The Kataoka family was once one of the great families of the city. At their peak, they were unequalled in both the Manifest and the underworld. While the Kataoka family focused on their pursuit of the magecraft, the numerous subsidiary families and organizations under them controlled the city's underworld with an iron fist. Leading their family was the great Hayao Kataoka; a staunch traditionalist who--were it not for his old age--would be considered one of the strongest mages of the city.

Tsune Kataoka was born into this family as a bastard--a tryst between an artist outside of the Dark Sphere and her mother--the sole granddaughter of Hayao Kataoka. For the conservative Hayao, Tsune was his worst nightmare come to fruition. His sole granddaughter--someone whom he raised from birth after the the death of his son and daughter-in-law--had come home sick and with child. To say that Hayao loathed Tsune was an understatement. No, in his eyes, she was the reason why his granddaughter was sick. Tsune was nothing more than an outsider. Someone of impure blood. Someone who didn't even deserve the name bestowed upon her by her grandmother.

While her mother truly cared for her--even negotiating with her grandfather in deep sickness to ensure Tsune's safety--her pleasant memories did not last long. The fragrance of incense. The sun shining on cotton blankets. The flowers her mother delicately arranged. Her mother calling Tsune her little Macaron--just like her father used to call her, she would say. But the sickness took her mother. Rainfall. Black and white fabrics. Coldness.

Tsune's position was precarious. Her mother's wishes protected her, at the very least. But she was not loved. The child was taught the bare minimum. She had always thought that maybe if she showed more effort and been a good girl, she would even feel a semblance of love from her family. But no matter how hard she tried or how good she was, she was never given even a glance by Hayao or anyone else. To Hayao, she was nothing more than the beast who killed his granddaughter. To her aunts, uncles, and cousins, she was the child of their oh-so-hated doted-upon sib. To those not of Hayao's blood, she was simply persona non grata lest they incur the wrath of the head.

But this precarious position no longer matters. It hasn't mattered for eight years. The Kataoka family was once a great family. Past tense. It happened in a single night. The horrors. The blood. There were only a handful of survivors. A handful of Kataokas who were hiding in personal safe houses. A few peons who were to unimportant to slaughter as they patrolled the red light district. It was only thanks to the hiding spots devised from an unwanted child that she survived. She watched as it happened. The horror. The beast. The behemoth. It punctured the only thing she could call family with its teeth--sliced them to bits.

The police said it was simply gang warfare. A coalition of upstarts sought to bring them down. An easy explanation. It was simple and believable. The power vacuum left by the sudden passing of so many Kataokas and their affiliates was good enough cover. Likewise, the only witnesses were the police and detectives that corroborated the story.

Meanwhile, Tsune no longer had a home--if you could even call it that. She was placed under the ward of one of the few of her family that survived--not that they cared to look after her--and received what little unseized familial assets she was entitled. It was enough to live. Or at least, support her until she reached adulthood.

But what was left of Tsune? Not much. The good little girl who tried her hardest to win the love of her family died that day. What was left was a girl who had seen too much. Someone who could no longer regulate their emotions. Someone who still craved love and kinship, yet no longer had an adequate understanding of them. A broken, fractured person who never had a chance to properly grow up. A girl who no longer kept the name carelessly bestowed by her grandfather and instead kept the name that gave her love.

A girl who delved into the labyrinth alone with only the memories of what she was taught.

A woman who survived 8 years alone in the city.

A woman named Macaron.

Macaron's craft matches her personality: unstable. Fundamentally, it is based upon the roots of the Kataoka's familial craft: to reflect one's inner self in reality. To sculpt one's form as one sees fit. A blade to cut all before them. An unbending will that can block bullets. However, Macaron's understanding of this craft is fundamentally flawed. Or perhaps, she understands it greater than even Hayao.

Her craft is driven by pure emotion. The restaint of neutrality forming sinew wires to restrain and garrote. The melancholy of sorrow being impenetrable as she is forced into turgor. The unrestricted rage and anger warping her with jaw and claw. Excitement being met with alacrity.

