Member
rabidbacon
Izurich
hanzo
Phase
Marlowe
LadyAnnaLee
Atalanta
Noctis
Abstract Proxy
SkwintI already sent this to our GMs, but it's here for transparency and completeness' sake too.
1.) History
i.) Who Made the Prophecy?
An enormously powerful, unhinged sorceror in the 1550s. He was jealous of Nostradamus. His name was Joseph Latienne, and he died in 1588.
ii.) What Was the Prophecy?
That an individual born under specific circumstances (alignment of planets, phase of the moon, following certain events in history) would inherit the primary power of the prophecy, which is the Mantle. The Mantle is (was) a separate enchantment laying dormant in a disk of black glass, only accessible to the subject of the Prophecy on a specific day. Latienne did not consider that the individual in question would not want to take it up.
iii.) What Is (was) The Mantle?
A powerful psychic enchantment, allowing for the selected individual to do nothing less than influence the minds of those around them in a meaningful and likely permanent fashion. The holder of the Mantle was meant to lead the world into a 'New Age.' The propecy itself is unclear what that New Age was going to be, and Madison never found out.
iv.) What was the New Age?
Violently oppressive autocratic rule under the holder of the Mantle. But hey, that's a New Age. Latienne was crazy.
v.) Why was Madison chosen?
She is the product of a generations-long knot of people faithful to Latienne's prophecy. They wanted to see that the Prophecy came to pass almost as a scientific experiment. Her parents were involved with this group, and both they and Madison were aware of the supernatural world.
vi.) Zee's Early Life
Zee did not have a childhood; she was created more or less at the same instant that the Prophecy's magical tendrils wrapped around Madison. I really don't have a preference how this is squared with the game's lore, but I'm falling back on "Latienne was unbelievably powerful, capable, and insane." He believed the Chosen One needed a guardian, and made sure they had one. Maybe those people faithful to the Prophecy's power were constantly making small adjustments to the Guardian's latent creation spell, to ensure that she came into the world with a generally-well-adjusted adult's level of knowledge and capability rather than speaking centuries-old French. I promise this isn't narrative laziness, or, well, more than usual.
vii.) What Happened To Madison
Maddy went to college and is pursuing a graduate program in social work. She is dating a man named Samuel Tanner, who is planning to propose in six months' time. They are currently on vacation in Paris. There was a fairly intense amount of fallout from her refusal to pick up the Mantle, but in the end, there was nothing really to be done as the enchantment really did unravel. She has not been attacked by magical creatures since turning away from the Prophecy, although she has also been being very carefully normal. Zee and Maddy correspond regularly, via written letters.
viii.) How did Zee Choose Her Name
The nameplate on a car she passed and a student walking by carrying a book about Haroun al-Rashid. She also looks Arabic.
2.) Wizard Stuff
i.) Gewgaw
It's one of my favorite words!
ii.) Exhaustion
Working large amounts of power is physically exhausting, with combat magic being exhausting on a whole other level. You might think of her like a magical boxer - every working takes effort, and she won't be throwing the hardest punches she can all the time. In fact, if she winds up doing a lot of little things, throwing those big hits won't happen either. Throwing a lot of flashy, offensive magic over a short period of time will probably leave her unable to conjure a shield to defend herself, if she has to. Similarly, defending a number of people from a hail of gunfire for a long period of time will absolutely leave her with swimming vision and a limited ability or desire to fling lightning back. Nothing comes for free.
iii.) Limits
When approaching her limits, Zee first feels that the spell is harder and harder to shape to get to her desired outcome (for exmaple, she may need to shrink the covered area for a shield), followed by physical exhaustion (including loss of balance, double/tunnel vision, and lack of coordination) and mental exhaustion (spells are harder to even concieve of). In extreme circumstances (or if she's just not paying attention to her body, through adrenal reactions, drugs, or other meddling) she is capable of working a powerful spell when she's really not supposed to, and will black out as a result. This is a serious medical condition.
iv.) Recovery
Like recovering from strenuous physical activity, Zee needs a period of time of Not Doing Magic to get back to baseline after doing a lot of spell-slinging. This is depenant on how much power she's been working lately, just the way it would depend with whether a person just did a triathlon or if they took a jog around the neighborhood.
