“Life, uh, finds a way”

Dr Ian Malcolm (Jurassic Park)

The Ideal of Life encompasses the aspects of Growth and Decay. It deals with natural (and unnatural) cycles. Such Muses have power over themes of development and deterioration, the rise and fall of power, maturation and inevitable decline.

Muses of Life almost never look back: whether decaying the old or bringing in the new, the Ideal of Life favours change with a forward momentum.

In Vignettes and the Dreamscape, these powers can be manifested through applications of the Muses' Skills.

The Strife Skill governs the use of powers to attack others. With Life, a Muse could inflict sickness upon their foes, or imbue themselves or their allies with greater strength.

Some examples of application at different power levels are:

• Weak: A Muse might inflict a minor sickness upon a single foe, impairing their ability to fight, or give an ally a burst of adrenaline, allowing them to snatch a narrow victory.
• Moderate: A Muse might disarm an opponent by causing their weapon to rot or tarnish, or restore a small group of fatigued soldiers to fighting fitness.
• Strong: A Muse might near-instantly heal a mortal wound in the midst of battle, or weaken a wall's foundations, allowing defences to be breached.
• Exceptional: A Muse might bring a plague of rot down upon an entire town, causing crops to wither and the weak to perish, or imbue a person with heroic vitality, appearing as almost a giant on the battlefield and cutting down swathes of foes.

The Subvert Skill governs stealth, duplicity, and forgery. With Life, a Muse could cause a lock to rust and break, or quickly degrade evidence beyond the point of recognition.

Some examples of application at different power levels are:

• Weak: A Muse might cause the ink to run on a written note, making its meaning hard to discern, or obscure a person's identity by making them appear younger or older than they are.
• Moderate: A Muse might cover tracks through a forest with a layer of new growth, or corrupt a hard drive's worth of data beyond readability or recovery.
• Strong: A Muse might dispose of a corpse by causing it to rapidly decay, or use the motion of a dense crowd to obscure a large and complex operation to kidnap an important dignitary.
• Exceptional: A Muse might cause a rumour to spread like wildfire, growing in magnitude each time it is retold, or throw a country into turmoil by accelerating the ruler's illness and causing them to die before declaring an heir - all the while leaving no-one the wiser.

The Seek Skill governs the use of powers to gather information. With Life, a Muse could read the lines of wear on an unknown object to determine its use, or discover something about an area based on the things that live there. Muses of Life are, of course, particularly well suited to uncovering knowledge wherever the natural world and living things are concerned.

Some examples of application at different power levels are:

• Weak: A Muse might determine if a lock was picked by reading the lines of wear around it, or predict the next day's weather by observing the behaviour of local animals.
• Moderate: A Muse might breed a strain of tea known for particularly accurate readings of tea leaves, or determine the cause of a person's illness - even if the symptoms are obscure and unusual.
• Strong: A Muse might encourage the rapid development of a new line of research, ensuring bountiful knowledge for the future, or reconstruct a scene based on only a portion of decaying ruins.
• Exceptional: A Muse might uncover intimate details of a person's life simply by observing the marks of growth and decay on their face, hands and clothes, or determine the social, economic and political state of an entire country by observing a day's activity on a single street of the capital city.

The Sculpt Skill governs the use of powers to modify objects. With Life, a Muse could cause a rosebush to produce a particularly beautiful bloom, or reduce a building to ruin by weathering the timbers.

Some examples of application at different power levels are:

• Weak: A Muse might weaken a tool so that it breaks easily when next used, or make a cut flower pristine and beautiful.
• Moderate: A Muse might cause a house to appear old and dilapidated to a prospective buyer, or make a wagonload of provisions remain fresh and free from rot for longer.
• Strong: A Muse might introduce regions of stress and fatigue in a dam, which will have disastrous consequences if left unchecked, or beautify a village with an abundance of flowers and pristine façades on all the houses.
• Exceptional: A Muse might grow a forest into a vast and labyrinthine expanse, or reduce a large swathe of farmland to a fallow waste.