Medium

Alert

Resource

Type

Power to Channel

Channels Alien Spirits

At the start of every orientation, manifest three random untethered flares as “spirits” and shroud them in your nexus. Vaporize spirits in your nexus until you have exactly three.

At any time, you may use this power to discharge a spirit in your nexus. All spirits have burnout and do not consume your flare charge.

Legacy: During every warpfall, if an alien does not have a flare in their cache, they may manifest a random flare. All untethered flares have burnout.

Strongly attuned to the spirits of the fallen, the Mediums have learned to converse with the deceased in order to channel their essence in combat. Since every alien race has some deceased members among its rank, there is no power they cannot tap.

Any: Orientation
Any: Any

Optional

Wild Flare

At any time, you may discharge this flare to manifest three random untethered flares. Add them to your cache. Burnout.

Any: Any

Super Flare

When using your power to manifest flares, you may discharge this flare to manifest two additional flares.

Any: Orientation

Modifications

Original alien is named Host.
I made the first aspect of Medium’s power mandatory since it is pointlessly optional. There is no reason to make it optional aside from saving time when you are 100% positive you want to keep your current flares. Even then, there is no harm in looking.
Host’s spirits are not officially “burnout”. They just get vaporized after use. I incorporated the burnout term for brevity, which has a small mechanical difference if a tethered alien enters the match after Medium manifests the spirit.
Medium’s legacy gives every alien a guaranteed free flare. The benefit of this flare generally comes down to the luck of the draw, as one alien could get a flare that is much more valuable to them or the current situation than another. Burnout flares can also be more valuable, since discharging burnout flares will grant another flare unless they have another flare in reserve. Compensation can still snatch flares away, but now it will potentially grant the target a stronger flare. Original Cosmic has no legacies.

Tips

Medium has the ability to manifest and discharge multiple flares per invasion. It can only use each flare once, so it needs to determine the best time to use each.
Medium has no pressure to use its flares as quickly as possible. Its flares cannot be snatched or viewed by most aliens, and it does not have a “use it or lose it” mechanic. The only potential issue is if it falls into “too good to use” syndrome, where it tries to save a flare for the right time only to never get a chance to use it.
Medium cannot use multiple flares if they are in its cache. Only spirits avoid using a charge. The flares in its cache also do not possess burnout and return to the cache during upkeep as normal.

Development Notes

Medium is one of the few powers where I changed the alien name but kept the power name the same. When thinking about the alien design, a “host” struck me as the inverse of Symbiote. It seemed weird for Host and Symbiote to have nothing to do with one another, so I tweaked the concept a little to fall in line with my imagination. Based on the history of Host, it is clearly based around a creature that “hosts” the spirits of other aliens. I went with “Medium” to refer to a spirit medium and the imagery that comes with it. It lets me tap into the fantasy captured by characters like Maya Fey or Reigen Arataka.
My interpretation of wild flares has always been the idea of injecting a limited amount of power into another alien for a brief moment, and the fantasy of Medium captures that nicely. It’s easy to imagine Medium channeling the spirit of another alien, perhaps a deceased member of that alien race, and gaining access to their powers for a brief moment. Since they don’t possess the physiology of the alien, their power is limited to what the wild flare can do.
It is also simple enough to imagine the aspect of the power to manifest flares being Medium’s attempt to converse with the spirits. It chooses which spirits to hold in conversation and can converse with up to three at a time. Conversing with the spirits is technically an aspect of the medium, but it can be interpreted as a spiritual discipline that any alien could learn. It is specifically channeling the spirits that incorporates a power, which is why it can be zapped. Mechanically, it makes sense to only zap it here as well, as there is no real reason to prevent Medium from manifesting random new flares when you don’t even know what they are getting. It is much more valuable to prevent the use of a specific flare when you know what you will be zapping.
The ability to discharge multiple flares in a match is also used by FFG’s Throwback. This effect is not potent enough on its own as a power, so both aliens make it an aspect of the power instead.
The untethered aspect of this power has an organic thematic bonus. It makes sense that Medium cannot converse with spirits of aliens participating in the match to help fight against them. Those spirits would simply ignore them. At most, it can converse with ones that enter the match later, which may not be perceived the same as the real deal. Also, if Reincarnator is reborn into Parasite, both Parasite and Reincarnator are considered tethered, preventing those spirits from arriving next orientation. It makes sense in such a context, since Reincarnator has been reborn as an actual Parasite, but it is still a Reincarnator too. Reincarnator’s spirits are an interesting concept as well considering they are supposed to be reborn after death, but it’s possible there is a limit to the cycle or certain logistical issues could cause them to get stuck in limbo.
Due to the timing mechanics, if Medium is zapped while channeling a flare, the flare remains in the nexus instead of being scrapped. It works the same way as the original power, only without requiring the specification.
The burnout keyword perfectly incorporates into this power. Since all of the flares it generates are untethered, they will never activate the effect that magnetizes them to the tethered alien, aside from some extremely niche circumstances like Reincarnator, who can manifest a new power after Medium manifests its flare. It does provide a slight nerf to Medium compared to Host, but I think it’s flavorful and niche enough to keep. The spirit of a dead alien gravitates toward its original people to help them as raw energy.
It’s fitting that Medium’s flare is burnout considering the keyword I added to it.
Medium is the first flare-based alien power introduced, alongside Aristocrat and Reactor. The way the three aliens differ is important to analyze for my design philosophy. Aristocrat and Medium both work with untethered flares. Medium gains one extra flare and can generate new ones every campaign to replace them. Aristocrat can manifest flares only as a leader, but it gets to reuse the flares it manifests instead of them being one-time use. Both powers inject many flares into the forge. Reactor distinguishes itself from the others by specifically working with tethered flares, holding them hostage and using them as incentives for the tethered alien. It’s a completely different beast than the other two.