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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rel" data-source="post: 1466357" data-attributes="member: 99">Here's the backstory for the next character I'm playing in an Arcana Unearthed campaign, Xersan.  He's a Verrik Mind Witch.  For those unfamiliar with AU, the Verrik have the ability have the ability to turn off their senses voluntarily.  It isn't quite as long, but still...Xersan (zer-sahn)I should arrive in Cre-Redova later today.  I know not what this Arayllia will be like and whether her intentions are honorable or not.  I feel it best to prepare myself for the unexpected.  I have never been one to be caught unaware and I don’t intend to start now.I find myself a small, quiet clearing in the forest, well away from the path I was following.  I clear the leaves and sticks away from the mossy area where I will make my preparations and I take my seat.  I gently lay my witchbag before me and look around to make sure that I am alone.  I turn off my sight.My preference is to also turn off my hearing because I can focus better without the distracting noises of nature.  But one must make certain concessions in the name of safety when traveling alone and these lands are reputed to hold dangerous creatures.  I will keep my ears open and do my best to flow with the wind and bird songs rather than let them distract me.My hands go to my witchbag but do not seek to open it immediately.  They feel the soft and well worn leather.  I feel the places where the scales once attached to the giant-lizard hide.  I feel the stiff, scorched area from where an ember popped out of the fire while I was sightlessly, soundlessly meditating and didn’t know a hot coal was sitting on the edge of my witchbag until my hand touched it.  But today I have no fire and no such distractions.My hand goes to the clasp fashioned of the lizard’s tooth.  I deftly unfasten it as I have done hundreds of times before and I feel myself sink further into my routine and meditation.  My hand feels the thick stack of polished bone plaques, bound up together in a strip of silk.  I feel the ridges across the tops of them and select one of the most familiar of them to prepare my first spell.I almost always prepare Mind Stab first.  Perhaps it is because it was the first spell that I learned beyond those most basic to my people.  Perhaps it is because I have such an easy affinity for it that it provides a solid start for the rest of my preparations.  Perhaps it is to give me a weapon to use against any who might interrupt my meditation.  No matter the reason, my hands find the patterns of bumps on the bone plaque and trace their familiar patterns.  I feel myself go through the motions of casting the spell:  I gather my will.  I reach my hand into the bag.  It finds the thin, polished, shape of the Needle-Snail shell form the shores of the Gulf of Firesight.  I press my thumb against the tip, feeling the prick of pain and I focus on this.  And finally…I ease my grip on the shell and let it fall where it hangs from the string tied to the inside of the bag.  If I should need to, I will complete the final step of the spell, lancing out with my will toward the mind of my target.I lay aside that plaque and select another that is worn with use.  I begin my preparations for the Canny Effort spell.  I cast my memory back to the day I first learned the spell.  My mother took me to a mesa in the Zalavat and bade me to climb it.  Always a thin child with scant musculature, I knew she meant for me to use my inner power.  I turned off my sight, my hearing, my taste, my smell.  I left only my touch, feeling every rough pore of the stone before me.  I focused my will upon these imperfections until each seemed as large and easily scaled as the steps leading up out of our house.  I gripped the stone and began to climb and moments later I found myself at thrice my height up the wall.Then I fell.That was also the day that my mother taught me to focus my powers of observation on the flesh that I might discover the subtle ways it could be coaxed to mend itself.  As my mother told me that day, “One always chooses the moment to climb.  One rarely chooses the moment to fall.”  I have carried bandages in my witchbag since that day and grown passably good at using them.  As I complete the preparation of this spell, my hand releases the chunk of stone that I carried away from the mesa that day.  I place it back in the bag where it waits ready to focus my efforts in areas where I do not naturally excel.I turn the plaque over to its other side and begin to feel the bumps and grooves that remind me of the steps necessary to cast Minor Illusion.  My other hand finds the small pocket where I keep a familiar, circular piece of mirror, about the size of a coin.  I think back to the cool desert night in our home when my mother taught me this spell.“Hold the mirror in your hand.  Now tilt it such that you can see my face.  Good.  Now focus on my face.  Remember all the details of it, the wrinkles around my eyes, the white of my eyebrows, the color of my skin.  Now focus that image onto the mirror with your mind.  Then slowly tilt the mirror away from me, but keep that image focused there…”My hand lingers with the mirror in it and I almost decide to complete the spell and see my mother’s face.  But that means turning my vision back on and interrupting my meditations and I am too disciplined for that.  