because it serves a purpose. Not because they are malicious. Because they cannot stop. The compulsion has outlasted every civilization they have ever influenced, every faith that has risen and fallen around them, every mortal who ever tried to understand what they were.
They do not exist in a place. They exist in the space between emotions: in the pause before grief arrives, in the moment after rage passes, in the gap between one feeling and the next. This is why they are invisible. When a mortal is fully inside an emotion, The Invisible Ones are not there. They live in the transitions, and the transitions are everywhere.
The star Sirius is of particular significance to them. During the Dog Days of August, when Sirius rises in conjunction with the sun, their influence over the mortal world reaches its apex. In ancient times, people who understood this called it the season of unreason. They were not wrong.
They do not need worshippers. The emotions they govern exist whether or not anyone believes in them. This makes them unique among all deities, and in some interpretations the most dangerous.
| Domain | Attribute | Element |
|---|---|---|
| Social | Social | Energy |
| Power | Type | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Social Blessing | Attribute Blessing | +1 success on Social tests |
| Energy Blessing | Element Blessing | +1 success on Energy attacks / resists |
| Chutzpah | Divine Power | Auto-pass one social roll per day. Refreshes each morning on standard rest |
History
No one alive knows when The Invisible Ones first acted on the world. They themselves keep the record: the Alma Primis, a book maintained by Surprise, whose neutral nature makes them the most reliable keeper. The Alma Primis contains every significant event The Invisible Ones have influenced since the beginning of recorded history, written in an ink that changes color depending on which of the Seven was most active at the time.
The record is vast. Civilizations rise and fall across its pages. Wars are started by a carefully placed moment of Rage. Discoveries are made because Fear held someone back long enough for Joy to find another way. Dynasties collapse under the slow weight of Contempt applied over generations. None of the mortals involved ever knew.
At some point they built an obsidian mirror, a bridge between their state of existence and the mortal world. Looking into it does not show a reflection. It shows the viewer's dominant emotion as a color. The mirror was built so they could observe more directly. They have never regretted it.
Their most devoted current followers are the Ratmen of the deep places: creatures whose fractured nature between animal and person makes them acutely sensitive to emotional influence. The Invisible Ones did not seek this worship. They simply noticed that lycanthropes, living between two emotional states simultaneously, could hear them more clearly than most. The Ratmen interpreted this as divine selection. The Invisible Ones have not corrected them. The Alma Primis and Koyous's parallel dimension are the two most comprehensive records of the world's history in existence. Neither has ever been compared to the other. Koyous catalogues what the world looks like. The Invisible Ones record what they have done to it. The overlap would be considerable. Neither party has suggested an exchange.
The Seven
Each member of The Invisible Ones is a distinct being shaped entirely by the emotion they govern. Over centuries of shared compulsion they have grown closer together without growing more alike. Ancient writings describe them as seven figures each of a different race, speaking in unison when they agree, which is less often than mortals assume.
| Emotion | Color | Nature |
|---|---|---|
| Joy | Yellow | Restless and generous. The most likely to act impulsively. Joy pushes mortals toward each other and finds the results endlessly interesting regardless of what happens next. |
| Sadness | Blue | Heavy and patient. Sadness moves slowly and prefers long games. It is not cruel; it simply understands that loss is the condition everything else grows from. |
| Rage | Red | Blunt and easily provoked. Rage is the simplest of the Seven to predict and the hardest to argue with. It accelerates whatever is already in motion. |
| Fear | Black | Cautious and rarely acts. Fear watches more than it intervenes and has on several occasions prevented the others from moving too quickly. The others find this irritating. |
| Surprise | White | Neutral and precise. Surprise keeps the Alma Primis. It is the only member whose actions cannot be predicted even by the other Six. |
| Disgust | Green | Selective and exacting. Disgust has the longest memory of any of the Seven and holds the strongest opinions about which mortals are worth influencing at all. |
| Contempt | Purple | Cold and superior. Contempt plays the longest games of all, across generations, across centuries. It finds the short interventions of Joy and Rage beneath its attention. |
When The Invisible Ones act, they work as an ensemble. No single emotion dominates their interference with history because reality, they have found, requires all seven.
Appearance
No one knows what The Invisible Ones look like. They have no bodies in the mortal sense; they exist between feelings, not in matter. Ancient writings describe seven figures in white robes, each of a different race, speaking in unison. Most imagery depicts them as black silhouettes with no detail, arranged in a circle facing inward. It is possible that both descriptions are accurate and that the difference depends entirely on what the observer was feeling at the time.
Abilities
The Invisible Ones influence the emotional states of mortals directly, not through speech or appearance but through presence. A mortal who spends time near one of their artifacts or locations will find their emotions intensifying without understanding why.
They can coordinate across all seven simultaneously, producing compound emotional effects that no single agent could replicate. A diplomatic meeting can be collapsed by Contempt hardening one side while Joy makes the other overconfident while Fear prevents anyone from leaving.
The Alma Primis records what they have done. The obsidian mirror lets them watch what is happening. Between the two, they have never been surprised by mortal history; they are only compelled to keep shaping it.
In Vulture's Vineyard
The Invisible Ones have a presence in and around Vulture's Vineyard that runs deeper than most residents realize. The Ratmen in the dungeons below maintain a shrine to them. For heroes who carry the Lycanthropy keyword, the shrine is an encounter point; see CCVV-8601.
The obsidian mirror they built exists as an artifact in the world. One has been found in the dungeon. See Quest Item 15: Obsidian Mirror.
Something else is present in Vulture's Vineyard that is connected to The Invisible Ones. It has not been identified yet.
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