Avatar of King Cosmos

Status

User has no status, yet

Bio

User has no bio, yet

Most Recent Posts

Alright sure, I've been getting back into Yu-Gi-Oh recently so I'll give this a shot.
This looks interesting. I'll probably need to see a completed character sheet before I really understand all the power stuff, but interesting.
Morgana Faith


“Tsk. A mess she says.” Morgana grumbled under her breath as Faye used her esoteric abilities to trace the magic in the portal to its destination. She watched the girl for a few seconds, seeing nothing whatever with her mundane eyes, before moving on.

What did magic look like to a fae? That they experienced magic in a different way to humans was well known, as shown by the way the girl could just glance at empty air and comment on how the magic looked to her, but what did she see exactly? Was there a visual difference between Greek and Middle Eastern formulas, between the modern and the archaic? How did they differ? Was it like looking at two paintings in different styles laid atop each other? Or like a building where the foundations were made in one style and the second floor in another?

Well, there was no denying that whoever had created this ritual had made something needlessly complex and potentially unstable by mixing different cultural spheres together, but it still worked and as far as Morgana could tell worked well; to call it a mess was to ignore the understanding and talent required to weave something like that together. Whoever made this was a genius, or at least exceptionally talented; the lack of a formal education does not mean the lack of any education after all, only that they did not learn what they knew from textbooks and classrooms. They had learned; in fact they had learned quite a lot. The intricacies involved, the careful balancing act of blending two or more disparate schools of magical theory without them clashing was more than Morgana could adequately describe; someone could dedicate years of their life to creating a ritual formula as complex as this and likely had. Though whether this person had created it themselves or simply learned it from another she wasn’t yet sure.

Being a scholar of magic was about standing on the shoulders of giants while trying to become a giant yourself, after all. Everything was built on top of what was there already.

Morgana raised her left hand and made a circle with her thumb and forefinger again. The circuit that appeared this time was different than the one she had used before with her right hand; rather than let her see the faint traces of magic in the air, this one let her capture and store images that could then be called forth later on. A camera, essentially. She recorded an image of the ritual circle for further perusal later on before turning away.

“Minsk, is it?” Not the place she would have expected to find a scholar of ancient Greek and Middle Eastern magics, but then those were a rare breed to begin with. “How fun. I’ve never been to Eastern Europe.”
Morgana Faith


“Anywhere out of the way is fine. Just clear the area for me please.”

The process of clearing out the crates went quickly and smoothly even with just Faye doing the work, the Fae’s teleportation magic making swift work of something that would take her much, much longer. Even with magic it would have taken Morgana a long time to move those crates, needing to create a separate ritual for each one, accounting for distance, position, weight and size; it would have been simpler to move everything by hand. But it was easy for Faye, in a way that was honestly quite vexing to witness; even more so when she confidently stated that she would be able to trace the teleportation ritual back to its source, since that was something that Morgana simply could not do. Magic or not.

So many advantages; Fae blood was exceedingly potent.

As was demonic.

When Amanda’s assistant, or whatever she was, arrived to perform her exorcism ritual Morgana couldn’t help but stop what she was doing to watch. The crime scene would still be there in a few minutes after all and it wasn’t every day that one got to see a demon open a door to the underworld. Morgana made sure to make a note of it all, even raising her glove to her eye again to witness the magic being woven together for a moment, before the sight of it began to make her throb in a painless but worrying manner. She wondered how much of the spectacle was truly necessary; the chanting, repeated three times, a magically significant number, the runes, not written in chalk or any other substance, but conjured into the air itself, the wine, cast to the ground as an offering to some higher power, perhaps a symbolic substitute for blood not unlike how it was used in Eucharist rites to symbolise the blood of Christ. It was a fascinatingly archaic display that Morgana found somewhat quaint.

Her own focus on research was often to remove such superstitions from the act of casting, or to determine how much they really mattered; were it a human casting in such a way she would have rolled her eyes at the waste of effort and a good vintage, but since it was a demon…

It was foolish to compared demonic rituals to that or human, as foolish as comparing her own magic to Faye’s or that of a dragon’s. The magic of demons tended to be somewhat theological in nature, the kind of practice that called somewhat on the power of a higher being in order to work; beyond that she didn’t know much more. Needless to say, Morgana didn’t spend much time researching that kind of magic; she was part of the department of heretical studies after all and higher beings such as these tended to be a little annoyed if you skipped out on the ceremonial aspects of casting.

