Welcome fellow gamer. I'm in the same boat as you: trying to get back into yugioh! I'd love to spitball some deck and character ideas with you. Maybe we could collab and make some characters who are close.
Yeah sure, we can work together on this. Not sure what deck I'm going to use yet, I need to do some play testing, but I'm thinking something villainous; dark, zombies, fiends, that kind of thing. Probably a rival type character.
“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.”
“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.”
"Heroes were a failed endeavour. It’s time to make way for the future."
[ NAME ]
Richard Hoss
[ HERO IDENTITY ]
Forge
[ NICKNAME/ALIAS ]
Rich
[ AGE ]
36
[ GENDER ]
Male
[ AFFILIATION ]
Villain/Vigilante; formerly a member of HERO
[ APPEARANCE ]
At 6’ 4” and 260lbs, combined with his broad shoulders and muscular build, Richard is an imposing individual; his height and his size, which includes a wide, barrel chest, thick arms and legs and large hands, give him a presence and physicality that is hard to ignore. His skin is a tanned bronze in colour, marred in places by the occasional pale scar, which complement his reddish brown hair and brown eyes.
Richard keeps his hair short on the sides but longer on top, letting the locks of hair fall as they may; his facial hair he pays more attention to, keeping his goatee neatly trimmed and in order. His face is as broad as the rest of his body, with a square face, broad nose and a strong, angular chin.
When it comes to his wardrobe Richard dressed plainly, but smartly, keeping to solid black or slate grey clothing. He will wear slacks or jeans, dress shirts or a sweater, depending on the occasion and the weather. Under his clothing he wears a bodysuit that covers his upper body and his lower half down to mid-thigh, black in colour; it is made of the same heat resistant and sturdy material that his old hero costume was made out of, capable of surviving him using his power without compromising his dignity.
[ PERSONALITY TRAITS ]
JADED
Richard wanted to change the world at one point. In a way he still does, but the hopeful and optimistic dream he once had as a young boy first donning a costume died a long time ago, snuffed out by repeated failures and the realisation that the world was not the way he thought it was. Richard is a cynical individual with little faith or trust left to put in people; he expects them to act in their own self-interest, nothing more, and treats them as such.
DRIVEN
The drive Richard had as a hero still exists; he has not given up on his goals, merely changed them. He never was the type to give up or turn away from a problem and he was never the type to let others keep him from doing what he felt needed to be done. In the past this meant fighting against villains or criminals, or standing up to the injustices he saw; now it’s the heroes who are standing in his way.
COMPOSED
Richard is not the type to wear his emotions on his sleeve, nor is he the type to let them dictate his actions. That is not to say that he doesn’t act based on his emotions at times, but instead that he is able to keep a level head even when under duress.
[ BIO ]
Richard comes from a family of heroes; he is third generation, with both his father and grandfather being heroes before him, and it was never really a question whether or not he would follow in their footsteps; not for them and not for him. His grandfather, Michael Hoss, became a hero in the 80’s during an era when heroes were just starting to reach the peak of their fame, with many becoming celebrities and household names in their own right. He operated in Texas, his home state, first as an independent hero and later on joining the hero company TEXAS. Although his grandfather, who went by the name Ironside, never managed to reach that level of notoriety himself his attitude and beliefs towards costumed heroes were shaped by his experiences in this time period; Michael held an idealised view of heroes, tinted by rose coloured glasses and later by nostalgia, believing that they were good and righteous people. Not that they should be good and righteous, but they that were be default just for being heroes.
Michael Hoss was a good man; too good, in a sense. Because he was a good man he couldn’t conceive of a hero who didn’t meet his ideal of what a hero should be and this blinded him to their faults. When his eldest son was born and began to display powers, he passed on his beliefs to him and began to train him as a hero; what he didn’t do was teach him how to be a good man. Because heroes were good by default he didn’t have to and so Richard’s father, Nathan, felt that he didn’t have to do anything to be good either; he just was. After spending a few years working at TEXAS with his father, under the name Thermal, he moved to Castleburg and signed up with HERO instead; a few years after that, he met his wife.
