You are Taylor Hebert, and you can do magic. Not much, in fact barely any at all, but if the...
Memories of Magic (Worm/??? Quest)
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Post 001
- Location
- Portland, Oregon
You are Taylor Hebert, and you can do magic. Not much, in fact barely any at all, but if the hazy memories you gained by being locked in a locker full of biohazards are true, then the sky is the limit of what you can learn.
It took you a couple days to come to terms with the fact that you weren't a parahuman, but your powers work like no cape's that you've heard of. You have one week off of school before you are expected back, and you are going to use that time to figure out as much of your magic as you can.
You are now sitting in the middle of your bed, meditating like you remember doing in your memories. Your dad is at work, so you don't need to worry about being interrupted. You can't remember specifics, but you do remember:
[] Talismans of magic, wielding power over the elements of fire, earth, metal, water, and wood.
(Class: Elemental Invoker. Based off of the light novel/anime Tokyo Ravens. Your power comes from rituals and words, both written and spoken. Start with knowledge of five elemental ofuda, and how to use them to create and control the elements. Most limited in what actually works, but probably the most obviously powerful.)
[] Seeing the ideal, and changing it to suit your purposes.
(Class: Conceptualist. Based off of Reinforcement from Fate/Stay Night and the fan-fiction From Fake Dreams. You see the ideas that represent every object, and can change them to change reality. Start with the ability to reinforce an object's basic concept (make a sword more of a sword, so it resists damage, is sharper, and can't be mistaken as something else). This is the average choice, a nice balance of versatility and power.)
[] Crafting and forging items of power, having a tool for every purpose.
(Class: Arcane Crafter. Not really based off any one thing. Using rituals and symbolism, you imbue items with magic. Start with a ritual to increase an item's durability. Almost no limits in what you can do, but that can be a blessing and a curse, as you'll never know if what you try will work.)
(QMN: Welcome to Memories of Magic, both my first post and first quest on Sufficient Velocity! This ain't your average Worm/DnD cross, no sir-ee. Rather than telling you what you can and can't do, every bit of advancement in your chosen magic will come via write in! The point of this quest isn't to rehash Worm canon (though we can if you want to), nor to overpower every obstacle in our path (though that is perfectly possible), but to have fun creating a system of magic between us. I've got ideas for each class on what is and isn't possible, but for the most part I'll allow you to decide what we try and figure out. Ideally, while we may start with a magic system that is similar to something, the end product will be entirely unique.)
It took you a couple days to come to terms with the fact that you weren't a parahuman, but your powers work like no cape's that you've heard of. You have one week off of school before you are expected back, and you are going to use that time to figure out as much of your magic as you can.
You are now sitting in the middle of your bed, meditating like you remember doing in your memories. Your dad is at work, so you don't need to worry about being interrupted. You can't remember specifics, but you do remember:
[] Talismans of magic, wielding power over the elements of fire, earth, metal, water, and wood.
(Class: Elemental Invoker. Based off of the light novel/anime Tokyo Ravens. Your power comes from rituals and words, both written and spoken. Start with knowledge of five elemental ofuda, and how to use them to create and control the elements. Most limited in what actually works, but probably the most obviously powerful.)
[] Seeing the ideal, and changing it to suit your purposes.
(Class: Conceptualist. Based off of Reinforcement from Fate/Stay Night and the fan-fiction From Fake Dreams. You see the ideas that represent every object, and can change them to change reality. Start with the ability to reinforce an object's basic concept (make a sword more of a sword, so it resists damage, is sharper, and can't be mistaken as something else). This is the average choice, a nice balance of versatility and power.)
[] Crafting and forging items of power, having a tool for every purpose.
(Class: Arcane Crafter. Not really based off any one thing. Using rituals and symbolism, you imbue items with magic. Start with a ritual to increase an item's durability. Almost no limits in what you can do, but that can be a blessing and a curse, as you'll never know if what you try will work.)
(QMN: Welcome to Memories of Magic, both my first post and first quest on Sufficient Velocity! This ain't your average Worm/DnD cross, no sir-ee. Rather than telling you what you can and can't do, every bit of advancement in your chosen magic will come via write in! The point of this quest isn't to rehash Worm canon (though we can if you want to), nor to overpower every obstacle in our path (though that is perfectly possible), but to have fun creating a system of magic between us. I've got ideas for each class on what is and isn't possible, but for the most part I'll allow you to decide what we try and figure out. Ideally, while we may start with a magic system that is similar to something, the end product will be entirely unique.)
Rituals and Artifacts
Post 002
- Location
- Portland, Oregon
(QMN1: It seemed pretty obvious which way the vote was going, so I started writing early.)
[X] Crafting and forging items of power, having a tool for every purpose.
You open your eyes from your meditations. A small sigh of disappointment escapes you at the perceived uselessness of the ritual you just remembered. You quickly stamp down on that feeling, though. While you may remember almost nothing of whatever past life you had, one maxim you were told comes to mind: The greatest of rituals are built from the smallest of symbols.
That thought firmly ensconced in your mind, you head down to your kitchen. You now know a total of two rituals. The first ritual increases the toughness of whatever it is applied to, causing it to resist any force that works to change it. You run through the components in your head: iron shavings for strength, salt for preservation, and absolutely pure water for resistance.
While iron and salt are fairly easy to acquire, pure water is practically impossible to find. Luckily, that's where your second ritual comes in. From your memories, you have the impression that pure water is used in a multitude of ways, so the ritual to purify water is useful, if boring.
Well, not that boring, you think as you smirk to yourself. You figure that it'll be a long time before you can call any magic you perform boring. Getting to work, you fill a small pot with tap water and haul it outside to your old charcoal kettle barbecue.
The barbecue brings back bittersweet memories. You don't think it has been used since your mother died. So many things have withered in your family since she died, your relationship with your father being one of the greatest casualties. You shake your head, and get back to work. There will be time to fix your relationship with your father later. For now, science! Or magic. Whatever.
The ritual to purify water is fairly simple. As one of the four classical elements, all you need to do is remove the taint of the other three elements from your water. First you sympathetically link the fire, earth, and air in the water to similar elements outside of the water. In order to do that, you must forge a connection through magic.
Unfortunately, the only source of magic currently in existence, as far as you know, is yourself. Grimacing slightly, you pull a kitchen knife out of your back pocket. Until you make some tools with their own inherent magic, your own blood will have to make do as the source of magic.
Pricking yourself as lightly as possible on your fingertip, you squeeze three drops of blood into the water. You then place one drop on the charcoal in the barbecue, one drop on a dirty nail, and smear the rest of the blood onto your lips.
The painful part done, you light the charcoal and let it heat up. Once the water starts to bubble, you start the ritual.
"Fire to fire," you chant softly. The charcoal flares up into flames, and you move the suddenly ice-cold pot of water off the barbecue to the ground. You grab the nail from the ground and begin to stir the water.
"Earth to earth," you say, and watch as the dirt that had fallen off the nail into the water suddenly clump together and stick to the nail. You pull it out and throw it aside.
"Air to air," you breathe out over the water, causing ripples to form. Once you have emptied your lungs, you breathe in sharply, and the ripples disappear.
You stare at the pot of water, and a smile wider than any you have smiled in years spreads across your face. Making magically and physically pure water may be the lamest super power ever, but it is just the first step towards ... well, something. You will have to decide what you want your goal to be.
Suddenly eager to experiment more with your magic, you hurry indoors with your pot of water. Time to make something tough! After a little deliberation, you grab a ratty old black sweatshirt out of your closet. You lay it out flat on the kitchen table, and set up the ritual. A small triangle of iron shavings, surrounded by a medium-sized inverted triangle of salt, with a large triangle of pure water surrounding the entire design, all laid out on the sweatshirt.
Taking the same knife as before, you reopen the cut on your finger and drop a single drop of blood in the center of the symbol. Your eyes widen as the materials seem to sink into the sweatshirt. What were once triangles of iron, salt, and water are now shimmering lines of black, white, and blue.
You pick up the sweatshirt, and see if you can feel anything different about it. As soon as you touch it, you feel an echo in the back of your mind. The magic that you used to enchant the sweatshirt resonates with you, most likely because your blood was the catalyst for enacting the ritual. Interesting, but not what you were looking for.
Suddenly feeling brave, you lay the sweatshirt out over your left hand and take your knife up in your right. First lightly poking your covered hand with the knife, you soon are driving the knife down upon your hand with all your strength. Rather than a knife, it feels as if you are hitting yourself with a whiffle bat.
When you realize how you must look, insanely stabbing yourself over and over again, you blush slightly and quickly set down the knife. Despite your embarrassment, you can't help but feel proud of your accomplishment. You, Taylor Hebert, Enchantress extraordinaire, are going to make a difference if it is the last thing you do.
A quick look at the clock brings you back down to earth. While you may eventually craft weapons to slay Endbringers or trinkets that grant powers as strong as Eidolon's, for now you need to clean up the kitchen in preparation for your Dad coming home.
Dad. While you hadn't wanted to tell him about your magic before you had tested it (just in case it turned out that you were insane from the locker), now you needed to decide what, and when you wanted to tell him. It has only been a couple days since you were released from the hospital, and tonight will really be the first chance you will have had to tell him.
[] Tell Danny everything you know about knowing magic, which admittedly isn't much.
[] Tell Danny you can strengthen objects, and maybe more. Not the whole truth, but who'd believe "magic" anyways?
[] Tell Danny nothing. It's not like you've been talking to him lately anyways, and you can decide to tell him later when you have more proof.
Besides Dad, you also need to decide what you want to try next with magic. You have three main options to choose from. One, you can continue meditating, and hope you remember more of your past life and the rituals you used in it. Two, you can explore your magic by yourself, and see what you can come up with. Three, you can leave magic for another day, and do something else. You do have a pile of homework you need to complete ...
Whatever you decide, it will have to wait until tomorrow, as you can hear your Dad's car pulling up right now.
[] Meditate on your past life.
-[] Write in on a specific topic you wish to focus on.
[] Explore your abilities.
-[] Write in what you wish to attempt.
[] Do something else.
-[] Write in.
(QMN2: Quick explanation. Whenever you have time to practice magic, you'll have two choices. First is to meditate. If you meditate in general, you'll get a brief memory of your past life, and maybe a hint towards a new ritual. If you meditate on a topic, you'll get a hint regarding that topic, and maybe a brief memory. Second choice is to do whatever you want. Write up as complex of a plan as you want, and I'll decide what happens when you try it! (Mwahahahaha) I also reserve the right to mix and match multiple plans in some cases, like if the more popular plan causes an explosion on the first step and you need something else to do. Third is to ignore the Questmaster, and tell Taylor to go do something else.
Also, I hope I gave you a good start on figuring out what you can do. I tried to spread the magic out over symbols, materials, actions, and words. That way you can take what you like and ignore what you don't. The only hard limit I gave you was the use of blood, and even that I mentioned a way around by using magical tools. Though you may find other uses for your blood eventually...)
[X] Crafting and forging items of power, having a tool for every purpose.
You open your eyes from your meditations. A small sigh of disappointment escapes you at the perceived uselessness of the ritual you just remembered. You quickly stamp down on that feeling, though. While you may remember almost nothing of whatever past life you had, one maxim you were told comes to mind: The greatest of rituals are built from the smallest of symbols.
