Atrophy

Deadwood: Hope, Death, & Misery [Closed]

Von Brandt

_______________________________ NAME: Hazel von Brandt AGE: 29 RACE: Human PRONOUNS: She/Her HOMETOWN: Cassor Valley HEIGHT: 5’9” WEIGHT: 150 lbs _______________________________ "A fire can warm a house or turn it to ash. It all depends on who starts it."

_______________________________ the Sacrilegious Turncoat the Sacrilegious Turncoat "Seek out Evil. Destroy the Source. End the Suffering. Words I used to live by. Stupid, stupid words." ▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅ ▅▅▅▅▅ What are you? What are you? APPEARANCE ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ "I suppose most will only notice the cover of the book anyway." The first thing most would notice about Hazel is that she looks practically untouched by the horrors of Deadwood. There is not a cress upon her face, a scar on her body, or a discoloration upon her light skin. Her lightning blue eyes have witnessed atrocities incited by the very words from her lips, but the weight and stress that it has brought upon her is only carried inside. Her straight, strawberry blonde hair is clean and cut just above the shoulder, framing her angular face. She wears golden earrings and a silver necklace that flashes in the sunlight, taunting brigands that watch from the shadows. It’s easily assumed from looking at her that Hazel was born in a high station and it extends into her mannerisms. She ever so slightly holds her pointed chin up, yet avoids appearing condescending. She stands with her shoulder’s back and her hands clasped behind her back, making her appear taller and broader than her actual body. Her stride is confident and unrushed, her eyes shining as she engulfs the environment and people around her. Her voice is soothing like a warm blanket coupled and a cup of hot cider after weeks navigating through the wilds. Despite her aura of elegance, Hazel dresses in sensible traveller clothes that, while pristine, are more functional than fashionable. CAPABILITIES ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ "Those things are still part of me, but now I can use them for something greater." Hazel’s greatly shines when it comes to being an investigator of both mundane and arcane nature. After spending nearly a decade operating as a witch hunter for the Ember Makers, she excels at following leads and sussing out the truth. Although less pertinent now as an independent agent, the skillset she learned while hunting witches still has its uses. In civilized or manmade areas she knows how to command authority, spot when someone is bullshitting her, or notice oddities and traps. In the wilds she can easily track just about anything, find safe locations for shelter, or notice the telltale signs of a monster’s lair. Against magic users she claims to have a kind of sixth sense, able to intuit what sort of ritual they are attempting to cast or “detecting” residue magic surrounding them after recent spell casts. While she has an abundance of stamina, she is not very skilled when it comes to fighting—typically Witchfinders hire muscle to work alongside them in the field. However, she has acquired an ancient arcane tome. While written in an ancient cipher based upon a dead language, Hazel has begun to work on cracking the code and has translated some of the spells. Her spells are largely supportive, serving to bolster her allies and hinder her enemies, but due to the rough translation are not perfect and can swell with rampant arcane energy. These Flares, as she has come to call them, are extremely rare but hint at a greater, more dangerous power to come. The obvious threat of being exposed as a mage and the potential for catastrophe with her Flares makes Hazel treat most of her spells as a final, desperate action instead of a go-to solution. Decoded Spells Healing Warmth: Hazel can cure most forms of light wounds by laying her hand upon the injury and performing a short ritual. Blood, either from the injured or from herself, is traced with her finger near the wound and then burned in the ritual to quickly cauterize and heal the injury. After the spell is cast the blood turns to ash and falls away. People who are healed by Hazel feel warmth as it is casted. While she can momentarily stabilize gravely injured people, her normal heal cannot pull them back from death’s door. The spell takes enough time to cast and requires a steady hand that it is difficult to perform while threatened. It doesn’t treat diseases, curses, or other abnormalities. Flare - Purifying Ashes: The blood sigils run causing the ritual to go array, yet while it should it does not fail. The target of her spell feels agonizing pain as all of the blood inside their body begins to boil and their flesh begins to glow like a star about to go supernova. Their skin is briefly covered in an encasement of ash that quickly cracks and falls away. Hazel’s heal can now pull someone back from the brink of death, remove all their wounds, and cleanse most abnormalities. Unless they are especially hardy the sheer pain of the heal will knock out most individuals for a short time, making it even riskier for Hazel to heal others with under attack. Natural Barrier: Hazel draws runes with dirt on the ground that allows her to terraform the earth around her. Veins of harmless flames streak from the runes to the targeted area, momentarily glow in the targeted area, and then melds the earth. She can cause rock barriers to jut up to form defensive walls, loosen and muddy the ground to make creatures get stuck, or create safer paths through treacherous areas. The time it takes to prepare the ritual depends on the form of the spell, with barriers being the quickest and paths being the longest. The earth shifts slowly enough that it doesn’t harm anyone caught on it, but is fast enough that it can be tricky to avoid and can be used to block obvious incoming attacks. Flare - Natural Disaster: Something goes horribly wrong. The ground shifts and quakes, the harmless flames begin to leap like geysers and spew rocks and smoke, and then everyone better take cover or flee. Depending on the Natural Barrier she was going for, the intensity of the disaster shifts. The rock barriers now burst out of the earth as quick as a fatal spear thrust before erupting in a blast of hot magma in a small area around them. The muddied ground turns to tar and spews forth poisonous volcanic ash, slowly choking the life out of whatever is unfortunate to be stuck in it. The path causes a massive fissure, plowing through whatever stands in its way like a frenzied Beast of Suffering and permanently changing the environment til the end of days. Bonfire: Hazel sprinkles a circle of ash around a piece of coal and creates a magical flame up to the size of a decent campfire. She cannot be burned by the flame, but others can. While useful in a utilitarian sense, Hazel is capable of controlling any flames she creates in this manner with directions from fingers coated in ash. She can smear the ash across the ground to create an opaque wall of fire, grab the coal to create a torch in her hand, or chuck the coal to throw a splash of fire at someone. Due to being magical, the fire does not behave like a normal fire would—it does burn enough to hurt, but it will not spread outside of the ash lines, cannot catch flammable objects on fire, and goes out quick once the coal is tossed away from the ash. In a fight a blade is more dangerous than her flame, but the sight of someone throwing fire is generally enough to keep the swords at bay. Flare - Funeral Pyre: The ash lifts from the ground, encircles Hazel, and engulfs her like a witch being burned at the stake as she becomes a walking inferno. While the flames still do not harm her, the conflagration surrounding her acts like a wildfire and is capable of spreading. She can spray fire from her hands like a dragon’s breath and whip it around her like a deadly firestorm, but she has no control over the flames once they are produced. The spell burns quickly, but the destruction caused by it and the remaining fires continue to burn long after the ash has blown away from her form. Burning Gaze: Hazel’s quickest and simplest spell. She streaks a smear of ash over her eyes and blinks it away. Her eyes appear like burning coals that strike fear into wild beasts and weak-willed, unintelligent monsters, prompting them to flee from her or freeze in place instead of fighting. While minorly unsettling, it is ineffective against humanoids and creatures at the top of the food chain. Since she must lock eyes with the target of the spell it is difficult to use against packs of animals, as the fear effect begins to fade as she turns the spell towards another. Flare - Terrifying Gaze: Creatures see an unspeakable horror when look into Hazel’s eyes, capable of making even the most daring of adventurers stop in terror. She knows not what they see, for none who have witnessed it would ever dare to approach her after she looks away. EQUIPMENT ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ "My system is one of organized chaos verging on catastrophic destruction." Her aforementioned satchel is stuffed with basic supplies, adventuring gear like rope and lanterns, and a journal. She wears three tiny pouches at her side, one for coin, one filled with coal, and the other filled with ash. Wrapped against her satchel is a map case stuffed with local maps, a spy glass, and cartography tools. Hung at her side in a brown scabbard is a shortsword for self-defense. The blade is beautifully crafted with nary a nick on it, and when drawn she holds it out like a rank amateur imitating a swashbuckler that they saw mock dueling at a harvest festival’s stage play. In a smaller scabbard behind her shortsword is a small curved dagger that has seen more use but is still regularly cleaned. The woman wears no armor, a questionable choice for any trying to survive in Deadwood. Hidden in a false side of her satchel is an old, leather bound tome filled with ancient arcane secrets written in another language. The words are actually a cipher, and they appear to shift and move when the pages are open. A few of the pages are splotched with reddish-brown stains. Also inside of the secret compartment is a dark iron insignia of a torch with a spiral of smoke wrapped around it. This is Hazel’s badge that once showed she was a Magistrate of the Ember Makers, the title given to their high-ranking witch hunters. There are perhaps a dozen other similar looking badges mixed in with her own, soiled with ash and rust.

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Who are you?
Who are you?

GOAL
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"I thought I had it all figured out. Now all I am certain of is how little I truly know."

Repentance, knowledge, and security, in that order. She believes that she can find all of those things by helping the Queen and achieving residence in Exusia. A former witch hunter, Hazel has shedded her extremist beliefs after acquiring a mystical tome. She knows she can never undo the suffering that she has caused, but perhaps she can achieve some sort of karmic balance by doing something constructive. However, to ease the path to redemption she’d like to learn more about her spellbook and find a way to detour the hunters on her tracks.

PERSONALITY
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"I do not want forgiveness. I do not want a status. I only want to help. Why is that so impossible to believe?"

Hazel acts matronly, quick to lend a hand or offer an ear, hesitant to judge, and respectful to even the most repulsive of people. She views her past self as a vile monster that was cold, calculating, and quick to suspicion. She is trying her hardest to behave differently, falling into the role of a friendly but quiet caretaker. Hazel displays altruism and generosity where she can, traits that she somehow managed to survive with despite the harshness of reality. Hazel is an abomination amongst the defeated faces, cold shoulders, and broken spirits of the denizens of Deadwood, a naive woman who still believes in goodness and righteousness despite the obvious signs that such things are nothing more than a flight of fantasy.

Under her kind, unbroken exterior is a creature driven by little more than sorrow. While she doesn’t deny what she once was, thoughts of the past still tear at her heart. She rather keep the sadness to herself than be a burden on others who already have it so hard. There have been times where people travelling with Hazel have noticed her staring without blinking into fire or piles of ash for minutes, practically unresponsive, like her soul was ripped out of her body. She will be politely dismissive if questions about it are brought up about it later, uttering an excuse about just being tired.

