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Table of Contents
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http://home.comcast.net/~scottd.orr/Viola1204.htm
http://home.comcast.net/~scottd.orr/Advancement.htm
http://home.comcast.net/~scottd.orr/Viola1220.htm
Age: 36 (appears 27), Year of Birth: 1184, Current Year: 1220
Covenant: Haunted Springs
Size: -1
Confidence: 1 (3)
Decrepitude: 0
Warping: 2 (24)
Characteristics
Intelligence: +4 (Precocious), Perception: +2 (Curious), Communication: -2 (Incomprehensible), Presence: +3 (Eerily beautiful), Strength: -3 (Insubstantial), Stamina: +2 (Resilient), Dexterity: 0, Quickness: +1 (Agile)
Wizard's Sigil: All spells include a manisfestation of violets: the flowers, the scent, or the color.
Virtues and Flaws
- The Gift, Hermetic Maga, Faerie Magic, Faerie-raised Merinita, Book Learner (+2 to book Study Totals), Free Expression (+3 to rolls for new works of art), Great Intelligence (+1 to Intelligence), Inventive Genius (+3/+6 to Lab Totals for new creations), Puissant Muto (+3 to Muto), Student of Faerie (+2 to Faerie Lore), Study Bonus (+2 to Art book and vis Study Totals)
- Favors (to faeries in father's family), Study Requirement, Clumsy, Driven (saving nature from the advance of man), Small Frame (-1 to Size, 4-point wound increments), Strange Magic (special “botch” die)
Mysteries and related flaws
- Arcadian Travel (travel between regiones) and Overconfidence
- Animae Magic (create faeries) and Faerie Friend
- Potent Spontaneous Magic and both Deleterious Circumstances - Iron (halves casting totals vs. target) and Discomfort from Iron
Personnality Traits
Altruistic +2, Honorable +3, Independent +3, Machiavellian +1, Trusting +1, Vengeful +3
Abilities
Area Lore: Black Sea (northern coast) 1, Area Lore: father’s regio (manor house) 1, Area Lore: Haunted Springs (faerie regio) 1, Area Lore: Mercia (faerie sites) 1, Awareness (alertness) 1, Bargain (faeries) 1 (10), Brawl (dodging) 1, Concentration (spells) 2, Craft: Illumination (nature subjects) 2, Etiquette (faeries) 1, Folk Ken (peasants) 1, Intrigue (plotting) 1 (10), Leadership (intimidation) 1, English (Mercian) 5, Gothic (Crimean) 1, Merinitia Lore (self-initiation) 2 (20), Order of Hermes Lore (House Merinita) 1, Swim (underwater maneuvers) 1, Teaching (Magic Theory) 3 (36), Artes Liberales (logic) 3 (34), Latin (Hermetic usage) 4, Philosophiae (moral philosophy) 2 (23), Faerie Lore (faerie lords) 3+2 (40), Faerie Magic (Arcadian Travel) 1, Finesse (precision) 3 (40), Magic Theory (enchanting items) 5 (88), Parma Magica (Mentem) 3 (45), Penetration (Rego) 1, Second Sight (regiones) 2
Arts
Creo 5, Intellego 6, Muto 9+3, Perdo 5, Rego 5, Animal 8, Aquam 5, Auram 5, Corpus 5, Herbam 6 (26), Ignem 5, Imaginem 7 (32), Mentem 5 (19), Terram 5, Vim 7
Useful Totals
- Magic Resistance (Parma Magica): 15 + Form & other bonuses + stress die
- Aiming Roll: 5 + die
- Concentration Roll: 9 + die
- Fast-cast Speed: 4 + stress die
- Basic Lab Total: 8 + Technique + Form + Aura
- Maximum Vis per Season: 10 (for enchanting items; 8 otherwise)
Combat
- Dodge: Init: +1, Attack —, Defense +3, Damage —
- Fist: Init: +1, Attack +1, Defense +2, Damage -3
- Kick: Init: +0, Attack +1, Defense +1, Damage +0
- Soak: +2
Fatigue levels: OK, 0, -1, -3, -5, Unconscious
Wound Penalties: -1 (1-5), -3 (6-10), -5 (11-15), Incapacitated (16-20)
Equipment
Enchanted Quill
- Material: Goose quill (stripped of barbs) filled with mercury (small size). Opened: 12 pawns (3 used).