That thought firmly ensconced in your mind, you head down to your kitchen. You now know a total of two rituals. The first ritual increases the toughness of whatever it is applied to, causing it to resist any force that works to change it. You run through the components in your head: iron shavings for strength, salt for preservation, and absolutely pure water for resistance.
While iron and salt are fairly easy to acquire, pure water is practically impossible to find. Luckily, that's where your second ritual comes in. From your memories, you have the impression that pure water is used in a multitude of ways, so the ritual to purify water is useful, if boring.
Well, not that boring, you think as you smirk to yourself. You figure that it'll be a long time before you can call any magic you perform boring. Getting to work, you fill a small pot with tap water and haul it outside to your old charcoal kettle barbecue.
The barbecue brings back bittersweet memories. You don't think it has been used since your mother died. So many things have withered in your family since she died, your relationship with your father being one of the greatest casualties. You shake your head, and get back to work. There will be time to fix your relationship with your father later. For now, science! Or magic. Whatever.
The ritual to purify water is fairly simple. As one of the four classical elements, all you need to do is remove the taint of the other three elements from your water. First you sympathetically link the fire, earth, and air in the water to similar elements outside of the water. In order to do that, you must forge a connection through magic.
Unfortunately, the only source of magic currently in existence, as far as you know, is yourself. Grimacing slightly, you pull a kitchen knife out of your back pocket. Until you make some tools with their own inherent magic, your own blood will have to make do as the source of magic.
Pricking yourself as lightly as possible on your fingertip, you squeeze three drops of blood into the water. You then place one drop on the charcoal in the barbecue, one drop on a dirty nail, and smear the rest of the blood onto your lips.
The painful part done, you light the charcoal and let it heat up. Once the water starts to bubble, you start the ritual.
"Fire to fire," you chant softly. The charcoal flares up into flames, and you move the suddenly ice-cold pot of water off the barbecue to the ground. You grab the nail from the ground and begin to stir the water.
"Earth to earth," you say, and watch as the dirt that had fallen off the nail into the water suddenly clump together and stick to the nail. You pull it out and throw it aside.
"Air to air," you breathe out over the water, causing ripples to form. Once you have emptied your lungs, you breathe in sharply, and the ripples disappear.
You stare at the pot of water, and a smile wider than any you have smiled in years spreads across your face. Making magically and physically pure water may be the lamest super power ever, but it is just the first step towards ... well, something. You will have to decide what you want your goal to be.
Suddenly eager to experiment more with your magic, you hurry indoors with your pot of water. Time to make something tough! After a little deliberation, you grab a ratty old black sweatshirt out of your closet. You lay it out flat on the kitchen table, and set up the ritual. A small triangle of iron shavings, surrounded by a medium-sized inverted triangle of salt, with a large triangle of pure water surrounding the entire design, all laid out on the sweatshirt.
Taking the same knife as before, you reopen the cut on your finger and drop a single drop of blood in the center of the symbol. Your eyes widen as the materials seem to sink into the sweatshirt. What were once triangles of iron, salt, and water are now shimmering lines of black, white, and blue.
You pick up the sweatshirt, and see if you can feel anything different about it. As soon as you touch it, you feel an echo in the back of your mind. The magic that you used to enchant the sweatshirt resonates with you, most likely because your blood was the catalyst for enacting the ritual. Interesting, but not what you were looking for.
Suddenly feeling brave, you lay the sweatshirt out over your left hand and take your knife up in your right. First lightly poking your covered hand with the knife, you soon are driving the knife down upon your hand with all your strength. Rather than a knife, it feels as if you are hitting yourself with a whiffle bat.
When you realize how you must look, insanely stabbing yourself over and over again, you blush slightly and quickly set down the knife. Despite your embarrassment, you can't help but feel proud of your accomplishment. You, Taylor Hebert, Enchantress extraordinaire, are going to make a difference if it is the last thing you do.
A quick look at the clock brings you back down to earth. While you may eventually craft weapons to slay Endbringers or trinkets that grant powers as strong as Eidolon's, for now you need to clean up the kitchen in preparation for your Dad coming home.
Dad. While you hadn't wanted to tell him about your magic before you had tested it (just in case it turned out that you were insane from the locker), now you needed to decide what, and when you wanted to tell him. It has only been a couple days since you were released from the hospital, and tonight will really be the first chance you will have had to tell him.
[] Tell Danny everything you know about knowing magic, which admittedly isn't much.
[] Tell Danny you can strengthen objects, and maybe more. Not the whole truth, but who'd believe "magic" anyways?
[] Tell Danny nothing. It's not like you've been talking to him lately anyways, and you can decide to tell him later when you have more proof.
Besides Dad, you also need to decide what you want to try next with magic. You have three main options to choose from. One, you can continue meditating, and hope you remember more of your past life and the rituals you used in it. Two, you can explore your magic by yourself, and see what you can come up with. Three, you can leave magic for another day, and do something else. You do have a pile of homework you need to complete ...
Whatever you decide, it will have to wait until tomorrow, as you can hear your Dad's car pulling up right now.
[] Meditate on your past life.
-[] Write in on a specific topic you wish to focus on.
[] Explore your abilities.
-[] Write in what you wish to attempt.
[] Do something else.
-[] Write in.
(QMN2: Quick explanation. Whenever you have time to practice magic, you'll have two choices. First is to meditate. If you meditate in general, you'll get a brief memory of your past life, and maybe a hint towards a new ritual. If you meditate on a topic, you'll get a hint regarding that topic, and maybe a brief memory. Second choice is to do whatever you want. Write up as complex of a plan as you want, and I'll decide what happens when you try it! (Mwahahahaha) I also reserve the right to mix and match multiple plans in some cases, like if the more popular plan causes an explosion on the first step and you need something else to do. Third is to ignore the Questmaster, and tell Taylor to go do something else.
Also, I hope I gave you a good start on figuring out what you can do. I tried to spread the magic out over symbols, materials, actions, and words. That way you can take what you like and ignore what you don't. The only hard limit I gave you was the use of blood, and even that I mentioned a way around by using magical tools. Though you may find other uses for your blood eventually...)
Post 003
- Location
- Portland, Oregon
[X] Tell Danny nothing. It's not like you've been talking to him lately anyways, and you can decide to tell him later when you have more proof.
[X] Meditate on your past life.
-[X] Your abilities, thecons, the benefits, and any tips/hints
You can't help but let out a sigh of relief as you see your Dad drive away for another day at work. He tries his best to be a good father, but damn if his best isn't good enough. Last night at dinner he asked if you thought you would be fine returning to Winslow. The fact that he could ask that with a straight face shows how little he actually knew about what you went through.
You let out a huff and close the blinds. No reason to let poor familial relations sour your mood when you could be learning more magic. Sitting criss-cross on the floor, you close your eyes. When you meditated before, you just thought of nothing, and hoped something came to mind. Now, though, you have a better idea of what you are doing.
You focus in on the source of your magic. You felt it yesterday when you held the sweatshirt you enchanted. The power comes from somewhere beyond your body, then flows into you through your blood. Following the flow backwards, you reach into your soul...
"Daaa! I'm ready! I had my first blood a whole week ago! Ma says you're just lazy."
You jump up and down in front of your dad. He looks up from the wand he is carving, a faint smile on his face.
"I guess you are, and I guess I am. Well, let's get this over with. Now," he says sternly, though the smile never leaves his face, "tell me the basis of our craft."
"Magic comes from stories and magic. I know all the rules, Da," you grumble. He's already made you waste a whole week when you could be learning magic; making you recite rules you've known for years is boring!
"You might know the rules, but do you know the why behind them? Why's are the important things for us crafters, not rules." Da settles in on his bench, and you roll your eyes as you know you're in for a lecture.
"Take the law of living reagents. 'The importance of the means by which a reagent is offered forth is dependent on the life force of the reagent.' The rule means that stone or metal can come from anywhere; only the state it is in when the ritual starts matters. With plant matter, the history matters. With animal reagents, not only the item's history but also your own interactions with it will affect the ritual. For reagents from Living Spirits, well, don't try to use those without a good deal of care and consideration.
"Now, knowing all this is fine and dandy, but if you focus on the rules, you'll miss the the forest for the trees. Remember the first law: 'Magic comes from stories and magic.' Magic coming from magic is simple; you need magic to make magic. Magic from stories is complex. Every rule, including the first, comes from this axiom. A stone has a story, and thus can take part in magic. The stone cares not for its own story, though, so it is the stories people tell of the stone that matter. A tree has a story, and it will always work towards telling it. It cares not for who listens, or what others say, so the story a crafter tells matters equally.
"Animals have stories, and depending on their strength of mind, they may greatly care who listens. A crafter must always be careful when working with beings capable of thought, as the story they tell themselves can easily overpower any story you try and force upon them.
"Enough philosophy. Let's design your first ritual. Recite what I've taught you about implements."
You barely stifle a yelled, "Yes! Um, I mean, yes, Da. An implement allows a crafter to imbue a ritual with magic without the sympathetic link of blood. In order to do so, the ritual to create the implement must include all methods you wish to perform with it. Traditional implements use numerology, runic symbolism, verbal commands, physical actions, reagents, elemental mysticism, and sometimes temporal and spatial symbolism. If you don't include a method while making the implement, then you won't be able to use that method while enchanting with the implement.
"The ritual to create the implement involves tying the implement to its owner with each method. Each method must either represent the owner of the implement, or work to increase the power of the implement. A person may have as many implements as they wish, though a new implement should always be created through blood, and not with a previous implement."
Your da beams at you, and pats you on the head. "Good, good..."
Your eyes open. For a minute, you revel in the feelings the memory sparked in you. You were so excited to finally be able to perform magic, and the contentment that flooded through you when your da praised you is something you haven't felt for a long time.
Finally, you make yourself get up as your stomach grumbles at you. It is three in the afternoon, long after you should have eaten lunch.
As you make yourself a sandwich, you jokingly consider ritualized food preparation. You are fairly certain it would work, but you should probably wait to experiment until you have created an implement. You don't think people would be eager to eat food that had your blood in it, even if it was magical food. Plus, you are pretty sure that there are some downsides to using your blood in a ritual, even if you can't remember what they are yet...
Sandwich in hand, you sit yourself down at the table in your living/dining room and think. It looks like you have a choice in front of you. You can either go ahead with creating an implement to save your poor fingers, or can try to figure out more rituals first so you actually have something to use your implement for.
If you decide to make an implement, you'll need an object to be the implement, as well as a number of methods to represent yourself through symbolism. You may want to meditate and see what your alter-ego used for her ritual.
You grumble to yourself around the sandwich in your mouth, and go to fetch some homework from your room. While you are deciding, you can at least do something useful with your time.
[] Meditate on your past life.
-[] Write in on a specific topic you wish to focus on.
[] Design a ritual to create a personalized implement.
-[] Write in.
[] Explore your abilities.
-[] Write in what you wish to attempt.
[] Do something else.
-[] Write in.
(QMN: Here's a short post. We're off to a slow start, but things will kick off once we get out of our week at home. Whoa, I pulled a lot of magical metaphysics out of my ass in order to write this dream sequence and plan for future ones. Hopefully it makes sense. If it doesn't, tell me what seems like nonsense and I'll rewrite it. Also, I fully expect to do a lot of meditation this week, but be brave! We still have a couple hours before Danny gets home, so we can experiment with our magic and meditate tomorrow (today was Tuesday). While you technically have three choices, you can feel free to choose all three, at least for this first week when we have plenty of free time.)