Nathan Hoss is not an evil man, he wasn’t even a particularly bad one; mostly he was just selfish, a little conceited and utterly lacking in self-awareness. When Richard was born and began to display his powers Nathan passed onto him the same beliefs that his father taught him, despite them being out-dated before he was even born. For a while, like his father, he even believed in those values; he believed in heroes, in his father, in HERO. That they were more. That they were better. That they were special. Once he turned eighteen he joined up with HERO himself, looking to continue his family’s legacy but unsure if a normal person like himself would ever be able to match up, and found that reality was not quite as he had been taught to believe. The heroes he met, the ones he worked alongside were… less than expected; arrogant and egotistical, petty, vain, overly concerned with their own fame and popularity, reckless and unapologetic about their mistakes. Even costly ones. They were, well, human; they were not the paragons that he had heard his father and grandfather talk about. Even his own father wasn’t immune; he just was blind to the man’s faults before seeing him in action.
Once he came to this realisation Richard began to question why people were okay with letting heroes act the way they did; if there was nothing separating heroes from regular people other than their power, if they were as flawed and imperfect as everyone else, then why were the hero companies allowed to act with as much freedom as they did? There were no qualifications to become a hero, he knew that for a fact since he was one; anyone walking in off of the street could become a hero, so why were they as respected and trusted as they were? His previous fear, that a normal person like himself could not match up to the lofty goal of becoming as good as the other heroes became the fear that they weren’t any better than him. And when some heroes held as much power as they did, power to ruin an entire city single-handedly, wasn’t that a terrifying thought?
Richard spent the next several years trying to become the best hero he could be; rather than be defeated by the shattering of his worldview, he sought to fix it instead, thinking that if he could become the kind of hero that he originally wanted to be and even inspire others to do the same, then things would be okay. Along the way he encountered a disappointing level of resistance and criticisms from those around him; most didn’t see any problem with the way they did things so long as the villains were caught and the disasters prevented, others were more blatant about the fact they just didn’t care, while a few even accused him of trying to upstage them and make other heroes look bad with his “crusade”. After five years of this he gave up and Richard quit HERO, instead deciding to become an independent hero and vigilante while also publically advocating for changes to laws regarding hero companies and heroes themselves. This approach didn’t make him many friends among the hero community, but he never had many of those to begin with.
When the e-Police were first introduced and heroes began to decline in popularity, he understood why. It seemed that the general public was finally starting to catch on to the idea that heroes were more trouble than they were worth. Why wouldn’t the public put more trust in a robot, than the heroes who were a constant source of collateral damage because “it was necessary”? Heroes who were nothing more than flawed individuals with too much power and not enough culpability. Heroes who were no better trained, sometimes even less trained, than the police but given far more leeway. The robots weren’t perfect, of course, and likely never would be; there would always be threats that required a person with powers to intervene, but if the heroes were starting to experience a decline then it meant people were starting to realise that occasionally needing a “hero” didn’t mean having to put up with the hero companies or the hero culture. If the heroes couldn’t recover from this set back and restore public opinion, then didn’t that mean it was fair that they were replaced?
Richard hopes that the current situation will be enough for the heroes to change their ways or for the hero companies to disband entirely, but he is not hopeful. If things are going to change then he will need to lend proceedings a helping hand and put the final nail in the coffin of the heroes.
| MISCELLANEOUS |
During his time as a hero working for, well, HERO, Richard always hid or chose not to use certain aspects of his power due to it being too dangerous or destructive to bystanders or the surroundings. This has made it easier for the company to disavow the fact that he used to work for them before becoming a villain by highlighting the fact that he has since started using abilities that he had never shown as a hero before, stating that he has either undergone some change or was hiding information about himself and was always planning to betray them. This is further help but the fact that his relation to his father and grandfather were also kept a secret while he was a hero, at his own request.
[ RANKING ]
A
[ POWERS ]
Molten Metal Generation
Richard Hoss has a power which appears straight forward at first, but is surprisingly multi-faceted in reality. He has strength and durability beyond that of a normal human, which by himself would make him an effective hero or villain, but in addition to this he is able to produce molten metal from his body at will; the substance he produces is atomically identical to high-grade steel and its temperature is high enough to remain fluid. Richard does not have any direct control over the movement of this metal, aside from his ability to keep producing more of it, but it will remain heated so long as he is in contact with it and so long as he will it; it will cool naturally should it leave contact with him.
