Forums:
Taxonomy upgrade extras:
Here are the Altered Fates Universe rules copied from Jennifer Adams' now defunct website.
The "Rules"
by Jennifer Adams
(Altered Fates universe Creator)
The rules... Hmmm... Well, They are not really rules. Rules sound so stuck in school or something.
Guidelines... yeah... that's the ticket.
The guidelines are mainly on the how the medallion works, as defined in AF: Juvenile Delinquent and AF: Disguised For Life. I actually wrote them into the universe.
I will start with non-medallion-related guidelines. (there are only two).
1. The medallion looks like cheap costume jewelry. No matter how well it is cleaned up it still looks cheap. That leads us to #2.
2. No one ever pays much, if anything, for the medallion. Refer to #1.
3. It has a picture of an angel or a fairy holding a wand, it has also been discribed as possibly something demonic, since the origin is unknown I suppose that is possible. There is also strange writing around the outer edge, on the front and the back of it is blank, it looks as though there may have been writing on it at
one time or may have just been scratched up.
Part of the goal of this universe is for the reader to think in the back of their mind,
"Could this really happen?" Or," Could this happen to me?"
By making the medallion readily available it makes these questions possible.
Now for how the medallion works.
1. The medallion transforms the wearer, meaning that if the wearer removes the medallion the TF stops right there.
If a character takes the medallion off during an equine TF(into a horse) and removes the
medallion while he only has a tail. He will be a man with a horses tail for twelve hours. (Refer to #2).
2. A person's body can only handle one TF by the medallion in twelve hours. It takes time for the body to recuperate.
3. If one wears the medallion and another touches the medallion it will produce a form swap, or they will look like the other used to. As long as the wearer hasn't TF'ed with it in the last twelve hours, in which case, nothing will happen.(refer to #2)
4. If a woman is menstruating or pregnant, the medallion will not completely TF her and then will auto-reverse the TF immediately. This works for someone starting as female to begin with or a TG'ed woman.
Before the medallion will work on a pregnant/menstruating woman. She must complete the
pregnancy/menstruating and her body chemistry must return to it's pre-pregnancy/menstruating state.
5. The medallion only does slight mental changes. Very minor ones can and are sometimes done by the medallion.
Stronger mental changes can be made but there has to be a prompt from an outside force.
As in the wearer donning a wedding band, then they might automatically believe they are married, how to please their hubby/wife. That sort of thing. I'm not a big fan of mind alterations, but they can be "made" to occur. Be creative.
I think that about covers it. If you are not sure if something fits and you don't find any reference in one of my AF stories (since there are some errors in AF stories written by other authors) feel free to e-mail me
and ask. My address is: [email protected]
Oh...
I almost forgot... Rule Number 6!
6. HAVE FUN WITH IT!!!
Jenny
AF rules
I saw that there is a universe rules section here and as Jennifer Adams web site is now gone, I thought this would be a good place to archive the rules.
I can post other author's universe rules, as I have more saved on my hard drive.
Mr. Ram
Yes, Please
Archiving stuff in multiple places is good. :)
- Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Some more Altered Fates rules
Here's a link to Jennifer Adams' AF stories.
She spells out the history of the medallion and some additional rules in Juvenile Delinquent:
"Okay, It supposedly was originated somewhere in Africa, but again I don't remember where. Some sort of priests would use it to transform into women during certain rituals and if they were warring with another tribe that had more men than theirs, they would use it to make some of their women into men for battles. With this secret weapon they were undefeated. One of the other things that they did was to turn their captive men into women for slaves and virgins for sacrifice. They were eventually wiped out by a natural disaster. Perhaps it was retaliation for fooling with mother nature."
"Perhaps. What happened to this medallion?"
"It's rumored that a missionary may have found it and quietly disposed of it. It was also possible that this missionary, afraid of a legend that said evil would befall the one who destroyed it, merely hid it and removed it form the continent. It was also rumored to have been sold to gypsies, but since tales of its continued use have never surfaced, that idea is probably just a myth. I prefer to think that it somehow wound up in someone's attic somewhere." He added.
"So, how is it supposed to work?"
"It's on a chain and can be worn like a necklace, so you put it on and touch something belonging to someone else to it and it will turn you into that person. You can also touch a garment of the opposite gender and you'll become that gender as though you'd been that way since you were born, at least your body will. Some of your actions will also change and become natural like wearing a bra for a former man might become instinctive, even though it wasn't when he was a man. Oh, one other way it works is if I put it on and you touched it I would become you and you would become me."
In Jennifer's stories the transformation is a quiet, slow process that takes a half an hour. The person needs to wear the medallion for the entire half hour, or the transformation will only be partial. Aside from a tingle in some part of their body, the person doesn't feel the transformation; they notice the changes visually; they watch themselves slowly change.
When the medallion transforms someone, the change is permanent -- in other words, the person will be stuck in their new form unless the medallion is used on them again.
In the story Disguise for Life the medallion is used to "tweak" someone's appearance. For example, a woman wore the medallion and touched a large-size bra to it: her breasts grew correspondingly bigger. Another woman transformed into a man and touched an extra-large condom to the medallion: it gave him a larger penis. This is explained in Small Favors:
"You have to wait twelve hours before your can use the medallion again so your body won't be over traumatized by multiple changes. If the changes are small like just height or hair color, you can use it sooner. The longer you wear the medallion after touching a garment to it, the more of that person's residual memories you'll pick up. I guess that means that you'll be able to do things they could do even if you couldn't do them before."
There is a transcript of a chat with Jennifer Adams at the link above. It's recommended reading if you want to write AF stories -- as are all her stories. Here are some bits that could be interesting to potential AF authors. When she speaks of "violations," she means AF stories by other authors that don't follow the rules.
Jen Adams: I made as minimal rules as possible so future stories are possible.
Q: Are the 12 hour limit, clothing worn, new clothing, pregnancy, and person to person the only rules?
Jen Adams: Animal transformations are also possible.
Q: OH!
Jen Adams: Yes, pretty much those are it. The biggest violation I usually see is how it used. It is actually supposed to be worn by one person and the person wearing it is the one affected, but I have left it go as long as the Medallion is being touched by the person being transformed.
I also want to mention that the reason for the contact during transformation is to allow for partial transformations, so one could end up with only breasts or just a female from the waist down sort of thing. I think that this could lead to interesting tales as well!
Q: Have you ever considered writing a story about how the Medallion was created?
Jen Adams: No never! Pretty clear cut, huh?
Q: Why not?
Jen Adams: I like it to be mysterious and the origin to be unknown. Where it came from no one knows and where it's going????
-- Io