(QMN: Added one line. Hopefully that makes creating an implement a little clearer. If it doesn't, eh, just meditate on it
)
[X] Meditate on your past life.
-[X] Your abilities, the
You can't help but let out a sigh of relief as you see your Dad drive away for another day at work. He tries his best to be a good father, but damn if his best isn't good enough. Last night at dinner he asked if you thought you would be fine returning to Winslow. The fact that he could ask that with a straight face shows how little he actually knew about what you went through.
You let out a huff and close the blinds. No reason to let poor familial relations sour your mood when you could be learning more magic. Sitting criss-cross on the floor, you close your eyes. When you meditated before, you just thought of nothing, and hoped something came to mind. Now, though, you have a better idea of what you are doing.
You focus in on the source of your magic. You felt it yesterday when you held the sweatshirt you enchanted. The power comes from somewhere beyond your body, then flows into you through your blood. Following the flow backwards, you reach into your soul...
"Daaa! I'm ready! I had my first blood a whole week ago! Ma says you're just lazy."
You jump up and down in front of your dad. He looks up from the wand he is carving, a faint smile on his face.
"I guess you are, and I guess I am. Well, let's get this over with. Now," he says sternly, though the smile never leaves his face, "tell me the basis of our craft."
"Magic comes from stories and magic. I know all the rules, Da," you grumble. He's already made you waste a whole week when you could be learning magic; making you recite rules you've known for years is boring!
"You might know the rules, but do you know the why behind them? Why's are the important things for us crafters, not rules." Da settles in on his bench, and you roll your eyes as you know you're in for a lecture.
"Take the law of living reagents. 'The importance of the means by which a reagent is offered forth is dependent on the life force of the reagent.' The rule means that stone or metal can come from anywhere; only the state it is in when the ritual starts matters. With plant matter, the history matters. With animal reagents, not only the item's history but also your own interactions with it will affect the ritual. For reagents from Living Spirits, well, don't try to use those without a good deal of care and consideration.
"Now, knowing all this is fine and dandy, but if you focus on the rules, you'll miss the the forest for the trees. Remember the first law: 'Magic comes from stories and magic.' Magic coming from magic is simple; you need magic to make magic. Magic from stories is complex. Every rule, including the first, comes from this axiom. A stone has a story, and thus can take part in magic. The stone cares not for its own story, though, so it is the stories people tell of the stone that matter. A tree has a story, and it will always work towards telling it. It cares not for who listens, or what others say, so the story a crafter tells matters equally.
"Animals have stories, and depending on their strength of mind, they may greatly care who listens. A crafter must always be careful when working with beings capable of thought, as the story they tell themselves can easily overpower any story you try and force upon them.
"Enough philosophy. Let's design your first ritual. Recite what I've taught you about implements."
You barely stifle a yelled, "Yes! Um, I mean, yes, Da. An implement allows a crafter to imbue a ritual with magic without the sympathetic link of blood. In order to do so, the ritual to create the implement must include all methods you wish to perform with it. Traditional implements use numerology, runic symbolism, verbal commands, physical actions, reagents, elemental mysticism, and sometimes temporal and spatial symbolism. If you don't include a method while making the implement, then you won't be able to use that method while enchanting with the implement.
"The ritual to create the implement involves tying the implement to its owner with each method. Each method must either represent the owner of the implement, or work to increase the power of the implement. A person may have as many implements as they wish, though a new implement should always be created through blood, and not with a previous implement."
Your da beams at you, and pats you on the head. "Good, good..."
Your eyes open. For a minute, you revel in the feelings the memory sparked in you. You were so excited to finally be able to perform magic, and the contentment that flooded through you when your da praised you is something you haven't felt for a long time.
Finally, you make yourself get up as your stomach grumbles at you. It is three in the afternoon, long after you should have eaten lunch.
As you make yourself a sandwich, you jokingly consider ritualized food preparation. You are fairly certain it would work, but you should probably wait to experiment until you have created an implement. You don't think people would be eager to eat food that had your blood in it, even if it was magical food. Plus, you are pretty sure that there are some downsides to using your blood in a ritual, even if you can't remember what they are yet...
Sandwich in hand, you sit yourself down at the table in your living/dining room and think. It looks like you have a choice in front of you. You can either go ahead with creating an implement to save your poor fingers, or can try to figure out more rituals first so you actually have something to use your implement for.
If you decide to make an implement, you'll need an object to be the implement, as well as a number of methods to represent yourself through symbolism. You may want to meditate and see what your alter-ego used for her ritual.
You grumble to yourself around the sandwich in your mouth, and go to fetch some homework from your room. While you are deciding, you can at least do something useful with your time.
[] Meditate on your past life.
-[] Write in on a specific topic you wish to focus on.
[] Design a ritual to create a personalized implement.
-[] Write in.
[] Explore your abilities.
-[] Write in what you wish to attempt.
[] Do something else.
-[] Write in.
(QMN: Here's a short post. We're off to a slow start, but things will kick off once we get out of our week at home. Whoa, I pulled a lot of magical metaphysics out of my ass in order to write this dream sequence and plan for future ones. Hopefully it makes sense. If it doesn't, tell me what seems like nonsense and I'll rewrite it. Also, I fully expect to do a lot of meditation this week, but be brave! We still have a couple hours before Danny gets home, so we can experiment with our magic and meditate tomorrow (today was Tuesday). While you technically have three choices, you can feel free to choose all three, at least for this first week when we have plenty of free time.)
(QMN: Added one line. Hopefully that makes creating an implement a little clearer. If it doesn't, eh, just meditate on it
)
Last edited:
Post 004
- Location
- Portland, Oregon
[X] Meditate on your past life.
-[X] Your abilities, your soul, your mind and memories of this life. And magic of the mind. Just as magic comes from stories. Sometimes the untold stories in the mind can effect magic. The subconscious desires. The dreams. The stories you want to make real. Even if you don't realize it.
[X] Look through old objects of yours. Find your flute. The one your mother taught you to use before she died and you took up her flute. Remember all the music you shared together. Clean it, wash it in pure water, polish it in your blood, purify it with your breath. Surround it with symbols of music written in iron fillings that have been purified with fire in the shape of 3 triangles. Call out to the corner stones of the stories of life. The things that make a story worthwhile. The tears of happiness, the blood of resolution and the breath of music. All things you have shared with the flute in all the time you have played it while your mother was alive. Do all of this and make your flute, a memento of happier times, a key to future happy stories.
Once again, you watch as your father drives off to work. After dinner yesterday, you spent the evening in your room planning a ritual to create your first implement. You are unsure how effective it will be, but even a failure will help you understand your gift more.
Before you get started, you sit down and meditate again. You focus on your soul, and the magic of the mind. Hopefully whatever memory you unlock will help you understand the power of stories...
You barely hold back your tears as you pull what was once your father towards what remains of your home. You wish you could use your wand to levitate him there, but that would sully the intent. You never understood this when you were younger, but blood magic is like a forest fire—the more you feed it, the hungrier it becomes. And hunger is what you need right now.
This time, the sob does escape your lips, but you trudge on. You hope your mother made it safely away, but if you want to survive, you need to focus on killing the bastard who caused the entire village to kill themselves.
Betrayal. The name of the insane Living Spirit. Most Living Spirits kept to themselves, but Betrayal had lost itself in its name. No army could stand against it, as they would turn upon each other. No wielder of magic could face it, as the very story she used to fight it would be turned against her. Anyone who saw Betrayal would be killed, in case the tale of betrayal had infected them. Betrayal was once human, but now was merely a conduit for betrayal.
When Betrayal wandered into your village, minor feuds turned into death matches, wives stabbed husbands in the back, dogs turned on their masters, and every action was an act of betrayal. Your father and you had gone out to try and save anyone you could, but like any attempt to go against Betrayal, your own actions had betrayed you. Oh, you and your father had artifacts that prevented unnatural changes from being enacted on your mind, but those artifacts had merely been the first to forsake you—your necklace of profound silence had been torn from your neck by an enraged neighbor right in front of Betrayal, and only your father giving you his necklace had prevented you from attempting to kill him then and there.
He'd told you to run, and run you did. An hour later, you'd returned to find corpses, your father's artifacts laying broken around him, and your father himself—
"I'm gonna kill you, Tali," he, no, it rasps. You stare ahead, eyes dry. While this may have once been your father, it now betrayed everything that it had once stood for, though through no choice of its own. You and he had both agreed before going to fight Betrayal that if the other was infected, they would kill them. You will kill your father, but not until you make his death worth something.
No, you are going to get your revenge or die trying. You smile a grim smile. Truthfully, your solution to the problem of any story used against Betrayal ending in betrayal was simple. All you needed to do was enact a ritual that, even when it eventually betrays you, would still achieve your goals.
Simply said, but very, very dangerous in practice. For you are going to do the one thing your father told you to never attempt. As you enter the clearing where your house once stood, only ruins and still-smoldering ashes remain. It is the perfect backdrop to perform a ritual that will affect your very soul.
You jerk up, panting heavily. It takes you several minutes to catch your breath, but the nausea you feel in your stomach lingers on. You sprawl out on the floor and stare at the ceiling.
Betrayal. It seemed eerily similar to the Simurgh, but where the Simurgh can only affect people, Betrayal could make anything betray its purpose. A hearth fire would burn down your house, leaving you in the cold. A shield would weigh down your arm, leaving you open to attack. Solid rock would crumble beneath your feet.
It was such a terrible fate, that you were planning to kill your father for having succumbed to it. You can't help but think that in the brief moment you were unprotected from the aura of betrayal, you were partially infected yourself. Not only were you going to kill your father, but from what you could tell, you were going to kill him in a life-powered ritual that would do the one thing he told you never to do.
You make a note to explore your soul, to see if you can figure out what you did to yourself. That is a task for another time, though. Now, you just want to take your mind off of the terrible memories, and make yourself an implement.
Rather than a blank crafter's tool that can produce an item for every need, or a powerful device made to enforce your will on the world, you have chosen your flute. An instrument of art with a deeply personal connection to yourself.
You can't quite forget the memory, not yet, but you force yourself up off the floor to gather everything you need for your ritual. You find the task of preparing calming, and your stomach stops its twisting and turning.
First, you must set the stage. Taking all the remaining iron filings you have, you heat them up in your kettle barbecue, wash them with pure water, and breathe over them in a bastardized elemental ritual. You let a single drop of blood fall over the filings, hopefully binding all four elements into one reagent.
You spread the filings out over your dining room floor, and start to corral them into shapes. You form three triangles, reminiscent of your first successful creation of an enchanted item. At each outer corner, you place a musical symbol: a treble clef for guidance and order, a segno for a new start, and a natural accidental to represent returning to a natural state.
Your runic symbolism all set up, you pull out your flute. You haven't touched it since your mother died except for last night, when you pulled it out of your closet. It's a relatively cheap student flute, made of something called nickel-silver. From a purely material sense, there is nothing unique about it.
With this ritual, you will give it meaning far beyond any it might have had before. After you place the flute in the middle of the symbols, you close your eyes to steel your nerve, then nod and say, "Alright."
You stand in front of the natural sign, and speak.
"I was an innocent child. Through music and my mother, I was joyful. Though I have lost both, I call back through my memories to grant power to this flute."
