Jenna Moran's blog posts on learning Chinese are excellent, and who knows how long the Eos-sama website will be up after all the shenanigans. So, here's an archive.
I figured out rén on the way to China, well over a year ago. I watched a movie on the plane. It was . . . Cyborg Cop? . . . or something like that. It had Chinese subtitles and English words. So I realized, oh, rén (人) is person.
In the calligraphic form it’s actually pretty cool. It’s got one leg coming forward with this giant foot in perspective, so it’s this action pose. It’s not a wishbone! It’s not the lower half of Charlie Chaplin, caught in the middle of an amusing splay-legged pose! It’s somebody bounding towards you like some sort of freakish Internet gazelle; or, at least, how could you hope to know it’s not?
Deep contemplation of the letter “rén (人)” and the expenditure of Persona Miracle Points may yield instruction on the following miracles:
Bounding Forward (3 PMP)
You may make any written “rén (人)” bound off the surface it’s written on and dynamically kick somebody. You can choose whether this is an injurious kick, a stunning kick, a kick that knocks them cinematically backwards, or some combination thereof. By default this has the same power as an average Power’s Aspect 4 kick, but you can scale up the power proportionally if the written rén (人) is larger than an ordinary person’s legs and add bonus special effects according to the nature of the rén (人)—fiery if it’s drawn in a fiery fashion and so forth. The HG determines the final strength of the kick and any special effects: you just decide whether to appeal to the size or characteristics of the rén (人).
Invoking this power requires your miraculous action. It has miracle level 4. Using this power efficaciously erases the writing in question, and thus you can use it to remove even apparently indelible stains or deface random signs and documents if you can identify an appropriate rén (人) for this removal and identify somebody for the rén to kick.
This is a one-use ability. You must retreat to an appropriate fastness and contemplate “rén” again while spending 3 more MP before you can repeat its use.
This is a Person (2 PMP)
You may label something “rén (人).” This imbues it with a level 2 Affliction that compels people to treat it as a person. The effects generally snowball from early reactions, rather than taking any given specific form. For instance, you could label an office chair as “rén (人).” Perhaps people will begin apologizing to the chair for sitting in it; or honoring the kind Mr. Chair who holds them up in meetings; or suspecting Mr. Chair of perverse intentions and refusing to sit down. They may go even further, seeing Mr. Chair as a person fully like themselves, and become resentful that Mr. Chair sits in the office doing nothing all day while they must work. Eventually Mr. CEO will come down and have a heated argument with Mr. Chair. Mr. CEO will throw Mr. Chair out on the street and let him starve for his insolence. However, because he is a chair, and a sorrowful chair to boot, he will not starve. People will give money to the poor mute Mr. Chair who sits forlornly in front of the building. They will roll Mr. Chair over to the money and plead for him to take it. But the money will only blow away. Eventually a madman looking for victims for human experiments (人实验) will kidnap Mr. Chair and take him away to meet the most terrible of fates. This fate will be particularly terrible because it will not even satisfy the madman.
This is a one-use ability. You must retreat to an appropriate fastness and contemplate “rén” again while spending 2 more MP before you can repeat its use.
Cyborg Cop (0 PMP)
You may invoke your knowledge of rén (人) to dramatically increase the likelihood that a local theater is playing a movie about cyborg cops.
This is a one-use ability. You must retreat to an appropriate fastness and contemplate or practice “rén” again before you can repeat its use. Further, you may only invoke “cyborg cop” once in any given story.
The Origin of Storks (4 PMP)
You create an ofuda that can transform into a person. Once invoked, it becomes an non-miraculous person more or less typical of the region where you constructed the ofuda; however, it will have two legs even if the typical person of that region does not. You don’t really control anything about what the new-made person is like, although they will owe you a large favor for their existence and sometimes they will have your eyes.
Ofuda-made people, or “rén-shikigami,” cannot reproduce.
This is a one-use ability. You must retreat to an appropriate fastness and contemplate “rén” again while spending 4 more MP before you can repeat its use.
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A Book of Divine Letters: Rén
Deep contemplation of the letter “rén (人)” and the expenditure of Persona Miracle Points may yield instruction on the following miracles:
Bounding Forward (3 PMP)
You may make any written “rén (人)” bound off the surface it’s written on and dynamically kick somebody. You can choose whether this is an injurious kick, a stunning kick, a kick that knocks them cinematically backwards, or some combination thereof. By default this has the same power as an average Power’s Aspect 4 kick, but you can scale up the power proportionally if the written rén (人) is larger than an ordinary person’s legs and add bonus special effects according to the nature of the rén (人)—fiery if it’s drawn in a fiery fashion and so forth. The HG determines the final strength of the kick and any special effects: you just decide whether to appeal to the size or characteristics of the rén (人).
Invoking this power requires your miraculous action. It has miracle level 4. Using this power efficaciously erases the writing in question, and thus you can use it to remove even apparently indelible stains or deface random signs and documents if you can identify an appropriate rén (人) for this removal and identify somebody for the rén to kick.
This is a one-use ability. You must retreat to an appropriate fastness and contemplate “rén” again while spending 3 more MP before you can repeat its use.
This is a Person (2 PMP)
You may label something “rén (人).” This imbues it with a level 2 Affliction that compels people to treat it as a person. The effects generally snowball from early reactions, rather than taking any given specific form. For instance, you could label an office chair as “rén (人).” Perhaps people will begin apologizing to the chair for sitting in it; or honoring the kind Mr. Chair who holds them up in meetings; or suspecting Mr. Chair of perverse intentions and refusing to sit down. They may go even further, seeing Mr. Chair as a person fully like themselves, and become resentful that Mr. Chair sits in the office doing nothing all day while they must work. Eventually Mr. CEO will come down and have a heated argument with Mr. Chair. Mr. CEO will throw Mr. Chair out on the street and let him starve for his insolence. However, because he is a chair, and a sorrowful chair to boot, he will not starve. People will give money to the poor mute Mr. Chair who sits forlornly in front of the building. They will roll Mr. Chair over to the money and plead for him to take it. But the money will only blow away. Eventually a madman looking for victims for human experiments (人实验) will kidnap Mr. Chair and take him away to meet the most terrible of fates. This fate will be particularly terrible because it will not even satisfy the madman.
This is a one-use ability. You must retreat to an appropriate fastness and contemplate “rén” again while spending 2 more MP before you can repeat its use.
Cyborg Cop (0 PMP)
You may invoke your knowledge of rén (人) to dramatically increase the likelihood that a local theater is playing a movie about cyborg cops.
This is a one-use ability. You must retreat to an appropriate fastness and contemplate or practice “rén” again before you can repeat its use. Further, you may only invoke “cyborg cop” once in any given story.
The Origin of Storks (4 PMP)
You create an ofuda that can transform into a person. Once invoked, it becomes an non-miraculous person more or less typical of the region where you constructed the ofuda; however, it will have two legs even if the typical person of that region does not. You don’t really control anything about what the new-made person is like, although they will owe you a large favor for their existence and sometimes they will have your eyes.
Ofuda-made people, or “rén-shikigami,” cannot reproduce.
This is a one-use ability. You must retreat to an appropriate fastness and contemplate “rén” again while spending 4 more MP before you can repeat its use.