I'm curious how you plan to resolve the tradition of mercere magi not descended from mercer dedicating their lives to training mercere descendants with the Gift with being mute. I like the character so far, and it seems like a very real issue for her to face.
To be honest, I wasn't planning on having her teaching to Mercere's descendants. But still, that sounds interesting. I have an early draft for her. Let's see if she's viable. Since you mentioned the teaching issue, I think it could be just the right gauntlet for her.
Khadija al-Maqdisiyya (Khadija from Jerusalem), born around the beginning of the XIII century, was a street urchin in the street of Jerusalem. Shunned by her parents, she had to adapt and survive in the streets. Forced to live with the beggars and other outcasts, she started stealing food from the local market stalls. Usually the theft were accompanied by sudden gusts of wind that distracted the merchants, or unusual sounds turning their attention. Words of her began to spread and reached the ears of the Redcaps, who then sent someone to investigate.
Eventually she was caught. Fleeing from an enraged victim, she bumped into a group of armored men and then a Turbulence marked by a sweeping wind incurred. The armored men dragged her in an alley and beated her, then cutting her tongue before leaving her to die.
She was found by Alexandra from Smyrna ex Mercere, the Redcap who was looking for her following the rumours. She took the child in and adopted her as her daughter, maybe at first only to justify her failure of not having being able to prevent her mutilation, but later for true affection. She pulled several strings in order to have her trained as an apprentice, with the mutilation and all.
As for the girl, the trauma has been devastating, and her condition has became part of her Essential Nature. It shaped her in her hatred against the kind of people who did that to her, but at the same time it prepared her for her future life. She has already experienced the worst of what life has to offer and she survived, and she will never be afraid of anything. In admiration for her fooster mother hellenic heritage, she later adopted the name of Terpsichore of Mercere when she passed her Gauntlet.
First draft of her characteristics:
Characteristics: Int +2, Per 1, Pre +2, Com -2, Str 0, Sta +1, Dex 1, Qik 1
Size: 0
Age: 25 (25)
Decrepitude: 0
Warping Score: 0
Confidence Score: 2 (5)
Virtues: The Gift; Hermetic Magus; Puissant Creo*; Major Magical Focus (weather); Affinity with Auram; Affinity with Imaginem; Quiet Magic x2; Self Confident, Educated, Subtle Magic;
*House Virtue
Flaws: Deficient Form (Terram); Hatred (Major) (armored people); Mute; Weakness (luxury); Hermetic Patron (Alexandra ex Mercere); Illegitimate Lineage
Personality Traits: Devoted to mother +3, Vengeful +3
Abilities: Area Lore: Jerusalem (Holy Places) 2, Artes Liberales (Ceremonial Magic) 2, Athletics 2 (Dancing), Awareness (People in armour) 2, Brawl (Dodge) 2, Charm (Men) 1, Code of Hermes (Levant Tribunal) 1, Concentration (spells) 3, Dead Language: Classical Greek (Hermetic Usage) 4, Finesse (Auram) 1, Guile 1 (hiding), Legerdemain (pickpocket) 1, Living Language: Arabic (Hermetic Usage) 5, Magic Theory (spells) 4, Organization Lore: Order of Hermes (House Mercere) 2, Parma Magica (Terram) 1, Penetration (Auram) 2, Teaching (House Mercere) 1
Arts: Cr 7+3, In 2, Mu 5, Pe 1, Re 7, An 0, Aq 0, Au 9, Co 0, He 0, Ig 0, Im 6, Me 0, Te 0, Vi 3
Her casting sigil is Lightness (levity).
I'll see later her voting sigil.
One of her primary means of communications will be the usage of this:
CrIm
PHANTASM OF THE TALKING HEAD
R: Voice, D: Diam, T: Ind
Creates an illusory face on a wall or other
flat object. The visage can speak during the
spell’s duration. Individual wizards’ sigils can
produce very interesting differences in how the
voice sounds, how the face looks, and so on.
