[centre][h2]Morgana Faith[/h2][/centre]

Seeing her family home again after what was almost a decade of estrangement was… a hard experience to define. It was a familiar sight, she supposed, but none of the memories she associated with the manor were what Morgana would particularly call ‘happy’; there was no nostalgia, no longing to stroll through the doors and walk its halls, venture into its rooms and see if everything was the same as she had left it.

When she had left before Morgana had done so with the full intent of cutting herself off from her family forever; she had expected to never see this place again. There had been a sense of finality to it that now left her feeling detached from the sight she was seeing. It was her childhood home, and it wasn’t at the same time; she had forsaken it long ago.

Now, it was just puzzle to be solved in order for them to progress with this case.

Truth be told, once it became clear that her mother had some kind of connection to this case Morgana had given some thought to how one might go about breaching those defences. However, between the mess with the spirit and then the assault on the cultist camp and then their quick journey back to the UK and now here there hadn’t been much spare time for her to devote towards the task, meaning her progress was disappointing. She had not been privy to every enchantment and protection placed on the property, having left home when she was still in her late teens, but she had been told about some as a necessity of her own safety, had figured others out herself during her tutoring as a child and had theories about the rest.

Morgana was quite well versed in protective wards, seals and similar such magics; some of her ideas around the type of protections her mother and their descendants would employ came about as a by-product of her own knowledge rather than a conscious effort to breach her family’s manor. She knew what types of wards worked best, their advantages and disadvantages, their places of origin and so on. She knew what kinds of magic her family tended to favour and where those two areas of knowledge overlapped. She could surmise what [i]she[/i] herself would have chosen and assume the same of those that came before her.

Knowledge of wards came with knowledge of how to penetrate said wards; what their weaknesses were and when not to use them. Or at least it should, if the one casting them had any kind of intelligence. That did not necessarily mean that she [i]could[/i] break them, just that she theoretically knew how.

[color=c4df9b]“Before anyone heads off to start poking around, I’ll give you the same warning I gave Madeleine when we approached the cultist’s camp. Any attempts to scry beyond the exterior of the building will be useless; perhaps your deities can manage something, perhaps not.”[/color] Useless, but not unsuccessful in the traditional sense. Witches had learned long ago that it was far more efficient to redirect efforts rather than try to block them; trying to scry inside the building would be successful, but show you nothing more than the surface of a reflective glass orb suspended in some unobtrusive corner of the building.

[color=c4df9b]“Any defensive wards on the building will be old, powerful, malicious and [i]reactive[/i]. Simply attempting to perceive them will trigger a response, so if you aren’t absolutely certain you can defend against or subvert a curse intended to harm or even kill, [i]do not[/i] approach the boundary of the building itself; not even with your magic.”[/color] At the cultist camp Morgana had determined that they would not be using wards, as the kind that witches used tended to be large workings intended for long term use. A temporary base like the camp would not be worth warding, but the Faith family manor? The seat of their coven’s power for the past few centuries? The wards would have been established around the same time the foundations had been set, the magic would have sunk into the earth and taken [i]root[/i].

[color=c4df9b]“Normally I would strongly advise against crossing any kind of threshold, but in this situation that may actually be our best bet. The wards around the entranceways can be raised to prevent anyone from crossing, even my mother, but given the invitation and the fact that mother would never deign to imprison herself, I believe the door are safe to cross.”[/color] Or perhaps not and her mother was simply hoping she would die as soon as she tried to set foot in her childhood home; Morgana would give even odds towards the wards imbued in her coat either saving her life or failing entirely should that be the case. But she had a feeling that was not what her mother had planned here. It simply wouldn’t be her style to set such a mundane and impersonal trap, even if harming her was her intent.

Morgana turned to Faye [color=c4df9b]“We’re estranged. I haven’t spoken to my mother in years, though she has certainly spoken [i]at[/i] me in that time. I don’t believe she would hurt me, yet. I can’t say the same for you.”[/color] Then again, it wasn’t like she had ever expected her mother to throw her lot in with whatever Mr X was either, so who was to say if her judgement was accurate or not? [color=c4df9b]“I would suggest against trying to teleport inside the building; you won’t arrive where you are expecting to and there’s a chance you won’t be able to teleport out afterwards.”[/color] Redirect your enemies efforts, rather than attempt block them outright. [color=c4df9b]“My family has never hunted or harmed the Fae to my knowledge, but unwanted guests were certainly never tolerated.”[/color]

Then she turned to Amanda. [color=c4df9b]“I can’t say what my mother would do; I never expected her to be involved in this in the first place. It would depend on whether or not she intends to play coy and pretend ignorance, or if she is willing to go public with her involvement in… whatever this all is.”[/color] The former would be immensely frustrating, the latter could be deadly. [color=c4df9b]“Those runes are new; they shouldn’t be visible like that, which suggests they are newly laid and haven’t been properly synched with the existing protections yet. They look like standard strengthening wards though; the manor’s defences have always been directed towards more esoteric threats, rather than those that my family would consider mundane.”[/color]

In other words… [color=c4df9b]“The windows aren’t bullet proof and the doors aren’t reinforced. Those runes are meant to rectify that. They aren’t yet complete.”[/color]

[@Kumbaris][@13org]