Changes made since JeanMichelle last commented on my changes.
Questions, comments, and flavor comments in this color.
Most recent edit: Added random 0-point skills, layout adjustments.
Viscaria Lychnis fillius Norbert Gunthar ex Verditus
Note: In European courts, the presentation of a flowering lychnis viscaria stem is an invitation to dance.
General concept: Having spent her life as the puppet & guinea pig of others, Viscaria is nigh-psychotically obsessed with freedom, safety and security.
[table][tr][td]Virtues
The Gift, Hermetic Magus. Verditus Magic (Casting Tools - carved stones)
Affinity with Craft/Glass, Terram
Pussiant Craft/Glass Terram
Hermetic Alchemy,
Minor Philosophic Alchemy
Strong Fae Blood - Dwarf
Start aging at 50 (apparent age = 70% of age)
Fae eyes - Second Sight, see in darkness. Gem colored eyes
Dwarf Blood - +1 to any craft total
Imbued With Spirit of Terram,
from RoP:Magic, use fatigue levels in place of terram vis
Freak out small Terram Spirits, piss off large ones[/td]
[td]Flaws
Dwarf, general-3 (Size -2, Str -1, Sta -1)
Confraternity Member, Samos, story -1 (TMRE, pg 126)
Faerie Upbringing, personality-1
Susceptible to Divine Power, hermetic -1
Difficult Longevity Ritual, hermetic -3
Spontaneous Casting Tools, hermetic -1[/td][/tr][/table]
[table][tr][td]Characteristics
Int +3
Per0
Pre +1
Com +2
Stri[/i] -1
Stai[/i] 0
Dex -1
Qik -2[/td]
[td]Personality Traits
Cynical +3
Hedonistic +1
Altruistic +2
Brave -2
_
_
_
_[/td][td]Age: 30
Apparent Age: 21
Size: -2
Confidence: 1
Voting Sigil: A flowering viscaria stem made of glass, with several captured flies in it
Casting Sigil: Viscaria / sticky catchfly symbolic affects
Afflictions: None
Warping: 0.2[/td][/tr][/table]
[table][tr][td]General Abilities
Bargain 1 (for souls)
Carouse 3 (gambling)
Charm 2 (covenfolk)
Craft / Stone 1 +1 (fae style)
Craft / Glassblower** 5 +3 (fae style)
Folk Ken 1 (body language)
Guile 2 (blame displacement)
Language, Occitan 5 (poetry)
Language, Latin 4 (written)
Prof: Scribe 2 (correspondence)
Prof: Architect 1 (secret spaces)
Teaching 1 (Latin)[/td]
[td]Academic Abilities
Artes Liberales 1 (mathematics)
Philosophiae 4 (Verditius)
Arcane Abilities
Magic Theory 5 (enchantment)
Faerie Lore 2 (beasties)
Parma Magica 1 (terram)
Supernatural and Hermetic Abilities
Crystal Dart Mastery 1 (fast-cast)
Baroque Hut Mastery 1 (quiet)
Second Sight 2 (faeries)[/td]
[td]Zero Point Skills
Concentration 0 (spell)
Leadership 0 (labwork)
Music 0 (stringed instruments)
Verditus Cult Lore 0 (members)
Samos Cult Lore 0 (members)
Finesse 0 (rego)
Penetration 0 (terram)
Code of Hermes 0 (covenant laws)
Order of Hermes Lore 0 (potential pen pals)[/td][/tr][/table]
Arts
[table][tr][td]Creo[/td][td]4[/td]
[td]Intellego[/td][td]4[/td]
[td]Muto[/td][td]4[/td]
[td]Perdo[/td][td]4[/td]
[td]Rego[/td][td]4[/td][/tr][tr][td]Animal[/td][td]3[/td]
[td]Auram[/td][td]1[/td]
[td]Aquam[/td][td]0[/td]
[td]Corpus[/td][td]4[/td]
[td]Herbam[/td][td]3[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]Ignem[/td][td]1[/td]
[td]Imaginem[/td][td]0[/td]
[td]Mentem[/td][td]4[/td]
[td]Terram**[/td][td]8(1xp) (+3)[/td]
[td]Vim[/td][td]4[/td][/tr][/table]
Spells:
The Crystal Dart
MuTe 10 (Rego) Voice, Mom, Ind
Always hits, +10 Damage
Mastery 1: fast cast
Hands of the Grasping Earth
ReTe 15 (Muto) Voice, Diam, Part
Strength stress 15 to escape
Burrowfingers (Based on Pit of the Grasping Earth)
PeTe 20Voice, Mom, Part
Creates a 700(?) cubic foot space in earth or stone, starting at a point of origin that can be sensed by the caster within voice range. Default opening is a cube, but this can be modified with finesse rolls.
It does not affect noble metals or gems. Base 3, +2 Voice, +1 Part, +1 Size, +1 Stone
The Baroque Peasant Hut
Creo Terram 25
Touch, Mom, Individual, Ritual
Similar to Conjure The Wizards Tower, only the resultant structure is a single story, 3-room long-house, with a basement. While the exterior is a single block of stone with only minimal design elements (gargoyles in the corner, etc), the interior returns to Viscaria’s usual style of artifice. The trapdoor to the basement is hidden. The basement contains an empty cistern, a secret room and 2 hidden alcoves. The alcove hidden next to the cistern is extremely useful for keeping food cold, thanks to the water and stone. You can actually design the chambers within, using Prof:Architect before starting the ritual, but this is Viscaria’s default layout.
