Kronshi

Magic in the Park

Everything about this felt wrong. The door, the halls, the silence. Not exactly a new experience within the confines of a Dark City but Oz could tell there was something about this that was different.

Leaving the letter leading him to its exact location aside, someone had managed to hex a door with a magical lock so complex that Oz had spent around 7 hours just cracking three of the bindings and 7 more on this last one alone. He was certain that this time the equation was perfect and... no, the door remained bound. The young man stood up and began pacing as he thought, keeping an eye and ear out for an approaching threats as he attempted to figure out why his magecraft was failing to open this path.

Rewrite's core function is the ability to change

Whoever left me that letter is aware of where I live,

the criteria that spells function under,

as well as has insight into my capabilities if they know

barriers included. This particular barrier

my skill with lock-picking spells. They also knew about

had 4 bindings with their own set of

this door and likely have some idea of what's behind it.

criteria and no 2 bindings could share a

What are their intentions with having me open up this

criteria but they could contradict each other.

barrier? They could have set a trap for me somewhere,

Balancing out the requirements for these

but then why not grab me while I'm focusing on breaking

bindings is difficult and runs the risk of a

the bindings? They could simply want what's behind

magical backdraft if done incorrectly. However,

the door, but how do they know I won't just take it for

I have gotten the formula close enough to not

myself? Similarly, they could kidnap me and force me

notice any repercussions for failing to unlock

to open the door if they don't want me taking anything.

the binding which leads to my next question.

Yet, nothing within this place has made a move.

Am I actually failing? It could be that I got

Likely answer, this is a test and my suspicions of

a previous binding wrong and didn't notice,

being watched are correct. They have some manner of

but the more likely conclusion is that the

keeping their eyes on me to witness how I crack this

barrier spell actively resists my tampering

vault and what methods I use to approach solving this

with a tampering of its own. That's it.

puzzle. Likely some form of detection spell, but they

The reason there's no recoil is because my

would have to be better with it then I am my own to

formula is always balanced by an inverse spell

be out of my range or have some means of obscuring

produced by the door. If I'm right, that means

their location that my Detect can't get through.

whoever created these locks knows how to use

Seeing as they thought that only I could understand

Counter and understands Rewrite well enough

this door and yet seem more knowledgeable than me,

to be able to use Counter on it. Alright, now

I have to presume that they bear a different crest

to test this hypothesis, I need to create an

than I do. Which also means that whoever is

inversion of an inversion of Rewrite but to do

testing me didn't make the barrier themselves

that without just casting another Rewrite spell,

but likely knows who did. Furthermore, I can

I'll need to utilize Establish and set a condition

assume that since this door requires the three

for imaginary variables. Negative of a negative

spells that I have learned during my training

is a positive, but the root of negative one is i

with my father, that these people knew him

so I just Establish that i squared can remain

personally and it is equally likely that

as i² within the natural numbers. Then it'll

the door-maker is in fact my father such

be equal to negative one but be a positive

that his disappearance is what makes me the

natural number, meaning I can invert it to -i²

only one who could understand this door.

and that is not equal to one, meaning my formula

The keys to this door were chosen deliberately

would not simplify back into Rewrite.

for me to be the only one who could unlock it.

With all that being said, Oz went about undoing the Counter security hex placed upon the door. It took him some time to verify his math was correct as this was his first time trying to do such a thing but when there was no recoil, he breathed a sigh of relief. That meant there was a spell that his formula affected, and his hypothesis was correct. Unfortunately, that also meant that all the bindings were likely never unlocked to begin with and he now had to start over. This was going to be a long night, but at least he was accustomed to pulling all-nighters.

Magic in the Park

<Snipped quote by Kronshi>

Y-yea, clocked him... (:3 To a certain extent, I just had to presume some things for him to get his particular side of the equation rolling. I do apologize if any of it came off as controlling.