(Base 2, +2 Voice, +1 Diam, +1 intelligible speech)
She will have variants of the same, I'll deal with the details later
Basic issue here-
- redcaps don't generally follow rumors about young Gifted people, other houses do that. They could easily come across a street urchin who has been stealing and maybe had their tongue cut out and adopt her, and then later she develops the Gift with no problem, but they don't actively recruit outside of their own bloodline.
- educated doesn't fit the background well as described where she would be adopted and apprenticed almost directly, though skilled parens would, and net you more development
- dance is a professional skill, not an aspect of athletics
- hiding is an aspect of stealth, not guile
- this character is short 75 xp
I will adjust accordingly.
Are the Virtues ok ? I was afraid there were maybe a lot too many hermetic ones for a just gauntleted magus, if that's the case I can redraft it (but i'd like not...)
hermetic virtues are fine
Terpsichore's Gauntlet.
On the fifteenth year of her apprenticeships, her Parens will summon her and give her this task.
He/She will inform her she is supposed to train an apprentice for the House, whose Arts are not yet opened. She is instructed she can use a spare laboratory for this task, and she has one full season to do it. The Parens will then orders her to proceed meeting the subject in the laboratory and then retracts the Parma which has covered her for all the apprenticeship from Terpsichore, leaving her unshielded from his Gift.
In the laboratory she will meet the future apprentice, a young man of about her age. Their first meeting is marked by cold formality, their mutual distrust is almost tangible in the room. And yet they manage to tolerate each other. Terpsichore is the first to take action. She turns her back on him, exposing herself to possible attacks. With deliberately slow movements she casts Phantasm of the Talking Head on a blackboard of the laboratory, and then through the spell she introduces herself and inform him of the instructions she received, and of her inability to speak normally. With a great effort from both the participants, the two apprentices come to an agreement.
She will try to open the Arts, even if she can barely manage her own Arts, and most likely incurr in a Major Crime by leaving him with several Deficiencies. She hopes that, legally, she will not be held accountable for this, being still an apprentice under her Parens responsability. On the other hand, the other apprentice, which goes by the name of Demetrios, agrees to let her try. He is polite and educated and clearly maotivated, but he somehow cannot seem to remember anything about the Order of Hermes, even when she is speaking of it.
During the first weeks of the season no apparent progress is made. Terpsichore seems unable to progress on opening his Arts, despite no apparent reason for her failure. Then she has a realization about something that she had somehow missed before: his inability to recall anything about the Order. With that awareness in her mind, she begins to investigate the source of this peculiarity. She then comes to identify a magic effect in a locket worn by Demetrios. By the end of the season she has been able to identify at least two of the effects infused into the locket.
A Creo Vim effect, designed to taint the wearer with magic. Enough to make him feel like he was Gifted.
With a hand on the locket, Terpsichore triggers the Linked Effect she also has been able to identify. The locket opens, and a gleam of renewed awareness flashes in the eyes of Demetrios, who then looks in anticipation to Terpsichore, saying this to her.
"You told me of the Order of Hermes. Now tell me about the Oath."
Through the Phantasm of the Talking Head, Terpsichore recites the Oath.
“I, Terpsichore, hereby swear my everlasting loyalty to the Order of Hermes and its members.
“I will not deprive nor attempt to deprive any member of the Order of his magical power. I will not slay nor attempt to slay any member of the Order, except in justly executed and formally declared Wizards’ War. I hereby understand that Wizards’ War is an open conflict between two magi who may slay each other without breaking this oath, and that should I be slain in a Wizards’ War, no retribution shall fall on he who slays me.
“I will abide by the decisions made by fair vote at Tribunal. I will have one vote at Tribunal, and I will use it prudently. I will respect as equal the votes of all others at Tribunal.
“I will not endanger the Order through my actions. Nor will I interfere with the affairs of mundanes and thereby bring ruin on my sodales. I will not deal with devils, lest I imperil my soul and the souls of my sodales as well. I will not molest the faeries, lest their vengeance catch my sodales also.
“I will not use magic to scry upon members of the Order of Hermes, nor shall I use it to peer into their affairs.