It doesn’t take long for people who work alongside Hazel to realize that she is a deeply curious individual. While respectful of a person’s privacy, Hazel tries to learn as much as she can about different cultures and locales, always jotting down notes in her journal at the end of the day. Likewise, she’s the kind of person who checks out the strange noise at night instead of hunkering down in her bed, fearlessly walking into potential danger as if nothing could possibly harm her.

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Why are you?
Why are you?

"I fear the thing I could have become."

Hazel doesn't tell her story often, for it is a long and harrowing one, and all the world really needs to know is that she is no longer the monster she appeared to be. Still, she is not the kind of person that is so cowardly that they refuse to face their shade. She will spin the yarn while seated across the campfire if properly encouraged, be it by the urging of companions or the pulling of a lingering sorrow. It begins like all tales from Deadwood begin—with hope, death, and misery.

I. Smoke

Her home was a small but strong community centered around a winery, governed and ran by her family and nestled in the valley next to Mt. Cassor. The von Brandts grew grapes in the fertile soil next to the mountain, yearly sacrificing a portion of their crops to the crater atop the smoking mountain to appease the beast they believed laid inside. When she was thirteen Hazel, whose father was on a business venture, joined her mother with their guards on the trek up the mountain to learn how to perform the sacrifice. The mountain rumbled and spewed forth smoke as Hazel approached the precipice to toss the fruit into the crater, slipping as it shook and tumbling over the edge. She was able to grab an outlet and once the rumbling stopped her screaming was heard and the guards lowered a rope. The sacrifice was finished without any further excitement and a shaking, terrified Hazel descended the mountain.

After the incident Hazel began to notice her mother acting differently. The woman had always been austere to the servants but had been kind to her own daughter, but now Hazel caught her own mother staring at her with suspicion, treating her like an outsider, and muttering under her breath. A year crept by at a glacier’s pace as Hazel found herself being followed by servants, discovered strange minerals and herbs in her meals, and found burnt effigies under her bed. A strange, older man named Augustine arrived at their homestead with a letter. The letter was written by her father, who said he would still be away for months to come and that Augustine had been hired to tutor Hazel, which he did. Yet he also probed her with strange, terrifying questions about herself and her parents that kept her up at night.

The tension that had been building for the past year erupted during the next trip up to the mountain. Hazel did not want to go, but her mother insisted. Augustine offered to accompany the women, but he was declined by Hazel’s mother—outsiders couldn’t take part in the sacrifice lest they irk the mountain. Struggling to hold the basket steady, Hazel approached the edge of the crater yet again. As it started to rumble she heard a shout come from behind her and she dropped the basket, grapes spilling into the crater as she turned to witness her mother, dagger drawn and hate in her eyes, crumple to the ground with a crossbow bolt in her chest.

Hazel watched in a numb daze as Augustine appeared on the summit and struck down the guards before they could even draw their steel. He then grabbed the petrified girl and descended the mountain. Hazel regained control of herself and attempted to struggle, but Augustine easily overpowered the girl. Her struggling stopped when she realized he would’ve harmed her already if that had been his intentions. As Hazel was loaded onto a wagon and driven away from the volcano that had begun to erupt, lava flowing down to destroy the small village, Augustine revealed himself to be a Magistrate of the Ember Makers, a hunter of witches—witches like her mother and father.

He explained everything to her. He told her that her parents ritually sacrificed people to the volcano to protect the regain and help grow their crops, that numerous girls had disappeared from neighboring villages, how her father had kidnapped them, and how her mother sacrificed them to the mountain. He had been tasked by the Ember Makers to completely purge the town, who all had been complicit with the ritual, but through his questioning had come to believe that Hazel was an innocent. As black ash darkened the horizon behind them, Augustine offered to continue Hazel’s tutelage—not as a student, but as a hunter. What was her other choice? Try to survive alone in the wilds of Deadwood when she used to have a lady help her get dressed in the morning?

II. Fire

Hazel accepted Augustine’s offer, and their training began. For years she served as his apprentice, faithfully at his side as he went from town to town drumming up support for witch hunts and setting the torch to husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons, and daughters. Hazel learned to hate witches. She saw how the presence of even one could spread poison through an entire community and turn neighbors against one another. Much to her surprise, she also began to enjoy the thrill of the hunt, the game of cat and mouse, the rush brought upon by the feeling of kill or be killed.

When Augustine died, his insides forced out by a few arcane words and a couple lines of chalk, Hazel didn’t even shed a single tear. The man who had killed her family and left her village to burn and the surrogate father who had raised her to become just as awful as he had clearly succeeded in his training. She picked up right where he left off, a bloodhound sniffing after the arcane, spreading fervor and fear wherever she went and ripping out the cancerous growths that were choking the stagnating societies that were struggling just to survive. She saw herself as a legendary hero, a knight errant, a champion of justice righting the wrongs in this world with a torch in one hand and the other waving on an angry mob.

And then came what would ultimately be her last hunt. It had turned sour once Hazel had realized some of the locals had banded together to protect a suspected witch, likely enthralled by her magic. So powerful was the spell that the only solution was to purge the village, level it completely like the lava from a flowing volcano and letting something better grow from the ashes. With a band of hired mercenaries by her side, Hazel led the wholesale slaughter of the town, sparing none, burning all. The town fought back valiantly. It was a bloodbath for both sides. Hazel pressed on even when the witch’s brother speared her through the ribs and just under her heart seconds before she drove her sword through his.

When she made it to where the witch was hiding she could barely walk and barely see, blood, smoke, and sweat mixing in her eyes. She saw the witch, a young girl perhaps in her late teens, not much older then when she had started traveling with Augustine, reach out towards her as Hazel’s world went black, the loss of blood finally getting to her. When Hazel awoke she saw the witch over her, spell book open, lips muttering. A warmth surged through her body and gave Hazel the strength needed to jam her sword through the girl’s belly. Hazel swears she saw the girl smile as the witch died, her tome falling open on the ground, the spell to heal Hazel having been barely finished.

The act of mercy towards an enemy shook Hazel deeply, and the vibrations broke Hazel free of the mold created by Augustine and the Ember Makers’ indoctrination. She grabbed the woman’s tome and took off before the remaining mercenaries could find her. Her mind raced as it saw the past witches she had hunted in a new light. If this woman had only been a healer, then what of the others? She began seeing inconsistencies in her past investigations, explanations she hand-waved, and vile actions she justified all for the fervor of the hunt.

Augustine had always repeated the motto of the Ember Makers to her: Seek out Evil. Destroy the Source. End the Suffering. They had been her mantra, but now she couldn’t remember a single time where a community had called for her to lead a witch hunt. She had always been the one to arrive in the town and declare one, as Augustine had done before her, and as she was certain the other Ember Makers did elsewhere. Before her arrival the communities had been fine, but upon her departure they were shattered, unlikely to ever regain a sense of normalcy. Hazel felt sick. End the suffering? Destroy the source? She might as well toss herself from a cliff then, because the only thing consistent in all of these awful witch hunts had been her leading the push.

III. Ashes

She was there on the edge when she felt the book burn in her hand. Hazel looked down at it, flipping through the pages, and watched as the cipher danced and shifted. She landed on the page with the girl’s bloodstained on it, the last spell the woman had ever cast. Amazingly, she could understand some of the text. Hazel sat down on the ledge, her feet kicking the stone cliff as her finger drew and redrew the arcane symbol in the dirt. She must’ve been there for hours before the sigil finally glowed, fizzled, and died. She couldn’t reproduce it again, but it didn’t matter. Her curiosity was piqued. She couldn't bring back the people she'd massacred or the towns she had destroyed, but she could show others the kindness the nameless witch had shown her. She just needed to learn how.

Hazel stepped away from the ledge. She abandoned the Ember Makers and began wandering to discover how to become the kind of person who could heal a monster that was trying to kill them. It didn’t take her long to realize that the other Ember Makers were after her. She was excommunicated from the order, branded a heretic, and slander was spread denying she’d ever been a Magistrate in the first place. Augustine was eradicated from Ember Maker history, his pages ripped out of their documents to remove all of Hazel’s ties from the fanatical order. It bothered her little. She wanted nothing to do with the bastards.

However, their chase meant she couldn’t stay in one place too long without fear of unleashing another witch hunt in a town she had resided. For the past two years Hazel has been on the move, helping travelers and studying her tome all while avoiding her former order. Hazel jumped at the call when she saw the Queen of Exusia’s plea for adventurers. It would be impossible for the Ember Makers to follow her there, and if she was able to live in Exusia then Hazel could get proper training on the spells in her book. She could finally achieve her goal. End the suffering? That was impossible, crazy even. But balance it? Perhaps that too was impossible, but she still had to try.

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What else is there?
What else is there?

“A world without joy is worse than a world with suffering, and you can’t experience one without the other.”

Deadwood: Hope, Death, & Misery [Closed]

Here. Take a human.

Von Brandt

_______________________________ NAME: Hazel von Brandt AGE: 29 RACE: Human PRONOUNS: She/Her HOMETOWN: Cassor Valley HEIGHT: 5’9” WEIGHT: 150 lbs _______________________________ "A fire can warm a house or turn it to ash. It all depends on who starts it."