- Effect name: Perpetually Sharp (MuAn 19) (constant effect)
- Effect name: Smooth-flowing Ink (+1 to Craft skill) (ReAq8) (constant effect)
Faerie Wine Casks
- These animate wine casks were given to one of Viola’s companions by the lord of the faerie vineyard in Haunted Springs. While unable to talk, the casks are friendly, and attached to their owner, often following her around as she moves about her living space or lab. They produce a quantity of wine every year; if drunk, this wine produces mild hallucinations, but its main value lies in its vis: depending on the desires of their owner, the casks produce either two pawns of Muto vis, four pawns of Imaginem, or six pawns of Herbam, any of which is faerie-tainted.
Familiar
Constantine, a Purple Emperor butterfly
Encumbrance: 0
Spells
Animal Spells
- InAn20 The Counsel of Animals (CT +12), R: Touch, D: Conc, T: Ind. Allows speech with the target animal (Base 10, +1 Touch, +1 Conc)
- InHe25 Converse with Plants and Trees (CT +13), R: Touch, D: Conc, T: Ind. Allows speech with the target plant (Base 15, +1 Touch, +1 Conc)
Mentem Spells
- CrMe15 The Wise Fool (CT +8), R: Eye, D: Sun, T: Ind. Plants an absurd thought in the target’s mind. The more absurd the notion, the easier it is to convince them they are wrong. However, they continue believing this foolishness until someone or something challenges it (Base 4, +1 Eye, +1 Sun)
Terram Spells
- MuTe(Aq)20 Eye of the Wizard’s Swamp (CT +13), R: Sight, D: Sun, T: Ind. Turns the ground in an area of 1,000 square paces swampy to one pace deep (Base 2, +4 Sight, +2 Sun, requisite necessary for effect)
Vim Spells
InVi20 Piercing the Faerie Veil, R: Per, D: Conc, T: Vision. Potency +1 (violet sapphire). Allows sight between levels of a regio (Base 3, +1 Conc, +4 Vision)
Custom Virtues and Flaws
Innate Spontaneous Magic (Major Hermetic Virtue)
To qualify for this Virtue you must have an extremely strong faerie nature. Examples include Faerie Blood, substantial Warping from a Faerie source, being bound by a Faerie Familiar, or the Inner Mystery of Becoming. All script variations for this mystery have one or more of these as a prerequisite. This and other new Arcadian Mysteries are available to Faerie magi outside of this group as well.
This Mystery taps into the power inherit in your Faerie nature, allowing you to handle magic with greater fluidity. When you cast a spontaneous spell without expending fatigue, you may choose to divide by five or by two. If you choose to divide by five, you need not roll a stress die, and cannot botch, just as normal. If you choose to divide by two, you must roll a stress die, and can botch.
Faerie-Raised Merinita (Major Hermetic Virtue)
A "catch-all" pack including Strong Faerie Blood, Innate Spontaneous Magic, Faerie Upbringing, Loose Magic and Weak Parens
Strange Magic (Minor Hermetic Flaw)
Whenever you roll a stress die for a magic roll, roll an extra die. If you roll a 0, you “botch” the spell as you would if you rolled a Weird Magic botch, but you get no Warping points for this botch, and it cannot trigger Twilight.
Potent Spontaneous Magic (Major Hermetic Virtue)
This Inner Mystery is an extension of Innate Spontaneous Magic, and uses your Faerie nature to bring your Magical essence closer to the surface. The rationale is that you are mostly a faerie being that, because of your human blood, has the Gift of Magic. Other magi are humans who would otherwise be mundane if not for their magical Gift, just as you would be a full faerie if not for the dollop of human blood that allows you to have the Gift for Magic. It is the Mysteries of Faerie Magic allow you to harmonize the two forces, and for this reason this Mystery is incompatible with Becoming. You cannot be initiated into one if you already have been initiated into the other.
Because your magic is brought even closer to the surface, you can get greater potency out of your Spontaneous Magic. This doesn’t work with Formulaic spells because the magic has to be quick and impulsive, and for the same reason it won’t work with Ceremonial Casting. Whenever you expend fatigue on casting a spontaneous spell, the lowest applicable Art is doubled before the whole total is divided by two. You still rolls a stress die, and may botch.
Vis
At the beginning of 1208, Viola had no personal vis. From 1208 to 1219, she got 44 pawns of vis (one per season), and used 19 for enchantments and a vis sacrifice for a mystery initiation. She used 17 more for enchantments for the covenant, including the quill, though she ended up taking the quill with her when she left the covenant, so let’s include the 15 for the quill in her usage total, making 36. (I’m assuming that the one pawn a season is all “savings”—that is, it doesn’t include vis that had to be spent during adventures.) That leaves her with eight pawns at the moment, distributed as follows:
Muto: 3 pawns
Animal: 2 pawns
Imaginem: 1 pawn
Vim: 2 pawns
Description:
Pale skin, bright violet eyes, very thin but not short, an eerie beauty. Her hair changes with the seasons, deepening from the palest blonde at the beginning of spring to a rich, pure gold at harvest time, then shading through a strawberry blonde to bright red and finally auburn, which fades quickly to white as the leaves fall.
