Expendable

Mundane fantastic slice of life

A character concept I came up with was a witch working off campus in a secondhand student furniture shop, complete with the basics. It's also how they can get ahold of odd items.

Escape from the Prison Mine

The kick sent Rizx flying into the wall, knocking out all the air in her lungs as she collapsed bonelessly on the floor.

She laid there gasping for breath, lungs burning as she desperately struggled to draw air back in, ignoring everything going on around her as she rolled onto her back, arching it desperately, clawing at her own throat. Somehow a wisp of air made it in as spots appeared in her eyes, and it was enough to get her into a ragged coughing jag.

Rizx laid there, spent, hearing the guard yelling, feeling the ache in her side where he'd kicked her, the pain in her back and the slowly fading burn in her lungs still, then ran her tongue over her sharp, pointy teeth. No matter what, that guard was dying, tonight, with his throat in her mouth. She could already taste the iron in his blood...

Tryliin Blues - A Merc's Life

Enjoy your well-deserved rest.

Tryliin Blues - A Merc's Life

Sem

Name: Sed'moy (Sem) Angel
-Race:

Valkyrii

Winged humanoid single-sex clone race from the planet Valkyrjur.

Valkyrjur is a resource-poor world, its temperate zones swept almost constantly by storms, forcing its inhabitants to live in caves carved out of the rock. Its primary exports are its people, working as orbital habitat builders and mercenaries.

Valkyrii females (there are no males) are born from "Mothers", an egg-shaped cloning tank that force-grows clones to a biologic mid-adolescence stage in 140 standard days and implanting a basic practical and military education.

Warning: Valkyrii possessed an enhanced strength, 150% of normal, thanks genetic alteration for bone growth stimulation that allows additional layers of muscle to be attached to additional points on the reinforced bones. Be very careful when interacting with newly decanted Valkyrii, as they do not know their own strength yet.

Valkyrii clones can be field-ready in 30 standard days following decanting, however, on the home world, they usually undergo two standard years of socialization and additional training before being assigned to a unit going off-world.

Programmer

Training can include the use of a Valkyrii Programmer - a helmet that can implant knowledge directly into the brain, allowing the quick mastery of a language or skill.

Valkyrjur takes no responsibility for any mental damage a non-valkyrii may suffer when trying to use this device, it was not designed for them. As such, Valkyrii Programmer helmets are seldom found offworld in working condition. It's also difficult to find someone who can produce suitable training programs for the device.

Valkyrii are short-ranged telepaths among their own kind, allowing for rapid response from nearby Valkyrii. Only 1% of their kind have the ability to communicate telepathically with other species via skin contact. As a precaution, those with the gift wear gloves to avoid unintentional contact with others.

Telepath Warning

Telepaths of other races, unless communicating with one of the touch telepaths, should not attempt to telepathically connect with a Valkyrii without a suitable supply of pain killers/medical assistance within easy reach.

Mind Scream

A touch-telepath attack of the last resort, they can project a mental scream into the mind of the subject. This can stun most subjects and the telepath for several minutes.

While the Valkyrii possess wings, the average wingspan is approximately 1 meter, insufficient for sustained flight in 1 standard gravity - not even on their own home world. In zero g, however, once acclimatized, they are quite adept at maneuvering in open air.

It is not known by the Valkyrii who created them, although they a 97% match with humanity, and have no issues consuming human rations.

-Age: 4 (biologic 20)
-Appearance: This cold woman reminds you of a dangerous weapon. She has slitted gray eyes that are like two pools of mercury. Her thick, wavy, midnight black hair is worn in a pixie cut style that reminds you of a cotton swab dipped in black ink. Her wings on the other hand are charcoal-gray. She is short and has a lithe build. Her skin is ruddy. She has a small mouth.

Height: 1.7 m., Weight: 61.2 kg.

-Personality: Sober (shows no interest in drugs or alcohol), and honest (not sure she knows how to lie).

-Equipment:

Every Day Carry

Weapon: Church Ordinance Judge pistol (.45 Long Colt / 410 Shotgun) with ammo pouch.
Weapon: Jensen Knives Out the Front Automatic 3.825" Tanto blade.

Communications: Seares Omni

Smart comm with oxygen and pressure alarms, video recording and playback, interfaces with other devices and can use apps. Can be connected to local communication networks - typically a fee service. Also acts as a short-ranged radio comm. Uses a commercial charging pad.