_______________________________ the Sacrilegious Turncoat the Sacrilegious Turncoat "Seek out Evil. Destroy the Source. End the Suffering. Words I used to live by. Stupid, stupid words." ▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅ ▅▅▅▅▅ What are you? What are you? APPEARANCE ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ "I suppose most will only notice the cover of the book anyway." The first thing most would notice about Hazel is that she looks practically untouched by the horrors of Deadwood. There is not a cress upon her face, a scar on her body, or a discoloration upon her light skin. Her lightning blue eyes have witnessed atrocities incited by the very words from her lips, but the weight and stress that it has brought upon her is only carried inside. Her straight, strawberry blonde hair is clean and cut just above the shoulder, framing her angular face. She wears golden earrings and a silver necklace that flashes in the sunlight, taunting brigands that watch from the shadows. It’s easily assumed from looking at her that Hazel was born in a high station and it extends into her mannerisms. She ever so slightly holds her pointed chin up, yet avoids appearing condescending. She stands with her shoulder’s back and her hands clasped behind her back, making her appear taller and broader than her actual body. Her stride is confident and unrushed, her eyes shining as she engulfs the environment and people around her. Her voice is soothing like a warm blanket coupled and a cup of hot cider after weeks navigating through the wilds. Despite her aura of elegance, Hazel dresses in sensible traveller clothes that, while pristine, are more functional than fashionable. CAPABILITIES ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ "Those things are still part of me, but now I can use them for something greater." Hazel’s greatly shines when it comes to being an investigator of both mundane and arcane nature. After spending nearly a decade operating as a witch hunter for the Ember Makers, she excels at following leads and sussing out the truth. Although less pertinent now as an independent agent, the skillset she learned while hunting witches still has its uses. In civilized or manmade areas she knows how to command authority, spot when someone is bullshitting her, or notice oddities and traps. In the wilds she can easily track just about anything, find safe locations for shelter, or notice the telltale signs of a monster’s lair. Against magic users she claims to have a kind of sixth sense, able to intuit what sort of ritual they are attempting to cast or “detecting” residue magic surrounding them after recent spell casts. While she has an abundance of stamina, she is not very skilled when it comes to fighting—typically Witchfinders hire muscle to work alongside them in the field. However, she has acquired an ancient arcane tome. While written in an ancient cipher based upon a dead language, Hazel has begun to work on cracking the code and has translated some of the spells. Her spells are largely supportive, serving to bolster her allies and hinder her enemies, but due to the rough translation are not perfect and can swell with rampant arcane energy. These Flares, as she has come to call them, are extremely rare but hint at a greater, more dangerous power to come. The obvious threat of being exposed as a mage and the potential for catastrophe with her Flares makes Hazel treat most of her spells as a final, desperate action instead of a go-to solution. Decoded Spells Healing Warmth: Hazel can cure most forms of light wounds by laying her hand upon the injury and performing a short ritual. Blood, either from the injured or from herself, is traced with her finger near the wound and then burned in the ritual to quickly cauterize and heal the injury. After the spell is cast the blood turns to ash and falls away. People who are healed by Hazel feel warmth as it is casted. While she can momentarily stabilize gravely injured people, her normal heal cannot pull them back from death’s door. The spell takes enough time to cast and requires a steady hand that it is difficult to perform while threatened. It doesn’t treat diseases, curses, or other abnormalities. Flare - Purifying Ashes: The blood sigils run causing the ritual to go array, yet while it should it does not fail. The target of her spell feels agonizing pain as all of the blood inside their body begins to boil and their flesh begins to glow like a star about to go supernova. Their skin is briefly covered in an encasement of ash that quickly cracks and falls away. Hazel’s heal can now pull someone back from the brink of death, remove all their wounds, and cleanse most abnormalities. Unless they are especially hardy the sheer pain of the heal will knock out most individuals for a short time, making it even riskier for Hazel to heal others with under attack. Natural Barrier: Hazel draws runes with dirt on the ground that allows her to terraform the earth around her. Veins of harmless flames streak from the runes to the targeted area, momentarily glow in the targeted area, and then melds the earth. She can cause rock barriers to jut up to form defensive walls, loosen and muddy the ground to make creatures get stuck, or create safer paths through treacherous areas. The time it takes to prepare the ritual depends on the form of the spell, with barriers being the quickest and paths being the longest. The earth shifts slowly enough that it doesn’t harm anyone caught on it, but is fast enough that it can be tricky to avoid and can be used to block obvious incoming attacks. Flare - Natural Disaster: Something goes horribly wrong. The ground shifts and quakes, the harmless flames begin to leap like geysers and spew rocks and smoke, and then everyone better take cover or flee. Depending on the Natural Barrier she was going for, the intensity of the disaster shifts. The rock barriers now burst out of the earth as quick as a fatal spear thrust before erupting in a blast of hot magma in a small area around them. The muddied ground turns to tar and spews forth poisonous volcanic ash, slowly choking the life out of whatever is unfortunate to be stuck in it. The path causes a massive fissure, plowing through whatever stands in its way like a frenzied Beast of Suffering and permanently changing the environment til the end of days. Bonfire: Hazel sprinkles a circle of ash around a piece of coal and creates a magical flame up to the size of a decent campfire. She cannot be burned by the flame, but others can. While useful in a utilitarian sense, Hazel is capable of controlling any flames she creates in this manner with directions from fingers coated in ash. She can smear the ash across the ground to create an opaque wall of fire, grab the coal to create a torch in her hand, or chuck the coal to throw a splash of fire at someone. Due to being magical, the fire does not behave like a normal fire would—it does burn enough to hurt, but it will not spread outside of the ash lines, cannot catch flammable objects on fire, and goes out quick once the coal is tossed away from the ash. In a fight a blade is more dangerous than her flame, but the sight of someone throwing fire is generally enough to keep the swords at bay. Flare - Funeral Pyre: The ash lifts from the ground, encircles Hazel, and engulfs her like a witch being burned at the stake as she becomes a walking inferno. While the flames still do not harm her, the conflagration surrounding her acts like a wildfire and is capable of spreading. She can spray fire from her hands like a dragon’s breath and whip it around her like a deadly firestorm, but she has no control over the flames once they are produced. The spell burns quickly, but the destruction caused by it and the remaining fires continue to burn long after the ash has blown away from her form. Burning Gaze: Hazel’s quickest and simplest spell. She streaks a smear of ash over her eyes and blinks it away. Her eyes appear like burning coals that strike fear into wild beasts and weak-willed, unintelligent monsters, prompting them to flee from her or freeze in place instead of fighting. While minorly unsettling, it is ineffective against humanoids and creatures at the top of the food chain. Since she must lock eyes with the target of the spell it is difficult to use against packs of animals, as the fear effect begins to fade as she turns the spell towards another. Flare - Terrifying Gaze: Creatures see an unspeakable horror when look into Hazel’s eyes, capable of making even the most daring of adventurers stop in terror. She knows not what they see, for none who have witnessed it would ever dare to approach her after she looks away. EQUIPMENT ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ "My system is one of organized chaos verging on catastrophic destruction." Her aforementioned satchel is stuffed with basic supplies, adventuring gear like rope and lanterns, and a journal. She wears three tiny pouches at her side, one for coin, one filled with coal, and the other filled with ash. Wrapped against her satchel is a map case stuffed with local maps, a spy glass, and cartography tools. Hung at her side in a brown scabbard is a shortsword for self-defense. The blade is beautifully crafted with nary a nick on it, and when drawn she holds it out like a rank amateur imitating a swashbuckler that they saw mock dueling at a harvest festival’s stage play. In a smaller scabbard behind her shortsword is a small curved dagger that has seen more use but is still regularly cleaned. The woman wears no armor, a questionable choice for any trying to survive in Deadwood. Hidden in a false side of her satchel is an old, leather bound tome filled with ancient arcane secrets written in another language. The words are actually a cipher, and they appear to shift and move when the pages are open. A few of the pages are splotched with reddish-brown stains. Also inside of the secret compartment is a dark iron insignia of a torch with a spiral of smoke wrapped around it. This is Hazel’s badge that once showed she was a Magistrate of the Ember Makers, the title given to their high-ranking witch hunters. There are perhaps a dozen other similar looking badges mixed in with her own, soiled with ash and rust.

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Who are you?
Who are you?

GOAL
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"I thought I had it all figured out. Now all I am certain of is how little I truly know."

Repentance, knowledge, and security, in that order. She believes that she can find all of those things by helping the Queen and achieving residence in Exusia. A former witch hunter, Hazel has shedded her extremist beliefs after acquiring a mystical tome. She knows she can never undo the suffering that she has caused, but perhaps she can achieve some sort of karmic balance by doing something constructive. However, to ease the path to redemption she’d like to learn more about her spellbook and find a way to detour the hunters on her tracks.

PERSONALITY
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"I do not want forgiveness. I do not want a status. I only want to help. Why is that so impossible to believe?"

Hazel acts matronly, quick to lend a hand or offer an ear, hesitant to judge, and respectful to even the most repulsive of people. She views her past self as a vile monster that was cold, calculating, and quick to suspicion. She is trying her hardest to behave differently, falling into the role of a friendly but quiet caretaker. Hazel displays altruism and generosity where she can, traits that she somehow managed to survive with despite the harshness of reality. Hazel is an abomination amongst the defeated faces, cold shoulders, and broken spirits of the denizens of Deadwood, a naive woman who still believes in goodness and righteousness despite the obvious signs that such things are nothing more than a flight of fantasy.

Under her kind, unbroken exterior is a creature driven by little more than sorrow. While she doesn’t deny what she once was, thoughts of the past still tear at her heart. She rather keep the sadness to herself than be a burden on others who already have it so hard. There have been times where people travelling with Hazel have noticed her staring without blinking into fire or piles of ash for minutes, practically unresponsive, like her soul was ripped out of her body. She will be politely dismissive if questions about it are brought up about it later, uttering an excuse about just being tired.

It doesn’t take long for people who work alongside Hazel to realize that she is a deeply curious individual. While respectful of a person’s privacy, Hazel tries to learn as much as she can about different cultures and locales, always jotting down notes in her journal at the end of the day. Likewise, she’s the kind of person who checks out the strange noise at night instead of hunkering down in her bed, fearlessly walking into potential danger as if nothing could possibly harm her.

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Why are you?
Why are you?

"I fear the thing I could have become."

Hazel doesn't tell her story often, for it is a long and harrowing one, and all the world really needs to know is that she is no longer the monster she appeared to be. Still, she is not the kind of person that is so cowardly that they refuse to face their shade. She will spin the yarn while seated across the campfire if properly encouraged, be it by the urging of companions or the pulling of a lingering sorrow. It begins like all tales from Deadwood begin—with hope, death, and misery.

I. Smoke

Her home was a small but strong community centered around a winery, governed and ran by her family and nestled in the valley next to Mt. Cassor. The von Brandts grew grapes in the fertile soil next to the mountain, yearly sacrificing a portion of their crops to the crater atop the smoking mountain to appease the beast they believed laid inside. When she was thirteen Hazel, whose father was on a business venture, joined her mother with their guards on the trek up the mountain to learn how to perform the sacrifice. The mountain rumbled and spewed forth smoke as Hazel approached the precipice to toss the fruit into the crater, slipping as it shook and tumbling over the edge. She was able to grab an outlet and once the rumbling stopped her screaming was heard and the guards lowered a rope. The sacrifice was finished without any further excitement and a shaking, terrified Hazel descended the mountain.