You pour your remaining pure water over the flute. The flute sparkles, cleaner than you've ever seen it. Moving clockwise, you go to stand at the sign of the segno.
"I am a captive of suffering. Through trials and persecution, I am reborn. In my new beginning, I offer forth my strengths to grant power to this flute."
Pulling out the kitchen knife with which you are forming a love-hate relationship, you cut yourself on your palm, and rub your blood along the length of the flute. Your stomach is again nauseous, this time from the pain coming from your hand, but you soldier on. You move to the last corner, the treble clef.
"I will be a source of inspiration. Through music and magic, I will live. In my dreams of the future, I wish for my hopes to grant power to this flute."
You step into the triangle and pick up your flute. Ice-cold from the pure water, you taste the iron of your blood as you place it at your lips. When you planned the ritual last night, you had thought to play something simple like Bach's Lullaby, since it had been a long time since you had last practiced. Instead, something else comes out.
You would have jumped in surprise at the unfamiliar tune, but you quickly found that your body wasn't under your control. The music and magic flowing through you quickly put to rest any fright, and you soon found yourself enjoying a song that seemed, somehow, to be uniquely you.
Almost too quickly, the song comes to an end. Before you have a chance to wonder if the ritual worked or not, you stumble as a torrent of power flows from you into the flute. You fall to your knees, light-headed, and absently notice that the iron filings and the puddle of water have disappeared. Your main focus, though, is on the flute in your hand.
Despite having been in your hand for the last several minutes, the flute is still comfortably cool. The only visual sign of your ritual is that the once silvery metal now has a faint red tinge. The main difference is in how it feels. Unlike the sweatshirt you enchanted, you don't feel a resonance between it and you. Instead, it feels like a part of you. You have no doubt that you could point straight at the flute, no matter how great a distance it might be from you.
You smile. Strangely enough, you don't feel proud of your accomplishment. Instead, you feel content. You relish in the feeling for a little while, but eventually you get up and start straightening out the house for when your dad returns home. Today, you went through a whole gamut of emotions, so you think you'll go to bed soon after you eat dinner.
Tomorrow, there is much you can do, but little time to do it in. You pull out a notebook and start planning out your day. You think you can fit two different activities into your day...
Choose Two:
[] Meditate on your past life.
-[] Write in on a specific topic you wish to focus on.
[] Explore your abilities.
-[] Write in what you wish to attempt.
[] Go shopping (or pillaging) for reagents.
-[] Write in what and where.
[] Do something else.
-[]Write in.
(QMN: Remember that all you have at this point is what you can find around a normal house. We've used up all our iron filings, so we don't even have that. We also don't really know much IC about parahumans or symbolism. If you want to learn more about either topic, we'll need to make a stop at the local library. So far we've just been meditating recluses, but that will change eventually.
A question: do people want me to do an in depth analysis of our implement? Pro's would be y'all would get a better idea of what I'm thinking when I create an implement. Con's would be taking some of the mystery away and possible spoilers for future story points. I'm fine with either decision, so I'll see what people say.)
-[X] Your abilities, your soul, your mind and memories of this life. And magic of the mind. Just as magic comes from stories. Sometimes the untold stories in the mind can effect magic. The subconscious desires. The dreams. The stories you want to make real. Even if you don't realize it.
[X] Look through old objects of yours. Find your flute. The one your mother taught you to use before she died and you took up her flute. Remember all the music you shared together. Clean it, wash it in pure water, polish it in your blood, purify it with your breath. Surround it with symbols of music written in iron fillings that have been purified with fire in the shape of 3 triangles. Call out to the corner stones of the stories of life. The things that make a story worthwhile. The tears of happiness, the blood of resolution and the breath of music. All things you have shared with the flute in all the time you have played it while your mother was alive. Do all of this and make your flute, a memento of happier times, a key to future happy stories.
Once again, you watch as your father drives off to work. After dinner yesterday, you spent the evening in your room planning a ritual to create your first implement. You are unsure how effective it will be, but even a failure will help you understand your gift more.
Before you get started, you sit down and meditate again. You focus on your soul, and the magic of the mind. Hopefully whatever memory you unlock will help you understand the power of stories...
You barely hold back your tears as you pull what was once your father towards what remains of your home. You wish you could use your wand to levitate him there, but that would sully the intent. You never understood this when you were younger, but blood magic is like a forest fire—the more you feed it, the hungrier it becomes. And hunger is what you need right now.
This time, the sob does escape your lips, but you trudge on. You hope your mother made it safely away, but if you want to survive, you need to focus on killing the bastard who caused the entire village to kill themselves.
Betrayal. The name of the insane Living Spirit. Most Living Spirits kept to themselves, but Betrayal had lost itself in its name. No army could stand against it, as they would turn upon each other. No wielder of magic could face it, as the very story she used to fight it would be turned against her. Anyone who saw Betrayal would be killed, in case the tale of betrayal had infected them. Betrayal was once human, but now was merely a conduit for betrayal.
When Betrayal wandered into your village, minor feuds turned into death matches, wives stabbed husbands in the back, dogs turned on their masters, and every action was an act of betrayal. Your father and you had gone out to try and save anyone you could, but like any attempt to go against Betrayal, your own actions had betrayed you. Oh, you and your father had artifacts that prevented unnatural changes from being enacted on your mind, but those artifacts had merely been the first to forsake you—your necklace of profound silence had been torn from your neck by an enraged neighbor right in front of Betrayal, and only your father giving you his necklace had prevented you from attempting to kill him then and there.
He'd told you to run, and run you did. An hour later, you'd returned to find corpses, your father's artifacts laying broken around him, and your father himself—
"I'm gonna kill you, Tali," he, no, it rasps. You stare ahead, eyes dry. While this may have once been your father, it now betrayed everything that it had once stood for, though through no choice of its own. You and he had both agreed before going to fight Betrayal that if the other was infected, they would kill them. You will kill your father, but not until you make his death worth something.
No, you are going to get your revenge or die trying. You smile a grim smile. Truthfully, your solution to the problem of any story used against Betrayal ending in betrayal was simple. All you needed to do was enact a ritual that, even when it eventually betrays you, would still achieve your goals.
Simply said, but very, very dangerous in practice. For you are going to do the one thing your father told you to never attempt. As you enter the clearing where your house once stood, only ruins and still-smoldering ashes remain. It is the perfect backdrop to perform a ritual that will affect your very soul.
You jerk up, panting heavily. It takes you several minutes to catch your breath, but the nausea you feel in your stomach lingers on. You sprawl out on the floor and stare at the ceiling.
Betrayal. It seemed eerily similar to the Simurgh, but where the Simurgh can only affect people, Betrayal could make anything betray its purpose. A hearth fire would burn down your house, leaving you in the cold. A shield would weigh down your arm, leaving you open to attack. Solid rock would crumble beneath your feet.
It was such a terrible fate, that you were planning to kill your father for having succumbed to it. You can't help but think that in the brief moment you were unprotected from the aura of betrayal, you were partially infected yourself. Not only were you going to kill your father, but from what you could tell, you were going to kill him in a life-powered ritual that would do the one thing he told you never to do.
You make a note to explore your soul, to see if you can figure out what you did to yourself. That is a task for another time, though. Now, you just want to take your mind off of the terrible memories, and make yourself an implement.
Rather than a blank crafter's tool that can produce an item for every need, or a powerful device made to enforce your will on the world, you have chosen your flute. An instrument of art with a deeply personal connection to yourself.
You can't quite forget the memory, not yet, but you force yourself up off the floor to gather everything you need for your ritual. You find the task of preparing calming, and your stomach stops its twisting and turning.
First, you must set the stage. Taking all the remaining iron filings you have, you heat them up in your kettle barbecue, wash them with pure water, and breathe over them in a bastardized elemental ritual. You let a single drop of blood fall over the filings, hopefully binding all four elements into one reagent.
You spread the filings out over your dining room floor, and start to corral them into shapes. You form three triangles, reminiscent of your first successful creation of an enchanted item. At each outer corner, you place a musical symbol: a treble clef for guidance and order, a segno for a new start, and a natural accidental to represent returning to a natural state.
Your runic symbolism all set up, you pull out your flute. You haven't touched it since your mother died except for last night, when you pulled it out of your closet. It's a relatively cheap student flute, made of something called nickel-silver. From a purely material sense, there is nothing unique about it.
With this ritual, you will give it meaning far beyond any it might have had before. After you place the flute in the middle of the symbols, you close your eyes to steel your nerve, then nod and say, "Alright."
You stand in front of the natural sign, and speak.
"I was an innocent child. Through music and my mother, I was joyful. Though I have lost both, I call back through my memories to grant power to this flute."
You pour your remaining pure water over the flute. The flute sparkles, cleaner than you've ever seen it. Moving clockwise, you go to stand at the sign of the segno.
"I am a captive of suffering. Through trials and persecution, I am reborn. In my new beginning, I offer forth my strengths to grant power to this flute."
Pulling out the kitchen knife with which you are forming a love-hate relationship, you cut yourself on your palm, and rub your blood along the length of the flute. Your stomach is again nauseous, this time from the pain coming from your hand, but you soldier on. You move to the last corner, the treble clef.
"I will be a source of inspiration. Through music and magic, I will live. In my dreams of the future, I wish for my hopes to grant power to this flute."
You step into the triangle and pick up your flute. Ice-cold from the pure water, you taste the iron of your blood as you place it at your lips. When you planned the ritual last night, you had thought to play something simple like Bach's Lullaby, since it had been a long time since you had last practiced. Instead, something else comes out.
You would have jumped in surprise at the unfamiliar tune, but you quickly found that your body wasn't under your control. The music and magic flowing through you quickly put to rest any fright, and you soon found yourself enjoying a song that seemed, somehow, to be uniquely you.
Almost too quickly, the song comes to an end. Before you have a chance to wonder if the ritual worked or not, you stumble as a torrent of power flows from you into the flute. You fall to your knees, light-headed, and absently notice that the iron filings and the puddle of water have disappeared. Your main focus, though, is on the flute in your hand.
Despite having been in your hand for the last several minutes, the flute is still comfortably cool. The only visual sign of your ritual is that the once silvery metal now has a faint red tinge. The main difference is in how it feels. Unlike the sweatshirt you enchanted, you don't feel a resonance between it and you. Instead, it feels like a part of you. You have no doubt that you could point straight at the flute, no matter how great a distance it might be from you.
You smile. Strangely enough, you don't feel proud of your accomplishment. Instead, you feel content. You relish in the feeling for a little while, but eventually you get up and start straightening out the house for when your dad returns home. Today, you went through a whole gamut of emotions, so you think you'll go to bed soon after you eat dinner.
Tomorrow, there is much you can do, but little time to do it in. You pull out a notebook and start planning out your day. You think you can fit two different activities into your day...
Choose Two:
[] Meditate on your past life.
-[] Write in on a specific topic you wish to focus on.
[] Explore your abilities.
-[] Write in what you wish to attempt.
[] Go shopping (or pillaging) for reagents.
-[] Write in what and where.
[] Do something else.
-[]Write in.
(QMN: Remember that all you have at this point is what you can find around a normal house. We've used up all our iron filings, so we don't even have that. We also don't really know much IC about parahumans or symbolism. If you want to learn more about either topic, we'll need to make a stop at the local library. So far we've just been meditating recluses, but that will change eventually.
