- Location
- Canada
[X] Be forceful, charismatic. Override their objections, bull your way through the conversation, and secure their co-operation regardless of their wishes and attitudes. You have the authority here; they do not.
- Location
- National Capital Region, USA
[X] Be calm and- well. Play down your superiority as much as you can. Seek the Duke's aid; if you might win his support, your investigation here shall go a great deal smoother.
Subtle, subtle...we are a dark witch. Not some 'Fireballs and lightning for everyone!' wizard. We work more quietly, indirectly. We need the Duke's assistance, and wasting time and energy directly confronting him is pointless.
Subtle, subtle...we are a dark witch. Not some 'Fireballs and lightning for everyone!' wizard. We work more quietly, indirectly. We need the Duke's assistance, and wasting time and energy directly confronting him is pointless.
- Location
- The Hague
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[x] Be cool.
The Duke is not necessarily an enemy and frankly we would be better served if he wasn't.
The Duke is not necessarily an enemy and frankly we would be better served if he wasn't.
[X] Be calm and- well. Play down your superiority as much as you can. Seek the Duke's aid; if you might win his support, your investigation here shall go a great deal smoother.
Whatever his reasons are, it's obvious the Duke isn't very much pleased with Hazel's presence. He can make our job difficult; he has the power to. Let's not ruffle feathers this early.
Whatever his reasons are, it's obvious the Duke isn't very much pleased with Hazel's presence. He can make our job difficult; he has the power to. Let's not ruffle feathers this early.
- Location
- Australia
The interior of the Duke's office was surprisingly tasteful, given the decadent appearance of the upper city and the rest of the palace. Perhaps you had not given him enough credit; the architecture had likely stood for centuries before the Duke was born, after all. There was hardly even any velvet in his room.
Within, three people stood arrayed around the room, glaring stonily at you as you entered. Two of them, you had seen earlier; the Guard-Captain and the Sherrif, standing to each side of the Duke's desk. The third, you had never seen before; Duke Amaranth. A short, weedy man, thick spectacles over his eyes doing a poor job hiding deep bags beneath.
Their presence filled the room, almost tangible despite being entirely unnotable to anybody without a witch-sense such as your own. Their aggression filled the room, a dark spectre of anger and malice and distrust towering over you.
A smirk tugged at your lips again, hastily fought down. Their positioning would suggest to most that the Duke was scared, had placed them there for protection, but you could sense the power lingering behind them. While the two carried with them a certain sense of weight, of purpose and solid, reassuring presence, they were not the biggest threat in the room.
No; like yourself, Duke Amaranth bore power that was not immediately apparent. This had been carefully set up, then. Were they underestimating you, or were they sending you a message? It was a poor message, if so.
This time, you couldn't suppress the lazy, insolent grin that spread across your face, filling your voice with mirth. "All this for me, Duke Amaranth?"
The Sherrif raised an eyebrow, but the Guard-Captain frowned, curiosity apparent in his eyes. You acknowledged him with a wave, but focused your attention on the Duke, watching as wariness stole across his features. He had underestimated you, then. Poor fool.
"Please take a seat," he said, gesturing at the sole chair in front of his desk. You stepped forwards and eased yourself casually onto the chair. "This-" He gestured at the Guard-Captain- "is Guard-Captain Jamison Hillesbred, and this-" He gestured again, towards the Sherrif this time- "is the Sherrif of Lyen's End, Elisa Crowen. I have asked them here today, as they may have information pertinent to your investigation. Is their presence here acceptable to you, or would you prefer I ask them to leave?"
Ah. This would not go as badly as you had feared, then, if he was willing to acede control so easily. "Their presence is welcome."
He hummed. "Very well then. Where would you like me to begin?"
You closed your eyes briefly, thinking things through. You had questions- oh, you had questions- but asking too many would make you seem foolish. There was only so much you could ask of the Duke himself, anyway; nobility concerned themselves solely with their own estates, and rarely ventured out into the wider world.
Nonetheless, you had questions- and a few moments to gather yourself in, if you needed to recall specifics.