Spoilsports.

Nonetheless, even if all of the effort involved was somewhat impractical it allowed the practitioners to call on that much more power than they would be able to with just their own strength; there was a benefit to it. But of course, even without that demon’s had enough natural magical strength to be able to cast greater magical rituals such as this without even the need to scribble a hasty circle around themselves. A demon like Madeleine would have been able to open a long distance teleportation spell given the correct knowledge, no doubt; such a creature would have been one of her candidates for who was responsible had they not found evidence of a human ritual.

Speaking of which; with the show over Morgana turned her attention back to proceedings, focusing her attention back on the remains of the teleportation ritual now that Faye had cleared out the crates for her. It was, as she had expected, partially destroyed. Not intentionally as far as she could tell, though she was sure whoever had run this place would have cleared everything away before they left had they the chance. No, the ritual was damaged simply because people had been dragging heavy crates along the floor, scuffing the chalk and wiping away faint traces of magical circles and patterns. It was enough for her to work with however, so she got to work pacing around the circle and examining what she could.

Whoever had drawn this seemed to mostly be drawing on European influences for their work, which was not surprising given where they were, but there were also some influences from other cultures thrown in their as well; particularly the Middle East, whose influence on mathematics during the Golden Age of Islam had introduced several significant additions to magical theory as well. Morgana was tempted to say that the combination spoke of an international group, or a particularly well educated individual among their number, but there was another clue as well. The European influences were specifically Greek in nature, old influences at that; there were some traces of more modern ritual formulas, particularly Germanic matrices in the stabilising elements, but the bulk of the work was Greek formulas from a time predating the rise of the Roman Empire. Whoever designed this was using old knowledge, primarily.

“Hmm.”

Beyond that the circle was not large, but that was due more to the compactness of the design than anything to do with the scale involved; the ritual patterns were drawn in layers, different formulas and calculations and stabilising elements piled on top of each other in a way that Morgana could not help but admire. Most of the fine detail was worn away, but she could still tell that the circle had spaces for seven practitioners to work in concert with each other; seven was another magically significant number, though with how many schools of thought there were in the world it was hard to find a number was wasn’t magically significant to someone or another. Three for the trinity in Europe, four for death in Japan, seven for luck in many cultures and eight for the same in China, nine simply because it was three times three and three, as she had already said, was the trinity; at those were just the ones off the top of her head.

“I have everything I need for now. I’ll need to do some more research later, but I don’t believe the person who designed this ritual had any kind of formalised education in magic; not one from this millennium at least.” What that meant for their investigation she didn’t know yet, which was why she needed to look into this more. She would need to do some digging into the history books, try and find an organisation or faction that eschewed modern teachings or who clung to the old ways. Alternatively they were looking for an individual who had been hired by this organisation to create this ritual, a freelancer who happened to specialise in ancient magics. “Faye, your turn to do whatever it is you do with that portal.”



Morgana Faith


“Knowledge that can’t be taught or put into practice is useless; or at least useless to anyone other than the person who has it, which is practically the same thing.” Knowledge hoarded was knowledge wasted, as was knowledge lost because it wasn’t passed on or recorded. And knowledge wasted was oh so very hard to get back. The history of magic was a treasure trove of information that would likely never see the light of day ever again. “All the more reason why we need to bridge that gap, do away with out-dated modes of thinking and make magic as accessible as we can. But I digress; we’re not here to discuss academics.”

Not that she was having much success at what they were here for. This particular part of the warehouse didn’t seem to have any traces of magic that she could detect with her enhanced sight and Faye presumably had not found anything either or else she would have said something. Morgana let her hands fall from her face, the illuminated design fading as she broke the circle.

