“What is the value of a single life when compared to a wish?” Ilse Koenig
Gender: Female
Age: 18
Height/Weight: 177cm/
<FORBIDDEN>Alignment: Passive-Aggressive Dead-Inside True Neutral
Servant: Rider of Red
Personality: Ilse's raison d’etre is to slay Arieh Ayondale and destroy his legacy. This is the fact that has been drilled into her very being since she was just a girl, and that which forms the crux of her tumultuous worldview. Before she sees herself as a “person” or a “magus” with her own hopes and dreams, she is a “weapon” with a singular objective that all of her actions work towards. But it would be a lie to say that she is a perfect automaton. Regardless of what indoctrination she may have experienced, one cannot completely suppress their humanity and inherent idiosyncrasies. As a result, what she wants and what she believes she wants are two very different things, a conflict which causes no small degree of internal friction.
She’s compartmentalized herself well however, and by all appearances, Ilse embodies the traditional feminine ideal of magus society: docile, selfless, and well-bred in both senses of the word. This is no coincidence; it is a carefully crafted facade necessitated by the culture she lives and the goal set out for her. Much like how the wives of upper-crust magi can be comparable to statues made for the indulgence of others, Ilse is as inscrutable as she is elegant despite her amiable social demeanor, and it’s only long after you interact with her that most realize that there wasn’t any sense of legitimate intimacy.
Knowing this, it really shouldn’t come as any surprise that Ilse is so poorly adjusted after having lived under the omnipresent weight of others’ expectations and being forced to constantly repress her own desires and emotions. Beneath her acquiescent facade, Ilse bears a personality that is difficult to deal with: one that is envious and resentful, but filtered through the precepts of proper etiquette. It’s been made increasingly clear to her that the lives and problems of others are far divorced from her own, and she can’t help but disdain those who can frivolously live their lives or force their views upon her.
To anyone else, it would be obvious that she’s reached a point where wants more for herself. She desires her own self-actualization above everything, but she’s not even aware of what that would entail for her after having lived so long with others making choices for her and that frustrates her to no small degree. She assumes that she'll achieve some measure of peace or understanding by killing Ayondale for her mother, but on some level she’s acknowledged that even that isn’t an inevitability.
It should be noted that her origin, Control, is an ambiguous impulse. Whether it denotes the drive to be controlled or to seize control remains to be seen...
Background: The Koenig family is a noble house associated with the Clock Tower’s faculty of Valuay, the department of Creation. Their chosen method of reaching the Swirl of the Root is by creating the purest substance, and unsurprisingly, their family magecraft is western alchemy oriented around the configuration of matter rather than coining of homunculi and the like. Ilse comes from one of the family’s branches, as her mother is the younger sister to the family’s rightful heir.
Ilse bears a marked difference from the other Masters of Red in that she herself was never wronged by Arieh Ayondale directly. In fact, the interactions they’ve had have generally been cordial, or politically acceptable at worst. Ilse’s motivation to kill Ayondale comes from a longstanding grudge her mother bears against her former associate for his part in the death of her husband, having murdered the man for the sake of his political gain.
It is because of her mother’s secret obsession with this grudge that Ilse has lived a rather difficult life. The first thing she would ever be taught was that she was expected to live only for the sake of someone else's revenge, and all of youth would be spent working in service to that purpose in some way shape or form. In lieu of magical research or experimentation, Ilse experienced grueling combat training under her mother’s watch, and her time would be spent between learning how to weaponize her magecraft from her mother, learning proper decorum from social functions, and learning “useless” magecraft from personal tutors and teachers in Clock Tower classrooms. Unsurprisingly, she has no friends.
According to Clock Towers student files, Ilse Koenig is a bland, average student with nothing that could be considered exceptional either positively or negatively, relatively speaking. If she were from a lesser family, her performance would be exceptional, but because she is from an aged family, it is simply something to be expected. It should be noted that one of her foremost teachers was none other than Ayondale himself, who, surprisingly, has never commented maliciously on her work and even personally tutored her for a time.
It is primarily because of this “friendly” (read: politically amiable) relationship with the Ayondale family that she and her mother first heard of the Grail War being held in Scotland. Incidentally, it was not Ilse who first contacted Leon and Albert, nor Albert or Leon who contacted her; it was her mother who tracked down these upstarts and made an offer: intimate information on Ayondale’s arrangements in exchange for accepting Ilse into their number.
Origin: Control
Element: Ether
School of Magecraft: Alchemy, Necromancy
List of Skills/Spells:- Sorcery Trait: Le Secret
No she doesn’t have a penis, but this is still a secret.