Communications (Display): Seares AR Glasses

Shatterproof plastic glasses with built-in heads-up Augmented Reality display, allows for gesture commands. Can also act as a targeting sight, display heat signatures, using the built]in cameras. Can connect to a smart comm or other devices as a dedicated display, or to local communications networks - typically a fee service. Popular for those without implants. Uses a commercial charging pad.

Body Armor: Kingsman's Leathers

A double-breasted vest with anti-stab lining and plate carrier, internal tech pockets, from their covert protection line of protective clothes, mostly aimed at the wealthy. Hers has been modified with back side-slits to allow her to spread her wings and small metal strips woven together with paracord to form spaulders to protect her shoulders.

Flashlight: Coleman's Laser Flashlight

this palm-sized light can project a diffused beam that will illuminate a large area, or can be focused down to a very short-ranged narrow beam capable of cutting most materials and ignite flammable ones.

Sensor: Seares Chem Sniffer

this palm-size rod when waved over an object can pick up the chemicals being outgassed by the material, often used by travelers to detect hazardous or poisonous food and displaying a green or red indicator light. When connected to a smart comm device with its database, it can do a basic chemical signature breakdown, allowing it to identify hazardous chemicals, poisons, alcohol strength, Scoville heat units, calorie count, or explosives.

Supplements: Seares MinTabs

a form of multivitamin, this provides trace elements that may be missing from a traveler's diet. Comes in a narrow pocket tin.

Supplements: Seares RationBar

A vaguely sweet, palatable, chewy protein bar with the consistency of soggy sawdust in stiff vanilla taffy.

Basic Mission Load

Mauser Tactical Centurion II Powered Exo Suit (Gorilla Suit)

Shielded water fusion micro-generator powers strength-enhancing polymer muscles that allows the exoskeleton suit to move organically, with a clamshell front plate design that makes the suit quick to don, and laminated armor plates that resist damage from explosives and kinetic weapons. Sensor-head design. Equip with internal life support and gas filters.

Operators use oversized (OS) versions of conventional weapons. 19 hours operation out of 1 liter of heavy water. Unit weight (without operator) 102 kg. Combined suit, operator, and equipment cannot exceed 340 kg. Initial sizing of suit takes approximately four hours.

Retired from active service over thirty-three years ago for less bulky, faster, lighter designs. Typically found in military museums and military surplus stores, or in use by budget merc units, survey crews, fire fighters, or as training units for high school mecha teams.

Briggs Heavy Shotgun OS

Single-barrel design, fires oversized slug, pellet, and grenade cartriges. 9 round capacity.

FM-39 Bullpup

Reserve weapon for Centurion II pilots. Three magazines.

Tangler Grenades

Throw-able canisters that explodes in a spread of less-than-lethal sticky and quickly expanding polymer foam that can quickly entangle to or more people. Requires an aerosol release agent to break down the tangler strands.

Entrenching Tool

for digging/personal defense

Survival Harness

battle dressing, combat application tourniquet x2, personal first aid kit, survival machete (etched & saw back), Seares RationBar x14, 1 liter osmosis canteen, flashlight laser, 3m copper wire, 25m paracord, 15m fishing line, 5m flat pack of heavy-duty duct tape, 4-pc survival card multitool, pocket gun-tool, 30-gallon trash bag x2, pack of soap slips, $50 non-sequential money cards x 10. Additional ammo for judge.

-Abilities:
Valkyrii-specific short ranged telepath (useless if there's no other Valkyrii around).
Enhanced strength (150%)
Good night vision.
Brawler, with a few unusual martial arts moves.
An odd knowledge of improvised explosives. (The shed in back of the church had to be rebuilt three times)

Bio:

Discovered passed out and naked in the salvage yard, lying in the only mud-puddle, looking like she fell out of the stretched out egg-shaped windowless booth. As she had wings, the workers smuggled her out to Father Petrov's church. He was concerned she had some sort of tramatic head injury at first, but she learned quickly. When Petrov asked about the booth, the yard workers reported that it had been sold and shipped out, they didn't know to who.

Within a year, she was working in the salvage yard, watched over by the other workers. On her first day, came home with an odd key she found in a trash heap. Keeps it with her.

Came to the notice of Boss Raskolnikov five months later when she unknowingly helped his nephew break into his cousin's flat, then when she broke his arm in Boss Raskolnikov's club while the group was celebrating their robbery. He immediately recognized her as Valkyrii, and ordered her left alone.