Her transformations are predictable yet unrestrained. Her will a slave to emotion that will easily flicker, waver, and shift.

Beyond that, she can utilize a basic spattering of novice crafts. A quick flame, a shard of light, or other such cantrips. However, her application of these crafts are unstable and warped.

You can’t know what you don’t learn.

The Baskervilles, a great Family seeped in Obscurity, knew this. And their heir, Casimir Baskerville, was just arrogant enough, just callous enough, just Machiavellian enough, to abuse this. After all, all Houses end up having the problem of an incestuous relationship with their magecraft. Spread their ties too wide, and their Family Secrets became public knowledge. Confine themselves for too long, and they stagnate, becoming inbred buffoons with no practical capabilities. They needed fresh blood and fresh perspectives, strangers who were nevertheless willing to divulge their own understandings of the arcane craft properly.

Strangers, who knew not that such knowledge was meant to be safeguarded with their life.

So Casimir looked for those who wanted purpose, who wanted to be special. Those has-beens, those drifters, those deluded of their own capability, who just wanted an opportunity to become who they once were. He took his time, of course. Scattered a few spells as miracles, promised those mundanes that he would reveal the truth of the world. Built up House Baskerville as the only justice in a cruel world. Armed them with a faith born from deception, roused their spirits, offered them that singular chance to truly be a part of something special!

And then plunged them headlong into the Dungeon.

Those that survive were drowning still, and the only lifeline they could grasp upon was House Baskerville. They gained the Craft and the Crest, the qualifications to walk the reverse side of the world, but with neither knowledge nor the ability to learn, all they could do was become subservient to the Baskervilles, to Casimir. To continue to plunge into Dungeons, continue to face great terrors, continue to mine for magecraft, in exchange for the shelter of Obscurity, for they knew not how to survive alone in a realm that defied one’s understanding of reality.

It was a successful program! After some delegation, after some showing of favors, it became a self-propagating program!

…

People disappeared, never to be seen or heard of again, but society forgot them.

Amaya, however, couldn't.

Before 15, her life had been fairly normal. Her parents weren’t excessively loving, but they weren’t abusive either. She went through public school, excelling in some subjects but never to the point of becoming extraordinary. She had her friends, her extracurriculars, and she was her class’s student representative. Perhaps she had a dream job, but she was realistic enough not to toss away safe options. Perhaps she had a crush or two, but it was easy enough to make excuses to never ask them out. It was a small town, a small school. Peacefully in the middle of nowhere in particular.

She thought it was a bit weird when the school brought in a guest speaker who looked like a bit of a loony, but his magic tricks were cool. It was some Oriental traditional practice thing, and after the speech and demonstration, they handed out pamphlets to another meeting they were having later on that week. Her friend, Renee, wanted to go, but didn’t want to go alone, so Amaya tagged along as her plus one. Renee liked that kinda stuff, after all. Magic and superstitions and such. Apparently one of her ancestors was a witch.

The meeting wasn’t anything that really stuck out to Amaya either. The group’s members were all cheerful sorts, though it gave off the impression of a bunch introverts and nerds with bad hygiene. Renee called it ‘aura’ though. Amaya didn’t think she’d have a BO fetish like that, but her friend seemed to be getting along with the others, so she hung around for a while longer and then excused herself.
It was a gradual thing.

If she didn’t know about the meeting, she’d have thought her friend had gotten a boyfriend.

Hard to imagine a boyfriend would be enough to get you to drop school altogether though.

Harder to imagine that a boyfriend would be enough to get you to disappear from your own house in the middle of the night, without even leaving behind a note, without even bringing her wallet.

The school worried about it for a bit, but ultimately, the administration were tight-lipped. The police worked on it for a bit, but they soon delegated the case to some other department, and no one seemed to know who really worked at that department. The parents grieved, worried, and yet there wasn’t any sense of urgency or desperation. People disappeared. It simply happened. What was there to worry about?

Amaya wondered if there was something in the water.

