| Background |
Sofie was born in Hong Kong as the daughter of a down-on-his-luck programmer. Based purely on her own appearance, Sofie reasons that her disappeared mother must have been extraordinarily beautiful. Her father, of course, was a Magus as a hobby - without much care for the deeper Mysteries, he killed time by using his experience as a programmer to act as a Wizard. Surrounded by his work as a child, he would even develop her toys like cyberspaces for using Codecasts, so she did not understand for many years that there was such a huge distinction between his corporate work and his Magecraft. Once she found out, she naturally wanted to learn his arts, and started pestering him until he agreed to teach her what little he knew. Sofie took to it immediately, going far beyond the realms of an ordinary Wizard. Her Codecasts were far more potent than a mere novice's had any right to be, even apparently bestowing her cellphone a rudimentary intelligence modelled on her own overnight, one that she could communicate with - in conventional Magus terms, she had turned it into a kind of pseudo-familiar, at least until it caught fire.
One day, she even attempted to create a Codecast that would connect her soul directly to the internet. This worked, to success so profound that she was almost killed in the process. A human could not be stretched so thin, nor could she have ever hoped to process such ridiculous degrees of information. In the end, she had to be directly disconnected by her father in order to survive. This experience was enough to make Sofie swear off virtual realities entirely, focusing only on what she could construct in actual devices. However, the tremendous magical energy involved did not easily disperse without attracting some undue attention. Her father was approached by a Taoist from Luó-Xuán Guǎn, offering him an ultimatum: hand over whatever caused such a phenomenon, and he would be paid a handsome sum for it; refuse, and he would meet with an unfortunate fate. Despite his adamant refusal in the face of a far more powerful Magus than himself, Sofie stepped up demanding to be bought - she would not allow harm to come to her father. The Taoist seemed to find this profusely amusing, and elected to take the girl as an apprentice to inherit his Philosophy Key. After assuring Sofie's father that he was a bandit, not a slaver, he agreed to allow the two regular contact even from the mountains where she would be trained. Sofie has been calling him every week since then.
Her new master was not from just anywhere. He hailed from a deeply arcane branch of Guǎn that was founded by the White Emperor Kublai Khan, and had detected Sofie's antics from the ruins of Xanadu where his order had held council. He taught her of the domain he specialised in: the applications of the Bagua, through what in western terms is essentially a kind of elemental Magecraft. Sofie, being from Hong Kong, was closer to the western world than he was, and quickly discovered the links that had been made between the Bagua of the I Ching and the base-2 counting system of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. In other words, the fundamental operations of the world were, according to Taoist literature, reducible to the same values as computer programs. Much to her master's bafflement, she quickly broke into merging what she had learned from the two men, designing a system to build Codecasts which would use numerology to execute nature interference through the formulae of Philosophy Magecraft. Her teacher commented that doing so was nonsense, lacking appreciation for very nature of Mystery, and the fact that she had done it with such success was proof that she was certainly squandering a great deal of talent that she had inherited from her mother. Sofie is often called a "yin-yang of the new age, who has yet to fully connect the two sides of herself".
Formally invited to the Sixth Holy Grail War, she accepted immediately, making her way to Japan a full year in advance to seek out the greatest summoning catalyst the country had to offer. She knows little of this so-called wish-granting device, but she's confident in her abilities, and has a goal in mind. Her own Magecraft is eclectic, uniquely suited to consumption civilisation, but it is a deeply unstable flash in the pan that could never be passed on for that exact reason. Therefore, she desires to pioneer the creation of a proper synthesis of Eastern and Western Magecraft.
