[ = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = ]
Octavia's Circle of Transplanar Containment
Abjurative Ward
Difficulty: Intermediate
Reagents:
- 1 stick of refined, high-calcite chalk (replacement carbonates will not suffice)
- 3 candles composed of a 7:1 wax to proper-grade writer's ink ratio
Instructions:
1. Identify and choose a site of containment. This should be no larger than a bed, and no smaller than a person can comfortably sit down in with some room to move. Make sure there are no easily-accessible points of entry to the area for other people who might enter the premises and disturb the circle during the spell's effects.
2. Take the stick of chalk and draw as precisely even a geometric circle to border the chosen site of containment as possible. Make sure to draw this circle in a counterclockwise motion! Doing so in a clockwise motion will not work. Also make sure to draw this circle with the subject inside of the borders already. Disturbing the line will prevent the spell from functioning!
3. Place the candles at equidistant points just outside of the circle's borders. The distance between each candle should form a mathematically perfect triangle if measured with tape (it is advised you do so for your first few attempts at this spell, just to be certain you have it right!).
4. Light the candles while reciting the spoken components of the spell, punctuated with the lighting of each candle: "The pillar of peace", "the pillar of discipline", "the pillar of control". These can be spoken in any non-Common tongue as well, so long as the translation is accurate.
5. Once each candle is lit alongside the spoken phrase, they should turn a black color! This means the spell is working, and the subject inside the circle, (if they are a Transplanar Entity or are inhabited by one such being, as the spell is intended for) will be prevented from leaving its borders for the next 12 hours or until the circle is disturbed. If the flames do not turn black, return to the first step of the instructions and try again.
[ = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = ]
Despite it being a spell of her own creation, Octavia still kept her notes close at hand while performing it just to be certain she wasn't making a severe error anywhere in the process. In her case, failure was not just the frustration of making a mistake or the self-deprecating thoughts that followed in their commonality: no, failure was an extreme risk in this scenario that posed a threat not only to her own livelihood but that of others. The pressure of making such a mistake always got to her, so she never created the spell without her notes close by.
Tonight was no different. Octavia sat upon the cellar floor of the home she'd recently purchased in the city, finishing the last dregs of her evening tea while poring over her notes obsessively. She double-checked that she had every material component on hand, and once she was certain she breathed out an easy sigh of relief and put the teacup far out of her physical reach. The stick of chalk was plucked up, and she delicately touched it to the finished floorboards beneath her: just enough that an edge of the dusty stick caught and provided the friction necessary to drag it along the wood and precisely draw a remarkably even circle around her own place on the floor. The candles were set out as per usual, and she steeled herself with a deep breath while she conjured up a small ember upon her fingertip. She muttered each of the phrases aloud as each wick was lit, and once the third and final was lit they all erupted into flames of pitch black: the usual sparks and nuance of color one usually saw within a crackling fire subsumed entirely by pallid, lifeless grayscale shades. The spell had worked, and she could finally relax.
She pulled her knees up to her chest and laid both of her arms around them, using them as a makeshift rest to bow her head and lay it upon. She knew sleep would claim her soon, and then the real trials of the evening would press her. For now, she chose to relish the peace and silence that the dimly-lit cellar and her short-lasting solitude gave her. Her thoughts fell to the pleasant things about her day that had passed her by: the fresh blackberry tarts she'd bought and swiftly eaten, the time she'd spent with the few people she thought to be her true friends, the sight of the sun setting on the shimmering waterline of the bay's horizon, all of it brought her a great degree of easy comfort that made it a simple task to slip away into the tight clutches of clawing sleep.
Sleep didn't last long. Her eyes snapped open and found themselves staring at the familiar canopy of a bed that wasn't hers, her body strewn out across its quilted covers. There was some breath that brewed within her lungs and left her lips as a sigh of indignation at the sight, despite there being no real reason why she wouldn't see it upon waking. This was usual, and nothing had changed, so why should she expect anything otherwise? Hope, she supposed, was a tenacious thing. She sat up in the bed and took brief stock of herself, finding her pallid and flimsy body clad in an equally-pallid and flimsy nightgown that clung to her in a way that made her feel self-conscious and awkward even while she knew nobody could see her. That was usual, too, and she looked at the bedroom she had awoken in with a similar sort of expectant glance: she found it to be quite the same, all ornate and expensive in an old and dusty way yet barren of observable features thanks to the thin haze of witching-hour shadow that clung to everything and left it dark and silhouetted. She pivoted her body and swung her legs out in order to slide off of the navy blue quilting and stand up, bare feet pressing against the frigid cold of the hardwood floor beneath her. She walked silently forth, passing through the open threshold of the bedroom door and into the darkened hallway beyond.
