• Closed • Boy, You Gonna Learn...

[Woe]

48th of Ymiden 720, midnight.

Woe thought as Vito recited his prayer, that the Tribunal had overcome his confusion. Enough that Woe could withdraw the watchful pincers of the Arachnid that hovered over his tangle, ready to intervene as soon as he showed signs of instability. The choice of prayer was an interesting one, and Woe found himself once more deeply interested in the Theocratum and its ways. Not for the first time, he reflected on how much Sintra's cult could learn from the Scarlet priests, bleeding for their invisible and unmoving god.

Why Woe wanted to know. Vito interrupted his thoughts by claiming to be alright. Woe nodded. He tried to project confidence outward, rippling from his own tangle to that of Vito. Hopefully, that would sustain him long enough for Woe to show him something, on these poor hapless workmen.

"Yes, for now, strengthen, bolster by strumming tangles existing on the surface, and create by knotting those threads together with others.". Woe took a breath, and then continued to explain, "Later, when you arrive at a greater competence in this magic, you will also be able to sever and winnow certain emotional threads."

Woe wondered if perhaps piquing his ambition to improve in the magic was a mistake. If he might not rush forward, heedless of the dangers. "But you must learn meditation if you wish to shut out the rippling emanations of the tangles around you. There's a danger in dealing with large groups, and perhaps you'd best practice meditation before presiding over any large congregations."

Then came the words he was waiting for, "Teach me?" Woe nodded with a smile, and approached the workmen. The mortalborn had a mutation that prevented him from tampering with another's tangle without first speaking words to them. He could not do so in silence. It was a serious weakness, especially exploitable if anyone knew of it. So he explained, "Words have power of their own, independent of arcana. For this reason, I'd advise you to study the art of rhetoric, seduction, persuasion, and intimidation. Empathy is no substitute for the subtle art of the spoken word." Woe said the words, allowing it to deliver honeyed etheric venom to the tangles of the workers. Then, he reached out to meddle with their tangles, all at once.

The Arachnid's pincers plucked and strummed at certain threads. They were chosen at random, but visible to Vito would be hues and vibrations of calm. He would see on their tangles, a color of calm arriving from deep within, buried beneath the fear. Here, Woe strummed the sense of calm in them and then knotted it with those fearful threads to create the emotion of concern. "When you can calm your mind, you might be able to manipulate more than one person. But for now, I caution you to focus on one. Can you identify the emotion that lies on his tangle?" Woe pointed to indicate the nearest workman. "Strum those threads, and see what else arrives from beneath the surface. Identify the thread that weaves upward, and knot it to the others. At all times, shield yourself from the emotions this reflects back upon you."

[Vito Rossau]

48 YMIDEN, 720. MIDNIGHT

Magic came to Vito like everything else in his life had – he was brought into it unknowingly, unwillingly, and yet the young scarlet priest had never even thought to be ungrateful for such gifts. If anything was unwanted, it was only for the fact that he had not yet seen its purpose and use… but Empathy magic he had seen firsthand, for all the good and the bad it could do. There were plenty of reasons to rejoice in having been given his spark, and the biqaj cared not for anything that told him otherwise, now that it had nestled within his soul.

Dark red eyes flitted from one trapped workman’s face to the other. Unfortunate, they were. Vito could not find it within himself to feel anything close to sympathy, but he could imagine the way it might have felt, the way he might one trial learn to sew it into his tangle if the need ever arose. Certainly it was far from any goal the unbothered Tribunal had, but it was an interesting line of thought to follow. He watched the men cower in their cages while his newfound mentor spoke, and found that Woe was indeed correct about the need for meditation. When he focused, and kept his mind mostly clear, the other tangles were not so difficult to bear… but when his attention drifted, the sensations threatened at the novice mage’s mind.

So he asked, with a curious glance back at Woe, for the older man’s guidance in the task.

As his mentor approached, Vito took a small step to the side. His crimson gaze shifted slowly back to the imprisoned workers, and while Woe explained the need for – or perhaps, Vito thought, the bonus of – the more subtle art of verbal persuasions, he did what he could to monitor what the older man was doing. Not all of it made sense to him, the sensations and abilities were all too new. But he understood enough to catch onto most of what the other mage was doing, while he meddled with the frazzled tangles of their poor practice subjects. Within them, pulled expertly to the surface by Woe, Vito recognized the threads of calm beneath the feelings of distress.

With the slightest furrow to his dark brows, the Tribunal narrowed his eyes and focused on only one of the worker’s tangles. The thread he had been following – that of wary calm – had been somehow changed with Woe’s meddling… pulled together with something else, something heavier. When the question came, Vito hesitated to answer for a trill. He kept his focus on the threads for just a little longer, to determine what he could of what they were…

“Worry, or…” he ventured gently, then, to strum the thread as Woe instructed. As it strengthened, Vito hummed, and answered more confidently, “concern.”

It was some kind of fear, then, that Woe had tied and knotted together with the threads of calm, to create the newer thread he strengthened now. Vito’s red gaze flicked upward to the workman’s face while he continued to gently strum that feeling of concern… and he began to parse carefully through the other threads that rose to the surface of his tangle. Some of them he still could not recognize, more nuanced and less easily understood by the inexperienced mage, but he ignored those threads in favor of the ones that he could.

“Concern,” the scarlet priest repeated, “and… pain. I cannot tell what kind, physical or mental.”

