Leah bat Yitzak, Defiant Baal Teshuva
Mythic Plausible - This post creates a character who is not historical. But her relationship to Judaism is something that is historically plausible. She also has a relationship with a historical figure, Nachmanides.
The town of Girona in Catalonia has a thriving Jewish community featuring a mix of faithful rabbis, ambitious mystics, and ordinary craftspeople. Out of the latter category came Leah bat Yitzak. Her father was a poor potter, and her large family, and plethora of brothers especially, left her with no real place. It didn’t help that her Gift meant that she was a social outcast in the Jewish community, and the black sheep of the family. Her father was the only one who saw the spark of intelligence in her eye, but he would tell her apologetically that there was no place for a girl at the beit midrash, and he was spending all his pennies to send her older brothers there in any case. For her twelfth birthday, the day she became a Jewish adult, he gave her a battered siddur as a token of the education he could never give her. She read and reread the beautiful poems within it.
But rumor of a strange off-putting girl reached the Order of Hermes, and Leah found herself an apprentice to the Anselmo of House Tytalus. The elderly magus saw the wasted potential of the girl, and took her as his apprentice. Leah was torn - she loved the opportunity to learn, but found her master to be overbearing and cruel. She tried to hold to her father’s teachings, keeping Shabbat, not eating pork, but her master had little patience with her observance. And she knew very little of practice in any case, since she had no formal training. When she was Gauntleted, under the name Kourasméni, she was not a practicing Jew, though she vehemently declared that she was no Christian either.
Anselmo trained her in the magic of debate and intrigue, and as soon as she escaped him she started to use the skills he had taught her to turn the Tribunal against him. It was a long and protracted battle that only ended with his disappearance into Final Twilight. Only after he was gone did Kourasméni realize that she had been doing exactly as he wanted the whole time, that he reveled in their conflict.
Anselmo’s death meant the return of his first apprentice, Peritheus, a skilled theurge who considered himself to be the true inheritor of Anselmo’s magical legacy of books, items, and prestige. This started Kourasméni’s second great rivalry, where she challenged a magus thirty years her senior and her clear superior in magical skill. But the ties that she had forged with the Tribunal meant that she had the upper hand, as long as the conflict was in the political realm. She thought this would mean her victory was inevitable. Instead she nearly lost her life.
Peritheus did not care about her political skill, he intended to simply murder her in a Wizard’s War. The strength of her covenant’s Aegis saved her from the initial assault, but it was a close run thing. Kourasméni had to flee to her allies covenants, staying one step ahead of her frater as he prosecuted several Wizard’s Wars against her.
After magical brute force did not prove enough to finish the job, Peritheus turned to his magical secrets and the Mystery Cult of which he was a member. The theurgic cult worshiped a powerful Etruscan spirit, Orcus, who claimed to be god of the underworld and broken oaths. In her decades of political struggle Kourasméni had accumulated a vast list of broken oaths, and each one gave Orcus power over her. Peritheus unleashed Orcus’s power on her, and all seemed lost. In a desperate effort to save herself Kourasméni explored many mystical protections, but then she remembered an ancient ritual from her youth.
Kourasméni returned to Girona. She was not exactly welcomed by the Jews there, but she spoke Ladino, and Rabbi Moses ben Nachman reminded the community that on Yom Kippur they are permitted to pray with sinners. The ritual of Kol Nidre freed her of her broken oaths, and it also stirred a longing for her barely remembered childhood.
Now Kourasméni has taken the name Leah bat Yitzak again. She has become a baal teshuva, someone who has returned to Jewish practice after a time away. Or at least, she’s attempting it. Rabbi Moses spent six months instructing her before throwing up his hands. Leah was willing to attempt to follow the laws of kashrut and Shabbat, she was absolutely not going to stop practicing magic.
Leah is now on a journey across Mythic Europe. She seeks to gather support for the destruction of the Orcus cult that Peritheus is a part of. It continues to be a threat to her personally, but she also now understands theurgic cults in general to be idolatry. As well, she seeks to reconnect with her Jewish faith by meeting different Jewish communities. And perhaps she can find a rabbi more permissive than Rabbi Moses.
Story Seed - Against the Cult
Leah comes to the covenant’s Tribunal seeking to stamp out theurgic cultic practice. She is a master manipulator, so she certainly will not say that outright at first. But she asks questions, seeking to find out who is a member of a Mystery Cult and who might be opposed to them. As well, her agents spread the idea that any Hermetic magus who devotes himself to a magical spirit claiming to be a god can’t be truly loyal to the Order. Such things are just a step or two away from Infernalism. She decides that the covenant could be a useful ally - they know the Hermetic political landscape so they can help her orient herself. And perhaps they can be manipulated into being her agents. More than anything, she needs a place to stay. How will the covenant react when this powerful maga invites herself to be their house guest. If they say no, have they gained a dangerous enemy? If they say yes, are they now enmeshed in her schemes?