Wall of Words ~ A Land Where Words Don't Matter
Type: Barrier, Anti-Sense/Self, Labyrinth
Rank: C
"Why is a raven a writing desk? Easy—because it can produce a few notes, though they are very flat; and it is never put with the wrong end in front!" "And the moral of this tale is thus: when you use a word, it means just what you choose it to mean—neither more nor less."
To work, the noble phantasm requires Caster to cast the activating spell on four separate walls; they don't need to connect to each other, but their sides, if they were to stretch on infinitely in the imagination, would need to intersect each other and make a sort of enclosure - a box or at least some kind of quadrilateral. Within the enclosed space, the walls loosen the meaning of words in reality. Caster can use this to alter the form of things by declaring the connection between the words. For instance, the Japanese word for mirror is "kagami", and "ka" roughly translates to "or", and me is another word for I, so origami therefore counts as a mirror. Or, given how the first kanji in "Tuesday" is "fire", fire only burns on Tuesdays. Or, since fish swim in schools, they could make it so that they could "swim" midair in a high school as if they were fish in water. Most of these changes are just temporary, and the strength of the effect depends on the strength of the wordplay; the more links in the chain of "reasoning", the weaker it'll be. Also, the wordplay alterations the Queens make apply to the world as a whole, not just to themselves, so not only can others potentially benefit from the same effects if they accept the wordplay (swim after Caster in the school, for instance), but any wordplay that opponents make based on what Caster has already started will also prove true, even if it undoes what Caster changed.
It's a decent effect on its own, albeit one that is prone to backfiring if Caster isn't careful, but that isn't the full extent of the noble phantasm. The true danger comes in how it instills in everyone within the walls a mentality of carelessness toward the meaning of things - even themselves. Does it really matter what your name is - or if you're a human, a monkey, a dog, or a gnat? This makes them susceptible to believing suggestions given to them by others (like the Queens). In the case of people whose bodies are repositories for magic - whether they are actual mages or just have strong magic potential - they will begin to unconsciously draw on the magi concept of "self-hypnosis" and begin manifesting their beliefs in the physical world; the more magic you have, the more likely you'll change yourself to match whatever whim you believe in.
The effect of the noble phantasm breaks if one of the outer walls is disabled to create an opening for the words to escape. However, Caster can build additional walls within the original set of barriers for reinforcement, creating a checkered gauntlet of walls that strengthen the effect. In addition, as these interior walls are within the field of wordplay, the actual form of these back-up "walls" can be rather variable - there's such things as "party walls", "wallpaper", and "wallflowers", for example.
Let the Games Begin! ~ Wonderland of Backward Games
Type: Labyrinth, Conceptual, Anti-Army
Rank: A
"Forward, backward, inward, outward, here we go again!" "No one ever loses, and no one can ever win!" "Round and round and round we go, and play for evermore!" "Once we were behind, but now we find we are before!"
A reality marble embodying the mad chess queens' belief in life being nothing but a game. It normally can only engulf a 50-foot radius around either queen and will only have temporary effects, but if activated within
Wall of Words, the noble phantasm will engulf the entire enclosed space and sustain itself indefinitely as long as the barriers continue to function. The world is morphed into a giant-sized living game board. The default setting is, as you might have guessed, a chess board, but Caster enjoys a lot of other games as well, and they can shift the setting between different games as they please, from cards to mahjong to even recent games. Keep in mind that the game setting may have other various landscapes mixed in for variety, like rivers, forests, and even mountains.
In this world of games, the Red Queen and White Queen eternally play against each other, for they are the only true players in the game (though also pieces), and everyone else in their land is therefore the opposite: game pieces to help one side or the other; this means that Caster can make individual "pieces"
Swap location and side at will, though swapping of other attributes is locked for the moment. One does not necessarily have to follow either queen, but there will be a price to pay. Whenever anyone in the game breaks a rule, they will receive a penalty to their luck and overall stats. The level of the penalty depends on the offender's intentions and the degree of the offense: breaking minor rules or being ignorant of the rules will give you only a small, temporary downgrade, but knowingly breaking major rules or trying to break the game as a whole will be met with severe consequences. On the flipside, following the rules of the game can have its rewards, and you may receive bonuses for showing particular sportsmanship. A lot of the rules are pretty obvious if you know the basics of the game (chess pieces only move in certain directions depending on rank, certain cards have advantage over other cards, etc.), but don't take things for granted. Not only does the exact form of the game shift at the Queens' whims, but, given Caster's nonsensical mindset, a lot of the rules are twisted around to make things more interesting. Sometimes the world may even become a fusion of entirely separate games.
When active within the
Wall of Words field, the mental and physical tampering on subjects becomes much more dangerous than normal. Now everyone, even those without magic, can naturally shift to new forms as long as doing so supports of the framework of the game. If person fully loses control and accepts his or her new role in the game, they will fully become game pieces in body and soul and thereby surrender their agency to their Queen(s); at this point, they are considered full property of Caster and can have every bit of them bandied about with other game pieces via
Swap as she sees fit. Depending on whether or not the individual's surrender was to the Queen(s) or to the specific rules of a game, the game piece's form may or may not be mutable; in the former case, they will likely alter themselves to match whatever game the Queens are playing, but in the latter case they will retain the form appropriate to the game they bound themselves to even if the world changes to a new game - the Queens don't mind, as it makes things even more fun in their opinion, so you could see playing cards running around in the chess game or vice versa.
Like other reality marbles, the noble phantasm can feasibly be broken from within given enough pressure, but the penalty curses for doing so make it a dicey proposition. Aside from disabling the walls, there is just one way to break the spell without breaking the rules: have someone win, and bring the game to a close. While each queen plays on valiantly, the game is set up so that, unless you really work at it, things will remain at a permanent limbo with neither queen fulfilling the requirements for winning. If you can somehow get either queen to win, the noble phantasm will automatically end and cannot be used again.
Dream From the Looking-Glass ~ Reflection Come to Life
Type: Conceptual, Anti-Unit, Anti-Anti-Self?
Rank: C
"Mirror, mirror, I ask thee - am I you, or are you me?" "Come out and play, it's time to meet your other you! Then soon neither of you will ever know who is who!"
To work, the noble phantasm requires Caster to use a mirror (or something that they can make count as a mirror under Wall of Words) to show a target's reflection. The target must remain in view of the mirror throughout the activation aria for the spell to take effect; if the target moves such that his or her reflection wouldn't be present in the world shown through the mirror anymore, the spell dies prematurely. First, the reflection will begin to move independently of the target, and then the glass will become all soft and murky like gauze, and the reflection will step out into reality.
Despite what you might think, the reflection, while quite different in many ways from the individual (a maid's counterpart could be a princess, or a nonmagical person could be paired with a magician), is hardly ever the antithesis or enemy of the original. Rather, the two sort of complement each other, like corresponding halves or synchronized dreams of each other. As a result, the pair will generally cooperate amiably with one another, though occasional arguments can occur. Furthermore, the "twins" subconsciously act in sync with such fluidity that no even the closest of companions could match. In some ways, this noble phantasm works against Caster, as it could literally double her opponents.
However, your reflection manifesting itself can have drastic effects on your own existence. Neither "twin" will cast a reflection on any surface, and their willpower and magic is effectively split between the two of them. Moreover, they find themselves "linked" together, and they cannot travel more than 100 feet from each other. Also, while the two start off as symmetrical in mind and body, either individual can feasibly be altered physically or mentally. Plus, when both halves are within the confines of
Wall of Words, their separate memories and personas will gradually bleed over into each other - and they'll be less resistant to such changes, too.
In addition, Caster has a second use for the noble phantasm for those already split by its power: by pointing a mirror such that it lines up with both the original and the reflection at the same time and then chanting the activating aria backwards, the mirror will shoot forward to "catch" both targets inside and then spit them out as a single, merged individual. Rather than being who the original was before the reflection came out, this new individual will be a composite of both the original and the reflection; if either person had alterations done to him or her, their fused counterpart will have those changes mixed in. The new person will cast a reflection again, but if that reflection were to be awakened, it would be a counterpart to the fused individual, not the original person.
The one other way to undo the split (other than by having the reflection die, at which point it goes back by default) is to have the reflection return by choice to a mirror's reflection, which it can do at any point. If so, the remaining individual will become the "real" one again and regain their full power back accordingly. However, be warned: at this point, both the original and the reflection would be considered by the reflector to potentially qualify as the reflection. While the return to the looking-glass can only be done willingly, it is possible for the original, if one's mind and identity is already a few screws loose, to forget that they were not the reflection to begin with. In such a case, the reflection would become the "real" person, and the original would be no more than their reflection in the mirror, a vague dream that disappears once you stop looking at the glass.
Please also note that once the
Looking-Glass has brought the reflection to life, the reflection and its counterpart are subject to the effects of Caster's
Swap power (both between each other and with other reflection pairs), though mental switches can be resisted with willpower.
Caster does not usually rely on this noble phantasm too much, mostly using it to divide up their master so each Queen has one on her side of the game. They also sometimes use it to speed up a game piece's submission by splitting the target up into more mentally-pliable pieces and then putting them back together. However, one has to wonder: could the Looking-Glass be used on non-living things? Would they too be inanimate, or would they be alive or something else entirely? Also, while normally just one Queen or the other will activate the Noble Phantasm on her own, what if both of them made their own separate mirrors, reflecting and empowering the same target twice? Who knows! Don't bother asking the Queens; you won't get a straight answer from them either.
Originally Posted by Skull
Also "Lambert"? Was that auto-correct or a Freudian slip since John Lambert was one of the heroes of the Civil War. A Servant sheet in the works perhaps?
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