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This is an article which attempts to fix what, in this author's mind, is an oversight in the Earthdawn rules: the inability for two pattern items to interact. By the end of this article, hopefully you'll see why it makes sense that pattern items can interact, and how you can possibly use this in your campaign.

But first, the news. As it currently stands in Earthdawn, the pattern items for a more specific subject take precedent over a pattern item for a more general subject. The classic (and, for that matter, really the only) example is in the Barsaive Players' Book, p. 34 ("The Nature of Names and Name-Givers"). To summarize, it uses the example of the Hall of Records and the Kingdom of Throal to show the limits of bonuses gained by adepts through weaving threads to pattern items. It presumes that you (lucky you!), have access to a pattern item for both the Hall of Records and the Kingdom of Throal. The example is that any threads woven into the pattern for the Kingdom of Throal stop working when you're in the Hall of Records, despite the fact that the Hall of Records lies entirely within the Kingdom of Throal, because the Hall of Records is itself a Named place, and its Name takes precedence over the more broad Name of the Kingdom of Throal. The entry goes on to show how pattern items for large places (like Barsaive or Throal) only give their bonuses in the "un-Named" areas of their boundaries, and that the more specific and focused pattern created when a subset of the larger whole (be it Barsaive or Throal) is Named overcomes the thread magic tied into the more general pattern, and creates a preference for threads tied into the more specific pattern.

All of which is nice and makes sense, but, in my opinion, greatly diminishes the use of large-scale Naming efforts. If the Therans Named Barsaive so they could use thread magic to better manage the province (which they did), then why would they go to that bother if the resultant pattern items of Barsaive are only useful outside of the large population centers you'd want to have power over? Why bother Naming the province if your wonderful Barsaivian pattern items turn off as soon as you step foot on the Twilight Peaks to look for rich sources of living crystal? What good does your pattern item for all Barsaive do if it doesn't give you any extra power along the stretches of the most important link in all Barsaive, the Serpent River? And what good will your Barsaivian pattern item do when your agents carrying it suddenly find themselves without their boosted power just by entering Bartertown?

My view is that, to put them in their proper place of respect and power, pattern items of large-scale places should not lose all their power when you enter the realm of a more precise Naming. One more brief example to make my point: consider the United States of America. Most of us Americans, at least, can imagine things that could be pattern items for our country: The Declaration, the Statue of Liberty, and perhaps every bald eagle could count as a minor pattern item. What good would they be since every bit of land in our nation is divided up into Named States? And then the States have counties, the counties have further subdivisions, the cities have boroughs, the boroughs have streets, the streets have Named buildings... good heavens, why bother with large scale pattern items at all?

On the other hand, I agree that pattern items of more specific locales should have more power over their target than the pattern item of a larger target. In one case, you're tying your magic to only one specific thing, while in another you're linking yourself to many things, only a little bit of which is something you actually want to affect at this time. To balance these views out, I developed the following system of Pattern Interaction. I hope this will be useful or at least inspiring to various Earthdawn GMs as they continue to create interesting and violent, er, heroic episodes for their players to encounter.

A few definitions first:

• A Dominant Pattern is the most specific, focused pattern in any given pattern interaction. In the classic case that we mentioned above, the Dominant Pattern between a pattern showdown of the Hall of Records and Throal would be the Hall of Records.
• A Passive Pattern is the more general, least focused pattern in any given pattern interaction. In our example, the pattern item for Throal would be considered Passive when compared to the Dominant Hall of Records pattern.

Thorough knowledge of the rules of pattern magic (from the Earthdawn Companion and Magic supplements) will be necessary to make any more sense out of this article. You have been warned.

A few other basic assumptions I made:

• A Dominant Core pattern should always be unaffected by any Passive competing pattern.
• Likewise, a Passive Minor pattern should always be completely disregarded by any competing Dominant pattern.

Under these new rules, your adept who just happens to have a Major pattern item of Throal will keep all of her thread ranks in it when she visits the Hall of Records (lucky her!). She will, however, have a change to the effective thread ranks woven into it if she interacts with someone or something who is tied into the pattern of the more Dominant area, the Hall of Records. If she's fighting a sinister Hand of Corruption agent in the Hall of Records, and she's the only one with a pattern item, she gets the full benefit of her threads, like usual. On the other hand, if the sinister Corruptor has a pattern item for the Hall of Records, then you'd use the following chart. Of course, if the Corruptor had the pattern item for Blood Wood instead, there wouldn't be any pattern interaction, because the two patterns are not intersecting in any way.

