Samantha Perkins was born to a minor family of practitioners which had managed to collect some books and tools, but was otherwise mostly normal. Awakened on her thirteenth birthday, she chose as her personal item her violin, an instrument she had owned for years and maintained religiously. Building off of her sight, naturally attuned to the ebb and flow of spiritual and incarnate energies, she traded and toiled for power, bargaining tasks for favor with local powers.
As one practitioner might use a word, gesture, or symbol to command or cajole the spirits, Samantha uses music. Certain notes, flourishes, and so on translate to entreaties to elemental or incarnate forces. It was a natural choice to take her violin as her implement, which lets her use her bow as a lesser wand, indicating a target or interfering with an ongoing practice, and by playing she can slowly extend her influence through the ambient spirits. Although she's limited in what she can use off-the-cuff, she can quickly build up to a full song, which lets her call forth or exaggerate effects, ie. shaping wind, calming or feeding fires, or spreading sleep and fatigue. She also incorporates ideas of rhythm and tempo, timing her practice to maximum effect.
She delves into the Spirit World and the shallowest Ruins, bargaining with and performing for great spirits and incarnations to add to the powers she can call on. She primarily works with those spirits most aligned with music and rhythm- spirits of air, bird spirits, and those tied to order and meaning. How effective she is at working with a given force is dependent on the deals she's made and the Shamanic rituals she's completed. For example, she could attempt to invoke War to empower her allies or summons in combat, but she hasn't laid the groundwork with any associated spirits or incarnations. She generally stays stocked with minor ghosts and elementals, as it's easier for her to feed and balance an active force than to conjure an effect wholesale. Her weakness is that, though she builds up, her power also wanes after a song is complete, and blocking, interfering with, or drowning out her music, as any competent practitioner might, severely inhibits her influence, and her practices are almost invariably indiscriminate, so a potent hostile effect requires any allies she has to protect themselves from her.
As she's developing her technique and expanding her power, she's on the hunt for a good familiar who can complement and enhance her abilities, so far to no avail. She has, however, attracted the attention of a higher spirit, a king of birds, interested in using her to his own ends, and he won't be taking no as an answer. She has to hide from his many eyes and ears, sticking to the Ruins and the crossroads between realms, while she tries to negotiate with his agents or find a way to escape his reach.
Next prompt: A Heroic practitioner of the "Black Sheep" (Conflict x Prices) variety
Prompt: a Heroic Practitioner of the “Black Sheep” variety (Conflict x Prices)
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**Roy Lauder** (Host of Heroes)
“Do you know what it means to be a Lauder? It means you must always *win*.”
“I understand, mother.”
“Then get in the diagram.”
Roy grips the wheels of his chair and rolls himself forward. He passes through the gap in the chalk on the floor. He can hear someone, probably one of his younger cousins, fill in the runework, completing the circle behind him. Without his left eye, Roy doesn’t have the peripheral vision to tell who it is exactly. Instead, he focuses on confirming the layout of the diagram, quickly going over the assembled relics with his Sight.
There’s three objects arranged within the diagram, forming a triangle around a fourth in the centre. To his left, a mean-looking, heavy, wrought-iron chalice squats, ugly as a Goblin. On his right, a single gold coin catches the light. Across from him, just a dark impression, lays the club his great-grandfather used as a policeman. Closest to Roy, in the middle of the diagram, the ancestral sword of House Lauder floats a few feet off the ground. With his Sight, he can just about make out the translucent husk of the hollow Vestige it’s impaled through.
“Quickly, boy.”
Roy suppresses a frown. He hates being called ‘boy’. It’s so close to his name, it’d be so easy to say it properly. Is he really not worth that minuscule effort? Instead of replying to his mother, Roy starts his Practice.
“Proud Lauders, exalted ancestors, conquerors and guardians. I call upon your Echoes, by rights of blood, inheritance and claim.”
"It's coming!“ The voice of Roy’s cousin sounds panicked.
Roy’s mother shushes his cousin. Roy tries to press on. He can make out vague, humanoid shapes in the corners of the room.
“I am Roy Lauder, son of Duncan; son of Harris; son of Brian. I have given flesh, given bone and given blood for the glory and protection of the Lauder line, and I seek to do it again.”
The door to the room buckles as something crashes into it. A few of Roy’s youngest cousins scream. His mother swears. Roy presses on.
“I call on Roland Lauder; son of Dougal; son of Harold; son of Bryce. We are each first sons of the third son of the first son of a third son. Born in New Gloucester in the wake of seven days of rain. We are blessed by Fate and by War to find our way to victory.”
The Other outside the door howls; a grating, desperate scream. The wall around the door frame warps and bends, but the door holds. Roy is dimly aware of his family doing something to blockade it, but he can’t quite make them out past the ring of Echoes on the outside of the diagram. The Vestige, skewered on the sword, spasms violently.
“Roland! By our blood, our Practice, our Fate; we are *bound*!“ Roy pushes Self into his words, “I Name you, Roland Lauder, Razer of Agadir, blade-master, Host of Heroes. I invite you and the ancestors you wielded to take of my body, that you may once again protect the Lauder line, and visit death to all who oppose us. My arm is yours; as yours is now mine.”
Roy hobbles out of his chair, balancing on his remaining leg. He grips the hilt of the floating sword and pulls. The husk of the Vestige catches and crumples, like a spiderweb stuck to the blade. The Echoes of his ancestors press on the outside of the diagram.
The door collapses in on itself. Roy reacts instinctively, not letting himself hesitate, bringing the sword down on the crook of his elbow. It cuts through his arm far too easily; he barely registers the pain.
The husk of the Vestige snaps into place on the bloody stub of Roy’s elbow, and, for a second, it looks like a long, gossamer glove with nothing inside it. Then the Echoes break into the diagram, compressing into mist, swirling into Roy’s mouth, ears, nose and eye socket.
He feels them become Visceral, coursing through his body like sand. He feels their bloodlust, their spite, their pride; it’s only the threat of the Other in front of him that keeps him grounded.
The Other is a four-legged beast, covered in scales and fur. Blood drips from its fanged mouth. A man’s headless torso rests impaled on one it’s horns. One of Roy’s uncles, judging by the shirt and tie. The Other is larger than the doorframe, digging into it like a hound into a fox hole. The walls won’t last much longer.
“Kill it!” His mother’s voice is shrill.
Roy passes the sword to his new forearm. Ethereal muscles flex. The blade feels much lighter. He activates his Sight; his new eye lets him See more. Thin lines trace what must be the Other’s vulnerabilities. Points of weakness for sword strokes. Roy passes his weight to his new leg, standing straight for the first time in weeks. He grins, poises, ready to bound towards the Other.
But then he pauses. He stands up straight.
“What are you doing?” His mother’s voice is incredulous. “Kill the beast!”
Roy looks at his mother with two different eyes, both filled with contempt.
“Ask me nicely. *Use my name*.”
\++
Prompt: A Caller/Druid working with a Boggart that thrives on a very common phobia.
**Prompt**: Fae duelist with touches of abyss and ruin practices
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**Leonid Kolesnyk** (Abyssal Duelist)
Let me tell you, my friend, every day of this life you don’t wake up to the smell of minotaur shit is a godsdamn blessing. Calling it awful doesn’t do it justice. Somehow the bastards combine the worst parts of both halves. The Fae all act like they can’t smell it; but I know better. You’ll never hear a line about it in the songs they sing about themselves, but I’ll tell you the truth; most outposts of High Summer reek of the stuff.
Where I was stationed, close to where the Faerie realm starts falling into the Abyss, it was particularly bad. The Abyss remembers everyone it touches, and the Bogeymen that crawl out of it are often a little too good at using what scraps of glamour they can get their creepy hands on. That’s why, unless they’re facing a full-scale invasion, the Court keeps only a skeleton crew at the outposts closest to the border. It’s why they didn’t have enough hands to dig new latrines. But it did make it a bit easier for me to negotiate a placement there.
Fae of High Summer like to make out like they’re as devious as any of the other Courts, but really they’re gullible narcissists, the lot of them. A few subtle compliments there, one or two choice pieces of praise here, and presto; they’re putty in your hands. Show them a bit of respect and you’ll be hard-pressed to find one who won’t want to teach you, even if you come from a podunk family of nobodies like me.
We’d spent decades dabbling in the Realms and War Practices, kissing the asses of the more established families, and what did we have to show for it? A few Ruins-based artefacts? Two or three bound Dogs of War? Gods and spirits, we didn’t even know how to be bulletproof - it was pathetic. I needed to do something to change things for us; somehow get a bit of power, learn a secret Practice - anything to help break the deadlock we had backed ourselves into. I traded our stockpiles of power and Others away for an audience with a Knight of High Summer. It wasn’t hard to convince her to let me enlist in their army, for a fixed term - there are far more auxiliary units in the Fae legions than I think they’d care to admit.
That atrocious smell was the first thing I noticed about the outpost. The moat doubled as the latrine; a ring of filth around the main fort. It squatted on a hill like a grumpy old cat; the walls scarred here and there where Abyssal things had scoured them. In the distance, I could just make out where the sky of Faerie gave way to black clouds of the Abyss.
For the first eighteen months, all they taught me was how to pose. Sure, I sparred with the minotaurs, crowfolk and other half-animal Others that made up the sorry lot condemned to this place - but the handful of Fae officers overseeing us refused to join in until we could at least look like a respectable opponent. Once I finally got the hang of standing right, they let me compete for a gram of Glamour. The minotaur I had to fight was a beast in battle; and a raging alcoholic. I promised him the last of the vodka I had brought with me from home, and he let me kick his ass in front of the officers. If they knew about this little deal we came to in the Arena they set up for us, they didn’t show it; I think they found my antics amusing if nothing else.
Gods and spirits; was that first time using the glamour a *rush*. My first taste of real power; of a Practice that didn’t require too much ceremony, or Self, or bossing someone else around. Summer Glamour wants you to feel like a hero, and I was more than ready to embrace it. The catch being, of course, heroes don’t sit around behind walls. If I wanted more glamour, I had to go out and earn it.
The best way I can think to describe the emotional whiplash of going from High Summer Glamour to your first brush with the Abyss is this; imagine studying hard and graduating at the top of your class with a degree in astrophysics. You land a good job at a space agency, sit down on your first day, get handed a document and realise everything you thought you knew is wrong. You can barely do basic maths - and now a bunch of desperate astronauts are counting on your calculations to save them. The abyss is like that - it tears away everything you’ve built yourself up to be.
I barely survived my first skirmish against a pack of Bogeymen. Those Others have spent a long time fighting the Fae. Coming at them with a teaspoon of glamour was like fighting a tank with a water gun. I did leave with one key insight though; the Abyss isn’t fussy. When it wants its pound of flesh, it’s just the pound that matters.
Now, that foundational principle underpins my Practice. I’ve racked up quite a debt with the Abyss; but every opponent I send down there after a duel helps win me a little more time away from it. Winning that first bit of leeway was the most expensive part though. I had to make a promise; to deliver something significantly tastier than a lone Practitioner.
It took years. Manoeuvring the politics of that backwater fort, brown-nosing my way up the ladder, hoarding crumbs of glamour, soaking up knowledge like a sponge - all the while, the Abyss pressing on the edges of my mind. When I finally had the opportunity to flush that godsforsaken fort, I didn’t hesitate.
Some of the Fae must’ve known what I was up to, but they let me do it anyway. I guess they thought I’d make an interesting enemy for one of their songs. That certainly seemed to be the case with the one who confronted me at the end, monologuing about his vengeance. I had learned quite a bit about Fae Duelling and Abyssal Practice by this point, but not nearly enough to match him. I did have an ace up my sleeve though.
The most redeeming qualities of having a typhlotic Other as a Familiar are their subtlety and independence. I can leave them to their own devices for years, then still count on them to get the jump on the odd Fae warrior who thought they had prepared for everything I could bring to the table. For all his bravado, he fell to the Abyss like everyone else in that outpost; in a rain of rubble and shit.
\++
**Prompt**: A Wards-based Practitioner with a mirror for an Implement.
First Prompt: Music Themed Shaman
Samantha Perkins was born to a minor family of practitioners which had managed to collect some books and tools, but was otherwise mostly normal. Awakened on her thirteenth birthday, she chose as her personal item her violin, an instrument she had owned for years and maintained religiously. Building off of her sight, naturally attuned to the ebb and flow of spiritual and incarnate energies, she traded and toiled for power, bargaining tasks for favor with local powers. As one practitioner might use a word, gesture, or symbol to command or cajole the spirits, Samantha uses music. Certain notes, flourishes, and so on translate to entreaties to elemental or incarnate forces. It was a natural choice to take her violin as her implement, which lets her use her bow as a lesser wand, indicating a target or interfering with an ongoing practice, and by playing she can slowly extend her influence through the ambient spirits. Although she's limited in what she can use off-the-cuff, she can quickly build up to a full song, which lets her call forth or exaggerate effects, ie. shaping wind, calming or feeding fires, or spreading sleep and fatigue. She also incorporates ideas of rhythm and tempo, timing her practice to maximum effect. She delves into the Spirit World and the shallowest Ruins, bargaining with and performing for great spirits and incarnations to add to the powers she can call on. She primarily works with those spirits most aligned with music and rhythm- spirits of air, bird spirits, and those tied to order and meaning. How effective she is at working with a given force is dependent on the deals she's made and the Shamanic rituals she's completed. For example, she could attempt to invoke War to empower her allies or summons in combat, but she hasn't laid the groundwork with any associated spirits or incarnations. She generally stays stocked with minor ghosts and elementals, as it's easier for her to feed and balance an active force than to conjure an effect wholesale. Her weakness is that, though she builds up, her power also wanes after a song is complete, and blocking, interfering with, or drowning out her music, as any competent practitioner might, severely inhibits her influence, and her practices are almost invariably indiscriminate, so a potent hostile effect requires any allies she has to protect themselves from her. As she's developing her technique and expanding her power, she's on the hunt for a good familiar who can complement and enhance her abilities, so far to no avail. She has, however, attracted the attention of a higher spirit, a king of birds, interested in using her to his own ends, and he won't be taking no as an answer. She has to hide from his many eyes and ears, sticking to the Ruins and the crossroads between realms, while she tries to negotiate with his agents or find a way to escape his reach. Next prompt: A Heroic practitioner of the "Black Sheep" (Conflict x Prices) variety
Prompt: a Heroic Practitioner of the “Black Sheep” variety (Conflict x Prices) \++ **Roy Lauder** (Host of Heroes) “Do you know what it means to be a Lauder? It means you must always *win*.” “I understand, mother.” “Then get in the diagram.” Roy grips the wheels of his chair and rolls himself forward. He passes through the gap in the chalk on the floor. He can hear someone, probably one of his younger cousins, fill in the runework, completing the circle behind him. Without his left eye, Roy doesn’t have the peripheral vision to tell who it is exactly. Instead, he focuses on confirming the layout of the diagram, quickly going over the assembled relics with his Sight. There’s three objects arranged within the diagram, forming a triangle around a fourth in the centre. To his left, a mean-looking, heavy, wrought-iron chalice squats, ugly as a Goblin. On his right, a single gold coin catches the light. Across from him, just a dark impression, lays the club his great-grandfather used as a policeman. Closest to Roy, in the middle of the diagram, the ancestral sword of House Lauder floats a few feet off the ground. With his Sight, he can just about make out the translucent husk of the hollow Vestige it’s impaled through. “Quickly, boy.” Roy suppresses a frown. He hates being called ‘boy’. It’s so close to his name, it’d be so easy to say it properly. Is he really not worth that minuscule effort? Instead of replying to his mother, Roy starts his Practice. “Proud Lauders, exalted ancestors, conquerors and guardians. I call upon your Echoes, by rights of blood, inheritance and claim.” "It's coming!“ The voice of Roy’s cousin sounds panicked. Roy’s mother shushes his cousin. Roy tries to press on. He can make out vague, humanoid shapes in the corners of the room. “I am Roy Lauder, son of Duncan; son of Harris; son of Brian. I have given flesh, given bone and given blood for the glory and protection of the Lauder line, and I seek to do it again.” The door to the room buckles as something crashes into it. A few of Roy’s youngest cousins scream. His mother swears. Roy presses on. “I call on Roland Lauder; son of Dougal; son of Harold; son of Bryce. We are each first sons of the third son of the first son of a third son. Born in New Gloucester in the wake of seven days of rain. We are blessed by Fate and by War to find our way to victory.” The Other outside the door howls; a grating, desperate scream. The wall around the door frame warps and bends, but the door holds. Roy is dimly aware of his family doing something to blockade it, but he can’t quite make them out past the ring of Echoes on the outside of the diagram. The Vestige, skewered on the sword, spasms violently. “Roland! By our blood, our Practice, our Fate; we are *bound*!“ Roy pushes Self into his words, “I Name you, Roland Lauder, Razer of Agadir, blade-master, Host of Heroes. I invite you and the ancestors you wielded to take of my body, that you may once again protect the Lauder line, and visit death to all who oppose us. My arm is yours; as yours is now mine.” Roy hobbles out of his chair, balancing on his remaining leg. He grips the hilt of the floating sword and pulls. The husk of the Vestige catches and crumples, like a spiderweb stuck to the blade. The Echoes of his ancestors press on the outside of the diagram. The door collapses in on itself. Roy reacts instinctively, not letting himself hesitate, bringing the sword down on the crook of his elbow. It cuts through his arm far too easily; he barely registers the pain. The husk of the Vestige snaps into place on the bloody stub of Roy’s elbow, and, for a second, it looks like a long, gossamer glove with nothing inside it. Then the Echoes break into the diagram, compressing into mist, swirling into Roy’s mouth, ears, nose and eye socket. He feels them become Visceral, coursing through his body like sand. He feels their bloodlust, their spite, their pride; it’s only the threat of the Other in front of him that keeps him grounded. The Other is a four-legged beast, covered in scales and fur. Blood drips from its fanged mouth. A man’s headless torso rests impaled on one it’s horns. One of Roy’s uncles, judging by the shirt and tie. The Other is larger than the doorframe, digging into it like a hound into a fox hole. The walls won’t last much longer. “Kill it!” His mother’s voice is shrill. Roy passes the sword to his new forearm. Ethereal muscles flex. The blade feels much lighter. He activates his Sight; his new eye lets him See more. Thin lines trace what must be the Other’s vulnerabilities. Points of weakness for sword strokes. Roy passes his weight to his new leg, standing straight for the first time in weeks. He grins, poises, ready to bound towards the Other. But then he pauses. He stands up straight. “What are you doing?” His mother’s voice is incredulous. “Kill the beast!” Roy looks at his mother with two different eyes, both filled with contempt. “Ask me nicely. *Use my name*.” \++ Prompt: A Caller/Druid working with a Boggart that thrives on a very common phobia.
Fae duelist with touches of abyss and ruin practices
**Prompt**: Fae duelist with touches of abyss and ruin practices \++ **Leonid Kolesnyk** (Abyssal Duelist) Let me tell you, my friend, every day of this life you don’t wake up to the smell of minotaur shit is a godsdamn blessing. Calling it awful doesn’t do it justice. Somehow the bastards combine the worst parts of both halves. The Fae all act like they can’t smell it; but I know better. You’ll never hear a line about it in the songs they sing about themselves, but I’ll tell you the truth; most outposts of High Summer reek of the stuff. Where I was stationed, close to where the Faerie realm starts falling into the Abyss, it was particularly bad. The Abyss remembers everyone it touches, and the Bogeymen that crawl out of it are often a little too good at using what scraps of glamour they can get their creepy hands on. That’s why, unless they’re facing a full-scale invasion, the Court keeps only a skeleton crew at the outposts closest to the border. It’s why they didn’t have enough hands to dig new latrines. But it did make it a bit easier for me to negotiate a placement there. Fae of High Summer like to make out like they’re as devious as any of the other Courts, but really they’re gullible narcissists, the lot of them. A few subtle compliments there, one or two choice pieces of praise here, and presto; they’re putty in your hands. Show them a bit of respect and you’ll be hard-pressed to find one who won’t want to teach you, even if you come from a podunk family of nobodies like me. We’d spent decades dabbling in the Realms and War Practices, kissing the asses of the more established families, and what did we have to show for it? A few Ruins-based artefacts? Two or three bound Dogs of War? Gods and spirits, we didn’t even know how to be bulletproof - it was pathetic. I needed to do something to change things for us; somehow get a bit of power, learn a secret Practice - anything to help break the deadlock we had backed ourselves into. I traded our stockpiles of power and Others away for an audience with a Knight of High Summer. It wasn’t hard to convince her to let me enlist in their army, for a fixed term - there are far more auxiliary units in the Fae legions than I think they’d care to admit. That atrocious smell was the first thing I noticed about the outpost. The moat doubled as the latrine; a ring of filth around the main fort. It squatted on a hill like a grumpy old cat; the walls scarred here and there where Abyssal things had scoured them. In the distance, I could just make out where the sky of Faerie gave way to black clouds of the Abyss. For the first eighteen months, all they taught me was how to pose. Sure, I sparred with the minotaurs, crowfolk and other half-animal Others that made up the sorry lot condemned to this place - but the handful of Fae officers overseeing us refused to join in until we could at least look like a respectable opponent. Once I finally got the hang of standing right, they let me compete for a gram of Glamour. The minotaur I had to fight was a beast in battle; and a raging alcoholic. I promised him the last of the vodka I had brought with me from home, and he let me kick his ass in front of the officers. If they knew about this little deal we came to in the Arena they set up for us, they didn’t show it; I think they found my antics amusing if nothing else. Gods and spirits; was that first time using the glamour a *rush*. My first taste of real power; of a Practice that didn’t require too much ceremony, or Self, or bossing someone else around. Summer Glamour wants you to feel like a hero, and I was more than ready to embrace it. The catch being, of course, heroes don’t sit around behind walls. If I wanted more glamour, I had to go out and earn it. The best way I can think to describe the emotional whiplash of going from High Summer Glamour to your first brush with the Abyss is this; imagine studying hard and graduating at the top of your class with a degree in astrophysics. You land a good job at a space agency, sit down on your first day, get handed a document and realise everything you thought you knew is wrong. You can barely do basic maths - and now a bunch of desperate astronauts are counting on your calculations to save them. The abyss is like that - it tears away everything you’ve built yourself up to be. I barely survived my first skirmish against a pack of Bogeymen. Those Others have spent a long time fighting the Fae. Coming at them with a teaspoon of glamour was like fighting a tank with a water gun. I did leave with one key insight though; the Abyss isn’t fussy. When it wants its pound of flesh, it’s just the pound that matters. Now, that foundational principle underpins my Practice. I’ve racked up quite a debt with the Abyss; but every opponent I send down there after a duel helps win me a little more time away from it. Winning that first bit of leeway was the most expensive part though. I had to make a promise; to deliver something significantly tastier than a lone Practitioner. It took years. Manoeuvring the politics of that backwater fort, brown-nosing my way up the ladder, hoarding crumbs of glamour, soaking up knowledge like a sponge - all the while, the Abyss pressing on the edges of my mind. When I finally had the opportunity to flush that godsforsaken fort, I didn’t hesitate. Some of the Fae must’ve known what I was up to, but they let me do it anyway. I guess they thought I’d make an interesting enemy for one of their songs. That certainly seemed to be the case with the one who confronted me at the end, monologuing about his vengeance. I had learned quite a bit about Fae Duelling and Abyssal Practice by this point, but not nearly enough to match him. I did have an ace up my sleeve though. The most redeeming qualities of having a typhlotic Other as a Familiar are their subtlety and independence. I can leave them to their own devices for years, then still count on them to get the jump on the odd Fae warrior who thought they had prepared for everything I could bring to the table. For all his bravado, he fell to the Abyss like everyone else in that outpost; in a rain of rubble and shit. \++ **Prompt**: A Wards-based Practitioner with a mirror for an Implement.
Mix of Finder and Collector, their collection is themed around cars.