Lustre

Part One

The Imperative

What lustre is, why it never asks, and what it has already decided about you.

Every universe in the Focal multiverse runs on one cosmic force, and what it hands down is a verdict. Lustre picks who is special, and for the ones it chooses, how much of what they hold will ever actually be theirs.

The Force

The judgement underneath the power

People get this backwards, so it is worth being exact. A character’s abilities are what they can do. Their lustre is the imperative underneath — the reason they can do anything at all, when the person standing beside them cannot.

Everyone has lustre. Almost nobody is lustrous. The difference is not effort and it is not merit: it is whether the imperative reached you, and only the ones it reached can ever unlock a power.

Where that power then comes from is a separate question, and the answer is very nearly anything. Arcane study. A machine you built. A mech you pilot. A pair of verdigrium bangles. That source is your power type — the well the ability is drawn out of, not the ability itself.

Two people can throw the same fire out of different wells. One is Elemental and one is Arcane, and they are not the same kind of person, did not come by it the same way, and will not end up in the same place. The fire is the smaller fact.

The Imperative

It selects you

Nobody in the Focal universe qualifies for a lustre. It selects, and its reasoning is not available for review. A treasure hunter puts a bare hand on a sleeping Atlantean engine and it chooses him. A cosmic burden older than the planet needs a new bearer and settles on a cynic who would give it back tomorrow. A model has been walking between the living and the dead since long before anybody thought to photograph her.

Which is the uncomfortable half of it. For every person the imperative touches there are billions it passes over, and there is no test any of them failed. That is what makes it fate.

It also decides the ceiling. Two people can share a power type and be nothing alike in scale, because the type answers what kind of power it is and which well it comes out of, not how big. How far it goes is the tier — and how much of that will ever be reachable by the person carrying it.

The lustre does not ask what you deserve. It has already decided what you are.

Part Two

How Much

Every ability on one ladder, from peak human to beyond reality itself.

The Scale

Every ability is rated on the same ladder

Strength, speed, power, combat, intellect and durability are each scored from 1 to 15, and each score falls into one of five tiers. The tier is the honest part: it says what league the ability actually plays in, no matter how it reads on the page.

A character is rarely one tier all the way across. Power Type the ladder across all six stats is how you tell an unstoppable fighter from someone who is merely very hard to kill.

Nullus 1–3 Human-scale ability — from below-average, through average, up to peak human.

Terra 4–6 Planetary scale — from one of the best on Earth to uncontested, planet-wide dominance.

Astron 7–9 Galactic scale — surpassing any human, up to the greatest in the galaxy.

Omnis 10–12 Near-godlike, universal scale — prowess of cosmic magnitude across the universe.

Multus 13–15 Beyond reality itself — prowess at this tier transcends time and realities.

Part Three

What Kind

Ten power types and no eleventh. Six are claimed, four are waiting.

The Classifications

Ten power types, and no eleventh

Every lustre in every universe falls into one of ten. Each one classifies the nature of a power and the well it is drawn from, so two people sharing a type may have nothing in common but that. Some are crowded. Some have not yet been claimed by anyone we have published, which does not make them any less real. A character whose power type came back double is listed under both of their power types, so these counts add up to more than the number of people.

01 Kinetic 4 in the cast

Power Type

The body itself — strength, speed and durability, with nothing burning off it.

What it looks like

Nothing is projected outward: the power stops at the edge of the body. Where it came from is a separate question — a current, a mantle, a bloodline.
A bloodline that finally came due, a mantle that had to go somewhere, an engine that woke under a bare palm.
The hardest lustre to hide, and the hardest to switch off.

In the cast

WardenStrength, speed, durability, and flight, channelled through the Atlantean Aegis Current — with deeper abilities still surfacing.

Adam AtlasThe cosmic mantle of Atlas: strength enough to move planetary masses. Push it too far and it drains the mortal body toward collapse.

Maiden IrelandA Fianna bloodline spark. Superhuman strength, and a durability that only deepens the more it is tested.

02 Dynamic 6 in the cast

Power Type

Force and change — power that takes hold of a thing and alters what it is doing, or what it is made of.

What it looks like

Matter, motion, sound, space: a Dynamic ability seizes something and changes its state.
The well is force applied with intent — not radiated outward, but worked on a thing until it gives.
It is named for exactly what it does. Nothing about it is borrowed from the other nine.

In the cast

ExileOpens spatial portals with the Trident of the First King. Reach too far and it can strand him in a reality that is not his own.

ArgentDynamic · Genetic. Commands the state of metal itself — liquid, ghost, or unbreakable at a touch.

RubicoreDynamic · Genetic. Tectonic Decompression — answers pressure by becoming indestructible corundum.

DashlightDynamic · Genetic. Runs fast enough to crush light into something solid, then runs through it.

03 Elemental 4 in the cast

Power Type

The elements — commanded, reshaped, or called up out of nothing.

What it looks like

Command of a thing the world already has too much of — water, air, fire, current, stone.
Rarely the strongest power type on paper, and consistently one of the most dangerous in a room with weather in it.
Often arrives at the exact moment the element in question was about to kill its host.

In the cast

CrestHydrokinesis — she commands, shapes and calls water by voice and gesture, and swims at superhuman speed.