He is also able to instantly cool any of the metal that is in contact with him, solidifying and hardening it into solid steel at a moment’s notice. He uses this defensively, to quickly coat himself in a layer of armour to protect against attacks or offensively to harder a part of his body for an attack. However, even when solid he still does not have any direct control over the shape of the metal and his body will be sealed inside the hardened shell, unable to move. That being said, he is not trapped forever as Richard is able to remove the metal from his body by shattering and propelling it away from his body like a burst of shrapnel.
[ PHYSICAL STRENGTH ]
■■■■■■■□□□
7/10 – Richard physical strength is greatly enhanced, being able to easily lift several tons of mass with his bare hands.
[ AGILITY ]
■■■■□□□□□□
4/10 – Richard has no enhanced ability to speak of, but his strength allows him to move faster than a normal person by using great, leaping bounds to cover ground quickly.
[ INTELLIGENCE ]
■■■■■□□□□□
5/10 – Though many assume that he is a dumb brute due to his power or his way of fighting, Richard is a surprisingly well educated individual. He is no genius, but he is intelligent and well spoken.
[ DESTRUCTIVENESS ]
■■■■■■■□□□
7/10 – His strength combined with the molten metal he leaves in his wake and the explosive shrapnel he produces mean that Richard has a great capacity for destruction whether he wants to or not. This was a limitation for him as a hero and made it so he needed to hold back or limit himself when fighting, but since leaving that path he is no longer fettered so.
[ LETHALITY ]
■■■■■■■■□□
8/10 – With destruction comes lethality. The carnage he can cause to his surroundings can also be visited on his opponents and the hazardous nature of his powers mean even bystanders are not safe when he is fighting his hardest.
[ ENDURANCE ]
■■■■■■■■□□
8/10 – Richard’s body is hardy even without activating his full powers, but when coated in molten metal or a layer of solid armour he becomes even harder to hurt.
[ EFFICACY ]
■■■■■■■□□□
7/10 – Though straightforward, Richard’s power is surprisingly complex. Even so, he has had years to practice using it and in a way the fact that he used to hold himself in check as a hero has made him even more proficient than he would have been otherwise.
[ SKILLS ]
Kickboxing/Wrestling – Rather than just rely on his size and power to win fights, Richard has spent several years learning to fight both on his feet and on the ground in order to be able to deal with a variety of opponents.
Public Speaking – A side-effect of being someone in the public eye first as a hero then as a grass-roots activist, Richard is confident and capable of addressing large audiences while getting his point across.
"Heroes were a failed endeavour. It’s time to make way for the future."
[ NAME ]
Richard Hoss
[ HERO IDENTITY ]
Forge
[ NICKNAME/ALIAS ]
Rich
[ AGE ]
36
[ GENDER ]
Male
[ AFFILIATION ]
Villain/Vigilante; formerly a member of HERO
[ APPEARANCE ]
At 6’ 4” and 260lbs, combined with his broad shoulders and muscular build, Richard is an imposing individual; his height and his size, which includes a wide, barrel chest, thick arms and legs and large hands, give him a presence and physicality that is hard to ignore. His skin is a tanned bronze in colour, marred in places by the occasional pale scar, which complement his reddish brown hair and brown eyes.
Richard keeps his hair short on the sides but longer on top, letting the locks of hair fall as they may; his facial hair he pays more attention to, keeping his goatee neatly trimmed and in order. His face is as broad as the rest of his body, with a square face, broad nose and a strong, angular chin.
When it comes to his wardrobe Richard dressed plainly, but smartly, keeping to solid black or slate grey clothing. He will wear slacks or jeans, dress shirts or a sweater, depending on the occasion and the weather. Under his clothing he wears a bodysuit that covers his upper body and his lower half down to mid-thigh, black in colour; it is made of the same heat resistant and sturdy material that his old hero costume was made out of, capable of surviving him using his power without compromising his dignity.
[ PERSONALITY TRAITS ]
JADED
Richard wanted to change the world at one point. In a way he still does, but the hopeful and optimistic dream he once had as a young boy first donning a costume died a long time ago, snuffed out by repeated failures and the realisation that the world was not the way he thought it was. Richard is a cynical individual with little faith or trust left to put in people; he expects them to act in their own self-interest, nothing more, and treats them as such.
DRIVEN
The drive Richard had as a hero still exists; he has not given up on his goals, merely changed them. He never was the type to give up or turn away from a problem and he was never the type to let others keep him from doing what he felt needed to be done. In the past this meant fighting against villains or criminals, or standing up to the injustices he saw; now it’s the heroes who are standing in his way.
