[2.5 Spoilers] Gifts Collected

From: VHayward@tbaynorth.ca
To: AKelly@tbaynorth.ca
Subject: Some copies of the stuff I’m giving Lucy re: Gifts

Matthew & Edith
Gift provided: yes
Gift was: Instructions on practice, use of runes.  Included notes on: basic earth/air/fire/water, circles, balancing out diagrams so they don’t collapse, supporting diagrams with words and symbols.
Follow-up lesson included: additional runes (light & dark), the progression of runes (how you can have white -> light -> sun as you go from simple to decorated runes), imperative runes that activate the diagram when something happens but consume power as long as they’re waiting, and referential marks that help break down or control smaller parts of the diagram.
We done here?  No.  They’ve said they’ll teach us more.
M&E Motivations?  Matthew & Edith don’t seem like they were doing anything other than their duties when teaching us.  Edith is a little more biased toward fire/air though.  That might be who/what she is: Avery’s heavy-as-earth stick broke and Edith didn’t know much about water.
Dangers?  Not really.  It doesn’t feel like they’ve left out anything major.  When we’ve made mistakes its because they haven’t taught us everything yet, but they are continuing to teach.

John Stiles
Gift provided: yes
Gift Was: Dog Tags for summoning & hot lead.  Hot lead is too uncomfortable to carry for everyday use, but serves as a bit of a battery that doesn’t draw power from local others.  Power seems to push through better, for high cost & high intensity effects.  Dog tags for summoning were used against Choir and he replaced it.  If we aren’t frivolous with using it, he’ll continue offering it.
We done here?  Maybe?  I think if we asked him for something he’d probably give it, and it could tie things up into a 3-part gift (and the practice loves threes), but I don’t think we could go up to him with our hands on hips and demand it.
JS Motivations? Seems solid?  Not getting suspicious vibes, no traps, no weirdness.  Like John, the gifts seem pretty straightforward.
Dangers? The Hot Lead can run out.  The summonings could be revoked if we mess around or pull him into something he doesn’t want to get involved with.  We shouldn’t forget that John Stiles is twitchy sometimes.  It’s worth thinking about before we summon him.  Is he going to become as much of a problem as whatever we’re calling him to help deal with?

Toadswallow
Gift provided: yes
Gift was: instructions on applying low-level curses.  Needs a three-peat of the insult, escalating each time.  Needs the nail and this is super easy to forget.  Without a physical action or violence to drive it in, it won’t stick and is just decoration/flavor.
We done here?  Yes.  With Toadswallow at least.  He did say he’d help Cherry pick something to give us.
TS Motivations?  A little sketchy maybe?  He likes chaos and ugliness and mess.  Lucy said he was pleased, after.
Dangers?  Not sure yet.  We might have to ask Charles/Miss [note to self/Avery: maybe tonight?].

Miss
Gift Provided: yes
Gift was: Individual gifts for each of us.  Lucy got a ring that would make ordinary objects into weapons.  Nice to have but if we don’t have a power source (hot lead?) then she says it makes us weaker and we can barely use the weapon.
I got the quill pen, that can take letters and words and put them back down.  I also got instructions about a magic school, which felt more like a thing she thought we should have anyway.
Avery got the instructions for the Forest Ribbon Trail.
She also gave us the means of calling her, with the general promise of advice/counsel.  repeat her name 3x.
We done here?  Yes.
Miss motivations?  Maybe?  Faerie says they want to make us more Other and making Avery Lost, Lucy weak or leaving room for me to mess up something important with the quill pen could be a way of doing that.  Do they only want practitioners in Kennet for this one incident?
Dangers?  Yes.  Each gift is a double-edged sword of sorts.  Plays to our wants & strengths (Avery wants to go places, is fast enough to do the detour maybe?  I like handicraft stuff and the pen works for that and the magic school interests me.  Lucy wanted to be stronger.) but also our weaknesses (weakens the user, for Lucy, Avery’s memory isn’t her strength and the trail requires memorization and attention to detail. Quill pen is an excuse for me to get into trouble?  School might have a trap?)

Faerie
Sending another email with more of a breakdown.  Each gift needs a heading, really.