I see her in my mind’s eye and then let go of her image and the mirror.  My hand finds another plaque and my mind readies itself for preparing my next spell:  Veil of Darkness.I take into my hand the strip of silk that binds together the plaques.  I run my fingers over its smooth surface and think back to the day it was bound over my eyes.  I recall arguing with the elders that it was unnecessary as I could simply turn off my vision.  But they instructed me that it was more important to learn to use the imperfect sight limited by the thick cloth than the utter darkness cause by turning off my sight.  They taught me well and I could soon reach out and grab the smooth stick they taunted me with thrice every four times.Their teachings have served me well.  On my travels north, I was performing my mediations one morning when a desert cat approached me, smelling the food I had cooked the night before.  As the silken strip slid through my fingers, the Veil of Darkness slid outward from me, over the sands around me, and in the darkness my Mind Blade found the cat before its claws found me.  I was gone before the creature awoke.I have grown comfortable in the dark and was only too happy to part with some of the coin my father gave me when offered the chance to buy the magical cloak that I wear.  Its shroud of darkness has allowed me to safely escape a band of highwaymen on the road north and when I grow weary of the questions of the provincial locals whose hamlets I must endure to restock my supplies of food, I find they have little to say when I become a shadow before their eyes.Another plaque comes into my hand and I reluctantly begin to trace its message.  With even greater hesitation, I reach deep into my witchbag and feel the claw.  I draw it out of the bag and then leave it lying on the flap and rest my hands on my knees for several heartbeats.  My next spell leaves the taste of ashes in my mouth.  I turn off my sense of taste and concentrate, taking both plaque and claw in hand again.I still dream of that afternoon in the desert.  My mother knew that I would never gain mastery of the Distraction spell without a real target.  We found the giant lizard laying in the shade and made our way closer, counting on the creature’s torpor and cover from a stone ledge to escape its notice.  When we drew close, I crept atop the stone ledge and hid behind a boulder.  There I waited while my mother moved to a nearby outcropping and conjured the image of a Runnerbird darting into view of the lizard.The head of the large beast twitched and its body bunched to strike.  As it leapt from the shade, I used my spell to Distract it.  It stopped where it stood, biting at the non-existent adversary I had set upon it.  But the spell held only for a moment and it saw the movement I made when I gestured toward it.  It turned and leapt at me instead of the illusory Runnerbird.I began to stumble backwards unaware that my mother had come up to protect me.  I knocked her over and fell off the ledge of stone we had been hiding behind.  Her Mindfire went astray and did not hit the lizard.  It was on top of her before I could recover.I recall striking it with a Mind Stab and then repeatedly slashing at its flanks with my Mind Blade.  By the time it was unconscious, it was too late.  My mother was dead and the lizard followed her soon after.  His claw is my focus for Distraction, his hide is my witchbag, his tooth is the clasp, his ribs are my spell-plaques.  That was the day that the lizard took the place of my mother as my teacher.  He has taught me much.I feel myself coming out of the distraction from my mediation, which is the way one prepares to use the Distraction spell.  Distraction as a means of focus is an odd sensation.With my spell preparations complete, I replace the contents of my witchbag and refasten the clasp before I return my vision.  As I take one last bite of my breakfast, I notice that I had turned off my sense of taste and that breakfast just isn’t the same without it.  Deprivation of the senses is only useful when it allows one to focus on what is important, not when it removes valuable information, such as the taste of saltmeat biscuits with pepper jelly.I look at the crock of pepper jelly and wonder if it will be available in Cre-Redova.  If not then my view of my trip north is even more bleak than before.  I have already left behind my mother and her death cost me my father.He never truly recovered from her death.  He couldn’t bring himself to blame me and therefore could not place his feet on the path of forgiving me.  And each time he saw me use my witchery, he could only think of her.  When he told me of the debt to the Witch of the North, I could see that he longed for the day of my departure.  I think he gave me so much gold that I might depart all the sooner.I do not believe he hates me.  But my presence is too painful for him to bear.  I pitied him the day that I departed.  He struggled to find words of wisdom to make my parting seem less like he was rid of some burden and more like I was embarking on some grand adventure.  He failed of course.  Words of wisdom were the province of my mother.  At last, he stepped back inside and brought me the crock of pepper jelly.  “They may not have this up north.”Those were his final words to me.Best I stop gazing backwards now and head into town to meet Arayllia.  If there are to be “grand adventures” in my future, she holds the key to them.</blockquote>

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