v.) Shields
Zee's shields are generally tuned to redirect kinetic energy and magical assaults rather than directly absorbing them, most of the time. When the option is open to her, her shield will typically make a bullet ricochet with minimal energy absorbtion, and deflect or scatter magical attacks rather than simply overpowering a working. The first regime is more sustainable (though not over serious timespans, say more than 5 minutes in general), the second is not practical for anything except "not flinging bullets into other people in a crowded hallway." She is capable of redirecting the entire magazine of a military rifle (30 rounds delivered over two seconds) with a shield that spans a half-dome in front of her with a diameter of her height, and still be able to retaliate afterward. She is capable of directly stopping perhaps a third of that before the shield would fail and she'd get shot 20 times. Another example would be providing an instantaneous, cushinoning barrier around someone falling off a second-story building to keep them from breaking their neck. Zee is also capable of redirecting magical workings of her own strength, for a considerable period, depending on how many come in at once.
The short answer for this is 'trust me,' the long answer is 'she can protect herself or others to a point, and after that point it's not great for her.'
vi.) Not Shields
Generally speaking, Zee is capable of controlling the initial point of evocation - for example, a stroke of lightning from Zee to a target. In other words, the lightning strike typically comes from the palm of her hand (and typically from a focus she can slide down from her wrist and over her palm) and lances straight toward a target. Barring extensive control afterward, the electricity will then take the natural path from there. That said, an attack would not be a sustained arc; the stroke of power will be over an extremely brief period of time. I think it's probably important to say that Zee can't control the weather; she can't call a thunderbolt out of a clear blue sky (although I have some fun plans for a hail-mary move if there happens to be a stormcloud overhead anyway). As before, big magic is big effort, and she can't do it forever (or even for long, or many times in rapid succession.)
vii.) Control
I like to think that Zee has very fine-grained control over her power, including charging her cell phone, refilling a car battery, Tasering someone, etc. This is all subject to what's been said previously; filling her cell phone probably is very close to zero effort, while incapacitating someone from a distance will be more of an effort.
viii.) Spread
Continuing from the discussion in vi.), the electricity will follow the path electricity would normally follow after a strike, unless Zee expends an enormous amount of effort making that not be the case. Striking someone through a conductive medium (salt water) is something she could do, along with electrifying a fence. She can probably destroy electronics fairly easily, although she tries not to.
3.) Getting Punched A Lot
i.) Not-so-Mutant Healing Factor
If a broken bone would take 6 weeks to heal on a standard, run of the mill human, Zee will probably be completely recovered in 4. The bone will also be healed more completely, without the telltale evidence that it had been broken (thickened bone around the break, marks and scarring, etc). In addition, she heals remarkably rapidly from connective tissue injuries (torn ligaments heal in a matter of weeks rather than months, sprained muscles in days rather than weeks). In addition, she tends not to lose muscle or bone density or dexterity while a limb is immobilized. Nerve damage will in all cases heal (including spinal injuries), with speed depending on what was damaged. A damaged spinal cord would take years (or decades) to return to even moderate function. A deep cut on an arm would restore nerve function by the time the wound healed. Wounds tend to leave scars, but so far she hasn't been hurt in a way that's permanently affected her body in a mechanical way.
ii.) Injury Resistance
Zee's body is simply a little bit tougher than normal, perhaps by a factor of 2. It is harder to bruise her, harder to break her bones, harder to concuss her or damage her internal organs. Her connective tissues are more resilient to damage, her muscles more resistant to strain and sprain. Considering that virtually everything in the supernatural world is much, much stronger than twice human baseline, this isn't often actually all that helpful, and she tries to avoid getting hurt to begin with. This has absolutely been noted by the doctors who have occasionally had to stitch her up. Her pain threshhold is extremely high, but that doesn't mean she can stand up if she's lost most of her blood.
iii.) Prior injuries
Zee has been shot twice, both times with handguns. One is on the left side of her abdomen, and left her in the hospital for about a week, and she survived largely due to Maddy calling an ambulance and the fact that the person who shot her was within dispatching-range. The other shot was to her calf, which was painful but not life-threatening, from when a bullet made it around her shield. She has a series of three deep scars across her lower ribs from a werebear she had to deal with after she moved to Loom, which hit her hard enough to lift her a couple of meters into the air and throw her through a shop window. She fought the bear hand-to-hand (or sword-to-claw), and it took around a month for all of the aches and pains to go away, though there have been no long-term effects other than scarring.