- Alchemy
The alchemy used by Ilse is the western style, which focuses on the conversion of matter, as opposed to the eastern style employed by Atlas alchemists, which focuses on the conversion of phenomena. As the magecraft school of her mother's family, it is the one she bears the most talent in and experience with; although, it would be wrong to say that she's a true Koenig alchemist. It functions by passing magical energy through a material medium, so the spells typically require some means of contact with the user as an energy source. This also means that structural analysis and reinforcement of the material comes naturally, and with her capabilities, materials under her jurisdiction can reach the strength of carbon steel. Noble metals are the type of medium she favors for her alchemical transmutation spells, and structural configuration is the type of effect that she favors.
- Create Matter
Replication and transmutation of existing matter. The foundation on which western alchemy is built upon. The prerequisites for replication is self-explanatory, but transmutation generally requires a source material of the same state and size as the target material. It's not limited to inorganic materials; for example, flesh can be transmuted into reinforced metal and "healed" by regrowing tissue using existing tissue as a basis. Another example would see Ilse using her hair to create wires of noble metals. - Configure Matter
Manipulation of the structure of a matter. While creative functions like changing the shape of a material or merging two like mediums are a given, it also includes relevant deconstructive functions like structural decomposition and state change. It should be noted that it doesn’t affect the purely conceptual properties of a given medium, only the features that manifest themselves physically. - Create Familiar
It's generally less efficient than using spirits or programming a construct with a spirit; so this doesn't see much use, and even when it is used, the familiars aren't of very high quality since it isn't as if she's an alchemical familiar specialist.
- Necromancy
Long-term tutelage by a certain professor aiming to establish himself as a benefactor to Ilse's family has bestowed to her a not-insignificant degree of knowledge in the skills associated with the Clock Tower's Eulyphis faculty. Rather than spiritual mediums and zombification, her necromantic training deals more with spiritual beings. But rather than spiritual self-possession or familiar mastery, Ilse uses this more as a supplement to her alchemy via inserting spirits into containers and using them as a means to program functionalities.
- Summon Spirit
Calling the spirits of a local area to act under the dominion of the user as familiars. Like most other necromancers, Ilse summons animal spirits and lower-class human spirits to serve under her. Anything above that is generally beyond modern magecraft or too inefficient. - Control Spirit
Direct management of spirits as opposed to setting them on auto-pilot. Typically, individual spirits don't have much in the way of physical interference capabilities, but Ilse can bind a spirit to a container in order to strengthen its ability to exert physical interference over that container.
- Item Construction
Not necessarily spells, per se, but the knowledge to create reagents that activate when magical energy is applied and Mystic Codes based on spiritual programming. Ilse carries around an alchemy set used to create the former, while the latter is reliant on her collecting the requisite materials from various sources, like graveyards or Dark Amazon. The potential effects of a given reagent vary on a case by case basis, but are generally limited by the properties of the components.
Mystic Codes:- Azoth Sword
A simple and common, but very effective Mystic Code that stores and amplifies the user’s magical energy to strengthen their spells. The blade Ilse received was from her mother, and was crafted using materials refined and purified through their family magecraft. While it is definitely a sharp, it’s not recommended to use it that way.
- Silver Lining: Alchemist’s Formal Wear
A silver belt with several animal spirits inserted into it. While the material of the strap appears to be a single mass, it is actually a nanofilament wire weave enchanted with a weight reduction spell. The Mystic Code can be directly manipulated using the precepts of alchemy and used as a conduit for her magical energy, but this alone wouldn’t necessarily make it any better than a really convenient bunch of haunted metal.
Its true function is serving as an autonomous defense; when activated the wires incorporate themselves into the thread of the user’s clothes, reinforcing them to protect against lesser piercing or slashing attacks. Not only that, but the wires become a sort of makeshift nervous system autonomously guided by animal spirits, allowing the user to indirectly use their senses and heightened reactive capabilities to avoid harm. However, because animal spirits have limited memorization capacity, only defensive patterns are available.
Furthermore, by infusing the Mystic Code with magical energy and chanting a single line incantation, the user’s clothes can be transformed into a modular alchemical exoskeleton that enhances the physical defensive capabilities of this Mystic Code further.
In short, it’s Mystic Code powered armor.
Circuit Quality: A
Circuit Quantity: A-
Number of circuits: 52, with 13 stubs each; no magic crest
Od (units): 100
Maximum circuit capacity: 500
Other:
