TEXT: Dragons are immortal, eternal, and infinite. Just
  because no scion in the modern age has yet pro-
  gressed beyond awakened rank 5 does not mean
  that one cannot. This web enhancement presents
  optional rules for the means by which FIREBORN
  scion characters can advance beyond AR 5; to
  learn what powers this grants beyond normal
  advancement, check out Secrets of Fire 14!.
  AWAKENING
  Normally, attaining an awakened rank beyond 5 is
  impossible, simply because karmic items go no high-
  er than rank 5; without a rank 6 karmic item in your
  scion’s hoard, he should be unable to reach awakened
  rank 6. However, what the power of one dragon alone
  cannot accomplish, the power of a brood can. The
  only question is how it chooses to do so.
  CONSUMING THE BROOD
  The quickest and most dire way for a scion to
  advance beyond the natural limitations of his
  human form is to absorb pure power from one of
  his broodmates. This unfortunate possibility can
  combine with a dragons’ lust for power to destroy
  a brood from the inside out.
  MURDER
  Canabalizing a broodmate’s power requires first
  that the broodmate be killed by the canabilizer.
  The killing blow must be struck by a karmic item
  from the scion’s mythic age hoard (i.e., an item
  that would qualify the scion for a hoard rank).
  BINDING
  An incredibly rare rank 5 spell, Eating the
  Brother, must then be performed. The range is
  touch, the duration instantaneous, and it must be
  performed in the presence of the murderer’s hoard.
  It also requires that the murdered broodmate’s
  body be present, and must be performed within
  five days of the murder, minus one day per awak-
  ened rank of the victim. If the broodmate is AR 5,
  the spell must be performed within one hour.
  The spell’s effect is to bind the broodmate’s
  spirit to the karmic item, keeping it from escaping
  and being reborn. The murdered broodmate’s
  awakened rank is instead added to the item’s
  karmic rank. So for instance, a rank 1 karmic item
  used to murder an AR 5 broodmate would become
  a rank 6 karmic item; once the item is added to the
  murderer’s hoard, it allows the possessor to
  advance to AR 6. The spirit of the scion trapped
  within the item is not reborn, and can never
  reborn, until the karmic item itself is destroyed. If
  the karmic item is ever drained of all its karma
  (i.e., its temporary karma rank is ever reduced to
  0), the scion’s spirit is forever consumed.
  CONSEQUENCES
  Needless to say, this form of advancement is
  inherently evil. The murder of one’s broodmate in
  this manner creates taint in a trivial range equal to
  the murdered broodmate’s AR (if the area already
  has a taint rank of 5, the taint may “spill over” into
  the next range increment as normal for the creation
  of taint). There are tales of more experienced or
  powerful scions discovering this method, aiding
  their broodmates from afar without ever revealing
  themselves, and then eventually “harvesting”
  them, one at a time, as they become powerful
  enough to be of use to their evil brother.
  PLACE OF POWER
  A far slower and more limited manner of
  achieving an awakened rank beyond 5 is to tie
  oneself, and thereby tie one’s power, to an area in
  which one is nurturing karma.
  1
  SECRETS OF FIRE 13: ADVANCED FIREBORN RULES
  BEYOND AR 5, PART I
  BY ROB VAUGHN
  
  NURTURING
  This can only be done in an area that already
  has a karma rating of 5, using an item of karmic
  rank 5, and can only be accomplished by a scion
  of AR 5 or higher. When the time has come to
  advance (i.e., when the scion has a heritage rank
  of 6 and a humanity rank of 6), he may nurture
  karma in himself, the area he has chosen, and a
  karma 5 item from his mythic age hoard, all at
  once. The most common location for such an act
  is in the dragon’s lair, where the rest of his hoard
  is located.
  The nurturing takes time as if raising an area
  from balanced to karma rank 1 (one week). It
  takes an expenditure of hours each day and
  karma each day, however, as if the scion were
  attempting to raise the area’s karma rating from
  5 to 6 (in other words, 6 hours of effort per day
  and 6 points of karma).
  This process if followed as normal each time
  the scion wishes to advance to the next higher
  AR, although the time and effort required to do
  so advance by one each time (so, to reach AR 7,
  the scion must spend 7 hours + 7 karma per day,
  and must do so every day for one full month; to
  reach AR 8, the scion must spend 8 hours + 8
  karma per day, and must do so every day for one
  ful year, and so on).
  CONSEQUENCES
  Upon completion of the nurturing, the scion is
  considered to have attained a hoard rank of 6,
  allowing him to reach AR 6. However, this
  process irrevocably binds the item, the scion,
  and the location. The scion is only considered to
  have AR 6 while within the boundaries of the
  place of power and while the hoard item remains
  there. This means that he can only manifest dra-
  conic form as if he were AR 5 when outside of
  that place of power, or if the item is ever taken
  from that place of power. For all intents and pur-
  poses, the area remains at karmic rank 5 and the
  item remains at karmic rank 5.
  EXTENDING
  Should a scion wish to extend the range of the
  area in which he maintains his power, say from
  trivial to minor, he may do so. However, this
  requires that the area to be included in his place
  of power must all already be karmic rank 5.
