[quote=@JulietIsTheSun] Hey there! I LOVE the premise and setting of this idea! Supernatural Southern Gothic would really tickle my fancy right about now. I've only just recently had to give up on a similar vibed roleplay as my partner went AWOL so if you want me to show you some writing samples let me know. (I'm also 25 ahaha) [/quote] Hello and thank you for your interest and kind words! I've sent you a PM with my sample, and am including it here for anyone else perusing the thread (this was me writing as the warlock from a previous iteration of this story. I am open to writing either role though!) [hr] The roll was bound with a strip of the same leather it was made from, knotted twice. The knot came loose under his hands and the leather fell open across his knee. Cedar oil and iron came up first. The cedar for preservation, the iron for everything that came after. Older than anything else in the room. A moment of stillness before reaching in. A pedestrian charm was knotted into the soft interior of the leather. It presented as a subtle friction on the attention, a suggestion to the hands that this wasn’t worth the trouble. It found nothing to catch on. The binding didn’t answer to Broussard magic and neither did he, now that the petals were dust. “Stay back from it a little,” he said. “There’s a ward on the leather. Meant to discourage exactly this.” A beat. “Won’t trouble me any.” The outer pockets first. Chalk in two preparations, stick and ground, stored separately. Thread on a card, red and black, the red spool near-depleted. A hand mirror no bigger than his palm, bevelled edge, old enough that the silver backing had gone patchy at the corners. Three wax-stoppered vials, two empty, the third dark with dried residue. He held it to the light without opening it. Old. Spent. A working done elsewhere to someone else, before he came here. Each item laid on the rug with the care of a man unpacking a surgical kit. “These are for blood magic,” he said. “Sanctioned, most of it. Every practitioner workin’ estates and covenants carries somethin’ like this. Chalk for warding lines. Thread for bindin’ prep. Mirror’s for scrying.” A touch to the near-empty red spool. “Red thread’s for tying a working to a living person.” The spool was near-empty. Worth noting once. The centre pocket gave up the fleam in its own sleeve of oiled cloth. Brass handle, darker at the grip from decades of hands that were not Sebastien’s. A monogram on the end cap, read and set aside. A phlebotomist’s instrument at its origin, a practitioner’s instrument by long re-use, the metal held the warmth of a thing that had been picked up and put down by the same kind of hands for the same kind of purpose across more years than Sebastien Broussard had been alive. Beautifully made. Very old. The weight of it exceeded the brass. He balanced it on his knee. A small tin beneath the fleam sleeve. The lid pried open with his thumbnail. Graveyard dirt. Dark, fine-grained, the smell immediately distinct from garden soil, layered, with depth to it. The lid went back on. “That’s not sanctioned,” he said. His voice had gone flat and he left it that way. “Not for any audit. In compulsion work, graveyard dirt weights a living person’s will toward the dead. Makes them more—” A pause for the word. “[i]Persuadable[/i]. Thread and dirt together, that’s the beginnin’ of overridin’ somebody’s judgment without them knowin’ it’s been touched.” The last pocket held a small dark bottle, cork stopper, hand-labelled in cramped script: [i]Bend Over[/i]. A condition oil, the bottle shy of full. Onto the rug. The petition paper was folded beneath it, one corner oil-stained from contact. Cream stock. Twice-folded. He unfolded it. Her name written nine times in a ruled column. Crossed by Sebastien’s own name nine times. Around both, circling the page until it ran out of room: [I]as I will, so she will.[/I] Long enough to be certain of what was there. Then turned so she could see. His mother’s word came up. [i]Geis[/i]. A binding obligation laid on a person at their most vulnerable, with the force of fate behind it, by a woman who knew exactly what she was making. Sebastien had managed cream stock and a condition oil with a label that said plainly what it was for. The ambition was the same. The craft was not. “Called a [I]defixio[/I], in older practice. Lead tablet instead of paper. The Romans left them at graves.” He let her read. “Same intention.” The fleam came back into his hand while she read. Good balance. The blade folded into the handle cleanly, the hinge without play. The edge opened with his thumb and caught the firelight and held it. The knowledge was in his hands before it reached his mind. From the years before the binding, from practice the binding had stripped power from but kept the memory of. Where blood came fast. Where it came slow. Where pain arrived immediately and where it arrived by degrees. A man could be bled a long time before the situation became critical. A man could be made to understand considerable things in that interval. The thought came sideways then, and it was a cold one: what Sebastien had managed with improvised materials and a borrowed conduit. Petals off a vine, a pocket watch, and one cloth soaked in her stale blood. A middling talent working fast with what the property offered, and even so it had nearly been enough. Closer than Gideon had let himself account for yet. Someone with the kit fully deployed, the patience to work properly, enough power to use all of it — that was a different morning entirely. His thumb ran along the flat of the blade. His breathing slowed to nothing. Then a breath, and the blade folded closed and went back on the rug with the rest. The kit reassembled. Fleam last, petition paper folded back into the leather, the whole thing rolled and knotted as he’d found it. On his feet then. Two logs fed to the fire and a moment standing with his back to her while the wood caught, the flame finding its way into the grain. Then across to the loveseat. The DMV envelope was where he’d left it, on top of the Laurel House letterhead. The registration came out with two fingers. The address on it was a rural route outside Asheville. He crossed the floor back to her with it and settled down onto the rug once more. Handed it to her. “Vehicle’s registered to an address in these mountains,” he said. “Burke County. Near Asheville. Could mean he’s been up here longer’n two years — or that he’s got reason to be close.” The registration went on the rug between them. “Either way, he knew this property. Didn’t come up that drive cold.” His eyes went to the wall that held the unconscious warlock on the other side of it. “Morphine’ll wear off soon. We ought to start thinkin’ about what we’re doin’ with him when it does.”