PowertripElectromagnetic field manipulation: static charge stored, discharged, and turned into flight.

SolCosmic · Elemental. Light and plasma manipulation, flight, and heat and energy absorption.

04 Cosmic 3 in the cast

Power Type

Power that is cosmic in nature — star-stuff, void, and the energies of somewhere off this world.

What it looks like

The source is off-world, or too large for this world to have produced it.
The classification is the origin. A Cosmic power type says where the power came from and leaves the ladder to say how far up it sits.
A great deal of Cosmic power arrives attached to an object, and the object rarely explains itself.

In the cast

PatinaThe Verdigrium Bangles drink cosmic energy without limit and give it back as golden fire, flight, and strength that cracks pavement.

SolCosmic · Elemental. A Solari of the sun’s fusion-heart, poured into a human life before it began.

05 Genetic 6 in the cast

Power Type

The body’s own code — mutation, or an enhancement written into it.

What it looks like

Written into the body itself. No artefact, no bargain, no ceremony.
Abnormal for their own kind — which is why an alien whose whole species can fly is not Genetic, and one who can do something no other member of it can, is.
It can be inherited, induced in a lab, or simply happen — and it does not always announce itself at birth.
The only lustre a person can carry their whole life without ever finding out.

In the cast

ArgentDynamic · Genetic. A shard of alien alloy came apart in a sealed lab and poured its nature into the only person inside.

RubicoreDynamic · Genetic. A mantle rupture dropped him into a pocket of superheated aluminium oxide and chromium, and he came back changed.

DashlightDynamic · Genetic. A track prodigy whose speed kept climbing past every human limit, with no accident anywhere to explain it.

06 Harmonic 1 in the cast

Power Type

Discipline — martial, spiritual and meditative practice; enlightenment, spiritual displacement, walking the realms of the dead.

What it looks like

Discipline as a power source: what a person becomes by practising something for long enough, or by never having been entirely alive to begin with.
The lustre most likely to cross a border nobody else can see.
Frequently mistaken for Arcane by people who have not been paying attention.

In the cast

YāohúA hulijing who walks between the living and the dead: supernatural allure, a spectral-fox shape, and spirit-walking to reappear far away.

07 Mechanical 3 in the cast

Power Type

Technology — the capacity to build it, harness it, pilot it, or push it further than anyone else can.

What it looks like

The power type is on the person, never on the machine. It is the capability, not the equipment — which is why a locked door can separate somebody from what they built and leave the lustre exactly where it was.
Not the only one who can operate the thing. The only one who can take it as far as it goes.
An engineer whose real gift is that nothing she makes has ever failed. The machines are the evidence; the ordainment is her.
A thief with the finished device is holding hardware. It may work badly for them, or not at all, and they cannot build the next one.

In the cast

No member of the published cast carries this power type yet. The lustre is canon; the character is not written.

08 Arcane None named yet

Power Type

Study — sorcery, dark magic and necromancy, learned rather than handed over.

What it looks like

Power that has to be learned, spoken, or paid for. It obeys rules, and the rules are older than the caster.
A hedge-witch working out of a laundromat, keeping a neighbourhood standing without any of them knowing.
A scholar who read one book too far and now has something following her home.

In the cast

No member of the published cast carries this power type yet. The lustre is canon; the character is not written.

09 Abyssal None named yet

Power Type

The dark end — death, the demonic, curses and corruption.

What it looks like

Something else is the source, and it expects to be paid.
A curse inherited from four generations back, arriving on a birthday nobody warned him about.
The lustre most often carried by someone genuinely trying to do good with it — which is the interesting part.

In the cast

No member of the published cast carries this power type yet. The lustre is canon; the character is not written.

10 Divine None named yet

Power Type

The high threshold — heavenly, angelic and blessed.

What it looks like

A gift, in the strict sense. Nobody has ever earned a Divine power type by wanting one badly enough.
A nurse whose hands close wounds she has no business closing, and who has never told a soul.
The counterweight to Abyssal, and — in the wrong hands — barely distinguishable from it.

In the cast

No member of the published cast carries this power type yet. The lustre is canon; the character is not written.

Part Four

Two at Once

When one word would have been a lie.

Compound Power Types

Some people read as two things

A power type can come back double, written with a middle dot: Cosmic · Elemental, Dynamic · Genetic. It means the imperative had to answer with two words because one would have been a lie, and it carries exactly the weight of any single power type.

Dynamic is the most common half of a pair, and that follows from what it is. Dynamic covers the genuinely unprecedented — an ability with no shelf waiting for it — so it usually arrives beside a second lustre that explains where the thing came from, even when nothing can explain what it is. Argent, Rubicore and Dashlight all read Dynamic · Genetic: three impossible abilities, one shared origin in the body.

Sol reads Cosmic · Elemental for a simpler reason. A Solari torn out of the fusion-heart of the sun and poured into the stopped heart of an unborn child answers to both descriptions at once, and the power type says so.

A Dynamic standing alone, as Exile does, is the rarest result the imperative produces: one word, and the one word that admits it has no answer.

Every character on the roster carries a power type, an emblem, and a ladder you can look at. Go and see which one found them.

Meet the cast