@Asuras

Absolutely not. And even if it did, I don't mind a bit of controlling from a GM if they do it in a respectful manner to tell a more interesting story. However, you shouldn't underplay yourself. At some point you had to make a decision to read Oz as someone who would sit in a Dark City staring at a door lock for 14 hours, and being right with that decision is impressive even if the decision wasn't founded on a lot. GM intuition into how a player wants to portray a character is a skill in its own right.

Edit: I have posted! Apologies if it's difficult to read. I wanted to show that Oz tends to have more than 1 train of thought going at the same time. So the entirety of the left sentences is 1 train of thought and the right is a separate train.

Magic in the Park

@Asuras
Love the start, Oz spending 14 hours on a door just because it was mysterious and out of place is completely in character for him. The narrator calling him Ozy, a nickname he hates, is either a strong metaphor if purposeful or just really hilarious if accidental. I never gave the details that Oz was such a stubborn scholar nor that he'd hate the nickname but it's impressive that you clocked one if not both of those from what I did give. Man's already suffering at the hands of the narrative. It's great.

Magic in the Park

And then there's Oz. An independent mage not part of an organization, who is still technically tied to his house, who is being spied on by Reina due to his father's legacy, who probably also has government eyes on him for the same reason. It is only a matter of time before someone scoops this man up once they realize what kind of magecraft he has. I can almost see him getting kidnapped by one group and then a second group "rescuing" him just for them to not release him so he's just kidnapped again.

Magic in the Park

@ERode
I imagine that since magic is tied to the Aspects and the aspects are almost philosophies of how one approaches magic, that certain personalities are better suited for some aspects. So not all mages of an aspect would have shared personality traits, but I personally feel like the higher on the food chain you look, the more similarities you'd see.

It'd be difficult to find a skilled Precedence that was also shy and a pushover, so most of them are likely confident if not arrogant since spells that build off authority are probably stronger in the hands of mages that believe they're an authority figure.

Similarly hard to find:
Obscurity that forgoes lying and manipulation
Manifestation with no aspirations
Complexity that isn't perceptive
And Dynamicism that's scared of change.

So I think there'll be some "same hat!" energy between those with like-crests if nothing else.

Magic in the Park

@ERode
I don't think Oz left House Falloch on bad terms. He didn't metaphorically leave the house as in he disowned himself, he just physically left to get his own place and do research outside of Falloch's libraries. So I don't think they'd have a contract open on him.

However, I feel like as Oz transitioned into the adult mage world, he probably found out that he likes both Obscurity and Precedence crested because one is associated with secrets and mysteries and hidden truths while the other is about absolute truths and rules and authority. Oz is trying to learn all the secrets, all the rules, and all forms of truth because he wants to define what the universe is. They probably hate him though. He brings hidden things into the light and tries to bend rules to see what breaks.

I feel like once he does meet Amaya and Reina he's going to have to mediate between the two to keep them from killing each other. He's a small man stepping into a large world and has no clue the kind of history these two would have experienced.

Magic in the Park

@Remram
One past version of Oz was a spellsniper so I'd find it fun to explore him learning firearms, but this version's reliance on his hands to do calculations would make it difficult. So I meant it as a half-joke myself.

I'd be interested in seeing if the idea comes up naturally through the course of the RP but I don't plan on him using a firearm.

Magic in the Park

@Remram
He wouldn't be opposed.

Magic in the Park

Excited to start this. Oz has been a character concept that has been redesigned like 8 times, so glad to finally give him the suffering he deserves. (He doesn't deserve it but he does for being one of my characters)

@Remram
Your character, that knows the complexities of the actual physical properties of practical objects.
🤝
My character, that knows the complexities of abstract fundamentals of magic, gravity, and other properties of physics. Who also can take the variables of objects to change their properties, just needs to know what variables even exist.

They'd work so well together if mages didn't hate sharing their trade secrets.

Magic in the Park

Ozymandias "Oz" Falloch

23 | He/Him | 5’7 ft. | Complexity

Background:

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.

Craft:

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.