4.) I'll be Watching Over You
i.) Attunement
This attunement is activated by a simple act of will and exchange of consent. Zee will touch someone (usually by putting a hand on their shoulder), concentrate for a moment, and then little pieces of that person's life will start to fill her mind, building slowly over time. The same effort of will can break the connection, as can a client's withdrawl of their consent.
ii.) Split Attention
She can do this to more than one person, but it's uncomfortable. She's never done more than three, and now makes every attempt to connect to only a single person at a time.
iii.) Fate
This means that if she's attuned to a single person for a very long period of time, the stream of Zee's personal causality will start to warp to the point where if she happens to be taking her sword to the gym to practice spariing with a friend, that will also be the exact moment that her charge needs to be defended from something that needs a sword to kill it. Or, more prosaically, that she'll always have bus fare in her pocket (even though she didn't intend to, or even if she'd intended to use that change to buy a pastry on the way home) if her charge needs to get on transit and forgot their wallet. She becomes their guardian angel, even for the little things, and even if it's inconvenient for her. If she's on vacation and danger is going to come to her charge, either she'll have a pressing reason to return home, or her charge will by coincidence happen to be just a few yards down the beach from where Zee is sunbathing when some fanged monstrosity comes flopping out of the water. This takes several years to establish, and since Maddy, Zee hasn't allowed her connection to anyone to persist that long.
5.) Weaponry
i.) Conductivity
Silver is the only commonly-available metal that is more conductive than copper, and it has the benefit of also being anathema to a lot of hostile supernatural creatures. Zee shoots lightning out of her hands. The sword is a really good electrode.
ii.) How Zee Summons It
The weapon is bound via an enchantment to an engraved silver ring. When Zee wears the ring (which is not always), she can summon the sword to the ring, and thus into her hand. The same enchantment allows her to dismiss the weapon back to where it was before (which is usually leaning against the door in her apartment). This can be blocked by magic circles, wards, or being in another dimension at the time she tries to summon it to herself. The ring and enchantment were something she bought at the Goblin Market, and is not a built-in part of her skills. The ring can be destroyed (by being melted, but probably not by being physically damaged); Zee does know how to make another ring if she had to, but would very much prefer not to.
6.) Foci
i.) Earrings
A pair of Zee's earrings (elaborately and very finely engraved silver studs) function to keep her from being deafened and dazed by nearby loud noises. These can include the thunderclap from her own power, explosions, and gunfire. They can deaden the bang from a flashbang grenade, but the light and explosion-ness from that kind of experience is still something unpleasant.
ii.) Rings
Most of Zee's rings are just there to be pretty (which is why she sometimes forgets to put the sword-summoning one on). Two of them, however, store a significant electric charge, which Zee can release into someone (or something) she's holding. She genuinely uses them mostly to gently zap people out of the way at concerts (with little pulses of power), but they can each incapacitate a big man if she dumps them out all at once. Zee can recharge them via magic, or let their enchantments recharge via micro-USB, overnight.
iii.) Shielding
On her left upper arm, Zee has an engraved and attuned silver cuff engraved with copper shields. This is her primary focus for defensive magic, mostly shielding and warding spells. Under heavy load, the focus itself does start to heat up (energy leakage from the incoming attacks) and can absolutely wind up burning her. She tries very hard not to let that happen. She can raise shields without this focus, but it is vastly more difficult for a shield of a given size or strength.
iv.) Striking
Zee's right wrist almost always has a bangle around it that, with a thought, will unfold and spring out into a beautifully-engraved brass and copper piece of hand jewelry. A curving plate covers her wrist and extends into her palm, held across her fingers and the back of her hand with fine chain. The plates are, like everything else, engraved with copper, and serve to guide and channel her evocation magic. Zee is capable of using offensive magic without it, but the kind of power she prefers to throw around is much more taxing for any given strike.
v.) Pendant
The pendant is nothing more than a beautifully-carved piece of black glass. Or, at least, that's all I ever had in mind for it. It is a fragment of something that once contained something enormously powerful, though....