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| Personality |
| Likes: |
Sweet and sour foods, screwing around with complex systems |
| Dislikes: |
VR, group projects |
| Talents: |
Rhythm games, puzzle games |
| Natural enemy: |
None |
| Alignment: |
True Neutral |
Sofie is somewhat eccentric; not just as a Magus, but as a person. Something of a hedonist, most of her actions can be more or less explained in terms of how interesting she finds something. She is curious about details more than the big picture, preferring to zoom in than zoom out. She doesn't really think about the world on larger scales - or rather, refuses to - and pays little attentions to things like nationalities or borders outside of how she can make practical use of them. She is clinical about her views on cultures and ideologies, mentally considering them nothing more than a product of social vectors that can be mapped, quantified, and utilised: a very Magus-like cynicism. In her mind, the advantage of Magecraft is that it can harness such an esoteric, amorphous resource; her primary criticism of the Philosophy Foundation is that its structure that focuses on sustainability and unification is ill-suited to an ever-accelerating world.
She avoids particularly identifying herself in concrete terms, even reluctant to be called a Magus and certainly refusing to be described as a Taoist: she personally would label herself as a "user of Taoism-based Magecraft". Likewise, although she is a member of Guǎn for all intents and purposes, she would prefer to be considered an affiliate. As expected, Sofie is fiercely independent, disliking the idea of being tied down by things like factions or allies. She thinks of herself first and foremost as an eternal outsider, and thinks little of traditional values like loyalty as a result - in fact, the historical emphasis on loyalty in Chinese societies probably causes her to reject it even more, given that she goes to great lengths to avoid thinking of herself as part of a community or nation.
In truth, she mostly just dislikes having things forced on her. She was born in Hong Kong, but she doesn't recall signing anything that demanded her fealty. In a sense, one could say that she doesn't believe in anything, and she wouldn't argue with that; she considers apathy to be the privilege of youth. In reality, she is far from uncaring, but rather her passions and values are of too high a purity to be applied in a world that exists based on compromise rather than synthesis. For her wishes, from the creation of a fused culture that takes the best qualities from around the world to simply being boil the perfect egg, she is faced with the choice between keeping that purity or being able to partially make them come true. Preferring a perfect fantasy to an imperfect reality, she keeps her mouth shut about her ideals.
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| Abilities |
Ego Genome
A subformula that Sofie is quite fond of, and the core of her eccentric use of numerology. A small formula used as a preface to many of her favourite custom spells, it acts to establish an axiom: that existence is emanated from self-consciousness, following in accordance with the principles demonstrated in the Zhuangzi, especially the famous butterfly dream. Using these principles as arguments, she forms a basis for the numerological construction of Pseudo-Spiritrons - normally an entirely separate theory from the Occident - within the Philosophy Foundation. Their behaviour is somewhat eclectic compared to the Pseudo-Spiritrons usually used by Wizards and alchemists, but Sofie describes her work on them as "80% accurate, 20% better".
On the surface, it appears like a simple trick, but it's comparable to to emulating a video game console on a chessboard because she doesn't want to play chess - the medium is so different, the simulation so elaborate, that any experienced Philosophy Magus would consider simply doing it at all to be madness for the sake of itself. A less resigned Taoist would take one look at her creation and furiously demand "is all of this a joke to you?!" when faced with such ludicrous misapplication of the Bagua, but her teacher tolerates her messing around for the sake of her developing potential. The great lengths that Sofie goes to squander her incredible talent to create something to her tastes is something of a running theme when it comes to her use of Magecraft.
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Codecast: Demon's Logic Fangxiang Operation
A Codecast in name only. Its function is to generate a kind of pseudo-familiar within a circuit by constructing a basic, animalistic intelligence out of Pseudo-Spiritrons. It was once developed on the principles of Spiritron Hacking, but has been rebuilt based on the numerology of the Philosophy Foundation. Therefore, this is more strictly called Fangxiang Operation II, ported to a different system for compatibility with the incredible exaptation of Ego Genome.