Then, with the arrogance of teenager who thought herself as a young adult, she decided to take matters to her own hands, because that cult had to be responsible.

…

It took two years of digging around the internet. It took a part-time job to buy a decent road bike and tickets for buses and trains. It took effort and relationships, and at times, Amaya herself wasn’t certain what she was doing, spending her high school life like this.
Did she even care about Renee, about other students, that much? Or was it simply a curiosity, an obsession, triggered by the behavior of others, who thought that none of it really mattered?

Before she reached that point, she got her breakthrough. Left on a bike, with a flashlight, a camera, a stun gun, and a sandwich all stuffed in a fanny pack. Didn’t know what to expect, but she was used to groping in the dark. Whatever it was, she’d know by the end of the week.

Darkness was replaced by nightmares.

A shadow-beast great enough to swallow the moon, a horde of ghouls rising from the walls, an abyssal quagmire, swallowing whole bursts of light and flame, the feeble resistance of those same members of that cult she had been tracking. Cries of the betrayed sounded, but mercy wasn’t a possibility, and in three minutes, all that remained was a vacant lot.

A vacant lot, and a man dressed like he hadn’t left the 19th century.

He was young in an ageless way. His eyes were as black as the night sky. Purple veins wriggled beneath his translucent skin. His hands were gloved. His shadow stretched out in a way that defied the streetlamps around him.

He smiled at her, and in that moment, Amaya could not remember what had been in that vacant lot before.

“Best to forget this, young lady.”

He passed by her, and Amaya forgot whether she had even brought anything with her on that night.

The clouds obscured the moon. The forecast spoke of rain tomorrow.

…

But while she had forgotten what was there, she knew that something had been there. Something that she wanted to see, something that she wanted to know. Something had dug into her mind itself, snipping away the bits that seemed to matter so much for her.

And when she returned home, that something had erased all traces of those who had disappeared. There was no notice in the school. There was no case in the department. There was no son or daughter who had disappeared. She couldn’t recall any faces, couldn’t find any photos, couldn’t do anything but scratch at that itch in the back of her head!

As blood collected beneath her nails, she had to wonder.

If her memories were so suspect, how could she be so sure that Renee was just some friend? Just another face in the classroom?
How could she be certain, when she was only on one side of the coin?

What was missing?

Three years passed. Six years passed. Ten years passed.

Amaya earned her Crest. She stepped deep into the Dark City. She delved into the Labyrinth. She formed connections as a courier. She learned of the Houses, of the Manifestations, of the innumerable ways with which the movements of the shadow could affect the status of the corporeal. She had become unrecognizable to her teenage self, stray beast with a gleaming fang, having so neatly cleaved herself from her realspace relationships.

But she held no regrets.

You can't know what you don't learn, and she was never smart enough to earn a scholarship.

The first thing mages note about Amaya is her sword, a spiritual construct imbued with a simple tenet: “What can be perceived is material.” With that understanding of the world, that blade of white light becomes capable of slicing through curses and maladies, of parting barriers and seals, of rendering the incomprehensible simple. It cleaves the unknown, parting darkness to reveal the true nature of the night: that there is nothing in darkness that isn’t there in day.

It has earned her the reputation of ‘Demonsbane’.

But that’s the thing about a sword. It draws attention away from the gleam in Amaya’s eyes. Eyes that see through deception, a sovereign capable of passing down divine judgment. Eyes that transfix her prey, a tyrant that allows for nothing less that absolute stillness. Eyes that, at times, offers solace amidst chaos as well, soothing the howling of the mind, pulling away the psychological afflictions that far too many spells and curses. One sees heaven in her gaze, and heaven can be blinding or beautiful, depending on the sins they bear.

A litany of other crafts assists Amaya in her work as a freelancer in the magical world, of course. Ways of folding and traversing space. Ways of finding a safehouse night. Ways of generating warmth without flame. Ways of cleaning clothing without needing to remove them.

Crest: Obscurity, a complicated floral tattoo on her right hand.