A question: do people want me to do an in depth analysis of our implement? Pro's would be y'all would get a better idea of what I'm thinking when I create an implement. Con's would be taking some of the mystery away and possible spoilers for future story points. I'm fine with either decision, so I'll see what people say.)
Post 005
- Location
- Portland, Oregon
[X] Explore your abilities.
-[X] Play your flute. Open yourself up to the rhythm. After all, music and magic are related according to some schools of thought...
[X] Meditate on your past life.
-[X] How blood magic works and the consequences of it.
[X] Do something else
-[X] Go to the library and study parahumans and how the cape scene works
(QMN: I decided to add in a third action so as to speed up the plot a little.)
Your day starts just like it has the rest of the week—with an awkward breakfast shared with your dad. Danny had offered to let you sleep in this week, but you had stubbornly decided to wake up at your normal time in order to keep in practice for school.
You wish you had just said you were going to sleep in. Your dad obviously feels like he failed you, and his presence just works to remind you that in just four days, you have to return to school. You glower into your eggs, the silence growing even more imposing.
"Got anything planned for today, Taylor?" Your dad suddenly asks you.
"Might go to the library. Do some research for homework," you say.
"Want a note? Just in case anyone asks why you're not in school..." Your dad trails off.
You feel torn between laughing and frowning at how uncomfortable he is, and compromise by grunting out a, "sure."
Your dad makes a couple more attempts at conversation, but you manage to stave them off with terse answers until he has to leave for work. Once he's gone, you go up to your bedroom. You have a full day planned out, so it's time to get to work.
First on your agenda is some basic experimentation with your newly-created implement. You pull the flute out from under your bed, and instantly feel lighter. When you turned it into an implement, you crystallized your past joy, present endurance, and future hopes and made them all a part of the flute. The best parts of you, all in one instrument.
Momentarily distracted, you think back to breakfast. Maybe you've been a little harsh on your dad. You wish he was a more attentive father, but maybe he needs your help as much as you wish you had his.
That is a thought for later, though. You bring the flute to your lips, and begin to play. Almost instantly, you fall into the melody you played during the ritual yesterday. This time, though, you listen intently to the song.
There are no patterns in the song you play. No chorus or verse, no theme or refrain. Just an endless flood of notes, each leading to the next. The song starts sprightly and light, with the occasional deeper note guiding the cheerful babbling of the upper register. When the lower notes suddenly disappear, the melody slows, and falls into what almost sounds like a funeral march. Finally, the speed picks back up, and the song grows ever stronger and stronger.
When you finally stop playing, you smile. The song is more than a recording of your history, or a representation of who you are. It is also a promise of who you will try to become. You recognize each part from the speech you made in the ritual in the song.
Somehow, you have a deeper understanding of the flute. It represents the growth of your character, and will put its full strength behind any enchantment which inspires similar growth, whether in you or in others. While it can't perform any magic in and of itself, anyone who listens to you play it will understand you on a level beyond a casual relationship.
You smile, and put the flute away. While maybe not what you were looking for, you now have a better idea of what your flute is capable of. As long as you dream for a better future, it will serve you well as an implement.
You next sit cross-legged on your bed, and begin to meditate. Not on rituals, as you can figure those out for yourself. Nor on the state of your soul, as since it has lasted this long, it must not be in terrible shape. You feel that your focus is better spent on blood, and its relationship with magic. You dive into your soul, and see what you can remember.
Several hours later, you shake out your stiff limbs. Instead of a specific memory, all your meditation returned was bits and pieces of knowledge. As you go over what you remember, you have to admit that the information is useful.
Blood is the means by which a soul transforms ethereal magic into a physical material. Living blood is a mix of the four primal elements (water, earth, fire, and air) and the fifth element of magic. It is a conduit by which a magic-user may impose their story upon the world's story. As part of the world, it isn't strong enough to completely go against the world, which is the reason why a ritual includes stories that match. The blood gives an overarching purpose to disparate pieces, forming an unified enchantment.
The downside of blood is, like all living reagents, it wishes to tell its own story. When the blood comes from the caster of the enchantment, the story the blood wishes to tell will often match the story the caster wants to tell. Sometimes, though, hidden parts of the caster's mind might come through the blood, causing chaotic side effects. The most standard effect is that a blood-bonded artifact won't work as well for other users, unless the caster is literally willing to shed their blood for the user.
Implements were originally invented as a method of preventing unusual side effects. The mindset of the crafter at the time of creation is imprinted on the implement, so that the exact same frame of mind can be used for any number of enchantments. It was quickly discovered that, as no actually blood was spilled during a ritual performed with an implement, implements also removed the condition that the caster be willing to spill their blood for the eventual user of the created artifact in order to utilize its full strength.
The true danger of blood magic is when the blood used doesn't come from the caster of the ritual. Foreign blood can contain any type of story that was in the owner's mind and soul when it was taken from them. Usually, this story won't be telling what the caster wishes, causing catastrophic failure of the ritual. The easiest way to get around this is to have the permission of the creature you are taking blood from, but ruthless crafters have used any number of methods to force a person to only tell certain stories.
You grimace at the dark tones of the last bit of information, but dutifully note it down as something that could be important. To summarize, use blood for personal artifacts, or when the purpose of the artifact doesn't match any of your implements. You throw together a quick sandwich, and then head out to the library, your dad's note stuffed in your pocket.
It is the first time you've left the house since you got back from the hospital, and everything is ... normal. The world goes on, and cares little for the random sophomore who was shoved into a locker full of garbage. You start to feel worse, but remember the promise you made by creating your flute. If you want to continue using it as an implement, you need to embody the desire for a brighter tomorrow. You straighten your shoulders, lift your head high, and embrace the faint heat of the winter sun.
The library must be having a slow day today, because there are open computers when you arrive. Choosing one in the back corner so no one can see your screen, you open up a web browser and start searching.
First looking up information for new capes, you sift through a large amount of dross. The only useful things you find are recommendations to talk with the Protectorate even if you don't plan on joining, and to never attempt to find out another cape's civilian identity. You also read up on a list of cape lingo, which includes the Parahuman Response Team's threat rating system and a brief description of trigger events.
Other than that, though, you don't find much. There are mentions of the Endbringer truce and something called the Unwritten Rules, but you doubt that an Endbringer will ever hit somewhere as useless as Brockton Bay, and funnily enough, the Unwritten Rules don't seem to be written anywhere that you can find.
Tiring of that topic, you instead turn towards Brockton Bay, and the capes that reside in it. Taking the easy groups first, you go to the official Protectorate website and the site for New Wave. You look at pictures of each hero so you can recognize them, and read brief descriptions of their powers. Next, you look up the gangs.
On a site call Parahuman Online, you find articles for each gang and descriptions of their capes. You raise your eyebrows at the distribution you see. Arguably the most dangerous gang, the Az'n Bad Boys have only two capes, but both are deadly. The Archer's Bridge Merchants have three capes, and the Empire Eighty-Eight has an astounding 15 capes listed under their name, though some haven't been seen in quite some time.
You sit back and stare at the ceiling. While you have to admit that you've had fantasies of going out as a hero, reading the realities of the cape scene in Brockton Bay puts a damper on you. While you may decide to go out at a later date, or possibly become a Rogue selling enchanted gear, either will have to wait until you have enough artifacts to defend yourself with.
Not wanting to leave the job half-finished, you return your attention to the computer screen to see what other capes are in Brockton Bay. You read up on Faultline's Crew, Coil's Organization, Uber and Leet, a couple solitary vigilantes and villains, and the two rogues in the city, a clothier named Parian and a craftsman named Amish, of all things.
Almost exactly one hour after you arrived, you are heading back home with a notebook full of your notes. Whatever you decide to do with yourself, you will make sure you are prepared for what comes.
Choose three!
[] Meditate on your past life.
-[] Write in on a specific topic you wish to focus on.
[] Explore your abilities.
-[] Write in what you wish to attempt.
[] Go shopping (or pillaging) for reagents.
-[] Write in what and where.
[] Do something else.
-[]Write in.
(QMN: Today was Thursday (in quest). We have Friday and the Weekend left of the tutorial, and then things will happen! Today was a little boring, but we got important stuff out of the way. If anyone has problems understanding my lecture on blood, please tell me so I can try and make it clearer. Since the metaphysics makes sense in my head, it is really hard to tell if it makes sense to anyone else when I put it into words. Other than that, enjoy! Next post will probably be late tomorrow.
As a reminder, you can choose to meditate in general, in which case you are given a useful memory. When you meditate on a topic, you only get a memory if I can think of one that fits.)
-[X] Play your flute. Open yourself up to the rhythm. After all, music and magic are related according to some schools of thought...
[X] Meditate on your past life.
-[X] How blood magic works and the consequences of it.
[X] Do something else
-[X] Go to the library and study parahumans and how the cape scene works
(QMN: I decided to add in a third action so as to speed up the plot a little.)
Your day starts just like it has the rest of the week—with an awkward breakfast shared with your dad. Danny had offered to let you sleep in this week, but you had stubbornly decided to wake up at your normal time in order to keep in practice for school.
You wish you had just said you were going to sleep in. Your dad obviously feels like he failed you, and his presence just works to remind you that in just four days, you have to return to school. You glower into your eggs, the silence growing even more imposing.
"Got anything planned for today, Taylor?" Your dad suddenly asks you.
"Might go to the library. Do some research for homework," you say.
"Want a note? Just in case anyone asks why you're not in school..." Your dad trails off.
You feel torn between laughing and frowning at how uncomfortable he is, and compromise by grunting out a, "sure."
Your dad makes a couple more attempts at conversation, but you manage to stave them off with terse answers until he has to leave for work. Once he's gone, you go up to your bedroom. You have a full day planned out, so it's time to get to work.
First on your agenda is some basic experimentation with your newly-created implement. You pull the flute out from under your bed, and instantly feel lighter. When you turned it into an implement, you crystallized your past joy, present endurance, and future hopes and made them all a part of the flute. The best parts of you, all in one instrument.
Momentarily distracted, you think back to breakfast. Maybe you've been a little harsh on your dad. You wish he was a more attentive father, but maybe he needs your help as much as you wish you had his.
That is a thought for later, though. You bring the flute to your lips, and begin to play. Almost instantly, you fall into the melody you played during the ritual yesterday. This time, though, you listen intently to the song.
There are no patterns in the song you play. No chorus or verse, no theme or refrain. Just an endless flood of notes, each leading to the next. The song starts sprightly and light, with the occasional deeper note guiding the cheerful babbling of the upper register. When the lower notes suddenly disappear, the melody slows, and falls into what almost sounds like a funeral march. Finally, the speed picks back up, and the song grows ever stronger and stronger.
When you finally stop playing, you smile. The song is more than a recording of your history, or a representation of who you are. It is also a promise of who you will try to become. You recognize each part from the speech you made in the ritual in the song.
Somehow, you have a deeper understanding of the flute. It represents the growth of your character, and will put its full strength behind any enchantment which inspires similar growth, whether in you or in others. While it can't perform any magic in and of itself, anyone who listens to you play it will understand you on a level beyond a casual relationship.
You smile, and put the flute away. While maybe not what you were looking for, you now have a better idea of what your flute is capable of. As long as you dream for a better future, it will serve you well as an implement.