1.) History
i.) Who Made the Prophecy?
An enormously powerful, unhinged sorceror in the 1550s. He was jealous of Nostradamus. His name was Joseph Latienne, and he died in 1588.
ii.) What Was the Prophecy?
That an individual born under specific circumstances (alignment of planets, phase of the moon, following certain events in history) would inherit the primary power of the prophecy, which is the Mantle. The Mantle is (was) a separate enchantment laying dormant in a disk of black glass, only accessible to the subject of the Prophecy on a specific day. Latienne did not consider that the individual in question would not want to take it up.
iii.) What Is (was) The Mantle?
A powerful psychic enchantment, allowing for the selected individual to do nothing less than influence the minds of those around them in a meaningful and likely permanent fashion. The holder of the Mantle was meant to lead the world into a 'New Age.' The propecy itself is unclear what that New Age was going to be, and Madison never found out.
iv.) What was the New Age?
Violently oppressive autocratic rule under the holder of the Mantle. But hey, that's a New Age. Latienne was crazy.
v.) Why was Madison chosen?
She is the product of a generations-long knot of people faithful to Latienne's prophecy. They wanted to see that the Prophecy came to pass almost as a scientific experiment. Her parents were involved with this group, and both they and Madison were aware of the supernatural world.
vi.) Zee's Early Life
Zee did not have a childhood; she was created more or less at the same instant that the Prophecy's magical tendrils wrapped around Madison. I really don't have a preference how this is squared with the game's lore, but I'm falling back on "Latienne was unbelievably powerful, capable, and insane." He believed the Chosen One needed a guardian, and made sure they had one. Maybe those people faithful to the Prophecy's power were constantly making small adjustments to the Guardian's latent creation spell, to ensure that she came into the world with a generally-well-adjusted adult's level of knowledge and capability rather than speaking centuries-old French. I promise this isn't narrative laziness, or, well, more than usual.
vii.) What Happened To Madison
Maddy went to college and is pursuing a graduate program in social work. She is dating a man named Samuel Tanner, who is planning to propose in six months' time. They are currently on vacation in Paris. There was a fairly intense amount of fallout from her refusal to pick up the Mantle, but in the end, there was nothing really to be done as the enchantment really did unravel. She has not been attacked by magical creatures since turning away from the Prophecy, although she has also been being very carefully normal. Zee and Maddy correspond regularly, via written letters.
viii.) How did Zee Choose Her Name
The nameplate on a car she passed and a student walking by carrying a book about Haroun al-Rashid. She also looks Arabic.
2.) Wizard Stuff
i.) Gewgaw
It's one of my favorite words!
ii.) Exhaustion
Working large amounts of power is physically exhausting, with combat magic being exhausting on a whole other level. You might think of her like a magical boxer - every working takes effort, and she won't be throwing the hardest punches she can all the time. In fact, if she winds up doing a lot of little things, throwing those big hits won't happen either. Throwing a lot of flashy, offensive magic over a short period of time will probably leave her unable to conjure a shield to defend herself, if she has to. Similarly, defending a number of people from a hail of gunfire for a long period of time will absolutely leave her with swimming vision and a limited ability or desire to fling lightning back. Nothing comes for free.
iii.) Limits
When approaching her limits, Zee first feels that the spell is harder and harder to shape to get to her desired outcome (for exmaple, she may need to shrink the covered area for a shield), followed by physical exhaustion (including loss of balance, double/tunnel vision, and lack of coordination) and mental exhaustion (spells are harder to even concieve of). In extreme circumstances (or if she's just not paying attention to her body, through adrenal reactions, drugs, or other meddling) she is capable of working a powerful spell when she's really not supposed to, and will black out as a result. This is a serious medical condition.
iv.) Recovery
Like recovering from strenuous physical activity, Zee needs a period of time of Not Doing Magic to get back to baseline after doing a lot of spell-slinging. This is depenant on how much power she's been working lately, just the way it would depend with whether a person just did a triathlon or if they took a jog around the neighborhood.