[X] What, then, would you ask of the Duke and his cohorts?
(Note, also, that you may feel free to seek additional information in-character; if it is something Hazel would know, I will reply with the information in question.)
With this post, we finally see the end of the prologue and out of scripted events! Hooray!
However, this also means that this here will be the last time you will receive "free" stat boosts. I suggest you spend them wisely.
[X] You have 5 stat points to allocate between your four stats and six magic skills. However, no stat or skill can have more than two points allocated to it. Where would you like to place these points?
Within, three people stood arrayed around the room, glaring stonily at you as you entered. Two of them, you had seen earlier; the Guard-Captain and the Sherrif, standing to each side of the Duke's desk. The third, you had never seen before; Duke Amaranth. A short, weedy man, thick spectacles over his eyes doing a poor job hiding deep bags beneath.
Their presence filled the room, almost tangible despite being entirely unnotable to anybody without a witch-sense such as your own. Their aggression filled the room, a dark spectre of anger and malice and distrust towering over you.
A smirk tugged at your lips again, hastily fought down. Their positioning would suggest to most that the Duke was scared, had placed them there for protection, but you could sense the power lingering behind them. While the two carried with them a certain sense of weight, of purpose and solid, reassuring presence, they were not the biggest threat in the room.
No; like yourself, Duke Amaranth bore power that was not immediately apparent. This had been carefully set up, then. Were they underestimating you, or were they sending you a message? It was a poor message, if so.
This time, you couldn't suppress the lazy, insolent grin that spread across your face, filling your voice with mirth. "All this for me, Duke Amaranth?"
The Sherrif raised an eyebrow, but the Guard-Captain frowned, curiosity apparent in his eyes. You acknowledged him with a wave, but focused your attention on the Duke, watching as wariness stole across his features. He had underestimated you, then. Poor fool.
"Please take a seat," he said, gesturing at the sole chair in front of his desk. You stepped forwards and eased yourself casually onto the chair. "This-" He gestured at the Guard-Captain- "is Guard-Captain Jamison Hillesbred, and this-" He gestured again, towards the Sherrif this time- "is the Sherrif of Lyen's End, Elisa Crowen. I have asked them here today, as they may have information pertinent to your investigation. Is their presence here acceptable to you, or would you prefer I ask them to leave?"
Ah. This would not go as badly as you had feared, then, if he was willing to acede control so easily. "Their presence is welcome."
He hummed. "Very well then. Where would you like me to begin?"
-------------------------------------------------
You closed your eyes briefly, thinking things through. You had questions- oh, you had questions- but asking too many would make you seem foolish. There was only so much you could ask of the Duke himself, anyway; nobility concerned themselves solely with their own estates, and rarely ventured out into the wider world.
Nonetheless, you had questions- and a few moments to gather yourself in, if you needed to recall specifics.
[X] What, then, would you ask of the Duke and his cohorts?
------------------------------------------------
(Note, also, that you may feel free to seek additional information in-character; if it is something Hazel would know, I will reply with the information in question.)
With this post, we finally see the end of the prologue and out of scripted events! Hooray!
However, this also means that this here will be the last time you will receive "free" stat boosts. I suggest you spend them wisely.
[X] You have 5 stat points to allocate between your four stats and six magic skills. However, no stat or skill can have more than two points allocated to it. Where would you like to place these points?
- Location
- The Hague
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Well first up, could Hazel please fondly regard creation her own abilities, giving us a breakdown of what her various skills do? Some of it is self explanatory, but ...
- Location
- Australia
I knew I was forgetting something!
---------------------------------------------------
My skills? Well, now. That's asking a lot from me. I've been learning for nearly twenty years now, after all. Still, let's see if I can summarize it a bit.
Alchemy is one of the most widespread magicks in the world, but for the most part, it is practiced by the ignorant. Hedgewitches and salesmen use it to make charms, potions- charms to ward against Fey creatures, potions to stave off childbirth, poultices to heal festering wounds and injuries. These are all valid uses of alchemy, but the skill has so much more potential than that.
