The Beast Fears Fire - Elves

Elf [Malevolence 2]
Impulse - To Bring Forth Humanity

If you ask a Crick about elves, they will probably echo some version of the sentiment that, because Crickton is the only place on earth where the five races of man live in harmony, it stands to reason that Crickton would have more elves and more active elves than anywhere else. Don't read a lot into that statement, you can hardly get two words out of it between factual errors and bullshit. Crickton is quite diverse and pluralistic, and you could divide the different physical characteristics and cultures of people into 5 just as accurately as any other number, as a nation and a people they handle their diversity better than most, and there are a lot of elves, but yeah, a lot of problems with the way the Cricks tell it.

Elves are custodial spirits of humanity, but what that actually means is kind of hard to suss out, sometimes. They live among people, can, like other custodial spirits, inhabit people, but unlike other custodial spirits, they do not manipulate or control people. They really can't, since self-determination is one of the defining characteristics of humanity (elves are custodial spirits of Rukh as well). This puts them in something of a weird position in regards to their responsibilities. Elves are bound to try and strengthen and preserve their element, but since humans are tricky, and since humans can determine their actions for themselves, elves have to follow suit. Elves have individual opinions on how to preserve and strengthen humanity, and while they can encourage their charges toward those ends, they can't make them. For this reason, elves are self-willed and significantly cleverer than other custodial spirits, to the point that they really don't have anything in common with the others.

When they manifest, elves take on a humanoid form, proportioned similarly to a cartoonish human toddler with a broad, clever face, pointed ears, a full head of hair and skin that is usually a darker or cooler shade of gray on the back, outside of the legs and arms and head and a lighter or warmer shade of gray on the front of the torso, inner arms and legs, throat, mouth and nose. Elves have navels and suggestions of secondary sex characteristics for their chosen gender, but are apparently sexless. Their hair can be just about any color, but it usually black, white, gray, some shade of yellow or orange or dark blue. Elves have quiet voices and slightly evil sounding laughs.

Harm 1/Peril [On Fire] Elves don't hurt people if they have any choice at all in the matter, and, even if forced to defend themselves, will usually only manifest fire as a distraction to give them time to discorporate. It is against their nature to do violence to any human directly, even one that has done them great harm. That said, they, like their charges, take sides in conflict, and will happily lend their strengths to a human friend who allow them to inhabit, up to and including helping them do violence (they are generally against violence, however, and always counsel restraint.

Inhabiting People Elves can inhabit a person pretty much indefinitely; during that time they may be active, giving advice and encouragement and actively engaging with the things their host perceives, or they might be passive, seeming to slumber. Whatever the case, the host has access to the capabilities of the elf, Instincts, Natures and Abilities, which they can use in place (in the case of Nature, if the elf is stronger) or in addition to their own. Any NPC who has an elf has their Threshold raised to 2 or by 1. Any PC who is inhabited by an elf gets use of the 1,2,and 3 Harm Spots (as well as being able to roll using the elf's dice). Also, anyone inhabited by an elf is immune to possession and the powers of other custodial spirits (only room for one, and elves are designed to inhabit humans, so they get priority).

An elf must always ask, every time they wish to inhabit a person. Their host must want to be inhabited, not just meh-willing, otherwise, it doesn't happen. Elves cannot control or affect the actions of their host, beyond improving their host's capabilities, trying to persuade them, or leaving their host if they object to their host's actions.

If a human dies while inhabited by an elf, the elf dies with them. This is the only way, short of massive psychic trauma, that they can die.

It is possible to forcibly separate elf from host using magic. This is kind of frowned upon, but sometimes necessary.

Exorcism
When you want to force a human inhabiting spirit out of its host, you need some charm, mojo or ritual, and face Malevolence.
On a Hit, you force the inhabiting spirit from the host, causing (Great Harm to the Spirit | Great Harm to the Host | No Harm to the Spirit | No Harm to the Host) - choose 1.
On a Hard Hit, choose 2.
On a Miss, the spirit remains in the host, you take Harm as stated, and cause one of the Hit conditions of Moderator choice.

More human than human
You can play an elf if you are really interested. This is a very different sort of character than most, and your Moderator might veto the choice, but if not, here is what you need to know.

- Your Nature, Strength, Instincts and Traits are all as normal.
- You have no Gear other than Fire (D8), which you cannot lose. You can pick up and use Gear that is around of provided by others when you are manifested, but carrying it is very hard to do.
- You do not get to choose your Abilities; instead, you get the following:
--Custodial Spirit
1. You can interact normally with other spirits regardless of your state.
2. When unmanifest, you cannot interact with physical things and they cannot interact with you.
3. When manifest, you can interact and be interacted with by physical things, you can manifest and unmanifest at will, but if you want to unmanifest in order to avoid danger, you must Act Under Fire.
4. You are not subject to Perils that affect living physiology (hungry, tired, suffocating, etc) unless the source of the peril is supernatural.
5. You can inhabit a willing person. When inhabiting them, they can call upon any of your Natures, Instincts, Abilities other than this one, if your capabilities are superior to theirs.
5a. You can spend Strength to help them on any Move, and both of you mark Insight any time either of you spends Strength.
5b. Your Host gains the 1,2 and 3 Harm spots.
5c. While inhabiting someone, you cannot make any Moves of your own.
6. When free of a host, you travel via levitation, which you can do in any direction about as fast as a person can run.
7. Fire does not harm you.

You can also learn the following Ability
I Touch My Elf
When you want to share some of your natural powers with your Host, face Malevolence
On a Hit, you can give your host 1 of your natural abilities (Touch Spirits | Levitation | Immunity to Some Perils | Unharmed by Fire).
On a Hard Hit, you can give them access to 2 of your abilities.
On a Miss, you and your host suffer 1 Harm and you are ejected from them. You cannot try to inhabit them for the rest of the Scene and until the Harm has been recovered.

There is a story that elves might have once been custodial spirits of fire who jumped over to humanity when they first saw humans making an using fire. Murens and Pinefolk do have (much smaller and more secretive) traditions of Fire based witchcraft, though fire witches are incredibly rare, to the tune of maybe five in Crickton, and that's a lot of fire witches for any nation.