You next sit cross-legged on your bed, and begin to meditate. Not on rituals, as you can figure those out for yourself. Nor on the state of your soul, as since it has lasted this long, it must not be in terrible shape. You feel that your focus is better spent on blood, and its relationship with magic. You dive into your soul, and see what you can remember.
Several hours later, you shake out your stiff limbs. Instead of a specific memory, all your meditation returned was bits and pieces of knowledge. As you go over what you remember, you have to admit that the information is useful.
Blood is the means by which a soul transforms ethereal magic into a physical material. Living blood is a mix of the four primal elements (water, earth, fire, and air) and the fifth element of magic. It is a conduit by which a magic-user may impose their story upon the world's story. As part of the world, it isn't strong enough to completely go against the world, which is the reason why a ritual includes stories that match. The blood gives an overarching purpose to disparate pieces, forming an unified enchantment.
The downside of blood is, like all living reagents, it wishes to tell its own story. When the blood comes from the caster of the enchantment, the story the blood wishes to tell will often match the story the caster wants to tell. Sometimes, though, hidden parts of the caster's mind might come through the blood, causing chaotic side effects. The most standard effect is that a blood-bonded artifact won't work as well for other users, unless the caster is literally willing to shed their blood for the user.
Implements were originally invented as a method of preventing unusual side effects. The mindset of the crafter at the time of creation is imprinted on the implement, so that the exact same frame of mind can be used for any number of enchantments. It was quickly discovered that, as no actually blood was spilled during a ritual performed with an implement, implements also removed the condition that the caster be willing to spill their blood for the eventual user of the created artifact in order to utilize its full strength.
The true danger of blood magic is when the blood used doesn't come from the caster of the ritual. Foreign blood can contain any type of story that was in the owner's mind and soul when it was taken from them. Usually, this story won't be telling what the caster wishes, causing catastrophic failure of the ritual. The easiest way to get around this is to have the permission of the creature you are taking blood from, but ruthless crafters have used any number of methods to force a person to only tell certain stories.
You grimace at the dark tones of the last bit of information, but dutifully note it down as something that could be important. To summarize, use blood for personal artifacts, or when the purpose of the artifact doesn't match any of your implements. You throw together a quick sandwich, and then head out to the library, your dad's note stuffed in your pocket.
It is the first time you've left the house since you got back from the hospital, and everything is ... normal. The world goes on, and cares little for the random sophomore who was shoved into a locker full of garbage. You start to feel worse, but remember the promise you made by creating your flute. If you want to continue using it as an implement, you need to embody the desire for a brighter tomorrow. You straighten your shoulders, lift your head high, and embrace the faint heat of the winter sun.
The library must be having a slow day today, because there are open computers when you arrive. Choosing one in the back corner so no one can see your screen, you open up a web browser and start searching.
First looking up information for new capes, you sift through a large amount of dross. The only useful things you find are recommendations to talk with the Protectorate even if you don't plan on joining, and to never attempt to find out another cape's civilian identity. You also read up on a list of cape lingo, which includes the Parahuman Response Team's threat rating system and a brief description of trigger events.
Other than that, though, you don't find much. There are mentions of the Endbringer truce and something called the Unwritten Rules, but you doubt that an Endbringer will ever hit somewhere as useless as Brockton Bay, and funnily enough, the Unwritten Rules don't seem to be written anywhere that you can find.
Tiring of that topic, you instead turn towards Brockton Bay, and the capes that reside in it. Taking the easy groups first, you go to the official Protectorate website and the site for New Wave. You look at pictures of each hero so you can recognize them, and read brief descriptions of their powers. Next, you look up the gangs.
On a site call Parahuman Online, you find articles for each gang and descriptions of their capes. You raise your eyebrows at the distribution you see. Arguably the most dangerous gang, the Az'n Bad Boys have only two capes, but both are deadly. The Archer's Bridge Merchants have three capes, and the Empire Eighty-Eight has an astounding 15 capes listed under their name, though some haven't been seen in quite some time.
You sit back and stare at the ceiling. While you have to admit that you've had fantasies of going out as a hero, reading the realities of the cape scene in Brockton Bay puts a damper on you. While you may decide to go out at a later date, or possibly become a Rogue selling enchanted gear, either will have to wait until you have enough artifacts to defend yourself with.
Not wanting to leave the job half-finished, you return your attention to the computer screen to see what other capes are in Brockton Bay. You read up on Faultline's Crew, Coil's Organization, Uber and Leet, a couple solitary vigilantes and villains, and the two rogues in the city, a clothier named Parian and a craftsman named Amish, of all things.
Almost exactly one hour after you arrived, you are heading back home with a notebook full of your notes. Whatever you decide to do with yourself, you will make sure you are prepared for what comes.
Choose three!
[] Meditate on your past life.
-[] Write in on a specific topic you wish to focus on.
[] Explore your abilities.
-[] Write in what you wish to attempt.
[] Go shopping (or pillaging) for reagents.
-[] Write in what and where.
[] Do something else.
-[]Write in.
(QMN: Today was Thursday (in quest). We have Friday and the Weekend left of the tutorial, and then things will happen! Today was a little boring, but we got important stuff out of the way. If anyone has problems understanding my lecture on blood, please tell me so I can try and make it clearer. Since the metaphysics makes sense in my head, it is really hard to tell if it makes sense to anyone else when I put it into words. Other than that, enjoy! Next post will probably be late tomorrow.
As a reminder, you can choose to meditate in general, in which case you are given a useful memory. When you meditate on a topic, you only get a memory if I can think of one that fits.)
Post 006
- Location
- Portland, Oregon
[X] Meditate on your past life.
-[X]Try to recall anyway to intensify or increase the result of a ritual.
[X] Meditate on your past life.
-[X]Try to recall something that might help you get around town quickly, preferably something like flight or teleportation.
[X] Explore your abilities.
-[X] A Talisman of Resilience: Your fascination with these new powers is tempered by the realization that you'll have to return to school soon. And at Winslow, you'll face them again. But maybe, you consider, your new powers can help with that. Acting almost on instinct, you move through your house, collecting the proper reagents. From the unused jewelry box you inherited from your mother, a small bracelet of silver chain that, a quick test confirms, fits comfortably around your ankle, and is well concealed by your jeans. From the bookshelf in your living room, an old, dog-eared book of poems. From a waste pile in one corner of your basement, a single link of chain, broken along one side, somehow almost untouched by rust. From the kitchen, a small bowl of the purest water you can get. Taking your supplies to your backyard, you carefully sketch the same triple-triangle symbol you used yesterday. At the center of one triangle, you place the chain link, for old bonds broken. At the second, you place the water, to cleanse the suffering of the past. And, in the center of the third you place a still-growing dandelion, tenaciously hanging on through the Brockton Bay winter, for the strength to overcome the weight of the world. Readying your implement, you open the poetry book to a well-marked page, and speak the words...
Today is Friday. As the week comes to a close, Winslow looms ever heavier on your thoughts. Contact with your implement helps keep you in a hopeful frame of mind, but you don't dare bring another flute to school with what happened to your mother's instrument.
Instead, you hope to create a charm that will inspire similar mental fortitude in you, while maybe also having other effects. You have some ideas, but decide to wait until you have done some meditation before you try them.
A wry smile appears on your face when you consider the amount of time you have spent just sitting the past few days. If you hadn't of had the memories of your past life, you would have been bored out of your mind. You might have ended up staring at spiders or something equally inane.
Clearing your mind of thoughts of possible rituals you could use a spider's web in, you begin to meditate on methods of strengthening rituals. Ideas and hints of knowledge settle into your mind, but once again you don't receive any full memories. Sitting in the middle of your bed, you consider what you learned.
While the crafters of the world your past life came from had rules of magic, they found that overly strict adherence to those rules actually weakened the magic they created. However, the rules did work as useful tips.
For example, more expensive reagents often led to more powerful rituals. Not because of any direct relationship, but because the narratives of entire cultures tended to put more emphasis on more expensive artifacts.
Also, complex rituals usually had stronger effects. You think back on your strengthening ritual. Now that you are familiar with magic, you could probably design a ritual that works better. Maybe a runic setup of three squares with their inner sides forming a triangle, with two more triangle within that one. In one square, put four reagents representing resistance, with the sign for electrical resistance in the center. Repeat that in the other two squares except with the concepts of strength and preservation, add in some words and actions, and there you have a ritual that would outperform the original it was based on.
The last method that came to mind was something called compartmentalization—using a ritual to create a reagent for another, later ritual. While this could be as simple as making reagents magical, like creating absolutely pure water or salt that preserves whatever it touches, it could also be more complex. You vaguely remember a ritual that creates a dimensional gateway between two stone arches. As part of the ritual, a single arch is cut into two arches with a sword enchanted to cut through anything.
As you walk around your room before meditating again, you consider the last method you remembered. It seems similar to creating an implement, but where an implement is the conductor of the enchantment, a ritually created reagent is like a member of the orchestra being given a solo.
Filing away the information, you again start to meditate, but this time on a ritual to augment your movement. You quickly fall into your soul as a memory reaches out to you...
"I don't know how you enjoy something as menial as creating boots of speed, Talia."
You smile calmly at Liliana Lightblade, 15-year-old crafter and fellow student at the Royal College of Rituals. Unlike most students who start at the age of 13, you are almost 20. Their attempts at ingratiating themselves with you are generally cute, so you often humor them.
"I find it quite relaxing, actually. It reminds me of crafting for a single village with my father."
You stifle a laugh as Liliana shoots you a disbelieving look. Despite your background being commonly known, your fellow students still doubt that you are the simple village girl you profess to be. You suppose that being the long lost scion of some ancient crafting clan is slightly more believable than a random 18-year-old successfully changing their soul. Sometimes reality is a strange place...
You finish up your preparations, and double check your work as you wait for Liliana to catch up. The paws of a cat who died of old age, soaked in water caught falling down a waterfall, are arrayed at the corners of a square for control. Inside the square rests a pair of leather boots with lightning bolts embossed on in silver. The cardinal signs for the four directions surround the boots, and a reagent sits between each sign.
Between North and East sits a portion of a sail that has caught many winds. East to South has bottle full of clouds from a distant mountaintop. South to West holds the branch of a tall tree struck by lightning. Finally, West to North is a fragment of a fallen meteorite.
The square and the cardinal signs are all written in the blood of the soldier the boots are for, so no other man may use them. Exchanging a glance with Liliana, you both begin to chant in unison excerpts from the scriptures of the wind god, your implements firmly in hand...
You find yourself back in your bedroom. In all honesty, the ritual isn't something you can just decide to copy. However, you are sure you can find some way to replace the reagents you can't get a hold of. Maybe replace the cat's feet with four non-living reagents that represent stability, and the meteorite with rain caught falling from the sky. You expect the results would have less explosive speed, but perhaps that would be better, as the stability would most likely be worse without the cat's paws.
Looking at the clock, you see that it's getting late. If you want to create your talisman of resilience, you had better get started. You run through the motions of your water purifying ritual, using your flute instead of blood. You grab the broken link of chain from the basement and one of your mother's favorite poem anthologies from a bookshelf. Finally, you open up your mother's jewelry box. You've never felt comfortable using anything from it, but you feel that this is a cause she would agree with.
You eventually choose a anklet of small silver chain. It fits snugly around your ankle, a perfect place to hide it from them. You feel despair at the thought of having to go back to face the people who put you in the locker start to bubble up. As soon as you grab hold of your flute, though, a comforting burst of emotion flows into you.
