[hider=Aliyah Schilling][table][row][cell]Name: Aliyah Schilling Playbook: Wizard Age: 33 Look: African American Woman in Fancy Clothing Demeanor: Volatile Stats ---- Blood: -1 Heart: 0 Mind: 2 Spirit: 1 Factions ---- Mortality: 1 Night: -1 Power: 1 Wild: 1[/cell] [cell][img]https://i.ibb.co/8YsfsF8/Aliyah.png[/img][/cell] [/row] [/table] Intro [b]Who are you?[/b] Aliyah Schilling. Doctor Schilling, if you prefer. [b]How long have you been in the city?[/b] All my life. How long has the city been in me? The same. [b]What keeps you up at night?[/b] Very little, thanks to a sip of Ease of Mind. That's a tea from an herb in the [i]Asteraceae[/i] family - that's the daisy family, for the record. Plus some other odds and ends. And the shot of whiskey doesn't hurt either. But if you mean what makes me resort to Ease of Mind ... my family, I suppose. My community. Same thing, in the end. I have responsibilities that weigh on my mind some nights. People place more faith in me than I deserve, and make more demands than I can handle, which is the fate of every competent woman. [b]What have you sacrificed for your power?[/b] I have no power. Only knowledge. And I earned it - EARNED it, mind - the old fashioned way. I worked, studied, practiced. Oh, I'll grant you, coming from my family I had a leg up. But every step I took was my own. If I'm still single in my thirties - a fact that I assure you my mother and several aunts point out every day - and if I have few friends, and few hobbies, what of it? [b]What do you desperately need?[/b] What does everyone need? Time. More money would be nice, I suppose, but it always seems to come with strings attached. But I have sachets to make up, and blessing to perform, and teas to brew and wounds to heal and minds to mend and more every day. Just give me time, and a nap. Gear: A simple house with an herb garden and a sunroom. An old truck with the back full of flowerpots and soil. Cell phone. Focus: Herbs, potions, powders and poultices. Sanctum: Kitchen at home. Weapon: Butcher Knife (3-harm hand messy) Features: An extremely knowledgeable assistant - Imani, a russet cat who sniffs every potion and always knows where every ingredient is. A library of old tomes Magical booby traps - Goofer dust around the foundation. Keeps away pest and other undesirables. An apothecary Flaws: It contains many volatile substances Its location is known by many FOCUS A satchel full of powders and concoctions. SPELLS Tracking Memory Wipe Hex [/hider] [Hider=Debts][color=9e0b0f]Someone is helping you keep your demons at bay. You owe them a Debt.[/color] Sometimes coming from a magical family is a pain in the posterior. Sometimes it means you have to deal with intrusive relatives and their scrying spells, sometimes you have to deal with demons. Well, not literal hellish demons, although if you squint it's hard to tell. Someone in my family - don't ask me who but not me - made a deal with Queen Mab herself from the Unseelie Court. I'm guessing whoever it was is long dead now, but the Unseelie don't have a tight grasp of human time. One of the courtiers decided it was time to collect and sent around their collections crew. Those are the guys who could pass for demons in any evangelist's nightmares. And apparently, the debt is one whole person. And I'm the lucky person. Thank the Goddess that [b]Caber[/b] stepped in. Between the two of us, we managed to get the Unseelie so turned around that they might as well have been back in the Underhill. So far, we've been able to keep them from tracking me down. I hear that I'm obliged to marry someone in the Unseelie Court. My romantic prospects are pretty dismal, but I'm not that desperate. [color=9e0b0f]Someone is your go-to when you get into trouble. You owe them 2 Debts.[/color] Who else? My sister. [b]Doctor Theresa Schilling[/b]. The white sheep of the family. The Schillings have practiced hoodoo since the days of slavery. So what does my rebellious older sister do? She runs off and becomes a skeptic, that's what. Oh, she's willing to admit that herbal remedies might work, but don't get her started on hexes and hands and juju. Still, she's my sister. I can call her whenever there's a problem. And there's always a problem. Last month there was a local church where the preacher got it into his head to sermonize against traditional medicine as "witchcraft." OK, fine, but he started naming names, and wouldn't you know it but Schilling was one of those names. So my sister comes to town with her organization - Society for the Examination of the Supernatural, or something like that - and does an expose on some of the miracle claims that the preacher had made. Lo and behold, it also turned out that preacher man had been doing some "laying on of hands" with a couple of women in the congregation. When Theresa got that story out, the whole church shook. So, she's effective, and she's smart, she's my sister, and I owe her. I just have to be careful not to let her meet any of my more exotic customers. That could get ugly fast. [color=9e0b0f]You are helping someone keep a dangerous secret. They owe you a Debt.[/color] There are only a few people in the world who know how to properly brew [i]garum[/i], the ancient Mediterranean condiment that the Romans put on everything. Great-grandma Moesy Schilling was one. Goddess only knows how she got the recipe. She passed the method down through the family. So, one day I've got a barrel of [i]garum[/i] brewing in my back garden. It involves fermenting fish juice, so it's a hard thing to miss from downwind. I turn around and there's this man standing there, trying to figure out where the smell is coming from. Imani - my cat - takes one look and nopes right out of there. Not even the frizzle chickens want to get close, and they love anything that smells like magic. So I chant a quick wisdom verse, and suddenly realize I've got an incredibly old vampire standing in my back garden looking wistful at a barrel of fish guts. He introduces himself as [b]January[/b]. Turns out he was an ancient Roman and hasn't smelled that ... distinctive fragrance in about 1700 years. We dicker a bit. I promise never to reveal his secret to any of the local churches - like any would listen to me - and he agrees not to try and drink from any of the Schillings. He also buys the entire batch of [i]garum[/i]. There are a few folks in the local magical community who would love some vampire fangs for elixirs. SO far, I've been able to keep them from finding out about January.[/hider]