Monthly Make-A-Magus Contest

[RoydGolden]

York: I actually like this sheet a lot. Gorgeous FC, likeable personality (that contrasts rather unsettlingly with her amoral job, but that's obviously on purpose) and a cool and interesting powerset. Probably one of my favs in this contest so far, to be honest. Also, "Mobius Strip" has got to be the most creative Circuit Composition I've ever seen.

I kind of wonder she'd get along with my Platina Wingfield, as they're both Mage hunters but have diametrically opposite personalities.

[Saron]

York: As you said, not necessarily "Turning People into Snails because RAINBOWS", but definitely really interesting and props to the imaginative use of the placebo effect. Her personality is also interesting to think of her as an ally or almost big baddy in a story. And in general, as always, really good shit Hermes

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Also, this contest has been out for what? A handful of weeks and I have no idea who's going to be my number one vote already because they're all so damn good!

[You]

So a little past half way
keep them comiing

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Also, "Mobius Strip" has got to be the most creative Circuit Composition I've ever seen.

Spoiler:

Touko flows her magical energy through her circuits in a mobius strip shape.
or as they say, canon already did it

[RoydGolden]

Spoiler:

Touko flows her magical energy through her circuits in a mobius strip shape.
or as they say, canon already did it

Didn't know that, thanks. It definitely fits the "illusion/paradox" theme, at least.

[Bird of Hermes]

I think thats the most/best feedback with a Mage that I've ever gotten so far. Thanks for the kind words.

York: As you said, not necessarily "Turning People into Snails because RAINBOWS", but definitely really interesting and props to the imaginative use of the placebo effect. Her personality is also interesting to think of her as an ally or almost big baddy in a story. And in general, as always, really good shit Hermes

That was my intention and you're bang on the money plot-wise. Depending how QoF ends up shaping out with you lot she might make a cameo... or I could be teasing.

I kind of wonder she'd get along with my Platina Wingfield, as they're both Mage hunters but have diametrically opposite personalities.

Given York is of the loner shut-in variety, not so well. She'd comment saying, "The Tsundere knight route isn't my thing, with the whole Queen deal you're trying to do you'd be more popular in about a decade or so".

As you can see, there's more than one reason she stays inside.

[You]

3 days left, get your magi in

[Bird of Hermes]

3 days left, get your magi in

In that case I'll compile a quick list of the entree's so far.

Enrica Hiri Crick aka "Koko" by Sauron - Death by Music
Lukas Adalbert by Sunny - Death by Coffee
Kit Scorza by sutaa - Death by Voodoo
York Lancaster by Bird of Hermes - Death by Cognitive Cursing

Not so many this time around, hopefully a few will pop up last minute. At least it makes voting easier.

[RoydGolden]

With so few entries I probably have a shot of actually getting votes this time around. Now if only I could muster the inspiration to finish my sheet...

[You]

In that case I'll compile a quick list of the entree's so far.

Enrica Hiri Crick aka "Koko" by Sauron - Death by Music
Lukas Adalbert by Sunny - Death by Coffee
Kit Scorza by sutaa - Death by Voodoo
York Lancaster by Bird of Hermes - Death by Cognitive Cursing

Not so many this time around, hopefully a few will pop up last minute. At least it makes voting easier.

I make servants not magi
-BL at the Disco

[ylas]

Name: Alain Sofia Tokarim
Alias: Changeling
Gender: Female?
Age: 34
Height/Weight: 176cm / 70kg
Birthplace: Atlas Academy



Forte/Likes: Planning, Ambient Music, Foreign Languages
Weaknesses/Dislikes: Silence, Puns, Smoking
Natural Talents: Fast Talking, Gifted Linguist
Natural Enemies: Kurogiri Satsuki

Magic Circuits
Quantity: D
Composite Quality: A+
Composition: Interlinking Loops

Character

Spoiler:

Quiet, somber and indecipherable, Alain squarely fits into the clichéd book person type. She constantly observes and categorizes available information in her surroundings leading to her apparent persona. She seldom assigns any emotional values to her observations, "interesting" and "unexpected" are compliments of the highest degree within her mind.

Biography

Spoiler:

Being conceived in the fallen house of Tokarim, Alain's path was preordained: Stronger, Faster, More Accurate, no matter the cost. The alchemists of the Tokarim family were among the first to achieve Thought Acceleration and Memory Partitioning, but used forbidden techniques to further enhance their mental capabilities: fusing multiple sets of fraternal twins into a single entity, using the excess souls as imaginary space for calculations, knowledge and hidden partitions. There are rumors that say, the knowledge within a certain Tokarim family head drove another noble family to ruin, as madness consumed their scion.
Alain is the pinnacle of this gruesome evolution, who succeeded in adapting this space as a Spiritron capture circuit.