It stretched out before her, long and imposing and completely blanketed in midnight shadow: its very end lay cloaked in terrifying mystery like the depthless gullet of some gaping-mawed creature open-jawed and waiting for her to accept her fate and simply fall in. She'd been here hundreds of times at this point, but still found some fear in its enigma, as if there could be anything at all waiting for her in the darkness. She took one apprehensive step, and then another, and the wood of the impossibly old house creaked in protest beneath her weight just as it had done the first time she traversed its innards. It had a habit of making noise in all sorts of puzzling ways: stairs would groan when nobody climbed them, wind would whistle through the gaps in such a perfect way as to emulate the whispers of the imaginary denizens of the dark and doors would simply sway upon their hinges at times most inopportune for the cowardly of heart like Octavia. Nevertheless, her experience in this living horror brought her to take another step, and then another, and yet another, slowly ambling down the pitch-black corridor just as she always had to. Then, the door at the end of the hall ahead of her clicked open.
It always stood before her when she came here, like some monument to her incorrigible fate. It loomed in its rectangular fashion, hewn from simple mahogany and outfitted with that tarnished silver knob and its old keyhole that was never visible until the same sudden shock of bright light exploded from behind it and gave the door its iconic silhouette in her mind. The light came on on the door's other side, passing through the keyhole and the gaps in the frame and hinges, the even rectangle only broken by the familiar pair of shadowed feet adding two strips of lengthened darkness to the bright box. Just as she'd vainly hoped she might not wake up here this time, she'd also been silently praying she wouldn't see those feet: seeing them meant she'd see who they belonged to, certainly, and that was something she had hoped dearly she might not have to do. Just this once.
She watched in paralyzed silence as the doorknob turned and clicked, and the door was unlocked. It swung open, slowly: painfully so, as if the person pushing it open wanted to relish every single anticipatory moment before they revealed themselves. Someone more sardonic and sure of themselves than Octavia might have reductively called them a dramatic, for it. Light continued to beam outward as it was released by the opening door, radiating an even square of itself out into the hallway and causing the shadows of the things it passed over to stretch out into impossibly long facsimiles of their owners. Octavia's shadow was no exception, and at this point she had learned better than to look back at her own and see the thin puppet-strings tethered to it. It disturbed her, and it also meant looking away from Him, and He hated that. Her stare always began at His shoes: polished and black loafers of an expensive finished leather, slipped onto stockinged ankles that barely peeked out from beneath the hem of his black trousers that adorned impossibly-long legs. Her eyes slowly and dreadfully trailed up, tracing the vertical gray pinstripes of His vest and pausing for a moment at the fringes of the cloudy, murky shadow that dripped down around His lacey cravat. She always had to stop there so she could take a deep breath and steel herself for what lay just above. Her eyes finally willed themselves to make that small trip up, and they settled on the featureless shadow that she somehow knew was staring right back down at her: featureless besides, of course, His grin.
"Hello, Octavia." He drawled to her. His voice carried all the properties of His willowy body and the way it moved forward: slow, syrupy and dark, like molasses. Backlit by the brilliant light of the room behind Him, His tall silhouette took a slow step in her direction and caused His shadow to stretch even further over her.
"Hello." she replied, in her usual meager quietude. She knew much better than to ignore Him at this point.
"You're going to make a mistake one of these nights, you know. We're both far too familiar with your tendency to muck things up to believe you'll get it perfect forever." His grin always remained the only visible, brightly illuminated thing in the haze of shadow that was His face, but sometimes as He moved she could almost swear she caught some of its silhouette at the right angle. Thin, sharp and angular, it made her sick to her stomach when the thought that He was somewhat handsome came to her mind. He took His usual long steps past her, a set of lengthy fingers perching themselves on her shoulder and guiding her along to follow Him down the foyer's flight of stairs that led to the manor's bottom floor.
"I'm a very good mage." she finally spoke up, in reply. She said it in such a way that she quite apparently seemed uncertain of it herself, and was attempting to both convince Him and herself of its truth simultaneously. He rewarded her faulty confidence with a low, cruel chuckle, and it made her wince.
"Of course you are, Octavia. You wouldn't be here now if you weren't." As if to remind her of what He meant, the shadows they cast upon the stairwell's wall flickered over and showed her the gruesomely familiar sight of mutilated corpses slumped and strewn out upon the carpeted stair, all adorned in Grauwald raiment. She shut her eyes to avoid looking at them.
"... What are you going to show me tonight?" she asked, moving the subject away as they landed upon the entry hall of the manor, equally cloaked in obscuring shadow as the rest of the estate's halls. His lack of an answer brought her chills while He led her along down the middlemost hall and right to the double doors at the back. Just as they reached them, His thin hand reached out to push the doors open, and He responded.
"I thought we'd watch a classic." He replied with audible mirth, and she felt nauseous because she knew what he meant. What lay before them was a theater: lavish and well-lit, with arcane lanterns that illuminated the rows of velvety red seats lined up one after the other. Gold fixtures pillared the walls, featuring relief carvings of fantastical storybook heroes and creatures and beauties all intertwined and perpetually frozen in the tales they were destined to play out. The stage towered over it all, massive burgundy curtains pulled shut to cover whatever the stage hid behind them. He led her to their usual seats: two perfectly-placed seats within the center, not too far and not too close, considerate of the theater's acoustics and of the viewing angle. She slowly sat right down next to him, keeping her hands clasped tightly in her lap while her knuckles whitened with each passing moment as they death-gripped one another. She felt His arm drape itself along the back of her seat, but she dared not look at Him because that meant looking away from the stage. She clamped her eyes shut for a fretful moment as she heard the wheel of the curtain's pulleys squeak and the vast lengths of cloth begin to shift apart, and then slowly opened one after another to look. He clapped, the sound of his palms striking one another echoing alone through the theater's empty stretches. She stared at the solitary figure standing downstage center.
It was supposed to be her. A thin, shadowy marionette of a person, garbed in a crimson hunting jacket, with a blonde wig and painted porcelain mask twisted into an expression of perpetual horror and woe.
"My name is Lady Octavia Athanasia," it warbled out, dramatically, projecting its voice to the empty rows where an audience was not, "and this is a tale of failure, heartbreak and cowardice. My tale!" The performer bowed, then He clapped, and then Octavia began to weep.
She'd wake up sooner or later.
Octavia's Circle of Transplanar Containment
Abjurative Ward
Difficulty: Intermediate
Reagents:
- 1 stick of refined, high-calcite chalk (replacement carbonates will not suffice)
- 3 candles composed of a 7:1 wax to proper-grade writer's ink ratio
Instructions:
1. Identify and choose a site of containment. This should be no larger than a bed, and no smaller than a person can comfortably sit down in with some room to move. Make sure there are no easily-accessible points of entry to the area for other people who might enter the premises and disturb the circle during the spell's effects.
2. Take the stick of chalk and draw as precisely even a geometric circle to border the chosen site of containment as possible. Make sure to draw this circle in a counterclockwise motion! Doing so in a clockwise motion will not work. Also make sure to draw this circle with the subject inside of the borders already. Disturbing the line will prevent the spell from functioning!
3. Place the candles at equidistant points just outside of the circle's borders. The distance between each candle should form a mathematically perfect triangle if measured with tape (it is advised you do so for your first few attempts at this spell, just to be certain you have it right!).
4. Light the candles while reciting the spoken components of the spell, punctuated with the lighting of each candle: "The pillar of peace", "the pillar of discipline", "the pillar of control". These can be spoken in any non-Common tongue as well, so long as the translation is accurate.
5. Once each candle is lit alongside the spoken phrase, they should turn a black color! This means the spell is working, and the subject inside the circle, (if they are a Transplanar Entity or are inhabited by one such being, as the spell is intended for) will be prevented from leaving its borders for the next 12 hours or until the circle is disturbed. If the flames do not turn black, return to the first step of the instructions and try again.
[ = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = ]
Despite it being a spell of her own creation, Octavia still kept her notes close at hand while performing it just to be certain she wasn't making a severe error anywhere in the process. In her case, failure was not just the frustration of making a mistake or the self-deprecating thoughts that followed in their commonality: no, failure was an extreme risk in this scenario that posed a threat not only to her own livelihood but that of others. The pressure of making such a mistake always got to her, so she never created the spell without her notes close by.
Tonight was no different. Octavia sat upon the cellar floor of the home she'd recently purchased in the city, finishing the last dregs of her evening tea while poring over her notes obsessively. She double-checked that she had every material component on hand, and once she was certain she breathed out an easy sigh of relief and put the teacup far out of her physical reach. The stick of chalk was plucked up, and she delicately touched it to the finished floorboards beneath her: just enough that an edge of the dusty stick caught and provided the friction necessary to drag it along the wood and precisely draw a remarkably even circle around her own place on the floor. The candles were set out as per usual, and she steeled herself with a deep breath while she conjured up a small ember upon her fingertip. She muttered each of the phrases aloud as each wick was lit, and once the third and final was lit they all erupted into flames of pitch black: the usual sparks and nuance of color one usually saw within a crackling fire subsumed entirely by pallid, lifeless grayscale shades. The spell had worked, and she could finally relax.
She pulled her knees up to her chest and laid both of her arms around them, using them as a makeshift rest to bow her head and lay it upon. She knew sleep would claim her soon, and then the real trials of the evening would press her. For now, she chose to relish the peace and silence that the dimly-lit cellar and her short-lasting solitude gave her. Her thoughts fell to the pleasant things about her day that had passed her by: the fresh blackberry tarts she'd bought and swiftly eaten, the time she'd spent with the few people she thought to be her true friends, the sight of the sun setting on the shimmering waterline of the bay's horizon, all of it brought her a great degree of easy comfort that made it a simple task to slip away into the tight clutches of clawing sleep.
Sleep didn't last long. Her eyes snapped open and found themselves staring at the familiar canopy of a bed that wasn't hers, her body strewn out across its quilted covers. There was some breath that brewed within her lungs and left her lips as a sigh of indignation at the sight, despite there being no real reason why she wouldn't see it upon waking. This was usual, and nothing had changed, so why should she expect anything otherwise? Hope, she supposed, was a tenacious thing. She sat up in the bed and took brief stock of herself, finding her pallid and flimsy body clad in an equally-pallid and flimsy nightgown that clung to her in a way that made her feel self-conscious and awkward even while she knew nobody could see her. That was usual, too, and she looked at the bedroom she had awoken in with a similar sort of expectant glance: she found it to be quite the same, all ornate and expensive in an old and dusty way yet barren of observable features thanks to the thin haze of witching-hour shadow that clung to everything and left it dark and silhouetted. She pivoted her body and swung her legs out in order to slide off of the navy blue quilting and stand up, bare feet pressing against the frigid cold of the hardwood floor beneath her. She walked silently forth, passing through the open threshold of the bedroom door and into the darkened hallway beyond.
It stretched out before her, long and imposing and completely blanketed in midnight shadow: its very end lay cloaked in terrifying mystery like the depthless gullet of some gaping-mawed creature open-jawed and waiting for her to accept her fate and simply fall in. She'd been here hundreds of times at this point, but still found some fear in its enigma, as if there could be anything at all waiting for her in the darkness. She took one apprehensive step, and then another, and the wood of the impossibly old house creaked in protest beneath her weight just as it had done the first time she traversed its innards. It had a habit of making noise in all sorts of puzzling ways: stairs would groan when nobody climbed them, wind would whistle through the gaps in such a perfect way as to emulate the whispers of the imaginary denizens of the dark and doors would simply sway upon their hinges at times most inopportune for the cowardly of heart like Octavia. Nevertheless, her experience in this living horror brought her to take another step, and then another, and yet another, slowly ambling down the pitch-black corridor just as she always had to. Then, the door at the end of the hall ahead of her clicked open.
It always stood before her when she came here, like some monument to her incorrigible fate. It loomed in its rectangular fashion, hewn from simple mahogany and outfitted with that tarnished silver knob and its old keyhole that was never visible until the same sudden shock of bright light exploded from behind it and gave the door its iconic silhouette in her mind. The light came on on the door's other side, passing through the keyhole and the gaps in the frame and hinges, the even rectangle only broken by the familiar pair of shadowed feet adding two strips of lengthened darkness to the bright box. Just as she'd vainly hoped she might not wake up here this time, she'd also been silently praying she wouldn't see those feet: seeing them meant she'd see who they belonged to, certainly, and that was something she had hoped dearly she might not have to do. Just this once.
She watched in paralyzed silence as the doorknob turned and clicked, and the door was unlocked. It swung open, slowly: painfully so, as if the person pushing it open wanted to relish every single anticipatory moment before they revealed themselves. Someone more sardonic and sure of themselves than Octavia might have reductively called them a dramatic, for it. Light continued to beam outward as it was released by the opening door, radiating an even square of itself out into the hallway and causing the shadows of the things it passed over to stretch out into impossibly long facsimiles of their owners. Octavia's shadow was no exception, and at this point she had learned better than to look back at her own and see the thin puppet-strings tethered to it. It disturbed her, and it also meant looking away from Him, and He hated that. Her stare always began at His shoes: polished and black loafers of an expensive finished leather, slipped onto stockinged ankles that barely peeked out from beneath the hem of his black trousers that adorned impossibly-long legs. Her eyes slowly and dreadfully trailed up, tracing the vertical gray pinstripes of His vest and pausing for a moment at the fringes of the cloudy, murky shadow that dripped down around His lacey cravat. She always had to stop there so she could take a deep breath and steel herself for what lay just above. Her eyes finally willed themselves to make that small trip up, and they settled on the featureless shadow that she somehow knew was staring right back down at her: featureless besides, of course, His grin.
The grin of a nightmare she never thought she'd have.
"Hello, Octavia." He drawled to her. His voice carried all the properties of His willowy body and the way it moved forward: slow, syrupy and dark, like molasses. Backlit by the brilliant light of the room behind Him, His tall silhouette took a slow step in her direction and caused His shadow to stretch even further over her.
"Hello." she replied, in her usual meager quietude. She knew much better than to ignore Him at this point.
"You're going to make a mistake one of these nights, you know. We're both far too familiar with your tendency to muck things up to believe you'll get it perfect forever." His grin always remained the only visible, brightly illuminated thing in the haze of shadow that was His face, but sometimes as He moved she could almost swear she caught some of its silhouette at the right angle. Thin, sharp and angular, it made her sick to her stomach when the thought that He was somewhat handsome came to her mind. He took His usual long steps past her, a set of lengthy fingers perching themselves on her shoulder and guiding her along to follow Him down the foyer's flight of stairs that led to the manor's bottom floor.
"I'm a very good mage." she finally spoke up, in reply. She said it in such a way that she quite apparently seemed uncertain of it herself, and was attempting to both convince Him and herself of its truth simultaneously. He rewarded her faulty confidence with a low, cruel chuckle, and it made her wince.
"Of course you are, Octavia. You wouldn't be here now if you weren't." As if to remind her of what He meant, the shadows they cast upon the stairwell's wall flickered over and showed her the gruesomely familiar sight of mutilated corpses slumped and strewn out upon the carpeted stair, all adorned in Grauwald raiment. She shut her eyes to avoid looking at them.
"... What are you going to show me tonight?" she asked, moving the subject away as they landed upon the entry hall of the manor, equally cloaked in obscuring shadow as the rest of the estate's halls. His lack of an answer brought her chills while He led her along down the middlemost hall and right to the double doors at the back. Just as they reached them, His thin hand reached out to push the doors open, and He responded.
"I thought we'd watch a classic." He replied with audible mirth, and she felt nauseous because she knew what he meant. What lay before them was a theater: lavish and well-lit, with arcane lanterns that illuminated the rows of velvety red seats lined up one after the other. Gold fixtures pillared the walls, featuring relief carvings of fantastical storybook heroes and creatures and beauties all intertwined and perpetually frozen in the tales they were destined to play out. The stage towered over it all, massive burgundy curtains pulled shut to cover whatever the stage hid behind them. He led her to their usual seats: two perfectly-placed seats within the center, not too far and not too close, considerate of the theater's acoustics and of the viewing angle. She slowly sat right down next to him, keeping her hands clasped tightly in her lap while her knuckles whitened with each passing moment as they death-gripped one another. She felt His arm drape itself along the back of her seat, but she dared not look at Him because that meant looking away from the stage. She clamped her eyes shut for a fretful moment as she heard the wheel of the curtain's pulleys squeak and the vast lengths of cloth begin to shift apart, and then slowly opened one after another to look. He clapped, the sound of his palms striking one another echoing alone through the theater's empty stretches. She stared at the solitary figure standing downstage center.
It was supposed to be her. A thin, shadowy marionette of a person, garbed in a crimson hunting jacket, with a blonde wig and painted porcelain mask twisted into an expression of perpetual horror and woe.
"My name is Lady Octavia Athanasia," it warbled out, dramatically, projecting its voice to the empty rows where an audience was not, "and this is a tale of failure, heartbreak and cowardice. My tale!" The performer bowed, then He clapped, and then Octavia began to weep.
She'd wake up sooner or later.