v.) Shields
Zee's shields are generally tuned to redirect kinetic energy and magical assaults rather than directly absorbing them, most of the time. When the option is open to her, her shield will typically make a bullet ricochet with minimal energy absorbtion, and deflect or scatter magical attacks rather than simply overpowering a working. The first regime is more sustainable (though not over serious timespans, say more than 5 minutes in general), the second is not practical for anything except "not flinging bullets into other people in a crowded hallway." She is capable of redirecting the entire magazine of a military rifle (30 rounds delivered over two seconds) with a shield that spans a half-dome in front of her with a diameter of her height, and still be able to retaliate afterward. She is capable of directly stopping perhaps a third of that before the shield would fail and she'd get shot 20 times. Another example would be providing an instantaneous, cushinoning barrier around someone falling off a second-story building to keep them from breaking their neck. Zee is also capable of redirecting magical workings of her own strength, for a considerable period, depending on how many come in at once.
The short answer for this is 'trust me,' the long answer is 'she can protect herself or others to a point, and after that point it's not great for her.'
vi.) Not Shields
Generally speaking, Zee is capable of controlling the initial point of evocation - for example, a stroke of lightning from Zee to a target. In other words, the lightning strike typically comes from the palm of her hand (and typically from a focus she can slide down from her wrist and over her palm) and lances straight toward a target. Barring extensive control afterward, the electricity will then take the natural path from there. That said, an attack would not be a sustained arc; the stroke of power will be over an extremely brief period of time. I think it's probably important to say that Zee can't control the weather; she can't call a thunderbolt out of a clear blue sky (although I have some fun plans for a hail-mary move if there happens to be a stormcloud overhead anyway). As before, big magic is big effort, and she can't do it forever (or even for long, or many times in rapid succession.)
vii.) Control
I like to think that Zee has very fine-grained control over her power, including charging her cell phone, refilling a car battery, Tasering someone, etc. This is all subject to what's been said previously; filling her cell phone probably is very close to zero effort, while incapacitating someone from a distance will be more of an effort.
viii.) Spread
Continuing from the discussion in vi.), the electricity will follow the path electricity would normally follow after a strike, unless Zee expends an enormous amount of effort making that not be the case. Striking someone through a conductive medium (salt water) is something she could do, along with electrifying a fence. She can probably destroy electronics fairly easily, although she tries not to.
3.) Getting Punched A Lot
i.) Not-so-Mutant Healing Factor
If a broken bone would take 6 weeks to heal on a standard, run of the mill human, Zee will probably be completely recovered in 4. The bone will also be healed more completely, without the telltale evidence that it had been broken (thickened bone around the break, marks and scarring, etc). In addition, she heals remarkably rapidly from connective tissue injuries (torn ligaments heal in a matter of weeks rather than months, sprained muscles in days rather than weeks). In addition, she tends not to lose muscle or bone density or dexterity while a limb is immobilized. Nerve damage will in all cases heal (including spinal injuries), with speed depending on what was damaged. A damaged spinal cord would take years (or decades) to return to even moderate function. A deep cut on an arm would restore nerve function by the time the wound healed. Wounds tend to leave scars, but so far she hasn't been hurt in a way that's permanently affected her body in a mechanical way.
ii.) Injury Resistance
Zee's body is simply a little bit tougher than normal, perhaps by a factor of 2. It is harder to bruise her, harder to break her bones, harder to concuss her or damage her internal organs. Her connective tissues are more resilient to damage, her muscles more resistant to strain and sprain. Considering that virtually everything in the supernatural world is much, much stronger than twice human baseline, this isn't often actually all that helpful, and she tries to avoid getting hurt to begin with. This has absolutely been noted by the doctors who have occasionally had to stitch her up. Her pain threshhold is extremely high, but that doesn't mean she can stand up if she's lost most of her blood.
iii.) Prior injuries
Zee has been shot twice, both times with handguns. One is on the left side of her abdomen, and left her in the hospital for about a week, and she survived largely due to Maddy calling an ambulance and the fact that the person who shot her was within dispatching-range. The other shot was to her calf, which was painful but not life-threatening, from when a bullet made it around her shield. She has a series of three deep scars across her lower ribs from a werebear she had to deal with after she moved to Loom, which hit her hard enough to lift her a couple of meters into the air and throw her through a shop window. She fought the bear hand-to-hand (or sword-to-claw), and it took around a month for all of the aches and pains to go away, though there have been no long-term effects other than scarring.