Munch, Gash, Cherry
Gifts Provided: not yet
Gift ideas: goblins are good at weapons, curses, nasty stuff.  We could ask for favors (Munch offered to hurt Paul?  Would he go after someone else?).  Cherry offered us something like ‘sticky stuff’?  Might be useful if we want weapons that the ring can’t give us.  Or a supply of weapons we can throw away?  Goo grenades?  Stinkbombs?  A way to slow someone or something down, or keep them stuck in place?
Expected Motivations?  Munch and Cherry are apparently trying to learn to be better ‘training wheels’ goblins.  Gash is more regular as a goblin.  They should keep to the awakening rules but they’ll be messy and violent.  I think they’d give us better gifts if we can get them excited.  Like, if we’re really P.O.’ed at someone and we want to mess with them.  Cherry and Munch would be all over that, from what we’ve seen.
Dangers?  May be messy.  Some Others don’t like goblins so using goblin stuff or carrying it around might reflect badly on us.

The Choir
Gifts provided: not yet.  Ever?  If they futzed with the awakening so they weren’t giving anything, just taking, maybe they aren’t obligated?
Gift ideas:  Zero idea.  They are tied to incarnation(s) and rules and patterns, so maybe an always-on effect?  Pendant that makes us less hungry?  I kind of want to wait.  If they’re our adversaries or if they’re a thing we should deal with to protect people, maybe we want to ask for something specific.  Like, imagine Avery signed up and lost on her first night, and we asked for our gift to be her being turned back to normal.
Expected Motivations?  The ritual must go on, I guess?  What they give us and the danger of that thing is going to depend on if they think we’re a problem for the ongoing ritual.  If they’re ticked off they might give us something problematic that still counts as a gift.
Dangers?  Being tangled?  Pulled into the game?  Ethical considerations, for those who have ethics (like buying diamonds for a wedding ring: that feeling like some slave in Africa could have been worked until his fingertips were bloody to get it).

Alpy
Gifts provided: Not yet.
Gift ideas:  She’s the most interlinked Other we have for access to Other realms and getting a sense of the little things in those realms.  Maybe a way to navigate?  Or access those realms on our own?  Something for each of us that protects us in a different hostile place?  Something relating to dreams is possible but I don’t know what that would be.  Dream visions?
Expected Motivations?  Does she have grander motivations?  Doesn’t want to be bound like other Kennet others, does her thing in the Kennet area.  Is friends with Maricica, though?  Was hanging with her at Awakening, sleeping in her & Guilherme’s cave.
Dangers?  ???

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From: VHayward@tbaynorth.ca
To: AKelly@tbaynorth.ca
Subject: Gifts, 2nd Email

Guilherme

List of apparent gifts from Guilherme
Avery: TBD, but it’s apparently a better glamour than what Maricica offered for Avery’s situation?
Me: TBD
Lucy: TBD.

Psychology/Motivations: Says he’s opposed to Maricica but there’s no guarantee of that.
Says he’s doing as John said and being good to us, but instinct could play a part, he could still trick us.
Getting a definite good cop/bad cop feeling.  Is this feeling a trap?
His style is Sun-touched Summer.  Warriors, heroes, adventures.  Toadswallow said he was fixated on the glory of battle and war. Maricica was trying to steal something and he’s protecting it?
Why is he in Kennet?
He met with an outsider to discuss a plot that didn’t have anything to do with the Carmine Beast.

We Done Here?  No.
Why not?  He’s answering Maricica’s stuff.  If we’re looking for traps, this could be a scenario where she makes a situation messy, and he comes in with “I told you she was good for nothing, here’s my fix” except we jump from frying pan to fire.

Dangers: Hard to say.  He hasn’t given us much yet, except for information on the courts.

Maricica

List of apparent gifts from Maricica:
Avery, Info: A way to challenge a ritual or dynamic like the Hungry Choir.
Avery, Trick: Turning one type of object into something similar.  A hat into a hood?
Avery, Glamour: Disguise, becoming someone else, how to use glamour to change our shape & face.

Lucy, Information: We were picked because we’re vulnerable to becoming more Other???
Lucy, Trick: Nettlewisp glamour, a counterattack charm if you can predict someone’s attack.
Lucy, Glamour: ?  TBD

Me, Info:  A way to make a contract ours, by weaving our style into it.
Me, Trick:  Creating a false image.  It can become reality if left unchallenged.
Me, Glamour: Changing into an animal.  She demonstrated and promised to teach the technique.