At its core, alchemy is the skill of taking the magical properties of something and applying it to a 'blank' item- typically, a vial of distilled water or a blank piece of paper. The magical properties of an item vary; sunlight, for instance, conveys warmth, healing and protection, but more than that, can represent the joining of two aspects- land and sky, night and day, healing and destruction.
However, alchemy also takes its toll on the user. In order to make something with it, the practitioner must sacrifice a portion of their spirit, inducing lethargy and depression in the user. As such, despite the potential uses of it, many practitioners simply find themselves unable to make so much as a simple homunculus. The creation of a Golem would strain even me.
Glamour is typically misunderstood to be the art of crafting and maintaining illusions. While this appears to be correct on the surface, it does not quite convey the depth and complexity the skill allows.
Glamour is fundamentally about changing people's perceptions of you, within certain limits. Not that this does not mean you can actively warp people's emotional perception of you; changes in emotional states stray into Mesmer territory. No; Glamour is about forcing people to pay attention to you, to increase your presence in the world- or to do the opposite, and make people incapable of noticing you. Many creatures, Fey and mundane alike, utilize the skill of Glamour to pass as something other than entirely alien to this world.
Mesmer is a skill more commonly known as 'Charm'- not to be misunderstood as the naive charm of a tavern-wench with shining eyes and a heaving bosom.
'Mesmer' describes the skill of influencing and altering the opinions and behaviours of the people around you. Many charismatic speakers use something nigh-on Mesmer, soothing inflamed passions and altering the target of a mob's wrath. Mesmer takes the same principles, but rather than working within the framework of a person's volatile emotional state, allows the witch in question to alter the victim's behaviour in a rather fundamental way.
This magic, along with Malison and Supplication, is responsible for the widespread reputation of witches. Incautious use of Mesmer can destroy minds, and even cautious use runs the risk of fundamentally changing a person. I use it subtly and sparingly; even so, I run the risk of simple poor circumstances ruining the mind of my targets beyond repair.
Also known as 'cursing' or 'hexes', Malison is a terrible skill known only by terrible people, such as myself. If anything, the public perception of Malison undersells the horrific acts its bearers can purvey.
Fundamentally, Malison is the skill of inducing misfortune and causing harm to its victims. Even relatively benign uses of Malison invoke pain or humiliation in those it targets; whether it be by causing them to fall and sprain their wrists, by causing them to step on a loose stone and impale themselves upon their blades, or by causing an insect to fly into their mouths and choke them- well. If I were to list the many myriad ways in which Malison may affect its targets, we would be here for years.
Even as such, that does not describe the worst aspect of Malison; its curses. Curses are volatile magicks that visit retribution amongst those it targets- always painful, always humiliating, and always fatal. A curse targets a single aspect of the wielder, and visits repeated punishments upon its victim until they either change (changing a very fundamental aspect of their being, such as their temper, or repenting for a past sin, something I have yet to manage) or die.
I seek to avoid using Malison, as it is a terrible art- and Selene disapproves of its use. Nonetheless, Malison remains inordinately useful, and as such, I find myself continually resorting to its use.
Invocation is the art of summoning spirits of the Fey.
Unfortunately, invocation bears little relation to the 'summoning' featured in the stories of peasants. While we may call upon the spirits of fey, they are not intrinsically bound to our will, nor are they bound to give us anything. If we wish anything of the spirits we summon, we must make a bargain with them, sacrificing a portion of our spirit to make it binding.
For the most part, spirits are willing to negotiate their freedom in exchange for a specific, non-dangerous task. Be very cautious of making binding bargains with a Fey spirit for anything else.
At its highest level, however, invocation becomes something almost unrecognizable. In the past, I have bound the spirits of the dead to my will. I have called upon the very elements themselves, sending the storms to visit my wrath upon those who would oppose me. I have Summoned Death Itself, visiting it upon my father in retribution for the pain he had inflicted on Selene. I bear its mark still.
Finally, Percipience- simultaneously the least magical of the magicks I know, and the most magical of them all.