After the incident Hazel began to notice her mother acting differently. The woman had always been austere to the servants but had been kind to her own daughter, but now Hazel caught her own mother staring at her with suspicion, treating her like an outsider, and muttering under her breath. A year crept by at a glacier’s pace as Hazel found herself being followed by servants, discovered strange minerals and herbs in her meals, and found burnt effigies under her bed. A strange, older man named Augustine arrived at their homestead with a letter. The letter was written by her father, who said he would still be away for months to come and that Augustine had been hired to tutor Hazel, which he did. Yet he also probed her with strange, terrifying questions about herself and her parents that kept her up at night.

The tension that had been building for the past year erupted during the next trip up to the mountain. Hazel did not want to go, but her mother insisted. Augustine offered to accompany the women, but he was declined by Hazel’s mother—outsiders couldn’t take part in the sacrifice lest they irk the mountain. Struggling to hold the basket steady, Hazel approached the edge of the crater yet again. As it started to rumble she heard a shout come from behind her and she dropped the basket, grapes spilling into the crater as she turned to witness her mother, dagger drawn and hate in her eyes, crumple to the ground with a crossbow bolt in her chest.

Hazel watched in a numb daze as Augustine appeared on the summit and struck down the guards before they could even draw their steel. He then grabbed the petrified girl and descended the mountain. Hazel regained control of herself and attempted to struggle, but Augustine easily overpowered the girl. Her struggling stopped when she realized he would’ve harmed her already if that had been his intentions. As Hazel was loaded onto a wagon and driven away from the volcano that had begun to erupt, lava flowing down to destroy the small village, Augustine revealed himself to be a Magistrate of the Ember Makers, a hunter of witches—witches like her mother and father.

He explained everything to her. He told her that her parents ritually sacrificed people to the volcano to protect the regain and help grow their crops, that numerous girls had disappeared from neighboring villages, how her father had kidnapped them, and how her mother sacrificed them to the mountain. He had been tasked by the Ember Makers to completely purge the town, who all had been complicit with the ritual, but through his questioning had come to believe that Hazel was an innocent. As black ash darkened the horizon behind them, Augustine offered to continue Hazel’s tutelage—not as a student, but as a hunter. What was her other choice? Try to survive alone in the wilds of Deadwood when she used to have a lady help her get dressed in the morning?

II. Fire

Hazel accepted Augustine’s offer, and their training began. For years she served as his apprentice, faithfully at his side as he went from town to town drumming up support for witch hunts and setting the torch to husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, sons, and daughters. Hazel learned to hate witches. She saw how the presence of even one could spread poison through an entire community and turn neighbors against one another. Much to her surprise, she also began to enjoy the thrill of the hunt, the game of cat and mouse, the rush brought upon by the feeling of kill or be killed.

When Augustine died, his insides forced out by a few arcane words and a couple lines of chalk, Hazel didn’t even shed a single tear. The man who had killed her family and left her village to burn and the surrogate father who had raised her to become just as awful as he had clearly succeeded in his training. She picked up right where he left off, a bloodhound sniffing after the arcane, spreading fervor and fear wherever she went and ripping out the cancerous growths that were choking the stagnating societies that were struggling just to survive. She saw herself as a legendary hero, a knight errant, a champion of justice righting the wrongs in this world with a torch in one hand and the other waving on an angry mob.

And then came what would ultimately be her last hunt. It had turned sour once Hazel had realized some of the locals had banded together to protect a suspected witch, likely enthralled by her magic. So powerful was the spell that the only solution was to purge the village, level it completely like the lava from a flowing volcano and letting something better grow from the ashes. With a band of hired mercenaries by her side, Hazel led the wholesale slaughter of the town, sparing none, burning all. The town fought back valiantly. It was a bloodbath for both sides. Hazel pressed on even when the witch’s brother speared her through the ribs and just under her heart seconds before she drove her sword through his.

When she made it to where the witch was hiding she could barely walk and barely see, blood, smoke, and sweat mixing in her eyes. She saw the witch, a young girl perhaps in her late teens, not much older then when she had started traveling with Augustine, reach out towards her as Hazel’s world went black, the loss of blood finally getting to her. When Hazel awoke she saw the witch over her, spell book open, lips muttering. A warmth surged through her body and gave Hazel the strength needed to jam her sword through the girl’s belly. Hazel swears she saw the girl smile as the witch died, her tome falling open on the ground, the spell to heal Hazel having been barely finished.

The act of mercy towards an enemy shook Hazel deeply, and the vibrations broke Hazel free of the mold created by Augustine and the Ember Makers’ indoctrination. She grabbed the woman’s tome and took off before the remaining mercenaries could find her. Her mind raced as it saw the past witches she had hunted in a new light. If this woman had only been a healer, then what of the others? She began seeing inconsistencies in her past investigations, explanations she hand-waved, and vile actions she justified all for the fervor of the hunt.

Augustine had always repeated the motto of the Ember Makers to her: Seek out Evil. Destroy the Source. End the Suffering. They had been her mantra, but now she couldn’t remember a single time where a community had called for her to lead a witch hunt. She had always been the one to arrive in the town and declare one, as Augustine had done before her, and as she was certain the other Ember Makers did elsewhere. Before her arrival the communities had been fine, but upon her departure they were shattered, unlikely to ever regain a sense of normalcy. Hazel felt sick. End the suffering? Destroy the source? She might as well toss herself from a cliff then, because the only thing consistent in all of these awful witch hunts had been her leading the push.

III. Ashes

She was there on the edge when she felt the book burn in her hand. Hazel looked down at it, flipping through the pages, and watched as the cipher danced and shifted. She landed on the page with the girl’s bloodstained on it, the last spell the woman had ever cast. Amazingly, she could understand some of the text. Hazel sat down on the ledge, her feet kicking the stone cliff as her finger drew and redrew the arcane symbol in the dirt. She must’ve been there for hours before the sigil finally glowed, fizzled, and died. She couldn’t reproduce it again, but it didn’t matter. Her curiosity was piqued. She couldn't bring back the people she'd massacred or the towns she had destroyed, but she could show others the kindness the nameless witch had shown her. She just needed to learn how.

Hazel stepped away from the ledge. She abandoned the Ember Makers and began wandering to discover how to become the kind of person who could heal a monster that was trying to kill them. It didn’t take her long to realize that the other Ember Makers were after her. She was excommunicated from the order, branded a heretic, and slander was spread denying she’d ever been a Magistrate in the first place. Augustine was eradicated from Ember Maker history, his pages ripped out of their documents to remove all of Hazel’s ties from the fanatical order. It bothered her little. She wanted nothing to do with the bastards.

However, their chase meant she couldn’t stay in one place too long without fear of unleashing another witch hunt in a town she had resided. For the past two years Hazel has been on the move, helping travelers and studying her tome all while avoiding her former order. Hazel jumped at the call when she saw the Queen of Exusia’s plea for adventurers. It would be impossible for the Ember Makers to follow her there, and if she was able to live in Exusia then Hazel could get proper training on the spells in her book. She could finally achieve her goal. End the suffering? That was impossible, crazy even. But balance it? Perhaps that too was impossible, but she still had to try.

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What else is there?
What else is there?

“A world without joy is worse than a world with suffering, and you can’t experience one without the other.”

Winds of Fate - A Thieves' Adventure (Semi-Tabletop)

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Solange - The Faded Lantern Tavern & Inn

^{They would settle for silver even when gold is just around the corner.}

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The pen slashed like a switchblade in the hands of a streetrat, bleeding out ink upon the page as a long finger idly traced the rim of her wine glass. Solange couldn’t remember when she had exactly picked up the habit that blocked other fingers from getting near the rim, but she imagined it had to be sometime after she’d spiked her first drink. She remembered standing next to the lavatory door with her ear cupped against the grain, holding back a smile as she heard the sobs and wretches from the otherside before giving away her position with a gentle knock. A few kind words, a hand to hold back the greasy locks of hair, and one embroidered handkerchief she never got back later and Solange had turned a rival into a lifelong friend. It was a shame that whatshername’s life didn’t end up being so long, but what could one expect from someone foolish enough to attempt to steal from Fontaine?

Solange never wanted to find herself in that girl’s spot, so desperate for the kindness of another person that she’d waste her life just because they offhandedly mentioned how they’d love to wear Fontaine’s necklace. She huffed dismissively and lifted the wine glass up to her mouth, nostrils flaring ever so slightly before she pressed her lips to the rim. Cautious, yes. Paranoid, perhaps. Safe, certainly. Solange took the smallest of sips, her face wrinkling ever the slightest at the swirl she had ordered. It was yet another thing the Red Sail had over the Faded Lantern. She set the glass down on the counter, twisting it ever so slightly so that the embellishment faced her, and returned to tracing the rim as she wrote.

“Whatcha writing?”

Solange closed her eyes, inhaled sharply, and smothered the sigh in its infancy. Another thing the Red Sail had over the Faded Lantern: the girls there knew when to not pester the customers. Solange opened her eyes, fixed a soft smile on her face, and looked up. The tavern had filled since she had sat down. Tables were crowded with sailors and dockhands drenched in a potent mixture of rain, sweat, and spilled grog. A game of cards was going. Solange smirked as one of the men slipped an ace out of his sleeve before her attention turned to the woman who had sidled up against the bar, her black hair chopped sloppily at her chin, her heavy makeup, the branding used by all of her peers, rivaling that of a court jester.

Solange shifted in her seat. Comradity wasn’t a common occurrence amongst the competition—the daggers the girls had first shot Solange when she’d entered the tavern made that clear. Perhaps the other prostitute had noticed the shift in the shoulder when a man had approached Solange earlier and made a show about dropping his coin purse on the counter to make the gold jingle. Perhaps she, like Solange, was trying to avoid work. Then again, the way she was marketing herself by folding her arms underneath her bosom and pushing up meant that perhaps she was the kind who didn’t limit her market. Perhaps it was just muscle memory. Solanged snapped her book shut.

“Why do you ask?” asked Solange, her hand completely cupping the top of her wine glass.

“No reason. Just don’t see whores writing much.”

“Careful, love. Imagine how insulted I would be if I were a lady,” said Solange, fully aware that no lady would drink alone or even desire to step foot through the doors of the Faded Lantern. “Things considered, I feel like you wouldn’t see many other kinds people writing in this place either.”