COMPOSED
Richard is not the type to wear his emotions on his sleeve, nor is he the type to let them dictate his actions. That is not to say that he doesn’t act based on his emotions at times, but instead that he is able to keep a level head even when under duress.
[ BIO ]
Richard comes from a family of heroes; he is third generation, with both his father and grandfather being heroes before him, and it was never really a question whether or not he would follow in their footsteps; not for them and not for him. His grandfather, Michael Hoss, became a hero in the 80’s during an era when heroes were just starting to reach the peak of their fame, with many becoming celebrities and household names in their own right. He operated in Texas, his home state, first as an independent hero and later on joining the hero company TEXAS. Although his grandfather, who went by the name Ironside, never managed to reach that level of notoriety himself his attitude and beliefs towards costumed heroes were shaped by his experiences in this time period; Michael held an idealised view of heroes, tinted by rose coloured glasses and later by nostalgia, believing that they were good and righteous people. Not that they should be good and righteous, but they that were be default just for being heroes.
Michael Hoss was a good man; too good, in a sense. Because he was a good man he couldn’t conceive of a hero who didn’t meet his ideal of what a hero should be and this blinded him to their faults. When his eldest son was born and began to display powers, he passed on his beliefs to him and began to train him as a hero; what he didn’t do was teach him how to be a good man. Because heroes were good by default he didn’t have to and so Richard’s father, Nathan, felt that he didn’t have to do anything to be good either; he just was. After spending a few years working at TEXAS with his father, under the name Thermal, he moved to Castleburg and signed up with HERO instead; a few years after that, he met his wife.
Nathan Hoss is not an evil man, he wasn’t even a particularly bad one; mostly he was just selfish, a little conceited and utterly lacking in self-awareness. When Richard was born and began to display his powers Nathan passed onto him the same beliefs that his father taught him, despite them being out-dated before he was even born. For a while, like his father, he even believed in those values; he believed in heroes, in his father, in HERO. That they were more. That they were better. That they were special. Once he turned eighteen he joined up with HERO himself, looking to continue his family’s legacy but unsure if a normal person like himself would ever be able to match up, and found that reality was not quite as he had been taught to believe. The heroes he met, the ones he worked alongside were… less than expected; arrogant and egotistical, petty, vain, overly concerned with their own fame and popularity, reckless and unapologetic about their mistakes. Even costly ones. They were, well, human; they were not the paragons that he had heard his father and grandfather talk about. Even his own father wasn’t immune; he just was blind to the man’s faults before seeing him in action.
Once he came to this realisation Richard began to question why people were okay with letting heroes act the way they did; if there was nothing separating heroes from regular people other than their power, if they were as flawed and imperfect as everyone else, then why were the hero companies allowed to act with as much freedom as they did? There were no qualifications to become a hero, he knew that for a fact since he was one; anyone walking in off of the street could become a hero, so why were they as respected and trusted as they were? His previous fear, that a normal person like himself could not match up to the lofty goal of becoming as good as the other heroes became the fear that they weren’t any better than him. And when some heroes held as much power as they did, power to ruin an entire city single-handedly, wasn’t that a terrifying thought?
Richard spent the next several years trying to become the best hero he could be; rather than be defeated by the shattering of his worldview, he sought to fix it instead, thinking that if he could become the kind of hero that he originally wanted to be and even inspire others to do the same, then things would be okay. Along the way he encountered a disappointing level of resistance and criticisms from those around him; most didn’t see any problem with the way they did things so long as the villains were caught and the disasters prevented, others were more blatant about the fact they just didn’t care, while a few even accused him of trying to upstage them and make other heroes look bad with his “crusade”. After five years of this he gave up and Richard quit HERO, instead deciding to become an independent hero and vigilante while also publically advocating for changes to laws regarding hero companies and heroes themselves. This approach didn’t make him many friends among the hero community, but he never had many of those to begin with.