Craft:

Mathias McGrath was born to a mundane family in the middle of fucking nowhere Montana. His family were not of some great social standing; his father worked as a grifting mechanic and his mother was a waitress at the local diner who was rumored to be the town bicycle. It was just as likely for Mathias' father to be his biological father as it was for any other man in town or passing by. That was probably one of the reasons why his parents fought so often.

He was a quiet, reserved child, but one with a kind heart brimming with curiosity and a sense of duty towards those around him. If he saw any injustice, be it a playground bully or the like he was the one who would step in because he was always the bigger, stronger kid. One would imagine that he was a bullheaded though he also had quite a head on his shoulders. Mathias enjoyed tinkering around with tools and was always curious with how things worked, like the cars his dad worked on. Every now again Mathias was even allowed to help his old man repair some cars in the shop.

But that was when he would see things. Things that no one else could see. The internal structure, the weakest and strongest impact points of the car, his father's shoddy work. While he couldn't understand what it was he could see and what information he was absorbing, he understood that only he could.

And in his dreams, he dreamt of a labyrinth and what sights he would see. Wonderous, yet confusing and unnerving, but with each visit there was something else to see, something else to learn. Awakening from each dream, his gifts would expand and evolve albeit rough and unrefined like coal as it would be without proper guidance. However, with each dream there was always a constant: a voice. It was drowned out, murky to the ears, but there was definitely a voice. As he got older, he found he no longer even needed to even sleep, but meditate to enter the labyrinth, but even then, he would still hear the voice.

Having powers was something that he understood was to be kept a secret. He read plenty of comic books and seen enough cartoons to know that, but they also had confidants, people who they could rely on and talk and like any foolish boy he told his best friend Maverick. He showed him all of his gifts, told him of the labyrinth and like any kid that wanted superpowers, Maverick asked Mathias if he could show him how to enter the labyrinth. Making no promises, Mathias tried, and did do something because Maverick found himself in that twisted world.

At first, things were fine. Maverick was progressing steadily with developing his powers and they even exchanged ideas and different paths of the labyrinth, but overtime something seemed off with him. He looked more haggard, more exhausted as the days turned into weeks into months. He became secretive, unwilling to divulge what he was doing. At the same time, there were strange reports of people's pets going missing. Concerned for his friend, Mathias confronted Maverick, but Maverick flew into a rage screaming that Mathias 'did this to him.' In his dreams, in his waking thoughts, in the corners of his mind all Maverick could see was the labyrinth. He wanted, no, he needed to know what was at the end of it all. Maverick told him that he had something to show him.

Maverick led Mathias to the abandoned refinery plant on the outskirts of town. Mathias smelled it before he saw it: rotting, broken carcasses of animals were strewn about the plants' floor. In his horror, Mathias asked Maverick what this was. It was his lab. For months, Maverick had been experimenting his abilities on living things when he realized that he hit a wall with his development all the while Mathias growth kept improving. It was unfair, infuriating that Mathias could delve deeper and deeper while he couldn't.

Mathias pleaded, begged with his friend to come to his senses when he saw something very much alive wriggling around with tears in its eyes; a little girl tied to a pole with her mouth gagged. With a churned stomach, Mathias asked his best friend what he had done. Maverick said that it was time to move onto human experimentation so they could be both exploring the labyrinth together.

Mathias looked at the monster he had inadvertently created and came to the only conclusion that he could: he had to stop him by any means necessary. The two green horn mages fought, and, in the end, Mathias landed the finishing blow though it was not enough to kill him. However, their battle had caused a flame to erupt due to igniting leftover barrels of crude oil and Mathias was left only enough time to save on person, the little girl or Maverick. Needless to say, Mathias left his best friend to burn alive in the factory.

The factory burned down and apparently whatever remains that were in there were too charred to even be recognized as animal or human. It never got out that Mathias was ever there. He made the little girl swear to secrecy of what she had seen.

Life went on, except Mathias could never forget what he had seen. Never again would he let anyone be a part of that world of his ever again. That voice wouldn't leave him alone, however. No matter how much time passed, he could still hear that murky voice almost taunting him for what he did.