“I will train apprentices who will swear to this Code, and should any of them turn against the Order and my sodales, I shall be the first to strike them down and bring them to justice. No apprentice of mine shall be called a magus
until he first swears to uphold this Code.
“I concede to Bonisagus the right to take my apprentice if he should find my apprentice valuable to him in his studies
“I request that should I break this oath, I be cast out of the Order. If I am cast out of the Order, I ask my sodales to find me and slay me, that my life not continue in degradation and infamy.
“The enemies of the Order are my enemies. The friends of the Order are my friends. The allies of the Order are my allies. Let us work together as one and grow hale and strong.
“This oath I hereby swear on the seventeenth day of Libra, in the fourteen hundred and eleventh year of Aries. Woe to they who try to tempt me to break this oath, and woe to me if I succumb to the temptation.
Demetrios reaches for the locket, inside there's a small jewel. He hands it to Terpsichore, with this words.
"On behalf of my Dominus, I Demetrios, apprentice Redcap, give you this token. The sender wishes you good luck for the days to come."
The laboratory doors open, and Terpsichore Parens comes in, accompanied by the Presiding Quaesitor and the Chief Redcap of the Tribunal.
"I think now you already know what was the Linked Effect, Sodale Terpsichore. Raise your Parma, and state your new name as my Filia, to be recognised by these witnesses as your Sodales."
There is no way she would be given a task to open a new apprentice as a gauntlet test.
my point was that she is expected, not required at gauntlet, to take a hereditary Gifted Merere as an apprentice.
I know. And she also could have expected. But I thought that the Parens wanted to also test her resolution in a possibly difficult task for her, and the loyalty to the House.
She is expected to train Gifted Mercere. And her Parens reminded her, as his last lesson, that no matter what, she has to try.
I agree with the idea that her final test should be one of loyalty to the house, but it needs to be something that would not require violating the code to accomplish. Perhaps spending a year instructing a mercere before they are opened.
Well, technically the gauntlet didn't require her to violate the code, as Demetrios could never have the Arts opened.
The other aspect of the test was to assess her willingness to do so in the name of Loyalty to the House. A no-win situation for her, as she initially tought she has been put in front a moral dilemma: loyalty to the House, or loyalty to the Order. She made a choice, and was willing to accept the outcome. Her limited knowledge of the Code of Hermes bolstered her resolve, and she took her chance.
Doing so she made it through. She trusted her Parens, and by extension his House. She has much to prove to the House, in order to be fully accepted (and overcome her Illegitimate Lineage issue).
By the way, I was not technically striving for full adherence to lab's work schedule. If that's the case, I'd say that instead of one season she has been given at least two season to work on Demetrios. The first one to let her identify the effects on the Locket (an invested device with multiple effects: the CrVi tainting effect, the Linked effect to trigger it's opening, the PeMe effect to suppress the knowledge of the Order of Hermes, and a few others, including the scrying effect by which her Parens monitored her progress). The other one to allow her to teach him, or train him, in something useful for the apprentice Redcap future.
As for your point, do you think, realistically, that the House would ever risk putting a Gifted Mercere, with his Arts not yet opened, in the hands of an apprentice not yet gauntleted, for a year of sub-par teaching ?
Spending an year with such Gifted Mercere would not even be an issue for her, she would just do it as best as she could. Not much of a gauntlet, IMHO, unless she was required to reach a specific standard.
The thing is that she can open the child's arts, but will wind up giving them numerous deficient arts in doing so. Even asking her to consider doing so before finishing her own apprenticeship would probably be a low crime.
On the other hand, before she is expected to teach an apprentice of the blood she will probably be proving herself repeatedly by making devices, helping with Hermes portals, enchanting redcaps with enhanced characteristics, providing longevity potions, and generally being of service to the house.
How could she open the arts of an unGifted apprentice Redcap ?
The entire gauntlet was a ruse. It was designed to made her believe she was supposed to open the Arts (which clearly would have resulted in High Crime due to deficiencies), force her to make a choice for every step of the gauntlet. In the end, the House trained two different assets in this gauntlet. A maga with a sense of loyalty, an apprentice Redcap exposed to the effect of the Gift and able to tolerate it.