When the e-Police were first introduced and heroes began to decline in popularity, he understood why. It seemed that the general public was finally starting to catch on to the idea that heroes were more trouble than they were worth. Why wouldn’t the public put more trust in a robot, than the heroes who were a constant source of collateral damage because “it was necessary”? Heroes who were nothing more than flawed individuals with too much power and not enough culpability. Heroes who were no better trained, sometimes even less trained, than the police but given far more leeway. The robots weren’t perfect, of course, and likely never would be; there would always be threats that required a person with powers to intervene, but if the heroes were starting to experience a decline then it meant people were starting to realise that occasionally needing a “hero” didn’t mean having to put up with the hero companies or the hero culture. If the heroes couldn’t recover from this set back and restore public opinion, then didn’t that mean it was fair that they were replaced?
Richard hopes that the current situation will be enough for the heroes to change their ways or for the hero companies to disband entirely, but he is not hopeful. If things are going to change then he will need to lend proceedings a helping hand and put the final nail in the coffin of the heroes.
| MISCELLANEOUS |
During his time as a hero working for, well, HERO, Richard always hid or chose not to use certain aspects of his power due to it being too dangerous or destructive to bystanders or the surroundings. This has made it easier for the company to disavow the fact that he used to work for them before becoming a villain by highlighting the fact that he has since started using abilities that he had never shown as a hero before, stating that he has either undergone some change or was hiding information about himself and was always planning to betray them. This is further help but the fact that his relation to his father and grandfather were also kept a secret while he was a hero, at his own request.
[ RANKING ]
A
[ POWERS ]
Molten Metal Generation
Richard Hoss has a power which appears straight forward at first, but is surprisingly multi-faceted in reality. He has strength and durability beyond that of a normal human, which by himself would make him an effective hero or villain, but in addition to this he is able to produce molten metal from his body at will; the substance he produces is atomically identical to high-grade steel and its temperature is high enough to remain fluid. Richard does not have any direct control over the movement of this metal, aside from his ability to keep producing more of it, but it will remain heated so long as he is in contact with it and so long as he will it; it will cool naturally should it leave contact with him.
He is also able to instantly cool any of the metal that is in contact with him, solidifying and hardening it into solid steel at a moment’s notice. He uses this defensively, to quickly coat himself in a layer of armour to protect against attacks or offensively to harder a part of his body for an attack. However, even when solid he still does not have any direct control over the shape of the metal and his body will be sealed inside the hardened shell, unable to move. That being said, he is not trapped forever as Richard is able to remove the metal from his body by shattering and propelling it away from his body like a burst of shrapnel.
[ PHYSICAL STRENGTH ]
■■■■■■■□□□
7/10 – Richard physical strength is greatly enhanced, being able to easily lift several tons of mass with his bare hands.
[ AGILITY ]
■■■■□□□□□□
4/10 – Richard has no enhanced ability to speak of, but his strength allows him to move faster than a normal person by using great, leaping bounds to cover ground quickly.
[ INTELLIGENCE ]
■■■■■□□□□□
5/10 – Though many assume that he is a dumb brute due to his power or his way of fighting, Richard is a surprisingly well educated individual. He is no genius, but he is intelligent and well spoken.
[ DESTRUCTIVENESS ]
■■■■■■■□□□
7/10 – His strength combined with the molten metal he leaves in his wake and the explosive shrapnel he produces mean that Richard has a great capacity for destruction whether he wants to or not. This was a limitation for him as a hero and made it so he needed to hold back or limit himself when fighting, but since leaving that path he is no longer fettered so.
[ LETHALITY ]
■■■■■■■■□□
8/10 – With destruction comes lethality. The carnage he can cause to his surroundings can also be visited on his opponents and the hazardous nature of his powers mean even bystanders are not safe when he is fighting his hardest.
[ ENDURANCE ]
■■■■■■■■□□
8/10 – Richard’s body is hardy even without activating his full powers, but when coated in molten metal or a layer of solid armour he becomes even harder to hurt.
[ EFFICACY ]
■■■■■■■□□□
7/10 – Though straightforward, Richard’s power is surprisingly complex. Even so, he has had years to practice using it and in a way the fact that he used to hold himself in check as a hero has made him even more proficient than he would have been otherwise.
[ SKILLS ]
Kickboxing/Wrestling – Rather than just rely on his size and power to win fights, Richard has spent several years learning to fight both on his feet and on the ground in order to be able to deal with a variety of opponents.
Public Speaking – A side-effect of being someone in the public eye first as a hero then as a grass-roots activist, Richard is confident and capable of addressing large audiences while getting his point across.
“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.”
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.”
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