Solange gestured toward the card table as emphasis, where one man was now yelling and pointing at the card sharp. Seems like he noticed the color on the back of the card was off, too. The woman shrugged. She seemed to be waiting for Solange’s reply to her original question. Flipping the book back open, Solange twisted the page so that it was easier for the other woman to read as she began to explain her process of categorizing and budgeting medicinal herbs for a quick-acting muscle relaxer she was working on. She neglected to mention that the relaxer would, ideally, make it impossible for a man to stand upright or defend themselves, turning them into a pile of bones and flesh long enough for someone to ventilate a jugular.

She caught the woman’s eye as she continued to explain about her process and saw a familiar look. It wasn’t the usual look of confusion or distrust she received when gushing about the marvels of medicine, but rather the familiar look that Fontaine’s girls gave her when something was off. Solange snapped her book closed, drained her drink, and snatched the woman by the hand. “Oh you pretty thing, why didn’t you interrupt me?” “I wanted to be sure it was you. I—” “Shush, not where others can hear. Lead me to your private chamber.”

Solange allowed the woman to drag her out of the common room right as a crack cut through the chatter and was followed by cheers as the card sharp ate a right hook like a champ. Solange wrinkled her nose; something always came up just when things were getting good. She heard a surge of energy, a bellow, a pause in the music, and then several echoing shouts behind her as the fight was carried outside as the music picked back up without even missing a note. Solange cast a glance over her shoulder to make sure they were not being followed as the woman led her up three flights of stairs and into a dimly lit room.

Solange joined the woman who sat on the bed and gave her hand a squeeze. This close she could smell the alcohol on the woman. Even in the lowlight and with the makeup it was clear that the woman was much older than Solange, perhaps twice her age. Tears ruined her rouge. Something about all of this was crushing, as if a door had been laid on top of her and weighted down with stones. Would this be Solange’s future, drunk and seeking comfort from a stranger, if she did not get out of the trade? Thoughts of how she could exploit the woman surfaced in her head next; she pushed them to the side for now and wrapped an arm around the sobbing older woman.

“There, there. Seeking help is the hardest part and you have already climbed that mountain. What’s your name, dear?” asked Solange, her low like a lover’s whisper.

“Magarette.”

“Okay, Magarette, we’re going to get through this together. Now then,” she said, the warmth in her voice falling away as she produced her journal. Solange shifted on the side of the bed, pulled back from the other woman, brushed a wisp of red hair behind her ear, and tucked a leg under her knee. “Tell me everything and I will make it all right.

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_{The sad truth is that most people enjoy being lied to if it makes them feel safe.}

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“Can you read? asked Solange, her voice punctuated with the sharp thunder of a sheet being torn from her journal. Scratched upon it in fine, flowing script was a detailed list of ingredients and instructions. Magarette shook her head no, to which Solange folded the sheet into a triangle and pressed it in the woman’s hand with a single gold piece.“Go to Thistleleaf Apothecary and give this to the man behind the counter. Don’t worry, he’s discrete, but do not give the letter to his wife unless you want the whole town to hear about your ailment. The gold will cover the components with enough bits to spare to get a scone from the bakery next door as he prepares the order. Just get the paper back once he is finished. If none of the girls here can read then ask for Renata at the Red Sail if I am not there. Garlic and acacia can be used to prevent it from happening again, although know that you know what to look for I imagine prevention will happen earlier.”

“Thank you, thank you. I have no clue how to repay you.”

Solange smiled. Fortunately she had a dozen methods already planned, but there was only one she could cull and knowing the woman could not read made it all the better. She reached into her bodice and plucked out the letter, sealed with wax to make it look official and spritzed with her perfume to entice interest. “Do you want to watch your boss polymorph into a giving man?” asked Solange, winking as Magarette took it from her. “Tell Lord Vargas it’s from his secret admirer and that she refuses to allow you to deliver that letter unless he gives you the night off. Mark my words, love, he’ll give you the week.”

Solange watched as Magarette carefully tucked the letter into her shirt and quickly left the room to do as she was told. A sweet woman, but a stupid one. Solange shifted down the bed until she sat next to the nightstand and tried the handle. It jiggled, but didn’t slide open. Solange smirked. The old hag was smarter than she had thought. Reaching back, she plucked a single pin from her red waves of hair, crouched down beside the bedside table, and slid the pin into the tiny keyhole. With a flick of the wrist and a light bump against the handle, Solange’s face fell as the hairpin snapped. A second and third attempt saw equal amounts of failure. Anymore she was risking not looking her best for Lord Vargas.

Frustrated, she slid the broken hairpins under the bed and returned to the bar. The music was still a lively jaunt, and the empty spot at the card table had been filled once more. Even her seat at the bar was still open, as if the world dared to not inconvenience her any further. Fine, she would forgive it for the day. Solange ordered another glass of red, which she guarded as dearly as the last, and flipped open her journal to review the notes on the men who had last slept with Magarette. Potential piggy banks each and every one of them, assuming she could ever find them based upon her largely useless descriptions to even try to crack open their porcine and porcelain bodies for the bounty hiding inside. Still, a girl could dream. She sipped her wine and schemed her schemes, humming quietly to the tune as she waited to hear word from her latest victim.

Solange’s Letter

My Sweet Lord-

So long has it been since my last correspondence, my dear, that I am fearful that perchance you have forgotten all about your precious ruby. Know that I spent every night with your letter clutched to my bosom, your sweet words against my beating heart, wishing that I could run to you but knowing it impossible. F had noticed the glance we exchanged upon your last visit and has kept her horrid beast prowling around in my affairs ever since. She has only just grown lax, bored by the lack of bloodshed.

Know this. I have the same desires burning inside me as do you. I am an honest woman stuck in a dishonest line of work, and until that life is behind me I am undeserving of your generosity. If it be as unbearable as you say, then you know how you can find me and the price to pay. But you are a gentleman, and you know that nothing smothers passion more than having to count out bits. This understanding of yours, your sweetness, is what keeps me up at night, warming my face and heating my hips. I ask only that you wait a few grains of sand longer..

BUT— There is no reason we should not meet. We have much to discuss in the matters of business, although I admit that it is largely an excuse just to see your face once again. I am already in the tavern. I eagerly await your call.

Yours In Dreams,

-S

Winds of Fate - A Thieves' Adventure (Semi-Tabletop)

Solange Belgard
Level: 1
Class: Seducer/Thief (novice)
Currency: 18G, 59 bits
Ammunition: Verbal
Armor: +0, Common Clothing

Vitality: 10
Status: Scheming

SOLANGE

Gender: Female
Age: 21
Race: Human, Bretonian
Origin: Pembrook, small farming settlement east of Gullian’s bay.
Religion: Voi
Attire: Billowing dress, loosened bodice, wrapped sandals, cheap jewelry.
Demeanor: Composed, attentive, shrewd.

Attributes:

Awareness: [3] (Bretonian) The phony horror stories the older girls used to tease Solange with kept her up at night and taught her to have an attentive eye. Now she’s quick to single out the drinkers and the talkers and the tag-a-longers, and wakes up the next morning eager to hear the actual horror stories about the men she passed over.
Intelligence: [2] She keeps a couple of books hidden in her room, knowing full well that less than a century ago they would’ve thrown her in a pyre for even dusting off a tome.
Strength:[1] Solange is strong enough to keep her chin up and capable enough to get someone else to do the heavy lifting.
Wit: [3] With understated cunning and tongue as sharp as a soldier’s rapier, she keeps her plays obfuscated until ready to drop the game winning move.
Dexterity: [2] She has quite the nimble fingers and has the graceful, poised movements more like a lady of high nobility than a woman of ill repute.
Willpower: [3] Solange works in a brothel for trade and regularly handles toxic plants and addictive substances for a hobby.She’d have been in a casket long ago if she wasn’t strong of body and soul.
Charisma: [2] She’s pretty enough as it is, but with a touch of rouge and the proper light she stands out as one of the more popular girls amongst the clientele. Still, good features are of little use outside of the house. Her profession marks her as undesirable amongst the more “reputable” members of society, even the ones that are regular clients...especially the ones that are regular clients.
Luck: [0] It is easier to accept that she is cursed to forever have bad luck than to admit that perhaps she has made bad decisions.

Skillsets

Words like Spun Wool [3]- Lying. Her whole profession is one giant charade. Nobody would pay her if she was honest. Solange knows how to thread together strings of deceit to spin a proper lie.
Clandestine Chamomile [2]- Poison. Solange is known amongst the girls of the house for making a cup of tea fit for royalty. Perhaps they would be more hesitant to take a sip if they were aware of the herbs she was growing in that little garden of hers. She’s just happy the ones she doesn’t like haven’t made the connection between their stomach cramps and her herbal tea.
Bitter Leaves, Better Lives [2]- Drugs. Not all of the flowers in her garden are there for prettiness or pettiness. Some of her herbs are quite practical, able to help others to get by or get high with painkillers, ointments, “powdered dreams”, and salves for sailor rash.
Threading the Needle [2]- Evade. Be it a wild haymaker from a rowdy drunk, a rogue beer bottle flinging through the air, or the Marm giving out cleaning duty, Solange is aces at getting out of the way and making herself scarce.
The Window Shopper’s Special [2]- Sleight of Hand. She works hard for her money. Why spend a single cent of it on something that can just as easily slip into the many hidden pockets she has sewn inside of her dress?
Boarding Party [1] (Bretonian)- Sailing. Solange is not a sailor. She’s only ever voyaged on a boat once. Nevertheless, she’s acquired enough knowledge from the seafarers she entertains to know port from starboard and that if she's the best sailor onboard then it's time to abandon ship.

Flaws:

Strife’s Seamstress: Solange is a miserable person that largely finds comfort in cruelty. She views others as playthings, toys to amuse her until they break or she grows bored of them. She’ll push people to be their worst self, or try to turn them against one another, or spread complete lies about them to ruin their reputation. She’s managed to avoid any comeuppance so far, always playing dumb and acting the innocent, but it’s only a matter of time before somebody sees through the bullshit.
Eyes of Evil: Solange believes that she was cursed to have bad luck. How else can she explain her awful existence? She will do everything in her power to avoid tempting fate and treats superstitions as if they were gospel. The woman seizes up in fear at the sight of black cats, avoids every crack she can despite her mother already being dead, and will leap the damn table to chuck salt over her shoulder if it is spilled. She has spent a small fortune on good luck charms, follows certain rituals every morning and every night, and listens to fortune tellers as if they are genuine prophets.
Pacifistic Pretense: The world better believe that Solange wouldn't even harm a hair on the head of someone who wronged her. It's not that Solange opposes violence or is against killing, it's just that Solange knows she's not really good at either one of them if it's an obvious act. She's just bad in a straight fight, easily telegraphing her attacks and barely ever considering her footing. She'd be better off running when against someone trained with a blade.