Just a minor addition. Since she is not yet a maga, technically everything she does is her Parens responsability. She could bear the blame for the several deficiencies if she does indeed works on an apprentice, but a case could be made that for the code her Parens should be charged of High Crime.
I'd fully agree with your last part, though. She will have to prove much more than this before a Gifted Mercere would ever be put in her hands.
I'm willing to add that I see her as an expendable assets. She can be asked to fulfill undesirable roles that needs to be addressed, with not much regret for her possible loss.
I see, the nature of the test wasn't clear on first reading.
I think different people will have a different opinion as to why she passed the test- whether it was because she was willing to do as asked or because she stopped and realized the real test was in recognizing the situation.
however other details do remain to be rectified.
Agreed, totally fine with that.
If you are referring to the techical issues you addressed, I'm working on the second draft taking in consideration your points.
Second draft of her characteristics:
Characteristics: Int +2, Per 1, Pre +2, Com -2, Str 0, Sta +1, Dex 1, Qik 1
Size: 0
Age: 25 (25)
Decrepitude: 0
Warping Score: 0
Confidence Score: 2 (5)
Virtues: The Gift; Hermetic Magus; Puissant Creo*; Major Magical Focus (weather); Affinity with Auram; Affinity with Imaginem; Quiet Magic x2; Self Confident, Skilled Parens, Subtle Magic;
*House Virtue
Flaws: Deficient Form (Terram); Hatred (Major) (armored people); Mute; Weakness (luxury); Hermetic Patron (Alexandra ex Mercere); Illegitimate Lineage
Personality Traits: Devoted to mother +3, Loyal to House Mercere +3, Vengeful +2
Abilities: Area Lore: Jerusalem (Holy Places) 2, Artes Liberales (Ceremonial Magic) 2, Athletics 2 (Grace), Awareness (People in armour) 2, Brawl (Dodge) 2, Charm (Men) 1, Code of Hermes (Levant Tribunal) 1, Concentration (spells) 3, Dead Language: Classical Greek (Hermetic Usage) 4, Finesse (Auram) 2, Legerdemain (pickpocket) 1, Living Language: Arabic (Hermetic Usage) 5, Magic Theory (spells) 4, Organization Lore: Order of Hermes (House Mercere) 2, Parma Magica (Terram) 1, Penetration (Auram) 3, Stealth 1 (hiding), Teaching (House Mercere) 1
Arts: Cr 8+3, In 3, Mu 5, Pe 2, Re 7, An 0, Aq 0, Au 11, Co 1, He 0, Ig 0, Im 6, Me 1, Te 0, Vi 6
Her casting sigil is Lightness (levity).
I'll see later her voting sigil.
I envisioned her as not actively being recruited by the Redcap FOR the Mercere, but rather ending up recruited by chance and direct intervention by her adoptive mother.
Let me clarify, this is what I pictured:
Alexandra (the Redcap) received rumors about her and verified if she could be a possible apprentice for someone in the Order. Showing up late, she founds the girl already mutilated (and therefore probably unsuitable for training). She then decides to adopt her (in mundane sense), out of sheer christian charity I'd say. After that, she pulled major strings to have her trained as a maga (if Alexandra would be fully statted, she'd have at least the Favour Flaw).
The Educated Virtue was meant to reflect the training that Alexandra had wanted for her and for which she paid personally (rather than by being supported by the house, that is), while she managed to have her fully adopted and then trained (rather than have her immediately have her apprenticed).
I'm ok with her immediately apprenticed, though.
For the other points:
- Swapped Educated for Skilled Parens
- Replaced Athletics (dancing) with Athletics (Grace)
- Replaced Guile (hiding) with Stealth (hiding)
- Added missing 75 xp + the net extra 10 from Skilled Parens
I'm not sure where those 75 extra xp came though, I built her as a 25 year old, with apprenticeship starting at 10 and gauntleted at 25. By my account she should be 30, to have those xp. I will follow your indication anyway.
are you taking your affinities into account in your calculations? I'm showing you still have 16 points available...