You haul everything outside, where your final reagent sits. A solitary dandelion shoot, not yet flowering, pokes its head up above the ground. You carve a triangle around the plant with a trowel, then form two more in formation next to it. In one you place the broken chain, and in the other you set down the pot of pure water.
You stand next to your ad hoc ritual, and begin by reciting the poem by Georgia Douglas Johnson you chose for the ritual.
"When I rise up above the earth,
And look down on the things that fetter me,
I beat my wings upon the air,
Or tranquil lie,
Surge after surge of potent strength
Like incense comes to me
When I rise up above the earth
And look down upon the things that fetter me."
You then place your flute at your lips and begin to play. You skip past your youthful joy and your sorrowful tenacity, and start right at your desire to improve yourself and the world. The music swirls around your backyard, and once again you lose yourself in the ever-changing melody that represents you and your hope for the future.
When you are done, you close your eyes. You go and pick up the anklet, when—
"Wow."
You spin around. Standing on your porch is your dad, tears on his face. You freeze, wide eyed, but he doesn't seem to notice as he stares at the flute in your hand.
"I didn't, I mean, what was that? I felt like everything was going to get better. Taylor..."
He stops staring at the flute at looks up at you in equal parts confusion and hope. You think quickly, then answer him.
[] You tell your dad everything—magic, your past life, and the fact you just completed a ritual to embolden you at school.
[] You tell your dad a mix of the truth—maybe that you are a cape, or that you know magic but not about the bullying.
-[] Write in the details.
[] You tell your dad you've been practicing the flute this entire week. You're pretty good, right?
Later that night, you lay in bed thinking before you fall asleep. You dealt with your dad, but now you only have two days left before you return to school. What do you want to do with your time?
Choose four!
[] Meditate on your past life.
-[] Write in on a specific topic you wish to focus on.
[] Explore your abilities.
-[] Write in what you wish to attempt.
[] Go shopping (or pillaging) for reagents.
-[] Write in what and where.
[] Do something else.
-[]Write in.
(QMN: Damn, this post was hard to write for a pretty fluffy post. You've got another chance to explain things to your dad, choose wisely, or not. The next post will include both Saturday and Sunday (and possibly Friday evening if you explain to your dad), and will be released on Monday. Shout out to @HeWhoAdds for beta-ing for me! Edit: if you find a mistake, it's not his fault, since he actually only read half the post.)
-[X]Try to recall anyway to intensify or increase the result of a ritual.
[X] Meditate on your past life.
-[X]Try to recall something that might help you get around town quickly, preferably something like flight or teleportation.
[X] Explore your abilities.
-[X] A Talisman of Resilience: Your fascination with these new powers is tempered by the realization that you'll have to return to school soon. And at Winslow, you'll face them again. But maybe, you consider, your new powers can help with that. Acting almost on instinct, you move through your house, collecting the proper reagents. From the unused jewelry box you inherited from your mother, a small bracelet of silver chain that, a quick test confirms, fits comfortably around your ankle, and is well concealed by your jeans. From the bookshelf in your living room, an old, dog-eared book of poems. From a waste pile in one corner of your basement, a single link of chain, broken along one side, somehow almost untouched by rust. From the kitchen, a small bowl of the purest water you can get. Taking your supplies to your backyard, you carefully sketch the same triple-triangle symbol you used yesterday. At the center of one triangle, you place the chain link, for old bonds broken. At the second, you place the water, to cleanse the suffering of the past. And, in the center of the third you place a still-growing dandelion, tenaciously hanging on through the Brockton Bay winter, for the strength to overcome the weight of the world. Readying your implement, you open the poetry book to a well-marked page, and speak the words...
Today is Friday. As the week comes to a close, Winslow looms ever heavier on your thoughts. Contact with your implement helps keep you in a hopeful frame of mind, but you don't dare bring another flute to school with what happened to your mother's instrument.
Instead, you hope to create a charm that will inspire similar mental fortitude in you, while maybe also having other effects. You have some ideas, but decide to wait until you have done some meditation before you try them.
A wry smile appears on your face when you consider the amount of time you have spent just sitting the past few days. If you hadn't of had the memories of your past life, you would have been bored out of your mind. You might have ended up staring at spiders or something equally inane.
Clearing your mind of thoughts of possible rituals you could use a spider's web in, you begin to meditate on methods of strengthening rituals. Ideas and hints of knowledge settle into your mind, but once again you don't receive any full memories. Sitting in the middle of your bed, you consider what you learned.
While the crafters of the world your past life came from had rules of magic, they found that overly strict adherence to those rules actually weakened the magic they created. However, the rules did work as useful tips.
For example, more expensive reagents often led to more powerful rituals. Not because of any direct relationship, but because the narratives of entire cultures tended to put more emphasis on more expensive artifacts.
Also, complex rituals usually had stronger effects. You think back on your strengthening ritual. Now that you are familiar with magic, you could probably design a ritual that works better. Maybe a runic setup of three squares with their inner sides forming a triangle, with two more triangle within that one. In one square, put four reagents representing resistance, with the sign for electrical resistance in the center. Repeat that in the other two squares except with the concepts of strength and preservation, add in some words and actions, and there you have a ritual that would outperform the original it was based on.
The last method that came to mind was something called compartmentalization—using a ritual to create a reagent for another, later ritual. While this could be as simple as making reagents magical, like creating absolutely pure water or salt that preserves whatever it touches, it could also be more complex. You vaguely remember a ritual that creates a dimensional gateway between two stone arches. As part of the ritual, a single arch is cut into two arches with a sword enchanted to cut through anything.
As you walk around your room before meditating again, you consider the last method you remembered. It seems similar to creating an implement, but where an implement is the conductor of the enchantment, a ritually created reagent is like a member of the orchestra being given a solo.
Filing away the information, you again start to meditate, but this time on a ritual to augment your movement. You quickly fall into your soul as a memory reaches out to you...
"I don't know how you enjoy something as menial as creating boots of speed, Talia."
You smile calmly at Liliana Lightblade, 15-year-old crafter and fellow student at the Royal College of Rituals. Unlike most students who start at the age of 13, you are almost 20. Their attempts at ingratiating themselves with you are generally cute, so you often humor them.
"I find it quite relaxing, actually. It reminds me of crafting for a single village with my father."
You stifle a laugh as Liliana shoots you a disbelieving look. Despite your background being commonly known, your fellow students still doubt that you are the simple village girl you profess to be. You suppose that being the long lost scion of some ancient crafting clan is slightly more believable than a random 18-year-old successfully changing their soul. Sometimes reality is a strange place...
You finish up your preparations, and double check your work as you wait for Liliana to catch up. The paws of a cat who died of old age, soaked in water caught falling down a waterfall, are arrayed at the corners of a square for control. Inside the square rests a pair of leather boots with lightning bolts embossed on in silver. The cardinal signs for the four directions surround the boots, and a reagent sits between each sign.
Between North and East sits a portion of a sail that has caught many winds. East to South has bottle full of clouds from a distant mountaintop. South to West holds the branch of a tall tree struck by lightning. Finally, West to North is a fragment of a fallen meteorite.
The square and the cardinal signs are all written in the blood of the soldier the boots are for, so no other man may use them. Exchanging a glance with Liliana, you both begin to chant in unison excerpts from the scriptures of the wind god, your implements firmly in hand...
You find yourself back in your bedroom. In all honesty, the ritual isn't something you can just decide to copy. However, you are sure you can find some way to replace the reagents you can't get a hold of. Maybe replace the cat's feet with four non-living reagents that represent stability, and the meteorite with rain caught falling from the sky. You expect the results would have less explosive speed, but perhaps that would be better, as the stability would most likely be worse without the cat's paws.
Looking at the clock, you see that it's getting late. If you want to create your talisman of resilience, you had better get started. You run through the motions of your water purifying ritual, using your flute instead of blood. You grab the broken link of chain from the basement and one of your mother's favorite poem anthologies from a bookshelf. Finally, you open up your mother's jewelry box. You've never felt comfortable using anything from it, but you feel that this is a cause she would agree with.
You eventually choose a anklet of small silver chain. It fits snugly around your ankle, a perfect place to hide it from them. You feel despair at the thought of having to go back to face the people who put you in the locker start to bubble up. As soon as you grab hold of your flute, though, a comforting burst of emotion flows into you.
You haul everything outside, where your final reagent sits. A solitary dandelion shoot, not yet flowering, pokes its head up above the ground. You carve a triangle around the plant with a trowel, then form two more in formation next to it. In one you place the broken chain, and in the other you set down the pot of pure water.
You stand next to your ad hoc ritual, and begin by reciting the poem by Georgia Douglas Johnson you chose for the ritual.
"When I rise up above the earth,
And look down on the things that fetter me,
I beat my wings upon the air,
Or tranquil lie,
Surge after surge of potent strength
Like incense comes to me
When I rise up above the earth
And look down upon the things that fetter me."
You then place your flute at your lips and begin to play. You skip past your youthful joy and your sorrowful tenacity, and start right at your desire to improve yourself and the world. The music swirls around your backyard, and once again you lose yourself in the ever-changing melody that represents you and your hope for the future.
When you are done, you close your eyes. You go and pick up the anklet, when—
"Wow."
You spin around. Standing on your porch is your dad, tears on his face. You freeze, wide eyed, but he doesn't seem to notice as he stares at the flute in your hand.
"I didn't, I mean, what was that? I felt like everything was going to get better. Taylor..."
He stops staring at the flute at looks up at you in equal parts confusion and hope. You think quickly, then answer him.
[] You tell your dad everything—magic, your past life, and the fact you just completed a ritual to embolden you at school.
[] You tell your dad a mix of the truth—maybe that you are a cape, or that you know magic but not about the bullying.
-[] Write in the details.
[] You tell your dad you've been practicing the flute this entire week. You're pretty good, right?
Later that night, you lay in bed thinking before you fall asleep. You dealt with your dad, but now you only have two days left before you return to school. What do you want to do with your time?
Choose four!
[] Meditate on your past life.
-[] Write in on a specific topic you wish to focus on.
[] Explore your abilities.
-[] Write in what you wish to attempt.
[] Go shopping (or pillaging) for reagents.
-[] Write in what and where.
[] Do something else.
-[]Write in.
(QMN: Damn, this post was hard to write for a pretty fluffy post. You've got another chance to explain things to your dad, choose wisely, or not. The next post will include both Saturday and Sunday (and possibly Friday evening if you explain to your dad), and will be released on Monday. Shout out to @HeWhoAdds for beta-ing for me! Edit: if you find a mistake, it's not his fault, since he actually only read half the post.)
Last edited:
Post 007
- Location
- Portland, Oregon
[x] You tell your dad everything—magic, your past life, and the fact you just completed a ritual to embolden you at school.
[x] Meditate on your past life.
-[x] soul change?
[x] Go shopping (or pillaging) for reagents.
-[x] to the shore for seashells, sand, saltwater, polished glass, metal from the hulks, and anything that seems significant.
-[X] graveyard for flowers, dust from the crematorium, a chip of stone from a hero's grave, and misc.
[x] Explore your abilities.
-[x] magic up some future reagents
[x] Do something else.
-[x] buy a hidden camera to wear to school.
"Dad," you say haltingly. "I ... I think we should go inside for this talk."
Your dad looks at you, and actually sees you. Thoughts flash behind his eyes, too many to understand. Eventually, he nods and turns back inside.