Background:

Born the youngest child in a small village to a largely unsuccessful tailor and a locally renown midwife, Solange settled into the role of becoming her mother’s replacement once her elder sister, Renata, eloped with some traveling merchant. She accompanied her mother for a number of years, enjoying the travel and the learning but absolutely revolted by the deliveries. Even when her mother told her she was ready to strike out on her own Solange insisted that she still needed more practice, something that her older sister now living in Gullian would call her out about in letters when not boasting about how magnificent her life was in the city.

When her mother became pregnant in her late thirties it was Solange who suggested they find another midwife instead of doing it herself. In the years Solange had followed her mother she watched the woman never lose a child or a mother, regardless of how harrowing the birth seemed. Now, Solange watched as the other midwife did both. Enraged and fueled by the stammering excuses streaming from the idiot woman’s mouth, Solange was determined to cause a third death that day. She managed to nick the woman’s neck but it wasn’t deep enough to finish her and a skittish Solange fled as the woman ran screaming for the local authorities.

She seeked shelter with her sister, but found that Renata had been lying in her letters about how lavish her life in Gullian had been. The merchant she had married was a charlatan and a scalawag, abandoning her a year after their elopement with a massive gambling debt she had no hopes of repaying. To pay off the debtors Renata had been working at the Red Sail for Madame Fontaine. Bitter about the gentle betrayal, Solange nevertheless took up Renata’s offer to join the brothel once she told her Fontaine could protect her from the law.

She hated it. Not necessarily because of the work—generally it was forgettable, and forgettable was generally better than the alternative—but the other girls. Renata had sung the praises of Fontaine so highly that she had failed to mention the awfulness of the other girls or the sheer terrifying presence of Fontaine’s red-headed enforcer. Solange felt like she was teased mercilessly, unaware that she was just being oversensitive to a hazing ritual. The teasing eventually faded as newer playthings were hired, and she even began earning a modicum of respect amongst the girls once she began using her midwife knowledge to treat the ailments that commonly befall women in their trade.

However, Solange’s status as a vital member of the whorehouse did little to change the fact that she still did not want to live out her life as a whore. Plus, she was pretty sure the bartender had begun to notice her slipping things into the drinks of the girls and the patrons that annoyed her and rather not face Fontaine nor her enforcer. She began making moves and pulling strings to look for a way to get out of there. Her latest client had mentioned that Vargas might be cooking up something. Maybe it was time for her to offer him some of her other services.

Personal Effects:

Dress with hidden pockets (well-worn but clean).
One filled poison vial of a dark purple liquid, enough for two full doses.
One filled antidote vial of a dark purple liquid, enough for one full dose.
One filled painkiller vial of a dark purple liquid, enough for three full doses.
One filled with a clear liquid that causes drowsiness, enough for three full doses.
One filled with poisoned coffee that causes stomach ailments, enough for one full dose.
Three additional empty glass vials.
A flask of distilled water.
Some basic bandages, a suture kit, and a few pouches of ointments.
A pouch containing a few medical components and some “dust”.
A tiny mirror and some touch-up makeup.
A coin purse containing a few coins and some dust.
A journal filled with notes and an inkpen too expensive to have originally been her own.
A pocket knife generally used for clipping plants. DMG: 1d3, CRIT: 18-20 (X2) RANGE: 5ft, (10ft thrown)
A punch dagger sheathed on her lower leg. DMG: 1d4 CRIT: 18-20 (X2) RANGE: 5ft, (10 thrown)
An utterly useless trash rock painted to resemble jade that supposedly wards off evil spirits, worn as a bracelet.
A folklore book designed specifically to give her nightmares about sea travel.
A bag of caltrops.
A vial of sweet, red spirits from Lymms.

Ship Storage/Solange's Medical Cabinet

2 Apothecary’s Grace (10 Uses)
2 Clotting Honey
12 Medicated Wraps
30 Purifying Tablets
4 Blessed Waters
2lbs of Purified Salts
Waterproof Cloak, Black Leather
Oil Lamp with 3 Oil Refills

Solange's Misfortune

Winds of Fate - A Thieves' Adventure (Semi-Tabletop)

Aw yeah it's time to get rolling, @Arkitekt.

_{Get it? Because there's dice mechanics and...I'll just leave this here and show myself out...}

Hider

Solange Belgard
Level: 1
Class: Seducer/Thief (novice)
Currency: 10G, 70 bits
Ammunition: Verbal
Armor: +0, Common Clothing

Vitality: 10
Status: Vexed (0)

SOLANGE

Gender: Female
Age: 21
Race: Human, Bretonian
Origin: Pembrook, small farming settlement east of Gullian’s bay.
Religion: Voi
Attire: Billowing dress, loosened bodice, wrapped sandals, cheap jewelry.
Demeanor: Composed, attentive, shrewd.

Attributes:

Awareness: [3] (Bretonian) The phony horror stories the older girls used to tease Solange with kept her up at night and taught her to have an attentive eye. Now she’s quick to single out the drinkers and the talkers and the tag-a-longers, and wakes up the next morning eager to hear the actual horror stories about the men she passed over.
Intelligence: [2] She keeps a couple of books hidden in her room, knowing full well that less than a century ago they would’ve thrown her in a pyre for even dusting off a tome.
Strength:[1] Solange is strong enough to keep her chin up and capable enough to get someone else to do the heavy lifting.
Wit: [3] With understated cunning and tongue as sharp as a soldier’s rapier, she keeps her plays obfuscated until ready to drop the game winning move.
Dexterity: [2] She has quite the nimble fingers and has the graceful, poised movements more like a lady of high nobility than a woman of ill repute.
Willpower: [3] Solange works in a brothel for trade and regularly handles toxic plants and addictive substances for a hobby.She’d have been in a casket long ago if she wasn’t strong of body and soul.
Charisma: [2] She’s pretty enough as it is, but with a touch of rouge and the proper light she stands out as one of the more popular girls amongst the clientele. Still, good features are of little use outside of the house. Her profession marks her as undesirable amongst the more “reputable” members of society, even the ones that are regular clients...especially the ones that are regular clients.
Luck: [0] It is easier to accept that she is cursed to forever have bad luck than to admit that perhaps she has made bad decisions.

Skillsets

Words like Spun Wool [2]- Lying. Her whole profession is one giant charade. Nobody would pay her if she was honest. Solange knows how to thread together strings of deceit to spin a proper lie.
Clandestine Chamomile [2]- Poison. Solange is known amongst the girls of the house for making a cup of tea fit for royalty. Perhaps they would be more hesitant to take a sip if they were aware of the herbs she was growing in that little garden of hers. She’s just happy the ones she doesn’t like haven’t made the connection between their stomach cramps and her herbal tea.
Bitter Leaves, Better Lives [2]- Drugs. Not all of the flowers in her garden are there for prettiness or pettiness. Some of her herbs are quite practical, able to help others to get by or get high with painkillers, ointments, “powdered dreams”, and salves for sailor rash.
Threading the Needle [2]- Evade. Be it a wild haymaker from a rowdy drunk, a rogue beer bottle flinging through the air, or the Marm giving out cleaning duty, Solange is aces at getting out of the way and making herself scarce.
The Window Shopper’s Special [2]- Sleight of Hand. She works hard for her money. Why spend a single cent of it on something that can just as easily slip into the many hidden pockets she has sewn inside of her dress?
Boarding Party [1] (Bretonian)- Sailing. Solange is not a sailor. She’s only ever voyaged on a boat once. Nevertheless, she’s acquired enough knowledge from the seafarers she entertains to know port from starboard and that if she's the best sailor onboard then it's time to abandon ship.

Flaws:

Strife’s Seamstress: Solange is a miserable person that largely finds comfort in cruelty. She views others as playthings, toys to amuse her until they break or she grows bored of them. She’ll push people to be their worst self, or try to turn them against one another, or spread complete lies about them to ruin their reputation. She’s managed to avoid any comeuppance so far, always playing dumb and acting the innocent, but it’s only a matter of time before somebody sees through the bullshit.
Eyes of Evil: Solange believes that she was cursed to have bad luck. How else can she explain her awful existence? She will do everything in her power to avoid tempting fate and treats superstitions as if they were gospel. The woman seizes up in fear at the sight of black cats, avoids every crack she can despite her mother already being dead, and will leap the damn table to chuck salt over her shoulder if it is spilled. She has spent a small fortune on good luck charms, follows certain rituals every morning and every night, and listens to fortune tellers as if they are genuine prophets.
Pacifistic Pretense: The world better believe that Solange wouldn't even harm a hair on the head of someone who wronged her. It's not that Solange opposes violence or is against killing, it's just that Solange knows she's not really good at either one of them if it's an obvious act. She's just bad in a straight fight, easily telegraphing her attacks and barely ever considering her footing. She'd be better off running when against someone trained with a blade.

Background:

Born the youngest child in a small village to a largely unsuccessful tailor and a locally renown midwife, Solange settled into the role of becoming her mother’s replacement once her elder sister, Renata, eloped with some traveling merchant. She accompanied her mother for a number of years, enjoying the travel and the learning but absolutely revolted by the deliveries. Even when her mother told her she was ready to strike out on her own Solange insisted that she still needed more practice, something that her older sister now living in Gullian would call her out about in letters when not boasting about how magnificent her life was in the city.

When her mother became pregnant in her late thirties it was Solange who suggested they find another midwife instead of doing it herself. In the years Solange had followed her mother she watched the woman never lose a child or a mother, regardless of how harrowing the birth seemed. Now, Solange watched as the other midwife did both. Enraged and fueled by the stammering excuses streaming from the idiot woman’s mouth, Solange was determined to cause a third death that day. She managed to nick the woman’s neck but it wasn’t deep enough to finish her and a skittish Solange fled as the woman ran screaming for the local authorities.

She seeked shelter with her sister, but found that Renata had been lying in her letters about how lavish her life in Gullian had been. The merchant she had married was a charlatan and a scalawag, abandoning her a year after their elopement with a massive gambling debt she had no hopes of repaying. To pay off the debtors Renata had been working at the Red Sail for Madame Fontaine. Bitter about the gentle betrayal, Solange nevertheless took up Renata’s offer to join the brothel once she told her Fontaine could protect her from the law.