Time passed on and when Mathias was eighteen years old, he joined the United States army as a combat engineer and in four years joined the Special Forces as an engineer sergeant serving in the 5th Special Forces Group. Over the years he had been deployed on several missions though he has no clearance to talk about them. However, there was one mission when he was deployed with a unit to Afghanistan to raid a compound of some terrorist cell leader. When they got there, however, it looked the inside of a meat grinder. Not a single soul was left alive or in one piece, except for one man.

There was a man that stood in the middle of the viscera, a man that looked so eerily like Mathias. At first. that appeared disinterested until he saw Mathias.

"How interesting."

It was the voice. It was the same voice he had been hearing for years.

Before he could question the man, all hell broke loose. Bloody mist sprayed the air like the juice of watermelon smashed by a hammer. His entire unit in an instant was turned into fleshy pulp. Mathias fought for his life, but nothing he did worked. Every shot, every bomb, every spell failed to leave any mark. By all rights, he should've died right then and there, but the man just let him live with a knowing grin.

Never before had Mathias felt so powerless, so angry. His comrades died in the blink of an eye except for him for some inexplicable reason, but he also left to report this disaster. Now how in the hell does anyone report that not only the entire compound was butchered, but so were the troops? Well, as it turned out it happens way more frequently than one would think.

Originally, his superiors were just going to wipe his memory clean with magic, but before they could do Mathias admitted that he had powers and demanded what was going on. His superiors quickly caught on to the fact that Mathias had no idea who he was or even the greater scope of the Dark Sphere, so they told him everything. The labyrinths, the Dark City, the houses, everything, including the man who slaughtered his entire team.

The man that attacked them was only known to them as simply The Mist due to how illusive he was and how he leaves his victims. They could never track him down no matter how what they did. He was too good at covering his tracks and the few times that they did find him, a platoon would be killed instantly. Except this time, he left Mathias alive. There was a connection between them, a lead that they could go off on.

They offered Mathias to join a special taskforce, the 0th Special Forces Group tasked by the Dark Sphere Command (DSC), to defend their nation from rogue mages and mages from other countries, friendly or otherwise. Typically, they worked with the Houses although those shaky relationships at best. When asked if he would be able to find The Mist, they said that there was a chance, but that as enough for Mathias. He needed answers and he needed that man's head on a pike.

Mathias, eager to get to work, needed training. He received proper training and guidance by mages within the Special Forces Group. It was truly the first time that he had really explored that side of his world again with another, not since Maverick, but he learned quickly that this was not the norm. Anything that went beyond what was standard knowledge was met with cold gazes of people protective of their spell craft. Still, he eventually found himself a role in this supernatural squadron and with each mission he understood the dark reality that he stepped into. Still, it was worth it. He needed answers and he'll keep delving in deeper into that darkness for it though lurking in it is someone that should have stayed dead.

To understand the complexities of the world, one must have eyes unclouded to bend it to your will. That is one way to explain his craft. He absorbs, analyzes, and breaks down highly detailed information at a rate that no other human could process. To go back to the car example when he was a child, he could look at it and breakdown everything about it. The internal structure, the car's physical weak points, the strength of the metal, the tensile strength, the heat it could with stand, how it runs, and so on. However, it is also possible to overload him with information if one were to try hard enough and prolonged use is exhausting on the brain and the eyes.

However, that is only one part of the craft. Once analyzed, he can create, manipulate, and dismantle. For example, he could create concrete, manipulate existing concrete, or dismantle concrete to its components. This can be applied to more complex objects such as guns or to things such as fire or water. There are some caveats to this. All three of these abilities are subject to the relation of size and power. The bigger something is, the more magic it is going to need to do it and may suffer from effects such as slower creation speed. He cannot just spawn a tank or a pile of TNT with a snap of his fingers.

Along with his main craft he picked up several different crafts from his time with Maverick and from when he trained with the 0th Special Forces Group.