Magecraft-related Abilities

Spoiler:

Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP)
While the scientific community discredits NLP as pseudoscience, it certainly held the Magus world in sway as Spiritron manipulation and mind interference became more common. Using certain keywords, sounds and cues while observing elicitated responses within a target, Alain can gauge its characteristics and inflict various effects using Spiritron synchronization and resonance, for example:

• Fractal Conundrum: forces the target to ponder a certain problem/situation/thought/riddle for an extended period; as they get lost within the depths of their own mind, Alain can access additional layers of the target's mind; fragile minds are prone to suicidal tendencies.

With unlimited access Alain is capable of rewiring and rewriting the personality and self-consciousness. It's the death of a person, without actually killing her physical body.

---
Creator's Remarks

Spoiler:

Inspirations: Cogito ergo sum; Kiasyd Clan from Vampire the Masquerade; Doppelgangers from the Dune Saga; Touko+The Body Snatchers; and various other sources.
While I tried to avoid the whole "mindcrush" cliché, further fleshing out this idea without significant time investment was not possible. Also: Guda Guda Event farming.

[Sunny]

Well, at least one person usually waits for the last 59 minutes, based on the contests so far. Maybe more than one. It’s harder to think of multiple magi foundations, but I’m still expecting some late arrivals lol.

[NMR-3]

I mean, I had an idea for an entry which revolved around the idea that the ancient Egyptian rites meant to protect the pyramids got rediscovered by an archaelogist, whose son tried them out, got some success, and became a magus with those rites as his focus. Wanted to do some shit with how the Egyptians saw the soul:Ba, Ka, Ren, Sheut, and Ib. Maybe a few Yu-gi-oh references. Things is, though, been busy, didn't know enough, and couldn't really get the pieces of that to fit together like I wanted them, so that didn't get off the ground.

Other idea I had was death by hunger, do some shit with Pretas or other eastern variants of the Hell(s) concept or whatever. That got even less far, partly because I felt that'd get too close to Daneel's winning entry and again, because I didn't know enough about the subject.

[4score7years]

I make servants not magi
-BL at the Disco

Servants seem more straightforward, at least to me. There's a metric ton of examples and also kind of a method I guess? Like, you know they've gotta have a Noble Phantasm, a class and the class skills, personal skills, so on. I've been trying to read more stuff in the Nasuverse but I still don't feel that I understand how magecraft works well enough to be able to make a Magus without fucking something up. For me, anyway, it's harder to know "what they can do" and "how does it even work"

Granted, there are plenty of ways to fuck up a servant sheet lorewise and people do it all the time, but still. I suspect this is also why Magi in rps and such tend to be a lot less fleshed out than Servants. Esp. since lots of people mostly know Fate stuff best.

[Bird of Hermes]

With so few entries I probably have a shot of actually getting votes this time around. Now if only I could muster the inspiration to finish my sheet...

I mean, I had an idea for an entry which revolved around the idea that the ancient Egyptian rites meant to protect the pyramids got rediscovered by an archaelogist, whose son tried them out, got some success, and became a magus with those rites as his focus. Wanted to do some shit with how the Egyptians saw the soul:Ba, Ka, Ren, Sheut, and Ib. Maybe a few Yu-gi-oh references. Things is, though, been busy, didn't know enough, and couldn't really get the pieces of that to fit together like I wanted them, so that didn't get off the ground.

Other idea I had was death by hunger, do some shit with Pretas or other eastern variants of the Hell(s) concept or whatever. That got even less far, partly because I felt that'd get too close to Daneel's winning entry and again, because I didn't know enough about the subject.

You can always just pop it in the regular CaM thread, it could always use more love.

[JetKinen]

I was going to write a sheet, but it was just bad timing for me this month.

[Sesto]

None of my preexisting ideas meshed well with the prompt, so I toyed with a few new ones. Eventually I thought about writing an magus which took the Cartesian theater/Homunculus argument literally and used it to murder people by slowly taking over their conscious, effectively hijacking their body to obtain magical crests.

But I'm too lazy to actually write it out.

[Rafflesiac]

Better than my NTR fatman idea

[RoydGolden]

Merci de Sade:

Titles: Angel Of

Mercy

Death

, Samael

Gender: Female

Age: 34

Birthplace: France


Appearance:

(On the left)
In addition to the above appearance, she also wears skintight fingerless gloves and a necklace with the Buddhist symbol of a Dharma wheel hanging over her chest.

Personality

Appears cold and apathetic, executing her tasks with almost mechanical efficiency. In truth a highly compassionate woman, but her sense of compassion is as twisted as her personality.