In Chinese folklore, Fangxiang are attested as child-sized brain-eating demons. In modern parlance, the word is simply a generic term for a monstrous creature, and so they would simply be called a "demon" in English - perfect inspiration for Sofie, who is familiar with the logic constructs called demons such as those used by Laplace and Maxwell. As implied by these two meanings, the Fangxiangs that she creates are quasi-sentient viruses generated from Pseudo-Spiritrons that operate by possessing circuits capable of computation or logic. Similar to the amorphous western gremlin that targets complex machinery for sustenance, they are beings of information with no fixed shape. However, with sufficient magical energy, they can exert a shape given to them by their creator upon the medium that stores them, becoming automata through structural alteration - similar to the likes of shinigami, they are a perfectly acceptable conduit for the casting of Magecraft as extensions of Sofie's own consciousness.
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Mystic Code: Pearl Shell
A Mystic Code originally designed for Spiritron Hacking, very important to Sofie as an heirloom that has been passed down the generations from her father: a silver-coloured flip phone, modified for use in Magecraft. Realistically, it can be dismissed as a mere wand that happens to have information recording functions. Inside are a handful of supplementary artificial Magic Circuits that the user can connect to, as well as being able to engrave small-scale thaumaturgical formulae into itself. Using this, it becomes possible to cast one spell repeatedly without having to repeat an incantation: a paltry sleight-of-hand, but a very convenient tool for a low-level Spellcaster like Sofie's father.
For Sofie, her ability to use numerology to directly interface with the conditions of the World allows her to go even further, accessing the systems inside and using the logic switches inside as an incredibly dense storage medium. For her, it seems such modern technology is more useful than it would be even for the conventional Wizard it was designed to accommodate. Furthermore, although somewhat unorthodox, Sofie has developed a kind of High-Speed Incantation using the phone's keypad, allowing her to string together huge combinations of the eight trigrams very quickly simply by pressing a corresponding number.
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I Ching Numerology
Of course, Ego Genome and everything derived from it are ultimately all just toys. Sofie's incredible Magic Circuits and prodigious density of magical energy allow her to make her experiments viable, but for her to use them first and foremost is nothing more than her holding back out of a kind of stubborn flippancy - a self-imposed challenge to deal with all obstacles using only the tools she likes. Her numerology, however, is the true basis for her designs, and those designs are nothing more than experimental applications of an art dating back to the Xian of the Age of Gods. Incredibly close to a Privileged Domain under the direct control of the Ten Judges, a master of the principles laid out in the I Ching can be said to be already on the doorstep of Xianhood. Naturally, the Bagua are of high importance in Feng Shui, and so at least a basic knowledge of it is necessary in order to use these arts at all.
In the past, divination was often performed by drawing numbers out of the World to discern cause and effect, but it is also possible to influence cause and effect by injecting numbers into the World. These numbers are derived from the eight trigrams that the I Ching outlines: combinations of yin and yang in sequences that create all phenomena. On the most subtle levels, this can be likened to random number manipulation, but in more extreme cases it is possible to produce entire events whole-cloth. By carefully manipulating the output of qi within the Magic Circuits, it also becomes possible to convert that magical energy into material effects or substances, similar to the elemental spells of the western world. This is how, with great effort, Sofie is able to simulate an entire supplemental Foundation within her Philosophy Key; a method not all that different from programming a cyberspace from lines of code.
As an art that is much older and derived from much stabler ground than Ego Genome, it is much more efficient to use on its own terms, and so it is here that Sofie's true ability shines. She is capable of much larger-scale effects of much higher magnitude and potency, as she is not wasting the majority of her output on bringing the laws allowing Pseudo-Spiritrons into existence. It is a very pure and simple form of nature interference, so much so that it is heavily coloured by its users. In order to make full use of potentially limitless versatility, one must first self-impose their own limits in order to be able to determine how that versatility is applied - not strictly a limitation on the Magecraft itself, but upon human psychology, and so axioms must be established by anyone attempting to use the Bagua as Sofie does. Naturally, in Sofie's case, the frame of reference she uses is programming, a system that shares the same root as her self-hypnotic image that she uses to cast Magecraft in the first place. |
Originally Posted by Bugs
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