Afterwards, worked for Boss Raskolnikov as a bouncer, she began talking to some of the mercs who visited his club (didn't water down the booze, hangout for the local job broker). Did some odd jobs, earned enough money to buy an old Centurion II suit in the salvage yard and got it working again.

Did some workouts with some of the mercs, like Vex, who agreed she wasn't the worse possible choice for a raw recruit and gave her an offer to join the group.

-Goal: To make it off of this world and find her people.

Mundane fantastic slice of life

I definitely think you're on the money about cost, although I don't know that we want to plan too much about magic. My idea here is for the magic and fantastical elements to be a little like window dressing for a college town slice of life.

I like the idea of keeping the process of doing magic deliberately vague, since it's a tool for the narrative, and not the focus of it. But there's definitely a need to define some general rules and boundaries.

Like you say, any spell has a cost, and the cost must be paid for the spell to remain in effect. By the same token, I think we can hold with "equivalent exchange" as described in Fullmetal Alchemist.

@Gisk

Equivalent exchange falls under Hermatic magic, also known as the Laws of Sacrifice - giving up in equal value to what you obtain. Some rituals, like stone circles, taps into people in the circle to charge a magical battery, which can then be used to work more powerful magic. However, it's very important that you replenish the magic you use. There's a magic circle in the series Outlander that transports a woman back in time, for example, at the cost of any gemstone she's wearing. The purity of the materials does affect it.

Sympathetic magic, or the Laws of Sympathy, is basically like calling to like - Voodoo dolls and spinning straw into gold, that sort of thing. If you can establish a relationship with runes and symbols, they work much the same. Like the Wizard's Eye, a drawing of an eye that allows a witch or wizard to see what's going on there.

Often, it's just two different methods to obtain the same result.

Mundane fantastic slice of life

<Snipped quote by Expendable>
<Snipped quote by Gisk>
Maybe it's considered more like a private Ivy League school - difficult admissions process, requiring outstanding extracurricular activities/achievements or strong SAT/ACT/equivalent scores. It's divided a College of Theurgical and Thaumaturgical Arts which has additional requirements to get into (like how one might have to audition to get into a performing arts school, or need an impressive project on their resume to get into a technical institute) and has interdisciplinary studies within other traditional colleges, which were gradually incorporated in the 1800s/1900s as firearms industrialized, becoming more deadly and gaining equal, if not greater, footing against magic.

For the magic system, I think it makes sense for nothing to happen if you don't have enough materials - like in chemistry, when you don't have enough reagent for a reaction to continue. If you do something wrong, your magic can backfire, sometimes in improbable or bizarre ways, perhaps with even greater force than what your initial input was. A simple prank hex could become a harsh curse.

Maybe magic, like life, is just borrowed energy - as such no spell can last forever, and at some point it must decay and return its energy to nature. A magical contract can fade if it isn't "fed." Everyday enchantments need some kind of fuel to keep going - there are a variety of associated costs or sacrifices with them, but there's always a price to be paid, even if that price is trivial, silly (perhaps whimsical, even), or embraced with enthusiasm.

Edit: Also, if we're going for a 90's setting, I would love to bring in 90's music for character throwback songs.

@kalanggam

90's

Blockbuster Video. Trolls. Tamagotchis. Spice Girls. Backstreet Boys. Dialup. AOL. Beanie Babies. Game boy. The Macarena.

Mundane fantastic slice of life

All the better, a private college. Very few invites. It doesn't accept a lot of outsiders. Very big on letters of recommendation. And not everyone gets accepted.

But, we need the basics of a magic system. How it works. What happens when you don't do it exactly.

video

or are spoken enchantments even needed?

Mundane fantastic slice of life

Perhaps the school was there first, perhaps beginning as an agricultural college and needed a lot of room, and the town simply grew around it.

Mundane fantastic slice of life

Yeah, you don't expect a lot of explanation occurring between two professionals, especially in the middle of a sword fight.

Princess Bride Swordfight

The fun bit is that there can be some blurring of the genres, here.

Liberal Arts may have some very... unusual classes that your advisor has to approve.

This could be some technical classes that require a security clearance and DARPA approval. Try not to stare too hard at Professor Grey, that's how the little guy reads your mind.

Reanimation classes for the surgically inclined. Bring Your Own Igor.

Witch studies. Are you a Wizard or a Warlock?

Mundane fantastic slice of life

This is Gisk's game, I just made a suggestion.