She follows a distorted form of Buddhism, believing in "saving people's souls" by granting them an illusion of their greatest desire before killing them, thereby freeing them from the hardship and suffering of mortal life. To "save" as many people as possible, Merci walks the path of an indiscriminate killer. She finds utmost beauty in the moment of death, likening a life's passing from the world to a supernova that blazes brightest before being extinguished. It can be said that witnessing such a sight is the only thing that brings joy to Merci's otherwise expressionless face.

Though an assassin, she cares nothing for money or status, only using her position as a means to

save

kill

as many people as possible. Merci rationalizes her task further by saying that, as an assassin, anyone she's contracted to kill is effectively marked for death anyways. If she were to pass up the chance, another assassin would simply kill them far less mercifully. Truly, twisted logic worthy of a false bodhisattva.

...However.

The business of "saving souls" is merely an act to mask Merci's true desire, one even she herself is unaware of. What she is truly looking for is someone who can experience her illusion of satisfaction without succumbing to it; a rare splendid soul willing to choose reality in all its pain and harshness over an illusory paradise. For Merci, finding such a person would be nothing less than "proof that life is worth living". Through killing, she seeks to affirm the value of life. A contradiction that craves its own refutation; that is the heart of Merci de Sade's existence.

Likes: peaceful death, meditation
Dislikes: painful death, those who foolishly cling to life
Talent: killing through pleasure
Natural Enemy: Florence Nightingale

Magical Attributes:
Origin: Contradiction
Elemental Alignment: Void

Magic Circuits:
Circuit Quantity: C
Circuit Quality: C
Circuit Composition: Chain

Magecraft-Related Abilities

Stimulating Hell Fist

Right Hand Of Euphoria, Left Hand Of Anguish

A martial arts style invented by Merci, allowing the user to manipulate the opponent's senses by stimulating special pressure-points on their body. It was formed by combining her knowledge of far eastern mystic rites with her own unique philosophy. In Buddhism it is thought that one can attain enlightenment through mastering and transcending one's physical senses. Rejecting the end-goal of transcending the body, Merci has taken the initial step of mastering one's senses and transformed it into her own martial art.

Fitting Merci's compassionate philosophy, she mainly uses this ability to incapacitate her targets through overwhelming pleasure before killing them, but excruciating pain can be inflicted with equal ease. Depending on the pressure-point struck she can enhance the target's senses until even the feeling of taking a breath or a leaf brushing against their skin is intensely pleasurable or painful, completely seal away one of their five senses or even reverse their sense of pleasure and pain entirely (so that pleasurable things feel painful and vise-versa).

The effects of this Skill are fleeting, lasting only about five minutes until the body learns to reject the false perceptions imparted by Merci. However, that is more then enough time for Merci to finish off her foes. She can also manipulate the target's sense of time to make the effects seem to last for far longer then they do in reality.

La Petite Morte

Delusional Pleasure

The climax of Merci's martial arts style, an ultimate technique that kills through overwhelming pleasure. To invoke this technique, Assassin presses her palm against the back of the opponent's neck and releases her magical energy into their body. With every sense of the outside world cut off, the target's mind is plunged into an illusory paradise, an inner world where all their heart's desires are granted.

If they desire money they shall find themselves surrounded by endless riches. If they desire love they shall be fawned over by all the beautiful women (or men) in the world. If their heart burns with vengeance against someone who hurt them then they shall see that person driven before them, helpless and awaiting judgment. Any craving shall be fulfilled no matter how twisted or deviant, subliming the target's mind to a state of perfect bliss. While this effect can theoretically be broken if the target musters the will to reject her illusion, only the most resolute soul could willingly choose the real world with all its hardships and suffering over the intoxication of paradise.

However, this 'paradise' has a dark side. While their mind is trapped in Merci's illusion, the target's body ages at an incredibly rapid pace, burning through entire years of their lifespan in mere seconds. In less than a minute their body withers away to leave an emaciated corpse, face twisted into a grotesque grin of pleasure.

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So here's the sheet I've been sitting on for almost the whole contest and only got around to posting up now. To be honest there's some parts I'm still not 100% satisfied with (mainly her personality and the wording in her second ability), but the contest is almost over so I figure I might as well post it up and be done with it. Might add in a History section sometime tomorrow if I have the time.

[RoydGolden]

Update: Tidied up her personality a bit. Hopefully now it's more easily readable and a little less bloated...

Might touch up a bit more if I have time, since I find it easier to edit when I have it already out on the page rather then fussing over how it'll all look afterward.

[SleepMode]

I suppose it's going to be voting time soon?