From his time with Maverick, he learned a basic level of electromagnetism.
From the Special Forces group, he picked up an array of crafts. Reinforcement, detection, presence suppression, strength and speed augmentation, telepathy, light generation, body temperature

Overview:
The history of Ozymandias cannot be explained without first explaining his father, Alexander Falloch of House Falloch. Alexander was a prodigious mage of unfathomable skill and knowledge that he had gained at great cost. His desire would oft get him into trouble, and it didn't take long until most of his family had died for his pursuits and the others exiled him to avoid the entire House dying out. When his research had platued, Alexander decided he needed an apprentice and thus, an heir. Oz was born as part of an agreement between mages, and Oz never learned who Alexander made a deal with or what he offered in return for a son.

When Oz was 15, Alexander suddenly vanished. Some speculate he died in the Dark City, others whisper that he may have achieved Apotheosis, but Oz knows that neither of those could be possible. His father proclaimed that he wasn't even halfway to the end of the Labyrinth, and he had become more careful over the years to spare Oz the same fate many other Fallochs faced. Oz hadn't managed to learn as fast as Alexander had hoped, but he still grasped quite a bit. Enough for him to Meditate unguided so that he may research and develop his own magecraft distinct from his father's, and yet he still feels as if he lives in the man's shadow.

Oz was then taken in by his father's House and was viewed as what they had always hoped Alexander would have been. Brilliant but humble. Ambitious but careful. He had not learned how to Dungeoneer yet and his combat magic could use some work but this also meant he wasn't dragging others into dangerous death traps. They lauded him as a proper scholar of magic unlike his adventurous father who preferred to get his hands dirty then to study, but this only made Oz despise their sentiments more. Every quality of his father's that they deemed him lacking in was something he desired to obtain and yet they praised him for being faulty. He would learn what he could from his family, but he needed a teacher that could show him how to utilize dungeons and the Dark City.

Unfortunately, finding a teacher outside of your family doesn't exactly happen. House secrets are important, and house-less mages often don't have enough power to be mentors. Ozymandias had no choice but to teach himself. The first realization he made is that the Labyrinth within Meditation and the one within Dungeoneering were not exactly the same, but they weren't entirely different. By noting how certain traits translated, he was able to scout an area in his mind and then traverse it physically. It wasn't perfect, but it made his first steps less fatal. The mastering of this technique allowed him only a singular practical advantage, crossing off dead ends. If one path of a dungeon ended in a dead end, then the complex folding of the physical into the mental connected that path to a few others that would also be dead ends. The time spent Meditating to draw these conclusions was often a little faster than checking all of those dead ends would have been. Instead of fast and dangerous Dungeoneering, or slow but safer Meditating, Oz opted for a hybrid route that was in the middle of them in terms of both speed and risk.

At 21, he set out on his own as he felt burdened by the expectations of his family and no longer saw what benefits they had left to offer to be worth it. For 2 years now Oz has managed in his own, but now the world is getting more dangerous and his research is becoming riskier. He refuses to give up, at least not until he unravels the truth of what happened to his father.

...

Training Insight:
Training under his father led Oz to develop similar habits and casting procedures as him. Oz casts spells by mentally structuring a formula that equalizes the cost and effect of the spell he wishes to utilize. Training to cast this way has given him both an understanding of just how deep a single spell can go if you add enough variables to both ends of the equation and many scars on his body from incorrect equations where he paid to little and magic forcefully righted the equation.

His father was a strict mentor who would encourage experimentation of variable relations in a sort of trial by fire idealism. You either pass the test or get injured. Where most would resent a father for this, Oz found those days where he failed to be the happiest. Pain was temporary, but learning where he went wrong taught him far more then succeeding by accident and that knowledge was permanent.

Under House Falloch, Oz's training was much more book-based. Understanding was gained but rarely tested, leading him to feel as if he was never getting better, but he would learn after he left that he was more aware of what variables and formulas even existed. He might not have gotten any better at his formulas, but he gained more pieces to experiment with.