“The glove won’t work if the wearer doesn’t have magic; it’s not just a power supply issue, but a control one. For simple workings something like a magical battery might be sufficient, but this array is too complex and delicate to simple shove magic into.” She’d had some success with creating lamps and heating elements powered by magic, just as a proof of concept, but anything more complicated than that tended to fail, break or worse. “Besides, there has always been the issue that magic circles and rituals tend to function better when you create them yourself; it’s just one of those little things that we haven’t been able to get around. I could create another glove and give it to someone, but it will never work as effectively for them as it would have had they made it themselves.”

Something to do with either a person’s understanding of a ritual’s intended effect having an influence on said effect, or the simple fact that people had more confidence in something they had a hand in creating versus something given to them. Further study was required.

“Let’s see what our daring leader has found, in any case.”

Quite a lot, as it turned out. The portal, or former portal in this case, was ‘sizeable’ just as Amanda had said; certainly large enough to accommodate the dozens and dozens of crates that must have passed through it before being shipped elsewhere by more mundane methods. She peered at it through her glove, holding the circle of her thumb and forefinger before her eye again as she examined the magical imprint left in the fabric of space. “It’s a tunnel. The ritual was performed at both ends of the spell, meaning we’re looking at a large number of moderately skilled practitioners rather than a small number of very skilled ones. I’ll leave it up to you to decide if that’s good or bad news. There’ll be a circle around here somewhere.”

Teleportation wasn’t a particularly difficult spell to perform, contrary to popular opinion. The formulas had existed for centuries after all and almost all civilisations and cultures had developed their own method for it at one point or another; the procedure had been refined almost to an art since then. It was complicated, certainly, not to mention prohibitively expensive and arduous for those involved, but any large organisation or even a particularly dedicated group of amateurs could open a portal over short distances. The issue was in scale and distance; this portal had the scale and if she could examine their methodology then she might be able to figure out the distance as well.

“Let’s move all of these crates out of the way. If they were interrupted before they could finish here then maybe they didn’t have time to clear all of their ritual preparations away. Assuming you didn’t blow up all the evidence on your way in, of course.”

@Kumbaris@13org@BigPapaBelial
Morgana Faith


It was to be small talk then. Morgana had been afraid that was going to happen when she was paired up with the talkative girl and it seemed she had been right to be; don’t get her wrong, she had nothing against getting to know her co-workers, no matter how many of them tried to call her a bitch, but there was a time and place for being personable and it was not while she was trying to concentrate on the magic remnants in the warehouse.

“I don’t put much stock in instinct. Not to say I doubt you of course, the fae’s innate talent for magic is well documented, but I find that people who rely on instinct or genius or anything of the sort have a difficult time explaining why something is in a way that makes sense to anyone but themselves.” Morgana stopped walking, staring at a nondescript part of the floor for a few seconds before continuing to walk again. “Genius that can’t be explained to others is no genius at all; it’s useless.”

The list of things Faye knew about magic that Morgana didn’t was probably innumerable and apparently included how to create a short range, personal teleportation spell with the snap of her fingers, but most likely she wouldn’t be able to explain any of it to her in a way that she could comprehend. ‘Like trying to breathe with her face on a pillow’; she’d be better off trying to explain sound to a deaf person. Such a shortcoming would make her useless in the lab environment Morgana was used to, but it shouldn’t be as much of an issue at a crime scene.

“My glove… think of magic like electricity; by itself it’s nothing, raw energy, a lightning bolt alone has no purpose but it can be harnessed and used to power things, produce heat or light or sound. Usually this is a practitioner’s role, to shape that energy into spells and to guide it towards a specific purpose. But I’ve created a… circuitry to handle that shaping for me, allowing me to focus on other things while I simply provide the magic.” It was a little more complicated than that, but such an explanation usually sufficed when people were curious about her etchings. The markings on her glove gave the magic shape but it was her act of looking through the ring of her thumb and forefinger that brought the effect to life; her desire to ‘see’ something through the pretend lens of her digits, like a child playing make-believe, gave the magic intent. There was a significance to small actions assigned with a meaning.

“Theoretically anyone could put on this glove and have it work the same way, regardless of it they know how it works of not. In theory at least.”

