Vlastach's favor

Having the favor of the land is an important consideration for anyone who lives in the world of Vlastach. The necessity to stay in the land's good graces for landworkers and dedicants, who depend directly on power delegated from Vlastach, is particularly obvious. But Vlastach's favor is almost as important to farmers, herdsmen, and anyone else who depends on the land for his livelihood. Those whom Vlastach favors tend to find all nature working in his benefit; his crops will grow more bountifully, the weather will tend to be propitious for his undertakings, and so on. Even citydwellers who have little direct contact with anything outside their urban settings risk disaster if they incur too much of Vlastach's wrath; weather and plant growth may mean little to them, but they can still be victim to lightning, disease, and other natural maladies. However, such degrees of disfavor are hard to come by; Vlastach is long to hold grudges, but not quick to anger, and it takes much to raise its displeasure to these extreme levels.

Earning favor

The most straightforward way to gain favor with Vlastach is to serve the land, doing Vlastach's will and working toward its ends. There are various ways in which the land may be served; tending to rare plants and animals and fighting Vlastach's enemies are only a few examples. But there are other ways of currying favor with the land aside from direct service. Serving those whom Vlastach favors is also likely to gain Vlastach's approval, and dedicants in particular gain favor with Vlastach by simply serving their lieges, even in matters that don't directly benefit the land.

Someone highly favored with the land may be able to intercede with Vlastach on behalf of someone at whom the land is angry, and convince it to lay aside its ire. However, this is a relatively rare occurrence; most of Vlastach's favored are content to let its judgments stand. Besides, a person who so tries to intercede with the land risks Vlastach's wrath himself—if the reasons he gives to plead the land's forgiveness seem to Vlastach to be clearly frivolous or direly insufficient, Vlastach may become angry at the advocate for his ill-judged request.

Losing favor

The quickest way to lose favor with Vlastach is by pointless destruction of natural creatures and phenomena. Measured and reasonable harvesting of natural resources does not anger Vlastach; a conscientious logger, hunter, or miner will not necessarily fall out of favor with the land because of his activities. But such harvesting should be done in a way minimally disruptive to the natural surroundings, and, if possible, sustainable. Loggers who clear-cut forests with no thought for replanting, hunters who slaughter animals for sport and make no use of their kills, and miners who strip large areas of vegetation and topsoil in order to get at the veins beneath will reap Vlastach's enmity.

There are other ways to anger Vlastach, however. While Vlastach has nothing in particular against its servants killing the innocent and destroying manufactured goods, it certainly would resent their doing that in its name, falsely claiming that they are acting at the land's command, and thereby damaging its reputation. Interestingly, conflicts with Vlastach's servants will not necessarily lead to disfavor with Vlastach itself. Vlastach understands that some of its agents may have goals and personalities that conflict with those of other people, and may not hold it against those who fight and even slay such of its allies.

Of course, one sure way to excite the land's deepest wrath is to dabble in landreaving, the black art of drawing upon Vlastach's power against its will. Vlastach considers landreavers its bitter enemies, and anyone who practices this arcanum will have Vlastach's utter odium. This does not necessarily transfer to a landreaver's companions, however, and in unusual cases landworkers and landreavers have actually worked together for brief periods when their goals coincided (and did not impinge directly upon the goals of the land), without the landworkers' suffering for their association.

As long as the impact upon the rest of the land is not excessive, Vlastach cares little for man and his municipalities, one way or the other. An arsonist who wantonly burns down city blocks (but who harms nothing outside the cities), or a mass murderer who strikes down hundreds of people, will certainly earn a dire reputation among his fellows, but will earn neither favor nor disfavor from Vlastach for such deeds—they are the concern of man, not of the land. (Conversely, a great philanthropist who helps out thousands of his fellow men will not sway Vlastach's favor by doing so either.)