Why so many? I wanted to break down every part of this section, so… let’s ask why she gave so many gifts.  Miss said Faerie like their patron-practitioner relationships, so is that why?  Was she trying to bombard us so we might miss something obvious?  There was a definite feeling of being swept up in her momentum.  Charles said something about how fairness mattered.  Is Maricica intentionally creating a bias?  If the deal we’re making is that we serve Kennet in exchange for gifts, power, and teachings, what happens if, theoretically, an Other gives us five million gifts?  Are we more beholden to them?  Do our responsibilities change?

We Done Here?  Not yet. One to be determined.  Three traps to be determined, hidden among the nine gifts we’re supposed to get.

Psychology/Motivations: Guilherme says her court (Dark Fall) has a lot of childnappers, those who transform, and those who take parts from a child and swap in animal parts.  They are apparently best court at avoiding falling into Winter?
She’s trying to steal something from Guilherme.  Reason for being in Kennet?
She’s apparently young for a Faerie.
Wants to amuse herself?
Hasn’t decided on a life path.  Didn’t rule out being a childnapper.
Promised three ‘momentary inconvenience’ traps in the stuff she gave us.

Gift: Info on why we were chosen?
What does this serve to know we might become more Other, or they might try to make us that way?
Makes Avery miserable.  Avery even called it out as a bad gift.
Makes us paranoid.
Trap Possibility: Is it possible this isn’t one of the nine gifts?   We could/should watch out for additional gifts from her.  The ‘minor inconvenience’ could be getting stuck in a lie and losing a bit of magical power because we were led to make assumptions.  I’m thinking back and trying to think about what we got that was explicitly declared a gift or outright given to us.  I think I’m going to make that a subheading for other gifts here.
Trap Possibility:  Multiple Others have told us that stuff hits harder if we’re warned about it first.  Is this setup for something else to happen with the rest of the Kennet Others?
Trap Possibility: Stirring up drama with us and the Kennet Others?
Gift Rating: 1/10 IMO, subject to change.
Was it actually declared a gift?  I think yes.  She said it was her gift to Lucy, to position us differently to the rest of the Kennet others, but my assumption was that it was to Avery.  It was only after I wrote stuff down that I realized the way to challenge the Choir had to be Avery’s gift.  So… why this for Lucy, specifically?

Gift: A way to Challenge the Choir
A means of calling on higher authorities to challenge an impossible contest.
When we passed on the info to Reagan we got more tangled up.  Lucy got assaulted.  Choir has been showing up more.
Trap Possibility: My first thought was that it’s dangerous to do this because we could lose hard.  That’s not a minor inconvenience tho.  What would make it minor is if it was a disaster, she pulled our asses out of the fire (no real consequence), we still learn the lesson, but then we owe her or trust her more.
Trap Possibility: Is something else out there that she’s already thinking about or planning on us using this trick against?  Something small that has a small/inconvenient consequence?  When we do end up using this, we should try to think about if or how she’s gaining from it.
Trap Possibility: Is the choir getting tangled up with us the trap?
Trap Possibility:  Who are we actually appealing to?  The Sable/Alabaster/Aurum judges were crabby with Charles.  Was part of that due to him appealing to them before?  Do we make enemies with them in a small way if they have to come be judges for our challenge?
Gift Rating: 5/10 for now IMO.  If it works it’s 7-8/10.  If it doesn’t it’s lower.
Was it ever actually declared a gift?  Not really?  She listed it off in a string of stuff she gave us.  Leaves me wondering how much is implied vs. confirmed.

Gift: A Way to Make a Contract Ours
If we can weave certain sayings, phrases, or stuff that’s more Verona (Or Lucy, or Avery) in sayings, catchphrases, or odd ‘signatures’ that stand out, three times in a document, we can gain more influence over the outcome and final terms.
Trap Possibility: Does making a contract more ours create more responsibility?  Goes back to the question on an earlier page, where I wonder about getting too many gifts and having expectations change.
Trap Possibility: Is it possible she’s already planning or thinking of a contract she thinks we’ll use this on?  With someone very dumb or easy to manipulate? (Cherrypop?  Munch?)  Might be this really does work, but it makes enemies of the other side.  Not many people out there like being screwed on a deal.
Gift Rating: 6/10.  Hard to use, have to be really good at negotiation, patter, and keeping the deal in mind to drop something into a contract three times without being obvious.
Was it ever actually declared a gift?  Yes.  It was the first explicit gift she gave us.