She hated it. Not necessarily because of the work—generally it was forgettable, and forgettable was generally better than the alternative—but the other girls. Renata had sung the praises of Fontaine so highly that she had failed to mention the awfulness of the other girls or the sheer terrifying presence of Fontaine’s red-headed enforcer. Solange felt like she was teased mercilessly, unaware that she was just being oversensitive to a hazing ritual. The teasing eventually faded as newer playthings were hired, and she even began earning a modicum of respect amongst the girls once she began using her midwife knowledge to treat the ailments that commonly befall women in their trade.

However, Solange’s status as a vital member of the whorehouse did little to change the fact that she still did not want to live out her life as a whore. Plus, she was pretty sure the bartender had begun to notice her slipping things into the drinks of the girls and the patrons that annoyed her and rather not face Fontaine nor her enforcer. She began making moves and pulling strings to look for a way to get out of there. Her latest client had mentioned that Vargas might be cooking up something. Maybe it was time for her to offer him some of her other services.

Personal Effects:

Dress with hidden pockets (well-worn but clean).
One filled poison vial of a dark purple liquid, enough for two full doses.
One filled antidote vial of a dark purple liquid, enough for one full dose.
One filled painkiller vial of a dark purple liquid, enough for three full doses.
One filled with a clear liquid that causes drowsiness, enough for three full doses.
Four additional empty glass vials.
A flask of distilled water.
Some basic bandages, a suture kit, and a few pouches of ointments.
A pouch containing a few medical components and some “dust”.
A tiny mirror and some touch-up makeup.
A coin purse containing a few coins and some dust.
A journal filled with notes and an inkpen too expensive to have originally been her own.
A pocket knife generally used for clipping plants.
A punch dagger sheathed on her lower leg.

Solange's Misfortune

Winds of Fate - A Thieves' Adventure (Semi Tabletop, Extensive Campaign)

Gonna formally submit my interest. So good to see this come back.

Recollections: Magnanimous (Cancelled)

---

---

It was difficult to tell by the black scarf covering his mouth or the determined look in his eyes, but Ezra was furious that they were all marching through the woods following some teenager with a hard-on for confrontation. He’d thought that Arabelle’s idea to get in touch with the cult’s traitor had been the most solid of the one’s proposed, but his family had drowned out logic with bickering and infighting. Now what was the plan? Show up at their front door, hope to hit them with a couple of suckerpunchs, and run them out of town? Stupid. An icy cloud of breath escaped from Ezra’s scarf. His boots cracked on snow and twigs and he continued after Justin in silence.

His body felt like it was being weighed down. Ezra tugged on the duffel bag hanging from his shoulder to try to make it less strenuous, but it seemed to change nothing. Perhaps it was just a drawback from lugging around the Masterpiece while walking through the woods. Maybe the weight he was feeling was a different one, tied to firearm squirreled away inside of his long, black winter coat. Going to kick in the door and bloody their noses as some chest-beating sign of strength would just keep the cycle of violence spinning, but amputating a few choice limbs would force the cult to let go of the merry-go-round, smack their head open on the concrete, and get the dangerous, rusted playground equipment permanently removed from the park. Justin had insisted that they avoid killing, but Justin was also a naive kid who’d probably think that every confrontation could be solved by gathering in a circle and singing Kumbaya.

"Alright, team, huddle," said Justin right on time, causing Ezra to break his silence with a quiet chuckle.

Ezra heard the branch snapped above and sidestepped to avoid the sudden shower of snow as he made his way over to their pee wee football coach. In the trees above, Nisha giggled as her foot broke a weakened branch and had to catch herself from falling with the Slaugh’s Long Arms. She’d joined the Vanburens on their woodtime assault even though nobody had asked her and, quite frankly, nobody had wanted her. Nisha knew from experience that only fun things ever happened in the woods at night, especially if some chucklefuck was stupid enough to bring a few bottles of Buckie with them. Besides, her “family” needed her to infiltrate the cult’s hideout and pretend to be joining. That was the plan right, after all? She had been distracted by Georgie’s little outburst to focus on the task at hand. Nisha smirked, thinking about how the girl had just dunked on her entire family. She was an utter bitch; Nisha quite liked her.

When they had made it to the woods, Nisha had taken it upon herself to play the role of the lookout. In actuality, all the girl had done was give herself an excuse to swing from the tops of trees like some kind of tentacled Tarzan. The Phantom Limbs had made it simple for her to scale up on, and every now and then the Vanburens would hear a branch shake from above as Nisha made her way through the treeline above. She was surprisingly silent with the exception of the occasional laugh when something bad happened or when she dropped snow on someone.

When Justin called for the huddle, Nisha dropped down from a branch with the same intensity of a jumpscare on a haunted trail. The only thing stopping her from crumpling to the ground were the watery limbs jutting out of her shoulder blades that snapped back into her as she landed softly on the snow below. Her bare arms were riddled with tiny scrapes and scratches, and one cut on her temple from a rogue branch was deep enough to cause it to bleed a tiny, harmless trickle. Nisha seemed as unbothered by her cuts as she was by the cold, still dressed for lounging on a couch while binging episodes of trashy teen dramas instead of a nighttime excursion in the woods. She bounded over to Justin, eager as ever, ready for a winter rumble.

"... Why you all look like you're ready to go to war."

Nisha turned with Justin and let out a surprised little shout as she saw the suited skeleton speaking. Instinctively, the four Phantom Limbs shot out of her and grabbed on to the trees behind her, slinging her back a few yards before snapping back into her body as she felt a warmth in the back of her head. Ezra’s reaction was more muted. He had seen what he thought was a deer approaching at first, and when its true form came clear he was able to keep his shock down to a simple eyebrow raise. He let the duffel bag slide from his shoulder to his hand as the thing spoke, ask questions that were strangely pointed. Ezra slid his scarf down to under his chin, a slightly amused smile on his face as the creature told Justin off.

“It sounds like you already know the answer to that question,” said Ezra, his steady voice managing to hide the fear he felt in the pit of his stomach. “So what of it? Are you a friend to those cult freaks? An ally of the Triple Goddess?”

“Are you her ex? Casual hookup?” asked Nisha loudly. These were the important, helpful questions that would crack open this mysterious intruder and spill the beans on his plans. Her smile was smacked from her face as she caught a sharp glance from Ezra. Under her breath, so she would avoid being hit by another piercing stare, she muttered, “You two do a lotta boning?”

Recollections: Magnanimous (Cancelled)

---

---

By the time Nisha finished explaining how she even knew all of the graphic methods of interrogation they could use on Morgana the conversation had long abandoned her and moved on. Her pal from the cafe, Ara...Are...Arielle? Arabelle. Right. Her friend Arabelle had joined the squad of soured faces, still clutching that security blanket of a skull, before the pudgy one whisked it away. Nisha had expected more of a fuss seeing how cagey Arabelle had been about the skull earlier that day, but apparently there was a pecking order. The girl turned on her, speaking with a posh English accent that Nisha assumed Her Royal Majesty was using to mock her for using both less fancy words and verbal wanking.

"And keep mum around...that. Can't have outsiders knowing too much."

Nisha winked and smiled at Georgie, seemingly unfettered by the jab. Truth be told, “that” was one of the nicer things Nisha felt that she had been referred to in her life. Generally, “that” was followed by something much worse. Alone, it didn’t really sting at all. What really hurt was how the family wasn’t absolutely jumping on board her fantastic idea. The sad(dest) looking guy said something about hoping she was a better actor than a Vanburen. She couldn’t help but quietly chuckle to herself as his insinuation went completely over her head.

The plan to come up with a plan had derailed itself as the cute guy hosting their little assembly began to spin hot, flaming balls around himself to show off his abilities and prompt the others to do the same. Nisha watched with widening eyes as several of the Vanburens demonstrated—god she was sure Her Royal Majesty was going to shit herself when Ezra had started pouring out the tea. This whole family had magic? That made everything so much more fun. Hopefully none of them could read minds. Or sense apparitions.

"What can you do, though?”asked the rock guy, perhaps unaware of how hard Nisha had been fiending for someone to ask her to show off. Nisha shrugged. “If you're gonna be here... would be better if you help us with this dumb plan."

Raymond had nearly finished his sentence as a mischievous smile began to stretch on the shrugging girl’s face as four phantom limbs crept out of her body and joined in with the shrug. Then in a flash the Long Arms reached up, grabbed two different sections of an overhanging outcropping from the second-story of the house, and suddenly flung Nisha up into the air. A rush of adrenaline spiked through her system as the Long Arms grabbed the rooftop and she violently hurled herself up even higher. She cackled with childish glee as she hit the peak of her arc and began plummeting back down to the patio. Maybe she should give them all a shock and show them all of her abilities. No, don’t rush it, dearie. Keep some tricks to yourself. Nisha sighed as her phantom limbs hit the ground first instead to break her fall, spidering out but barely bending as they kept her several feet from even touching the ground.

“Ta-da! Pretty cool right? But wait, there’s more!” she asked, waiting for no affirmation as the watery limbs poofed away. She dropped the remaining couple of feet and the limbs cascaded out of her body once again, this time snaking around the patio and looping between Vanburens to show off her control of them before they snapped back to her side and wiggled about like a quartet of wavy tube men caught up in a crosswind. “So much weird stuff I could do with these bad boys. They can pretty much squeeze through anything, so if you lock yourselves out of your Porsche or something feel free to give me a call. “

“So does this mean everyone in this family has some kind of super special power?” asked Nisha, followed by a sharp inhale of excitement. “This is so cool. Wait!” Nisha pointed a finger at Georgie. However, she was looking at Sabrina, who had a phantom limb hovering a few feet away from her face and pointing towards her, while the other three limbs had each pointed towards a different Vanburen. “So what can you do!?”

Recollections: Magnanimous (Cancelled)

---

---

Ezra felt the web of a slow, creeping migraine spread from the back of his eye to the base of his neck as his family threw their pennies into the pot. Nisha’s asinine idea (which she was still embellishing upon in the background, underneath the voices of the other Vanburens) was followed with a more sensible one from Arabelle. His eyes lit up as Georgie stashed the ram skull in her secret vault of roses. It was potentially an ingenious solution to their little theft problem, yet the only kudos he gave her was a nod of approval upon her return.