Background:
Daughter of a human and a faerie lord, raised after the age of three in her father's court. Her affinity with violets derives from the flowers that grow in her father's land and in the regio connecting it with the mundane world. Her pater, in Stonehenge Tribunal, is Salignus.
In 1204, Viola passed her gauntlet, and, seeking to be independent from her pater, wandered down a random faerie trod, turning up on the southern slope of the Crimean mountains. She soon met another newly gauntled maga, Auriane of Flambeau, and they were joined by other young magi fleeing from a pair of senior magi in Constantinople whom they’d witnessed in a very blatant attempt to interfere with the mundane attack on the city during the 4th Crusade. The covenant joined Thebes Tribunal and, with no other covenants for miles around, had plenty of vis. In addition, a couple of its began to research the magic cult of a nearby group of monks, who were capable of creating magic regions within Divine auras.
Soon after the covenant was founded, Viola came into possession of a pair of animate faerie wine casks that produce faerie-aspected wine each autumn (they were actually a gift to her musician companion, Matthias). The Art of the vis depends on what she’s thinking about at the time: it can be two pawns of Muto, four pawns of Imaginem, or six pawns of Herbam. Drinking the wine produces mild hallucinations.
In 1207, in order to prevent possible violence and/or a serious Hermetic legal incident, Viola adopted as an apprentice a wandering priest, Theodolphus, who visited the covenant—and who, before taking up the cloth, had been apprenticed for three years to a diabolist, and then “lost” by the proper authorities when the diabolist was killed. From 1208 to 1219 she spent one season a year completing his training…badly—her ability to teach is laughable, but the Code says one season a year. She let him spend a lot of time in the library, and the fact that his Arts had already been opened means that she was able to train him despite lacking training herself in many Arts. Theodolphus was gauntleted in 1219, and embarked on a career as an itinerant magus in Thebes and Novgorod Tribunals, exchanging lab assistance for hospitality, and gently proselytizing the inhabitants of the covenants he visits.
Much of Viola’s service to the covenant of Haunted Springs consisted either of vis hunts, to various locations in Crimea and elsewhere along the northern coast of the Black Sea, and dealing with the local faeries, both the benign ones in the regio in the surrounding woods and a darker group inhabiting a regio on the nearby coast. Viola dealt competently with the former band, despite the occasional interference of troublemaking outsider satyrs. The coastal faeries committed a singular act of violence in the covenant’s environs in 1205, apparently pursuing one of their own, and then launched an attack on the covenant itself in 1210. Viola used trickery to foil this attack, and then counterattacked, penetrating the lower two levels of the faeries’ regio, enough to neutralize them as an immediate threat. She finally was able to defeat the fae conclusively in 1217, penetrating to the highest level of the regio by entering a cave accessible only by swimming underwater from a coastal grotto. In the cave, she confronted the lady of the regio, and, aided by some critical information her butterfly familiar, Constantine, obtained through eavesdropping, discovered the lady’s vulnerability to wind, and subdued her by using a spontaneous spell to channel wind into the cave. Taking advantage of the faerie’s weakened state, Viola made what she hopes will be a lasting bargain between the regio and the covenant.
In 1206 and 1207, respectively, she also conducted a pair of extended expeditions to retrieve the bones and mantle of a distant faerie relative slain in Arcadia, and to deal with concerns of the local faeries, who demanded the return of a magical herb stolen (unbeknowngst to them) by a rival group.
In 1214, Viola traveled home to England to locate a magical purple emperor butterfly to serve as a familiar. She named him “Constantine”, and bound him in 1215.
During this trip, she also spoke with her pater, Salignus, for the first time since her gauntlet. In 1213, prompted by his gift of a book, Viola had initiated herself into the first mystery of the Bright Ones Merinita cult, Arcadian Travel. She was initated into two additional mysteries, Animae Magic in 1216, by her pater, and Potent Spontaneous Magic in 1218, by the elusive Newyn.
Viola decided to leave Haunted Springs in 1219. Nothing in particular drove that decision, really, other than a desire to live somewhere new. She picked the secluded covenant of Andorra because of its impressive library and its still unspoiled surrounding wilderness.
Viola left the covenant in 1226 and returned to Novgorod to establish a new covenant.