Percipience is the art of seeing, of piercing the lies reality tells us. Common practitioners use this to pierce magical veils, to pierce glamour and mesmer and invocation's fey spirits. Others use it to see the paths of magic and emotion, to see that which cannot be seen.
I- I, and other witches of similar skill- use it to see through the lies of reality, to pierce the earth and see its underpinnings. I have seen the storms that drive the oceans; I have seen the seething blood that drives the earth itself to madness; I have seen Life and Death itself, seeking and spreading and corrupting all with their presence.
Note, though, that Percipience is different from the nigh-mystical arts of Science. As I understand it, my Sight bears little resemblance to their Laws of the Physical World. What I see is the fundamental truth, not the laws that bind them.
Skirmish is the term Selene has used to describe my unorthodox fighting style. Where most wield spears and maces, or in rare cases swords and lances, I wield daggers, chains, and polearm... spear... pike... halberd... daggers-on-a-stick. I seek not to engage in prolonged combat; repeated sacrifices of my spirit have robbed me of my stamina, rendering me incapable of engaging in extended fights.
This skill describes my ability to disengage safely from opponents, and to seek vulnerabilities both physical and magical in those who seek to do my physical harm.
Augury is the skill of foresight, of understanding the omens and portents that tell of things to come. Some would describe this as a 'gut feeling', although I feel this term is misleading.
Augury allows me to foresee threats before they realize, to avoid danger prior to my reckoning, and to sense the presence of terrible events before they come- often as early as days before, allowing me to act on the knowledge that something terrible is coming before it is coming.
Occultism describes the research materials I have bought, and my extensive knowledge of the incorporeal world of magic around us.
Misfortune and ill circumstances often lead to fruitless hours spent poring through notes, searching for names and places and hidden meanings in texts that I could otherwise have discovered in minutes. More than that, however- the more attuned I am to occult matters, the easier it will be for me to pick up on magical matters around me. To sense the presence of fey creatures, to notice the signs of practitioners and witches, to draw from my knowledge of obscure facts to draw realization from confusion.
Observance is my knowledge of rituals and practices, and my ability to gather together the necessary materials to... observe them.
When I wish to make a staff, for instance, I will utilize this skill to imbue it with power and presence. In turn, I may use this ability to pacify enraged spirits, or to request an audience with a departed family member.
Observance is distinct from my Rituals skill in that the rituals are simpler, and thus far smaller in scale. Where Observance allows me to speak to the soul of the departed Nicholais, Rituals allows me to speak to the spirits of long-fallen Gods. Where Observance allows me to craft staves and wands to focus my presence, it was a Ritual that was used to craft Exsanginious, Nathaniel's arcane blade with which he slew the dragon Arhaxanicelai.
That is, I think, a list of all my skills and magics.
wdango
Storyteller
- Location
- Bali, Indonesia
Hmm... And the index page reveals that we can get up to ten ranks at maximum...
[x] Plan Perception
-[x] Percipience
-[x] Percipience
-[x] Augury
-[x] Augury
-[x] Occultism
This gives us a lot more room to react, but not much to react with, so take from it what you will.
[x] Plan Perception
-[x] Percipience
-[x] Percipience
-[x] Augury
-[x] Augury
-[x] Occultism
This gives us a lot more room to react, but not much to react with, so take from it what you will.
- Location
- National Capital Region, USA
One each:
[X]Alchemy
[X]Glamour
[X]Invocation
[X]Percipience
[X] Occultism
EDIT: Oh, right, His Knobs.
What does the Duke think is the source fo the miasma over the town? Where does he think the problem lies, and what has he been trying to do about it?
[X]Alchemy
[X]Glamour
[X]Invocation
[X]Percipience
[X] Occultism
EDIT: Oh, right, His Knobs.
What does the Duke think is the source fo the miasma over the town? Where does he think the problem lies, and what has he been trying to do about it?