Finally, GMs shouldn't use these rules when having a villain with a pattern item for the village he has under his control, say, confront a heroic group of adventurers with a group pattern item. The group pattern items are unique as they are, and these rules are more concerned with geographic conflicts than setups like that. These rules could be used with a villain using an actual pattern item of a member of a group who may be forced to use their group pattern to help resist the evil magic; however, since these rules would have the personal pattern item be the Dominant one, and the group pattern item the Passive, that would leave the group pattern with no effective power for the adept in question during this struggle. This may annoy some GMs (to say nothing of players), but since pattern items are usually pretty rare to begin with, I'm not too concerned about this situation coming up much. Furthermore, you can check out the nifty Thread Weaving Talent Knack later on in this article to help keep your Passive Patterns where you want them.

Terminology for the chart:

• "y loses ranks equal to x..." means that the pattern in question loses effective ranks equal to the initial thread ranks woven into the other pattern, but not lower than zero.
• "Limited" means that the threads of one pattern item are lowered, if necessary, to the original thread ranks of the other item (or some other specified level).

New Talent Knack

The use of this Knack allows the adept to "boost" their lost ranks of thread magic during a pattern interaction back up to, but not beyond, their starting ranks. For instance, a Dominant Minor 4/Passive Major 3 interaction will leave the Dominant Minor with an effective 1 ranking and the Passive Major with an effective 0. Use of the Pattern Interaction Restoration Knack will allow the adept to restore any "lost" ranks of threads woven to pattern items for the duration of the interaction.

To use this Knack, the adept Tests against a target number equal to the Thread Weaving Difficulty of the rank of threads they're trying to restore.

In the example above, restoring the Passive Major to 3 would require making a Test against the Target Number for weaving a Rank 3 Thread to any item (usually 10). To this number, add the number of ranks you are trying to restore (in this case 3, giving us a 13). If you're trying to restore from a 4 to an 8, then you'd test against the number needed for a Rank 8 thread + 4. If you're trying to restore a Passive pattern, also raise the Success Level needed by one step for every "level" of difference between your type of pattern item and the Dominant pattern item. Add an additional level of success needed for any attempts to restore any Minor Pattern, Passive or not (this is because all Thread Weaving attempts with Minor pattern items require at least a Good Success). Example: restoring a Passive Minor against a Dominant Core finds the Minor item two "steps" away from the Core item. This gives us an Excellent Success needed to restore the Passive, plus one for being Minor, which gives us an Extraordinary Success on the Target Number generated above. Restoring a Passive Major against a Dominant Core would only require a Good Success, however, and restoring a Pattern against a Pattern of the same "level" only requires an Average Success (unless it's a Minor Pattern item, in which case, as always, Good is as good as you can get).

The adept may try to restore as many times as they wish, so long as they don't get a Poor Failure against the required Target Number. Each attempt takes up a full Action and costs 1 Strain.

Campaign Considerations

This is mainly because, at least in all the campaigns I'm aware of, pattern items are relatively rare. And, let's face it, someone walking around with the pattern item for all of Barsaive, the Blood Wood, or Throal will very quickly find themselves becoming very interesting to some very powerful people, no matter which rule system you use. Since I doubt most GMs are giving their players pattern items to such grand areas, the main purpose of this article will be to help solve the few cases where pattern interaction will be taking place.

And also, quite frankly, I'm baffled by the concept of the Pattern Item of Throal Itself only being useful in the back alleyways and forgotten corridors of the kingdom. This restores the truly powerful pattern items to a place of prominance, but also allows, quite rightfully, for the more specific, Dominant Pattern Items to be used as effective counterbalances against them. GMs who are truly interested in this idea could take the Talent Knack presented in this article and spread it to having "rank wars" between two competing adepts trying to boost or raise each _other's_ ranks, but such a convoluted series of counter-Thread Weaving is beyond the muddied scope of even this article. Besides, most such pattern interactions will probably end up being much more efficiently solved by just walking up and smacking the opposing party hard with sword or spell, anyway.

Good luck and good hunting across Barsaive!