On his own, his training became far more explosive. Either literally causing disastrous effects to himself or his surroundings, or metaphorically with how much his knowledge grew with every eventual success.

...

Social Life:
For the formative years of his life, Oz had almost no one to interact with outside of his father. He didn't go to school, he didn't interact with the magic-less, and most mages he met were far older than him and wanted to speak with his father instead of Oz. Not much changed after moving in with his family as there was no one his age at House Falloch. This has led Oz to be reclusive and awkward and his family's lack of care for niceties has lead him to say what he's thinking, believing that most people prefer to be told the truth even if it hurts. Oz now maintains connections with a few associates he's met during his research, although they could hardly be called friends.

...

Goals:
Oz's main goals are to live up to his father's expectations and find the truth of his disappearance. But, beyond that he also wishes to free himself from the comparison's between them. They may appear similar when you take into account only magic, but they are two very different people and Oz intends to distinguish himself.

Oz doesn't see knowledge as a path to magic like his father, he sees magic as a path to knowledge. He wants to find the secrets of the universe no matter how complex and put them on display for others to bear witness.

As stated previously, Oz casts spells through formulaic expressions of how he wants to bend reality. By doing this, he adds complexity to situations that others will struggle to grasp the rules of while he operates just fine. But he can also unravel complexities to pull knowledge out of a situation as well. As someone who learned combat late, most of his spells are of the second variety. However, the spells he has of the first variety are more refined and usually infuriate his foes.

Adding complexities to a situation involves a setting of rules, not authoritative ones but universal ones. For example, he could cause every action to have to be split into three parts. A single sword swing must become three intentional ones that continue the movement of one into the next. In return, each part bears the force of an entire swing. So, those who don't understand the rules will only have their attack travel a third of the way before stopping because they didn't make an act to continue swinging. Those who know what's going on and have the skill to take advantage of it could make three swings that change trajectory but not momentum in the same time it would take to do one.

Removing complexities is a series of information gathering tools and keys that break apart things that are happening so that the situation becomes more smooth and easily discernible. This is also extremely useful for breaking conditions that need to be met to pass through barriers or get through spell restraints. So long as the conditions are equally hard to meet, he can replace a condition he can't meet with one he could.

Adding and removing complexities to spell effects allows Oz to seem like he knows far more spells than he does. A simple air blast spell could turned into a tornado or a heat wave or a speed buff by changing the rules and how they get to function.

Common Spells:
Detect: By removing the complexities that locations, manifestations, and mages use to hide, Oz can detect magical presences within a 200 ft. radius. This spell is easiest to use in Realspace where there isn't magical interference, and hardest in the Labyrinth where every step in the halls is deeply magical. Although when Meditating, it is one of his "keys" to maneuver where he wishes to go.

Establish: Adding or removing complexities to a situation and establishing function. Simplest use is establishing a basic idea such as "The perception of red and blue swap places." More complex uses would switch around a number of concepts, "Gravity is now applied proportional to the percentage of your limbs touching the ground; floors, walls, and ceilings classify as ground; Wings do not classify as limbs; if there is no ceiling above a floor, then the air 12 ft above it classifies as a ceiling." Oz must be aware of your precise location in order for you to be affected by this spell, so he often pairs it with Detect to avoid having to always establish line of sight.

Rewrite: Similar to Establish, but for spells and non-instantaneous spell effects. Changing the rules that a spell uses to function allows Oz to create unique effects out of his own spells or mess with his enemies' spells. However, he needs to be casting the spell or touching the spell's effect to do so.

Counter: By creating an inverse formula to a spell, Oz can cause this spell and another to cancel each other out. Oz needs a firm understanding of the spell and the rules it uses to function in order to this, so it rarely comes up beyond canceling general-use spells.

Oz also made sure to get a general use spell for Fire, Water, Earth, and Air so that he could manipulate the four main forms of matter by using Rewrite on these spells. Additionally, Oz acquired a Barrier spell so that he could attempt to replicate stronger protection spells by utilizing Rewrite on Barrier.