4.) I'll be Watching Over You
i.) Attunement
This attunement is activated by a simple act of will and exchange of consent. Zee will touch someone (usually by putting a hand on their shoulder), concentrate for a moment, and then little pieces of that person's life will start to fill her mind, building slowly over time. The same effort of will can break the connection, as can a client's withdrawl of their consent.
ii.) Split Attention
She can do this to more than one person, but it's uncomfortable. She's never done more than three, and now makes every attempt to connect to only a single person at a time.
iii.) Fate
This means that if she's attuned to a single person for a very long period of time, the stream of Zee's personal causality will start to warp to the point where if she happens to be taking her sword to the gym to practice spariing with a friend, that will also be the exact moment that her charge needs to be defended from something that needs a sword to kill it. Or, more prosaically, that she'll always have bus fare in her pocket (even though she didn't intend to, or even if she'd intended to use that change to buy a pastry on the way home) if her charge needs to get on transit and forgot their wallet. She becomes their guardian angel, even for the little things, and even if it's inconvenient for her. If she's on vacation and danger is going to come to her charge, either she'll have a pressing reason to return home, or her charge will by coincidence happen to be just a few yards down the beach from where Zee is sunbathing when some fanged monstrosity comes flopping out of the water. This takes several years to establish, and since Maddy, Zee hasn't allowed her connection to anyone to persist that long.
5.) Weaponry
i.) Conductivity
Silver is the only commonly-available metal that is more conductive than copper, and it has the benefit of also being anathema to a lot of hostile supernatural creatures. Zee shoots lightning out of her hands. The sword is a really good electrode.
ii.) How Zee Summons It
The weapon is bound via an enchantment to an engraved silver ring. When Zee wears the ring (which is not always), she can summon the sword to the ring, and thus into her hand. The same enchantment allows her to dismiss the weapon back to where it was before (which is usually leaning against the door in her apartment). This can be blocked by magic circles, wards, or being in another dimension at the time she tries to summon it to herself. The ring and enchantment were something she bought at the Goblin Market, and is not a built-in part of her skills. The ring can be destroyed (by being melted, but probably not by being physically damaged); Zee does know how to make another ring if she had to, but would very much prefer not to.
6.) Foci
i.) Earrings
A pair of Zee's earrings (elaborately and very finely engraved silver studs) function to keep her from being deafened and dazed by nearby loud noises. These can include the thunderclap from her own power, explosions, and gunfire. They can deaden the bang from a flashbang grenade, but the light and explosion-ness from that kind of experience is still something unpleasant.
ii.) Rings
Most of Zee's rings are just there to be pretty (which is why she sometimes forgets to put the sword-summoning one on). Two of them, however, store a significant electric charge, which Zee can release into someone (or something) she's holding. She genuinely uses them mostly to gently zap people out of the way at concerts (with little pulses of power), but they can each incapacitate a big man if she dumps them out all at once. Zee can recharge them via magic, or let their enchantments recharge via micro-USB, overnight.
iii.) Shielding
On her left upper arm, Zee has an engraved and attuned silver cuff engraved with copper shields. This is her primary focus for defensive magic, mostly shielding and warding spells. Under heavy load, the focus itself does start to heat up (energy leakage from the incoming attacks) and can absolutely wind up burning her. She tries very hard not to let that happen. She can raise shields without this focus, but it is vastly more difficult for a shield of a given size or strength.
iv.) Striking
Zee's right wrist almost always has a bangle around it that, with a thought, will unfold and spring out into a beautifully-engraved brass and copper piece of hand jewelry. A curving plate covers her wrist and extends into her palm, held across her fingers and the back of her hand with fine chain. The plates are, like everything else, engraved with copper, and serve to guide and channel her evocation magic. Zee is capable of using offensive magic without it, but the kind of power she prefers to throw around is much more taxing for any given strike.
v.) Pendant
The pendant is nothing more than a beautifully-carved piece of black glass. Or, at least, that's all I ever had in mind for it. It is a fragment of something that once contained something enormously powerful, though....