You let go of a breath you didn't know you were holding. Flute, anklet, and poem book in hand, you head in to meet your fate.
Your your lips quirk upward at the dramatic undertones of your thoughts. Shaking your head, you go to your room to grab your sweatshirt, and then head downstairs with it, your flute, and the anklet. You find your dad sitting at the kitchen table. You notice how tired he looks—bags under his eyes, his slouched demeanor, and the faint tremor in his hand as he pours himself a cup of tea. You smile as you smell your favorite brew.
Your dad looks confused at the assortment of items you have in hand, but remains silent. You sit down, take a long sip from the teacup in front of you, then begin to speak.
You tell your dad everything. You start with the relentless bullying you've faced, the fact that your teachers has done nothing, and how it culminated in being stuffed in a locker. You then move on to how you woke up in the hospital with memories of another life. You tell Danny what little you've managed to remember through your meditations, and of the rituals you've enacted. After demonstrating the toughness of your sweatshirt, you play your song on your flute.
Your dad remained silent throughout your entire explanation, though you could tell that he had to rein himself in several times. He blinks away the tears that sprung up from listening to you play again, and finally speaks.
"First things first. Are you sure you're actually a, a magical crafter, and not just a Parahuman? There are Parahumans whose powers have affected them ..."
While you want to instantly deny the possibility, you make yourself consider the question from his perspective. After half a minute of thought, you answer.
"It's not impossible. I've done my research, and nothing on the internet even hints at a Parahuman having memories of past lives. Dauntless has a power that is similar to mine in effect, but his works at a single touch, not through complicated rituals. Tinkers all work on scientific methods, not by combining conceptual narratives.
"I guess what I'm saying is that while I could be a Parahuman, the only thing that points towards it is the fact that I can do things other people can't. If we really wanted to be sure, we could get a brain scan done. I've read that capes all have an additional lobe in their brain that controls their powers. That brings me to my next topic though."
You look your dad straight in the eyes and speak intently.
"Dad, I don't want you to go to the PRT or tell anyone that I have powers, Parahuman or not."
Your dad closes his eyes, draws in a deep breath, then slowly lets it out. You can tell that he's clenching his fists under the table. Finally, he replies.
"Taylor. I could understand if you didn't want to join the Wards. I wouldn't like it, but I would understand. But the PRT are there to help people understand their powers, and it sounds like your powers more than anyone's require safe exploration."
"That's the thing," you interrupt. "Having past memories of what works and, more importantly, what won't work, means that I don't need to have a plethora of scientists trying to analyze my abilities. Not only is that the wrong way to use magic, but with the number of people who would know about my powers, I have no doubt that it would be a matter of days before someone I didn't want to know would find out.
"Let's make a deal. Let me explore my abilities for a month without telling anyone. I'll keep you informed on what I do, and give you veto power. After a month, we'll talk again."
Your dad rubs his brow, and then places his hands on the table and looks at you.
"If we don't tell anyone, then there will be rules that you follow. You won't do any of your rituals outside of our house and our backyard. You won't go out and be a hero, or try to set up a business until I give permission. If at any time I think that this is too dangerous, then we will go to the PRT or the Protectorate together. Finally, you will keep me informed on what is going on at school. Taylor, I, I can't afford to lose you too. If being safe at school requires joining the Wards so you can transfer to Arcadia, then that's what will happen.
"In exchange, I'll help you get, reagents, I think you called them. We'll work together at this. I'm sorry that you didn't feel like you could tell me about what was going on at school, but I'll try and trust you."
You nod your head vigorously, as tears fall from your eyes. Your dad smiles for the first time tonight, and comes over to give you a hug. It feels good, and you know everything is going to be alright. Emotionally spent, your father and you go and sit on your couch in companionable silence. Eventually, you drift off to sleep, your head on your father's shoulder.
The next morning, you wake up in your bed. You can hear your dad moving around in the kitchen downstairs. Changing into a fresh set of clothes, you head down and sit at the table. Your dad, in the middle of making breakfast, looks over his shoulder at you.
"I was just about to wake you up." He flips a couple of pieces of bacon, then hesitantly adds, "so, magic?"
You smirk, and say, "yeah, magic."
Your dad lets out a sigh of relief.
"Thank god. I woke up this morning, and almost decided last night was a dream."
You dad pauses in his cooking, and turns around.
"I meant to ask this last night, but we didn't quite get to the topic. I know I haven't seen Emma around in a couple years, but even if she isn't your friend anymore—"
"She's one of them," you blurt out. "She's the one who leads the entire group into bullying me."
You dad's grip on the spatula tightens, a grim look on his face.
"Damn that girl," he mutters. "Taylor, I said that I would trust you, but I can't just sit around and do nothing while my daughter is shoved into lockers by her former best friend!"
By the end of the sentence, your dad is practically yelling. He visibly stamps down on his anger, and seems smaller than ever.
"Please, just tell me what I can do to help."
Your first reaction is to tell your dad that you can handle it, but you know that isn't what he needs to hear right now. Remembering an idea that you had earlier, you ask your dad a question.
"Could we get a hidden camera or something to get proof of what she's doing?"
"I can't see how that would work," your dad says as he shakes his head. "We're a two-party consent state, so any hidden attempt to record a conversation would just open us to getting prosecuted. We couldn't even use it to persuade Alan to control Emma, as he would just take it as a threat and react accordingly.
"Maybe, just maybe, we could take it to the school board and get your principle replaced, but I have no idea if that would work. Taylor," your dad begins hesitantly, "could you use your powers to help somehow? I know you made that anklet to help you get through the school day, but I want you to not be bullied, not just persist through it. Maybe some sort of item that would make people not notice you?"
You consider what your dad had to say. After some thought you tell your dad:
[] You want to try recording the bullies at work.
-[] Write in what you do with the recording.
[] You want to create an artifact to prevent the bullying.
-[] Write in a ritual to perform.
[] Write in a response.
Serious conversation over with, you tell your dad what you have planned for the next couple days. Today, you plan to explore the city and try and gather reagents for future use, and tonight you will meditate. Tomorrow, you'll prepare basic materials and implement the plan you decided on. Your dad agrees with your plans, and tells you that he will see what scraps he can collect through his connections at the Dockworker's Union. He's sure that he can gather iron shavings, and maybe other more rare materials as well.
Feeling like part of functional family for the first time in a while, you head out to the city. Starting at the Boardwalk and its beaches, you start filling your backpack with materials. You fill three jars with sea water, sea foam, and sand. A perfect skipping rock goes into your pack as you imagine making boots of water-walking. You don't manage to find any rarer shells, but five perfect sand dollars get neatly wrapped up and placed in your bag.
You spend a little while longer on the beach, but only manage to find some seaweed and driftwood. As the day gets later, the nearby boardwalk begins to fill up with people. A sudden thought occurs to you. You've wandered the boardwalk before, but not from the perspective of a crafter.
You head up off the beach, and start looking for shops that may contain good reagents. A seashell and rock collector's store stands out, as well as a New Age store that advertises fortune telling. Both would likely be expensive, but you know that different types of stone have different meanings, even if you don't know what they are.
You have just passed the New Age store when motion in an alleyway catches your eye. Behind the store, an employee comes out with a cracked crystal ball, about to throw it into a dumpster. Your eyes widen, and you run forward.
"Hey! Are you throwing that away?"
The 30-some-year-old woman looks up in surprise.
"Uh, me?"
You nod, slightly out of breath. Maybe you should take up running?
The woman blinks, and answers absently, "yes, but I don't see why anyone would want it. You could cut yourself on the crack. Madam Rosmerta knocked it over while telling a fortune, and—"
"Art," you interrupt. "I want it for an art project I need to do for school! Please?"
You attempt to make puppy eyes. Either your eyes worked, or the woman just didn't want to go through the effort of opening the dumpster, because she hands it over after telling you that if you hurt yourself, it would be your own fault.
You practically skip along after that. You're sure you could come up with several different uses for the cracked crystal ball, as a reagent for invisibility, un-notice-ability, or as a device to hinder fortune telling. You soon return to a more somber mood as you reach your next destination.
The original graveyard for Brockton Bay has long been surrounded by the city, but still exists. You wander through the lightly wooded area, and gather what reagents you can find. A freshly fallen limb of a pine tree, a couple of mushrooms that you'll have to look up online, a chip of the tombstone of the first mayor of Brockton Bay, and a little dirt from above the oldest grave site. You casually eye one of the larger crypts, but figure you would have to return at night with a way to enter the locked building if you wanted anything from inside.
You also gather a collection of cuttings from various plants, but nothing of any particular importance. Finally, with the sun going down, you return home with your prizes from the day. You enjoy a simple meal with your dad, and head up to your room to meditate when your dad interrupts.
"Taylor, do you think I could watch you meditate, at least this once?"
You consider, and answer, "sure."
You sit in the middle of the living room, and turn your focus inwards to your soul. It's surprising easy to ignore your dad staring at you from the couch. You attempt to fall into a memory, only to be bounced out. You blink once in surprise, and then try again, but slowly.
You can feel the memory that you are trying to see, but a barrier of some sorts prevents you from reaching it. Instead, you try to observe how the memory connects to your soul. As you do, a different memory appears before you. Hoping to gain some hint of what was going on, you begin to remember...
"Da? Why don't we enchant ourselves, so we don't have to carry around so many artifacts at once?"
Your da stills before continuing with his carving.
"Well, little Tali, some people do enchant themselves, but there are several downsides. One, humans tell the strongest stories. Without a ritual that can match or overcome the intrinsic story of the self, the ritual won't work. Two, any ritual on a living body can't be passive. It must have some sort of action or situation that activates it. The third reason is the most important, though."
Your dad stops his work, and looks you straight in the eye.
"If you aren't careful, the ritual will affect your soul instead of your body. Your body is merely the means by which a soul interacts with the story that is our world. The soul, though, is what interprets the story, and decides what it means to you. If you change your soul, you risk changing how you perceive reality, and how reality perceives you. If a man changes his soul to not recognize failure, then he will never fail when interacting with the world. By changing your soul, you do more than change yourself, and change what you can interact with.
"Talia. I want you to promise me that you will never attempt to change your soul. If you fail, you will merely die. If you succeed, you risk becoming something even more inhuman than a Living Spirit. Promise me, Talia."
You're not sure what your da just said, but it sounded important. You nod your head.
"Mmhmm. I promise, da!"
You wake, and think. Your dad has left, and you see that you have been meditating for several hours. You couldn't figure out what you did to your soul, but it seems that you somehow changed how reality affected you.
Suddenly anxious, you hurry and go get ready for bed. Tomorrow, you and your dad will implement your plan for school, and you will have to decide what you want to do in the near future regarding magic. You can talk to your dad about your soul tomorrow, after you've had a chance to sleep on the matter.
Choose two!
[] Meditate on your past life.
-[] Write in on a specific topic you wish to focus on.
[] Explore your abilities.
-[] Write in what you wish to attempt.
[] Do something else.
-[] Write in.
(QMN: I was planning on having this update be the whole weekend, but it just didn't happen. Hopefully the Danny/Taylor interactions seem realistic. The next update will include Sunday (preparing for school, one of the above choices, and preparing basic reagents that we didn't get to today) and Monday (school, aftermath, and the second of our two choices). After this next update, I'll try and include more time per update.)