Last edited:
- Location
- The Hague
- Pronouns
- He/Him
So I note that Hazel is currently rocking the following:
Alchemy: ●●●○○○○○○○
Glamour: ●●●○○○○○○○
Mesmer: ●●●●●○○○○○
Malison: ●●●○○○○○○○
Invocation: ●●●○○○○○○○
Percipience: ●●●●●○○○○○
Skirmish: ●●●○○○○○○○
Augury: ●●●●○○○○○○
Occultism: ●●●●○○○○○○
Observance: ●●●●○○○○○○
I note that we ended up arming Hazel with a bunch of witch weapons which are noted to synergise well with Skirmish and Malison. So this is a good opportunity to crank those up, because this is our last 'free' stat boost. If we pump up those two stats we can be reasonably safe in assuming we can deal with any early physical threats and then focus on shoring up other skills. I recommend supercharging Mesmer because it'll probably have a lot of utility but it's dangerous to use, so there's benefit in making it even more reliable.
So my suggestion is:
[X] +2 Skirmish
[X] +2 Malison
[X] +1 Mesmer
---
As for a question ...
[X] 'I imagine you have been keeping records of the various disturbances in Lyen's End. Could I have access to them?'
Alchemy: ●●●○○○○○○○
Glamour: ●●●○○○○○○○
Mesmer: ●●●●●○○○○○
Malison: ●●●○○○○○○○
Invocation: ●●●○○○○○○○
Percipience: ●●●●●○○○○○
Skirmish: ●●●○○○○○○○
Augury: ●●●●○○○○○○
Occultism: ●●●●○○○○○○
Observance: ●●●●○○○○○○
I note that we ended up arming Hazel with a bunch of witch weapons which are noted to synergise well with Skirmish and Malison. So this is a good opportunity to crank those up, because this is our last 'free' stat boost. If we pump up those two stats we can be reasonably safe in assuming we can deal with any early physical threats and then focus on shoring up other skills. I recommend supercharging Mesmer because it'll probably have a lot of utility but it's dangerous to use, so there's benefit in making it even more reliable.
So my suggestion is:
[X] +2 Skirmish
[X] +2 Malison
[X] +1 Mesmer
---
As for a question ...
[X] 'I imagine you have been keeping records of the various disturbances in Lyen's End. Could I have access to them?'
wdango
Storyteller
- Location
- Bali, Indonesia
Well, GM, your first part is exclusively write-in.Everybody, please don't forget there was two parts to the vote
It's a big responsibility.
- Location
- Canada
[X] +2 Skirmish
[X] +2 Malison
[X] +1 Mesmer
[X] 'I imagine you have been keeping records of the various disturbances in Lyen's End. Could I have access to them?'
[X] +2 Malison
[X] +1 Mesmer
[X] 'I imagine you have been keeping records of the various disturbances in Lyen's End. Could I have access to them?'
wdango
Storyteller
- Location
- Bali, Indonesia
I... actually have a supporter! :O
Having 7 ranks in Percipience would be interesting though.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
These are all incredibly fucking stupid. Do not vote for these. Change your votes. Do it now.
You know why? You've given us a bunch of abilities to predict stuff with, and no ability to do shit about it. You have, in effect, voted to make us a support NPC, someone you hire for a bit of an edge, instead of actually giving us the ability to do....anything at all, really.
Hint: 'I know we're about to get boned and can do absolutely nothing about it' is not useful at all.
This is a good plan. Vote for Ford's plan.
[X] Ford's Plan.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
'I will die with reasonable speed' is, technically, better than 'I will die quickly', but I'd prefer 'I might not die' all the same, thank you very much.
- Location
- The Hague
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Our major contact is an information broker. Gaining correct information is a matter of preparation, planning and patience, but surviving an attack is usually just going to be on Hazel.
wdango
Storyteller
- Location
- Bali, Indonesia
@Havocfett I know. It's even stated right in the post : "This gives us a lot more room to react, but not much to react with, so take from it what you will."
I didn't really expect to have any supporters, but calling the plan I crafted (and indirectly, myself) incredibly fucking stupid makes me absolutely unlikely to change my vote to whatever it is that you desire.
I didn't really expect to have any supporters, but calling the plan I crafted (and indirectly, myself) incredibly fucking stupid makes me absolutely unlikely to change my vote to whatever it is that you desire.