Bulwark

You have fashioned your Aether into a shield. Or a wall. Or a ramp. You can fashion your Aether into a lot of things, it turns out.

Power: You can create impermeable barriers with your Aether. They have a filmy, soap-like appearance that distorts visibility but doesn’t eclipse it entirely (in whatever colorways you like). When you create a barrier you may invest Aether into it for strength; it will survive invested Aether + 1 Harm before shattering and dissipating. Use the “targets” guideline for how many people a barrier can support.

Barriers are not sharp, so you can’t use them as infinitely fine cutting surfaces.

Barriers are completely impermeable: no people, no water, and crucially no air.

Upgrades

• The Cell Wall is a Semi-Permeable Membrane: When you create a barrier, you may define what passes through it. For any reasonable noun or element, this adds no cost to using your barrier. Highly complex membranes (“my friends may pass”) will require more Quality at the Referee’s discretion.
• Artiste: You control the opacity and visuals of your barriers, to the point of being able to create near-lifelike images. As a guideline: passable images that stand up to no inspection are free; details cost 1 Aether; near-perfection costs 2. The image is mirrored on the reverse side, and the opacity is the same.
• Persistence: While they’re in your line of sight, your barriers act as though they had +1 Aether invested in their Time. (You don’t have to be actively looking at them, just able to.)