Marks of favor

The most significant mark of Vlastach's favor, of course, is that things will work toward one's good. This, however, is not something that can be easily measured, or displayed at will. For landworkers and dedicants, the very fact that they can draw upon the land's power shows they have its favor, but they may be reluctant to call on this power just to prove their favor. More constant and tangible marks of Vlastach's favor also exist, however, so such inapparent signifiers need not be relied on.

Some of the land's boons are themselves immediately obvious. If someone is accompanied by a varven, that is certainly an easily visible sign of the land's favor. If the individual himself is transformed into some sort of landhine. But only a small minority of those favored by the land are landhines or possess varvens, so for the sake of those who need to prove their favor other means have been developed. Among the most common is a talisman called a collar of favor, an arc of living vegetation that is worn around the neck and marks the bearer as favored by Vlastach, and which, like landcoins, seems to be protected by Vlastach itself against unsanctioned reproduction.

Consequences of disfavor

Falling out of favor with the land can have potentially dire consequences. The closer an individual is to the land and the more they rely on Vlastach's power, the greater the repercussions of disfavor. Landworkers and dedicants will lose their powers, of course, but are likely to also face additional punishment greater than that that would be meted out to a layman guilty of similar misdeeds. Landhines understand as a condition of their gift that it carries with it a responsibility to the land, and those who shirk that responsibility do so at their peril. Even someone who has never received any unusual blessing from the land, however, still may find it in their best interests not to earn the land's antipathy.

Mild displeasure toward an individual on the part of the land will have little direct effect; while the unfavored individual is unlikely to find natural events converging for their benefit, they won't won't likely be unusually against them either. If Vlastach's disfavor becomes severe enough, however, natural beings of all kinds will be hostile toward them; they may find themselves attacked in the wilderness by normally peaceful animals, and even natural noetic beings, such as dedicants, kalues, and scions of the land, will feel ill-disposed toward the individual. Those who Vlastach so abominates may also find themselves more subject to disease and to similar natural maladies.

Should Vlastach's wrath grow great enough, then nature itself in all its forms may conspire against its subject. Lightning, earthquakes, and other dangerous phenomena may occur more frequently in their presence, and beneficial natural processes may even cease to work for them. Falling this far into Vlastach's enmity, however, is not lightly done, and would require a concentrated attack on the land and on all it values.

Community favor

Vlastach's favor applies not only to individuals, but to communities as well; when a community jointly petitions Vlastach, it is the favor of the community as a whole that will affect whether the petition is granted. Obviously, in general, the more favored by Vlastach the individual members of the community are, the more favored the community as a whole, but there's more to it than that. Individuals who are extremely favored by Vlastach, or extremely disfavored, tend to disproportionately skew the community favor; a community harboring a respected landworker will be looked at more favorably than it otherwise would have, whereas one that tolerated the presence of a landreaver would suffer some disfavor because of it.

To some degree, this even extends to the national level. Grower nations, that seek the favor of the land and rely on landworking for much of their needs, Vlastach is more sympathetic toward than he is to Crafter nations that largely ignore the land to work things by their own power and by elemental magic. Still, Crafter nations generally maintain the resources, by trade or by their own ingenuity, to not suffer too much from not having Vlastach's favor.

Redemption

Those who have earned Vlastach's disapprobation are not necessarily beyond return to favor. However, once a person has sunk low enough in Vlastach's disfavor, it will take more than normal means to earn forgiveness. Landreavers, for instance, are not easily reprieved, though their absolution is not impossible if they seem truly contrite. The land will require a great sacrifice to make up for the individual's past misdeeds, and even then is likely to remain ever vigilant against their recidivism.

If the repentant individual can find a powerful landworker or someone else highly favored by the land to vouch for them, this could aid their atonement, and help them better win amnesty from the land. Their interceder, however, had better be very sure of their intentions, for if the pardoned individual should return to their old ways the person who spoke for them will be held partly to blame, and will likely lose some of their own favor with the land.