Whatever warmth had begun to radiate from him for his family was quickly cooled as Shane excused himself to go raid the old man’s bar—Ezra’s bar, actually. Ezra thought to go after Shane, either to stop his half-brother from sliding further into his addiction or to, at the very least, stop him from drinking Ezra’s good scotch. Alternatively, the idea of grabbing a nip to ease the throbbing in his brain sounded pretty good too. Unfortunately, he was obligated to stay and play his part as head of the house, slipping away only for a minute to grab himself a cup of tea.

Justin had moved on from making it clear that they had to deal with the Triple Goddess no matter what and had moved on to dismantling Sabrina’s suggestion to call the cops. As a rich, white, middle-aged man it had been Ezra’s first thought, but he’d quickly come to the same conclusion that Liao did. Naturally, they wouldn’t say anything about magic being involved, just that a group of hooligans had raided their house, damaged their property, and assaulted their persons. Nevertheless, it would be negligent to call the cops on people who commanded hellhounds and whipped up tidal waves—might as well just call Officer Dewey over and feed him to LeBeau and save the time.

"So, uh, what can you all do by the way?" asked Justin before he demonstrated his own abstraction.

“How to even...I improve people and things. Temporarily, anyway,” said Ezra with a wave of his hand. “I can Configure the size of an item or make it a perfect Masterpiece, nigh indestructible, flawless in its design, and even capable of being an infinite resource...as long as I am able to maintain the spell, that is.”

As he spoke, the tea cup served as a model for the demonstration. As the memento bracelet on his wrist glowed orange and swirled with faint sigils, the cup doubled in size and then shrunk back down to normal as he channeled the entirety of the item to become a Masterpiece. He walked over to the edge of the deck so as to not make a mess and the channeling stopped, the cup radiating an orange light before the energy faded. Then, he glowed for a split second as he made himself a Prodigy. He began to pour the steaming hot tea out, his eyes focusing on Justin nonchalantly as the drink continued to endlessly flow.

“I could spend the next several hours explaining to you the proper etiquette for a tea ceremony, the history behind ceramics, or just blindly taste test teas til the charm wears off of me explaining to you the subtle difference between Earl Grey and Lady Grey, but I think that’d be a bit excessive,” said Ezra. He tilted the cup back up, which by then had poured out several gallons worth and had melted a fair chunk of the snow below him, and dropped the spells. “After all, my siblings need their go, and we still need to get back to the real discussion on hand.”

“Which, for the record, I think Arabelle's idea to contact the girl is the most sound. At the very least we’ll know what we’re up against. We don't even know if who attacked was the entirety of their cult or not,” said Ezra. He gestured to his siblings. "But we'll get back to that. Who wants to go next in show-and-tell for Mr. Liao?"

Recollections: Magnanimous (Cancelled)

---

Earlier, the Hospital

---

Okay, okay, okay. Nisha knew now, as the ungentle nurse used a cotton swab to fence with her uvula and tested the limits of her gag reflex, wasn’t the time to panic. She needed a plan. Another plan, actually. Plan one had been to stop the test. It was simple enough: she could swab the nurse’s throat with one of the Long Arms of the Slaugh and see whatever she could rip out until the nurse stopped swabbing. Of course, then she’d have to deal with being charged for murder, or potentially another nurse. She could just off that one too, but killing the entire overworked hospital staff wasn’t really a plan.

Neither was her second idea, which was to burn the motherfucker down. The third was to pull off the old switcheroo and swap the swab with a dummy one that wasn’t covered with whatever booze that was still lingering in the back of her esophagus. However, that plan was dashed because it arrived about three seconds after the nurse had finished shoving the swab into the bottom of Nisha’s stomach and gingerly popped it into the vial, cruelly adding a “There, see? Not so bad,” as Nisha resisted the urge to yak. That left Nisha with one option and one option only: she’d have to steal it after hours. Filing Operation: Spit Take firmly into the “good idea” mental filing cabinet, Nisha hopped off of the white sanitary paper and followed the nurse to the lobby.

Nisha watched which ward the nurse headed down after she had returned Nisha to her guardian. Ezra was in a conversation with a female doctor with straight, blonde hair that was in such a tight ponytail that just looking at it gave Nisha a contact headache. Although Ezra looked as calm as ever, there was a redness to the doctor’s cheeks and a wagging of a finger that showed their conversation wasn’t casual small talk. It came to an abrupt halt as the blonde woman held up her hand and walked away, her heels clacking as she left the lobby. Nisha watched Ezra stare after her, swearing that she caught a faint smirk on his face.

Ezra wouldn’t admit it, but he had been smirking. He had just convinced Dr. Vaught to run some tests on the bloodsoaked knife he’d recovered from one of the cultists. Sure, Anne had been right when she said it was unprofessional, and unscrupulous, and, yes, even a bit uncool to put a friend in that kind of spot, but it was a spot Ezra knew he could put Anne in and that she would still pull through and they would still be on good terms. He just owed her dinner, and maybe a written apology. Smartest person he knew, but still a sucker for the sentiment. It’d take a day or two, and possibly three out of spite, but he should have the identity of one of the cultists soon enough. Anne had even promised to call him if anyone came in with a knife wound.

“She looked pissed. You two dating?” asked Nisha.

Ezra gave Nisha a blank stare. He not only didn’t trust the young woman, he was also fairly certain he didn’t like her. After what had been basically an interrogation, their talk had shifted into getting to know a little bit about one another. Well, okay, it had been Nisha dominating the conversation and talking about herself for nearly twenty minutes straight. She was rude, seemed impulsive, and sounded from her choices in life that she was fairly self-destructive. Honestly, those bad qualities made him believe that perhaps there was a chance that she was his father’s daughter after all. James wasn’t one to control his urges.

Regardless, Ezra wasn’t going to speak about his dating life with a stranger. He ignored the question and said, “How did it go?”

“Great. Is she your ex?” asked Nisha, studying Ezra’s face for some kind of revelation. “Casual hookup?” He blinked. She considered that to be a definite yes. “Oooh, you dirty dog! Sounds like you’re a chip off of the ol’ block, eh? Like father like son, huh? Apple doesn’t fall too far from the—”

“Oh look, I think that’s Arabelle,” said Ezra, rushing in the direction of some random woman and praying that the actual Arabelle would be released soon enough.

---

Now, the Vanburen Estate

---

Nisha finally understood the nature of Ezra’s pointed interrogation when it had just been the two of them in the car upon their arrival at the mansion. In fact, he had downplayed it quite a bit. It hadn’t just been a break-in, it had been a full blown assault on the mansion. Someone must’ve brought some serious firepower to blow a hole in the wall that large. Ezra made some quick rounds with her to give her the lay of the mansion and show her the guest house she’d be staying in for the time being. He even did the honors of introducing her to the handful of Vanburens that were still around, taking them aside to what Nisha assumed was to ease their suspicion.

In reality, Ezra had reminded them of what James’ policy was on alleged offspring and to treat Nisha like a guest, but to remain vigilant around the girl and be careful what they mention around her. Even when James was around to expedite the process he was always suspicious anytime someone came knocking about being a new Vanburen, and her timing in relation to the attack did little to ease his nerves. Still, on the miniscule chance that she was family or at least believed that she was then he didn’t want her first impression of the Vanburens to be negatively colored by the tension brought upon by the day's events. Although it was hard to tell between the exhaustive girl and his extensive family which one would give off the worst impression in the first place.

Regardless, it wasn’t long after Nisha had found herself settling in and turning the guest house into a guest home by tossing all of her shit around in a mess that would seem chaotic to anyone but her that she noticed a small group of rich marks gathering on the patio. She gritted her teeth and flared her nostrils with a huff. First day “home” and they didn’t even invite her to the winter cookout? Well, she wouldn’t let a lack of a proper invitation stop her. She’d just crash the party. Nisha rushed out of the guest house barefoot without even thinking to throw a jacket on over her purple tank. Nevertheless, she trekked through the snow to the patio without even noticing the cold, seemingly heated by her spirits.

Ezra gave her a quizzical look as she snuck in behind the others. He put a finger to his lips as Justin started to speak, silencing the complaint that was about to come from Nisha’s mouth. Her eyes widened as the kid went on about a cult that lived in the woods and about how they should fight them and rambled on about gods and goddesses and, holy shit, it looked like everyone was taking this seriously. A gleeful smile spread on Nisha’s face as the Vanburens started chiming in support of the idea. Either these rich people were crazy, or the hot asian dude was a brilliant swindler, or what they said was true, or a little bit of everything. No matter what, this was going to be fucking fun.

“Oh, oh! I can help!” Nisha excitedly jumped forward in front of the gathering of what were basically total strangers, waving her hand in the air like a know-it-all teacher’s pet eager to volunteer to show the class how to diagram a sentence. “They don’t know I’m one of you, you know? So I could go in pretending like I’m really there to join the Horny God Cult—” “Nisha.” “—but really I’m not there for that I’m there to help you guys fight them and like I can drug their drinks—” “Nisha.””—or set off a bomb or do something really cool to fuck them over while you all charge in like a couple of badasses and—”

“Nisha, hold on!” barked Ezra in a rare moment of visual frustration. He stepped forward, grabbed the bothersome woman by the shoulder, and lightly shoved her out of the circle. His tired eyes scanned the faces of his family, a look of reprimand striking upon those who’d spoken up in support of this idea, and then his face relaxed as he sighed. He pushed his hair back, rolled his shoulders, and resumed his cool demeanor.

“Why are we immediately jumping to the idea that we go in swinging? Like you said, Justin, they caught us unprepared and still lost. They didn’t get what they wanted, they were forced to retreat, and they took casualties while we only lost the use of our dining room until repairs are done and the bearskin rug in the entryway that, in hindsight, was a bit tacky. I honestly think the threat of violence would be better than actual violence, and I rather not go murder a bunch of people who might have family that might start asking question. So before we go galavanting off to assault what seems like a couple of losers who hang out in a ransacked Five Seasons maybe we could try brainstorming a few other ideas? Anyone?”

Ezra closed his eyes and tightened his lips as Nisha spoke up again, “What if I pretend to join their cult but, but, but instead of kicking their asses I instead lead their leader to a mirror? And then Arabelle and I could pull them through and they’ll have nobody to follow, causing a power vacuum which will make them turn on one another and crumble from the inside.”

“That is, by definition, technically an idea,” said Ezra, as Nisha continued rambling on about something involving a car battery and jumper cables. “Anyone else?”

The please was unsaid, but heavily implied.