  Further, for ever increased range of the place of
  power, the scion must nurture his place of power
  as if it were one karmic rank higher. So a scion
  who wished to create a place of power with
  minor boundaries in which he could advance to
  AR 6 would first need to find or create a place
  with karma 5 out to minor range, and then would
  have to nurture karma there for one month
  instead of one week. If he wished to advance to
  AR 7 in the same place of power, or to advance
  to AR 6 in an area out to moderate range, he
  would need to nurture karma there for one year.
  As normal, any time taint is spawned in an
  area, it reduces the karma there; any area within
  a scion’s place of power that is not at karma rank
  5 immediately ceases to be a place of power for
  him. 
  Creating a place of power is the most common
  method of advancing beyond AR 5 in the mod-
  ern age and in those rare times throughout histo-
  ry that magic has awakened enough to allow a
  scion to remember his previous lives. It neither
  forces a scion to prey upon his own brood nor
  forces him to rely on that brood for power, as the
  Becoming One method, below, requires. Yet it
  often forces a scion to become a recluse, fearful
  of letting his place of power or the item(s) that
  are essential to it be damaged or taken from him,
  and makes some quite powerful creatures hesi-
  tant to face any foe outside of their lairs.
  BECOMING ONE
  This method for attaining AR 6 and higher is
  less brutal than the Consuming the Brood option
  and less painstaking than the Place of Power
  option, but requires an amazing level of trust and
  dependence.
  SECRETS OF FIRE 13: ADVANCED FIREBORN RULES
  2
  
  COMBINING THE HOARD
  Instead of nurturing karmic power in a place
  and with an item, the brood instead nurtures their
  karmic energy within one another. The first step
  is the combination of all of the scions’ hoards.
  Only scions who mingle their hoards and com-
  bine their places of power can join their ka in the
  manner required.
  COMBINING KARMA
  Second, each member of the brood must per-
  manently invest karma into their brood mind
  (effectively lowering their maximum karma
  pool) equal to the AR desired. They’ll probably
  get that karma back (see Becoming, Secrets of
  Fire 14), but you have to pay to play, so to speak.
  This investment takes place through constant,
  uninterrupted meditation, requiring one day for
  the combined desired ARs of the brood. For
  instance, a brood of four scions at AR 5 who
  wished to use this method to reach AR 6 would
  have to meditate for 6 x 4 days, or 24 days, and
  each scion would have to permanently sacrifice
  6 karma, lowering their max karma pools by 6.
  Once this is accomplished, the brood has cre-
  ated a pool of karma that, combined with the
  unification of their hoards, allows each scion to
  act as if he had an rank 6 hoard item, and there-
  fore to attain AR 6. However, this power comes
  with limitations.
  CONSEQUENCES
  First of all, the scions must keep their hoards
  together. If any scion removes his hoard from the
  group’s, their effective AR is reduced by 1.
  Second, the scions become powerful when
  near one another, but are weakened when they
  are apart. Keep track of the greatest boundary
  rank between each member of the brood and the
  furthest other member of the brood, ignoring
  lesser boundary ranks in favor of higher ranks.
  When the total ranks worth of boundaries
  between brood members are equal to the brood’s
  normal AR, the effective AR of the entire brood
  is lowered by one; when the total is equal to
  twice the brood’s normal AR, the effective AR of
  the entire brood is lowered by two; and so on.
  So for instance, say you have a brood of four
  AR 7 scions. Then let’s say that they all have
  missions around London, so they’re at least sep-
  arated by moderate  (rank 3) boundaries, for a
  total of 4 x 3 = 12. That’s greater than AR 7, so
  the brood’s effective AR is lowered to 6. If they
  gather together in the house they share, they’re
  all separated by trivial (rank 1) boundaries, for a
  total of 4 x 1 = 4. In that circumstance, they’re
  all still effectively AR 7. If two of them sudden-
  ly need to take off to separate neighboring cities
  (rank 4) while the other two continue to patrol
  the streets and allies of London, the boundaries
  become 4 + 4 + 3 + 3 = 14, or twice the brood’s
  AR of 7. In that circumstance, each of the brood
  is effectively only AR 5. If one of the brood
  should die, the rest of the brood is considered to
  be cut off from him as if by a barrier equal in
  rank to his AR when he died (up to AR 10, even
  though there are normally no such barriers). This
  penalty persists until the broodmate is reincar-
  nated, reintegrated into the brood, and reinitiated
  into the Becoming One process.
  Sound nasty? It is! Broods who Become One
  are essentially binding their lives, their souls,
  their power, their very existences to one another.
  A scion of AR 6 or higher is extremely powerful,
  and the other two methods require that the scion
  either betray and destroy his closest allies, or
  that he bind his power to a single place, hamper-
  ing his ability to affect the wider world. Broods
  of scions that are of AR 6 or higher are able to
  travel about freely and use their power at will,
  but they must pay for that power with the knowl-
  edge that they are eternally dependent on their
  brood, and that any enemies they make will
  always be watching for times that they are sepa-
  rate from one another, and therefore weaker.
  Even a simple barrier like a stream or a tree line
  can mean the difference between a powerful
  brood and a crippled one.
  SECRETS OF FIRE 13: ADVANCED FIREBORN RULES
  3
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Fireborn/Fireborn Secrets of Fire 13 Beyond AR 5 Part I.pdf