@13org
Morgana Faith


Ah, field work. Not something she approached with relish, but Morgana would admit that it was a necessary evil at times; some things just couldn’t be studied in a lab after all and even if they could, the first step towards discovery would often be taken elsewhere. Today her work didn’t take her to the burial site of an ancient artefact though, nor a conflux of leylines turned ritual grounds; it was a drab warehouse complex on the outskirts of Frankfurt that she was taken to.

Lovely.

While the android dealt with the local police, Morgana turned her eye towards the warehouse itself. It was mundane in every way that mattered to her, though if this was being used as a place to store weapons then at some point magic must have been used in their transport and a working of such magnitude was likely to leave traces. How much of a trace would depend on the method used, namely whether it was a tunnel or a gateway that had been formed; a tunnel would mean a ritual being performed at both the departure point and the destination, performed in concert with each other, to link the two locations together, while a gateway would mean a single, larger ritual performed at the departure point only with just a target destination in mind; perhaps with a sympathetic link to this location to refine the accuracy with regards to the placement of the gateways aperture. Both were workings of a higher order, but the latter was the more difficult and costly of the two; the latter would also allow for greater flexibility in where they could teleport to however and the ritual could be reused multiple times if it was well made while a tunnel would need setting up anew each time.

This was assuming they were using rituals at all however, since she still hadn’t ruled out any other methodology. It was simply the most likely one.

While she had been distracted the android, Amanda, had finished her business and was now assigning them tasks. Morgana, as expected, was to look for the teleportation’s ‘origin point’, though that term was possibly a misnomer depending on her findings. She was to be paired up with the fae girl as well who, although she didn’t come across as someone particularly knowledgeable about magic, did seem to have a natural affinity for this particular kind of thing.

“Fine. Let’s get started shall we?”

Walking into the warehouse without waiting for a reply, Morgana reached into a pocket and pulled out a black leather glove before sliding it onto her right hand. She formed a circle with her thumb and her index finger while also allowing some of her mana to leak into the glove itself, the barely perceptible markings on the outside of the glove beginning to glow faintly as her gesture closed the magic circle and allowed the spell she had sunk into the item to come to life. The heretic held the glove up to her eye, peering through the ring formed by her hand and seeing much more than her mundane eyes could ever see by themselves.

If there was any magic to be found in the warehouse she would find it, especially if the shaman’s ritual brought it to the surface.

@Kumbaris@13org
Dietrich Konig - Aegis


Rolling his shoulders, Dietrich stepped forward, loosening his muscles as he prepared to take a swing at one of Japan’s top heroes. If he was afraid at the prospect then he didn’t show it, if anything he looked eager.

He didn’t bother changing into his costume as he approached; it was barebones to begin with and didn’t offer anything that would help him in this little test. Mostly it was designed to cover for the few things his Quirk didn’t already protect him against, mostly airborne substances and temperature, neither of which applied in his fight since as far as he could tell his opponent’s Quirk wasn’t either of those. Decay. Dietrich honestly wasn’t sure if his barrier would protect him against however that worked; only that it was debilitating and occasionally fatal to those it was used on.

Would she go that far in a fight like this, against her own students? Would she cripple them, or even kill them, on their first day? She’d talked a lot of talk about pushing them to their limits, about how they’d come out of here better than Zeal or not at all; didn’t mean she was serious about it or that she’d get away with it if she was. There had to be limits to what even this country would allow its top heroes to get away with, right? Then again…

Dietrich smirked, all teeth and no humour. Yeah, she just might go that far. He’d agreed to train under a real piece of work hadn’t he?

“You? Outmatch me? Don’t be conceited.”

Deserve. Interesting choice of words for something that wasn’t a reward in his eyes, but instead a burden, a calling. Worthy would have been the better term, as far as he was concerned. Being a hero wasn’t a privilege to be doled out, not even by one of the few who called themselves the pillars; you either were or you weren’t.

Was he worthy?

He would be. Or he would fail.

Aegis didn’t fail.

He raised a hand and pointed at Snake-Eyes, index finger extended. “Fall.” Aegis’ barrier, always active and invisible to the naked eye, extended from the tip of his finger as fast as he could make it move. It wasn’t a killing blow, for all that she had told him to come at her with intent to kill that just wasn’t his style, but it would strike a solid blow if it hit.

@Blizz
© 2007-2026
BBCode Cheatsheet