A caster is never unarmed. The channeler can manifest his nimbus as a stylized, unconcealable melee weapon of a form totemic to the user. The weapon has a Durability equal to the character's Eminence.

When first created, the character picks an Arcanum to affiliate with the weapon. The weapon, by default, does 2 Bashing damage. Each dot of the Arcanum being manifested gives the character a point to spend on the weapon. The costs are as follows:

The nimbus weapon cannot exceed the maximum +5 equipment bonus to attack. Example: a manifest with an Arcanum of 5 can have a 9-again +5L sword (2 Bashing default, 1pt for Lethal, 3pts for +3 Damage, 1pt for 9-again).

Note that the inclusion of the “My Sword is My Defense” rule modification automatically increases your Defense rating by half of the weapon's Damage bonus (rounded down). So an Arcanum 2 character with a +4B quarterstaff would have an extra “free” +2 Defense. Alternately that character could have a +2B quarterstaff would have an extra “free” +1 Defense and allocate 2 Arcanum points for another +2 Defense, bringing the total to +3 Defense on a +2B weapon.

The form of the weapon is decided the first time it is manifested. A point of mana must be spent to manifest the nimbus as a weapon for each point used to supplement the weapon (a weapon with 4 points in bonuses requires 4 mana to be spent). The weapon is powered by this mana until it is dismissed. This mana expenditure can exceed the maximum mana per turn limit for a manifest of a given eminence. A lesser weapon can be created if desired.

Manifesting the weapon is an instant action. Under no circumstances can a weapon be created and dismissed in the same turn. It does not incur a die penalty if the user doesn't have the appropriate weapon skill.

Flavor examples: A weapon of Space may appear purple and bend space like a black hole, where a death weapon may appear as a blade of chaotic entropic energy.

When in combat with a mix of extras, a manifest with a nimbus weapon may do a cleave attack. If an attack has more successes than necessary to kill/incap an enemy, and another extra is attackable from the same position (read: no movement) with the same defense/armor score, then the damage rolls onto the second target without an attack roll. Cleave only rolls over once, and only against extras. Cleave must be performed with a manifest weapon (read: mundane weapons cannot do this).

We're going to use the following healing times for manifests (not extras or mundanes):

The rest time is required to downgrade a wound from one type of another. A single point of grievous damage would take 8 days, 4 hours and 15 minutes to completely heal. A character with 5 aggravated and 2 lethal must first downgrade the 5 aggravated to lethal (taking 5 * 1 day = 5 days), then downgrade the 7 lethal to bashing (taking 7 * 4 hours = 28 hours), then 7 bashing to fully healed (taking 7 * 15 minutes = just under 2 hours), for a total healing time of 6 days, 5 hours and 45 minutes.