Base 3, +1 Touch, +3 Elaborate Design, +2 size
(Conjures the Wizard’s Tower is 80ft tall, plus 20 feet underground. This structure is 25 ft from top to bottom, hence +2 Size instead of +4)
Watching Ward
ReVim 10, Touch, Special, Ind/Ritual
Store The Essence
ReVim 15 (Terram) Touch, Mom, Ind
As the Gather The Essence of the Beast spell, only transferring the vis to a suitably prepared receptacle, and applies to all types of vis, not just corpses.
Doublet of Impenetrable Silk
MuAn 15 Touch, Sun, Ind (adds +3 soak to cloth, +? to leather)
Command the Living Stone
ReTe 25 Voice, Conc, Ind
(as Living Fire, RoPMagic 133)
Penetration > Might to control earth spirits
Base 5, +2 Voice, +1 Conc, +1 affects Stone
Equipment
A dress befitting a 10-year-old girl, with wide sleeve openings
One set of Thick leather smithing clothes
A circular glass pendant on a fine silver chain, bearing the OoH and Verditus symbols
A bag (are backpacks anachronistic?) full of crystal objects and other ceremonial tools
Cold Iron eating knife.
Spell Casting Tools and Spontaneous Casting Tools, short finger-thick cylinders of varying quality glass, with symbols embedded in a second color inside them. These are stored in ammo-belt-like leather bracers underneath her voluminous sleeves.
Spare bag of casting tools, made of stone
A chest containing: Glass blowing tools, stone mason tools, wax tablets, several stylus, his lab texts (still ciphered), writing equipment, (architectural) drawing equipment, etc
Short Biography:
Born to a clan of dwarven craftsmen, taught the secret smithing of sand into baubles.
Won in a bet by a Verditus mage, who abused her as part slave, part guinea pig for several years (hence the Imbued With Terram) before realizing she was Gifted and took her on as an apprentice. This did not stop her pater from his cruel treatment and physical abuse.
Her faerie upbringing makes Viscaria inherently Hedonistic, unused to thinking about long term benefits. While she is often moved to acts of Altruism, she Cynically believes that no good deed goes unpunished in the human realm, and that all generosity will ultimately be betrayed or usurped by the power-hungry. Still victimized by her treatment at the hands of her parens, she is not very Brave.
Detailed Biography
Blue indicates material which might affect the campaign setting in one way or another.
Viscaria, born Camellia, was conceived as part of a compact made by a Merinita wizard and Orbhammer Founderson, a craftdwarf of some repute in (faerie lands near our setting). The maga spent four seasons among the kindly ones, conceiving and birthing the child without stepping foot into the mundane world. Shortly after this, the Merinita committed some (unknown to Viscaria) act which forfeited her end of the bargain and she was exiled from the clan hall without her child. Viscaria never learned her mother's name, for the dwarves only referred to her by the most derogatory of epithets.
She played diligently and worked joyously, learning the strange crafts of ice-metal and the ecstatic dances of her court for the first 12 years of her life. Then came Norbert Gunter Verditii, with his cunning tongue and hex'ed dice. Norbert won the child, a gifted ice-metalsmith, in accordance with ancient fae gambling traditions. Norbert dragged the child back to his sanctum in Laguna Sententia and locked her in a warding circle. Her life, once full of song and dance, became a dark timeless agony, as Norbert ripped into her flesh and soul for secrets only known to him. Her only diet was food laced with the vis of Terram. Her only comfort was the small pile of papers she first used as pillow and bedsheet.
She taught herself to read, write and count with these tear-stained discussions of Gothic Architecture. Three years after her imprisonment, she knew enough to scrawl a plea for rescue on one page of her pillow, written with her own blood. Out the window and into the hands of another Magus of Laguna Sententia, who realized the child was Gifted, and forced Norbert Gunter to take her as an apprentice.
The next 15 years of her life may not have included warding circles and vis-laced food, but they were hardly the reprieve from misery she had hoped for. Norbert Gunter took her tutelage seriously, but still treated her as a barely human creature, unworthy of respect or empathy. The single ray of compassion in her life was her one-time rescuer, whose rare visits were filled with mathematical games and tales of an ancient sage named Pythagoras. He always announced his return to Laguna Sententia by sending her a single stem of Viscaria, and at her gauntlet, she snubbed her pater by taking that flower as her name within the Order, rather than the name Norbert had chosen for her.
For her gauntlet, Viscaria created The Sunberry Chandelier, a green glass sylph-tree with colored berries which emit sunlight on command. No doubt, she suspects, the masterpiece is growing dust in some unused corner of Norbert Gunter's lab, and he will never see the message hidden inside just for him, only visible when the spell is active -- the wounded sylph imprisoned inside the tree, screaming to get out.
Future Plans:
Mechanically : Hermetic Architecture, and its ability to create/manipulate auras and regiones. Also interested in the Stone Guardians Of Triamore spell, or something similar. Also wants to bind lots of odd Terram Elementals to her will: Glass Elementals, Ruby Spirits, etc.
RP-wise: Viscaria wants to create a covenant and sanctum where she feels safe. As she relaxes into a sense of security and an understanding of her own power, she grows curious as to the nature of those protections -- auras, covenants, regiones, etc.
You can see the exact char-gen expenditures by era here. Craft:Glass gets +2 from Pussiant Ability, +1 from Dwarf-Blooded.
I have a really hard time imagining a Dwarf Blooded, dwarf-statured woman. Maybe that'll be the whole fun of it.
Please be sure to quote whatever you're commenting/replying to, since I intend to edit this entry so that it is always the current sheet.