Likely, he supposed it could be both. Though he had not been trapped nearly long enough to experience the height of discomfort himself, Vito thought the traps Woe had devised were far from the most comfortable of places to be. “Sadness,” he added in a quiet afterthought.

Vito took a small step closer to the cage. Still not within arm’s reach, but it somewhat helped his focus, as he stared into the worker’s wide eyes. Reddened with the makings of tears, Vito watched them slowly begin to overflow, to let salty tears run down his cheeks. Only then, when he felt that obvious thread of sadness rise closer to the surface, did he carefully knot it to those feelings of pain and concern. A deeper, heavier emotion was left in its place –

“And despair,” he finished, as he finally glanced back to Woe. The priest’s own eyes had reddened at the rims and colored themselves a deep green, and Vito recognized the note of discomfort that rose to the surface of his own tangle then. For as much as he had tried to keep the feelings from weaving into his own emotions, his inexperience left him slightly unequipped. He did not cry, and he did not feel it as deeply as the man he had meddled with. But he felt it enough to ask, “what am I to do when I cannot shield myself?”

[Woe]

The spark that resided within Woe's soul withered away at his once stern and solid will. Where once he'd been stoic, he became effusive with emotional confusion. He became the madman. His spark as a rapacious expander, and wished to purvey its dominion and that of its child sparks through the world. Yet, Woe couldn't deny what it took from him it gave back in spades of subtle but deep power. It was this power that Woe wished to impart upon young Vito, to see if he had the potential to succeed and thrive where Woe's other initiates had only disappointed, abandoned him, or spurned what knowledge he had to impart.

Although the initiation had been a trap, and one sprung upon Vito by nefarious means, the young priest seemed willing enough to follow it to conclusion.

Woe nodded as Vito acknowledged the emotion of concern, which sprung from hues colored by fear and calm. It was a weird amalgamation of two emotions, yet Woe had found that all emotions interact on some level. Even going so far as to create strange twistings and turnings that could be brought to one's aid. Woe, for instance, after meeting the Raggedy Man had been so affected that he had to meld his emotions of fear, entwining it with a hemmed-in reservoir of morale and hope, which would trigger when that same dread occurred to him, should they meet again in a dark alley somewhere... It'd worked as a substitute for courage, if nothing else.

When Vito's question about shielding himself came, Woe nodded. It was almost as if the other man was reading his mind! "As you reach greater competency with the magic, you will learn a technique known as quilting which will do to shield you from their feelings, or even the manipulations of other Empaths. But for now, if you cannot find calm through meditation, iron-clad focus will do in a pinch." Woe reached out with a hand to grasp the younger man's shoulder. He found that not only words, but also mere touch could facilitate an easier manipulation of emotions. This was less a mutation of Woe's magic and more a conventional technique, that may as well have worked outside the Arcane arts.

Woe steadied the young man's emotions for a bit, trying to smooth over the vibrations as subtly as he could without ending them entirely. Vito would probably feel it like a warm blanket draped over his tangle. This was the technique of Quilting. Woe hadn't tried applying it to another mage, but for whatever reason he was able to do so for his initiate. "If you absolutely cannot calm or block out their emotions, you can knot them deep within your tangle, for use and release at a later, safer time. But you must always learn and strive for calm."

Woe released his shoulder then, and nodded to the workmen. "Try and knot the one or more of the emotions you identified in them just then. Tie them deep within the tangle so that they cannot feel them anymore." Vito's attempts would likely be clumsy and ill-directed at first, as all fledgling mages were. He would not go the way of Woe, experimenting on himself. He wished his initiate to go into the world as whole and with as healthy a mind as possible. Meddling with one's own tangle at such a tender stage was difficult and dangerous.

"I will be here to watch and make sure this does not go awry." Woe said, without any further manipulation of the younger mage. "Now, go on."

[Caprice]

woe

Points

XP: 15
Magic XP: -
Renown: 5 (for torturing civilians for the sake of training your initiate)

Knowledges

Requested:
-
To Be Issued:
-

Gains/Penalties

Loot: -
Language: -
Losses: -
Wealth: -
Injuries: -

Skill Review: Appropriate to level

vito

Points

XP: 15
Magic XP: -
Renown: 5 (for torturing civilians for the sake of learning your magic)

Knowledges

Requested:
-
To Be Issued:
-

Gains/Penalties

Loot: -
Language: -
Losses: -
Wealth: -
Injuries: -

Skill Review: Appropriate to level

Overview: Hey there! What a shame this thread didn't get any further. As it appears to be a continuation from another thread, it would have been nice to have had a link to that thread but I understand it's old and you just wanted to get things tidied up and accounted for <3 Just in future, it'd be nice when possible to have access to prior threads for context- and story-sake since I was a bit lost when I first began reading it.

Despite so few posts, everything is extremely well written and it's my first ever read of any type of initiation (and first ever review involving magic). I must say, Woe is a wonderful teacher, astute and knowing when it came to the needs and steering of his initiate (despite said initiate being one against his own will, from what I can gather!) Using what appears to be innocent civilians to train Vito is truly sinister but Woe's intention was well placed. From what I can gather, Woe has experience when it comes to the negative effects of trialling techniques on ones own mind; by exploiting the minds of these trapped men, he's ensuring Vito would not have to take such risky measures to learn. Brilliant!

Thanks for the read and enjoy your rewards! Do let me know if you have any questions or concerns regarding your review.