Gift: Nettlewisp Charm
A bit of glamour held in hand, the rune gets drawn on it, and we whisper what we expect our enemy to do.  Answers as a blinding/confounding counterattack.
Trap Possibility: My first thought was that if we’re wrong, it might be a lie.
Trap Possibility: Second thought is more subtle.  What if it just waits for the opportunity to counterattack?  Can we put it down/away?  It would be a big inconvenience to have a fistful of combat dust we can’t really get rid of without picking another fight.
Trap Possibility:  We keep getting tricks and charms that are a bit cumbersome or have a lot of drawbacks in a real fight.  Who has time to grab dust, draw on their hand, and whisper something when being chewed on by waifs?
Gift Rating: 7/10.  I talk smack about it above, but it’s just plain nice to have something like this, just in case.
Was it actually declared as a gift?  Given to Lucy as a paper.  Does that count?  Why is it important that Maricica tell us that it’s paper from a fancy wedding invitation?

Gift: Like to Like
Object must be placed next to another, similar object.  Should have something in common.  Headwear to headwear, handheld tool to handheld weapon, black fabric to black fabric.  Use glamour, and draw a figure-eight with one object in one side and use glamour to draw the desired object in the other.  ‘Wind it in’.  There are ways to do this with two similar items, combining them, or turn a weapon into a charm that dangles from the wrist until needed, but may be costly.
Trap Possibility: Doesn’t specify what happens to the thing if the glamour breaks.  If I turn a knife into a charm to wear around my neck, and the glamour breaks, do I have a knife?  A charm?  The worst of both worlds?
Trap Possibility:  There’s no mention of time limits.  How long does it last?  It would be SUPER awkward to use this with my hat & mask (my first thoughts) to keep them with me at school, but then have them turn into a hat and mask in the middle of class.  Explainable but messes up our day and Others us a bit, if people think we’re weird and push us out.
Trap Possibility: If we need glamour for these things, does it give Maricica a way to keep tabs on what we’re keeping with us?
Trap Possibility:  Just thought of this one… if glamour is the thing Faerie are best at, is smearing it all over something important to us giving up ground?  Does it mean the Faerie could claim it?  Inconvenient to lose my hat until I go to the Faerie to ask for it back.
Gift rating: 6/10.  Really convenient, but can’t use it for its full convenience until we have answers.
Was it actually declared as a gift?  I don’t think so?  It was given as a piece of paper, so that might count.

Gift: False Image
Illusions that can become real.  Needs a fair bit of glamour, sculpted in same technique used to change Avery into Kell.  The image is very fragile but gains durability the longer it goes unchallenged.
Trap Possibility: There’s no guarantee the drawbacks of one gift don’t apply to the other gifts.  So do we need to read that bit about stuff becoming reality and watch out for any ‘inconveniences’ when something we did with a transformation, or turning a hat into a charm, becomes reality because we left it too long?
Trap Possibility: What if it’s not just limited to images?  There are ways to convey ideas or moods with glamour.  Dazzling people with Nettlewisp, too.  If we convey a mood or gain a mood with False Image (like, say, making our rooms cozy or cool) then is there a way that becomes reality even if it’s not necessarily right?  What sticks?  What doesn’t?
Trap Possibility:  It was given on a patch of silvered skin.  Who/what is the skin from?  Do I find myself enemies with something if I pull out the skin or use the trick that was written on the skin?
Gift Rating: 8/10.  I see basically no way I live to an old age and don’t find a good way to use this.
Was it ever actually declared as a gift?  I don’t think so, but again, it was handed over as a bit of vellum.

Gift: Glamour for an Animal Form
A change to an animal body, with promises of instructions on how to do this myself.
Trap Possibility: I could get stuck this way.  Is that a minor inconvenience though?
Trap Possibility: As a prey animal, I could be preyed on.  As a animal hunters could go after, I could be shot.  Not necessarily a minor inconvenience, but if Maricica sees it coming and saves me, owing her a favor could be a minor issue, I guess?
Trap Possibility:  Routine becomes expectation becomes reality.  Is there a possibility that repeatedly going back to a form makes me vulnerable to returning to it?  Or being forced into the form by someone else (like Maricica or Guilherme?)
Gift Rating: 9.5/10.  Just plain fun.  Too fun?  Super useful for attack, escape, utility, depending on the form.  Not so much for defense.
Was it actually declared as a gift?  Not explicitly.

Gift: Disguise (Girl to Boy)
How to change our face and become someone else.  Maricica included some tips for how to sculpt one’s body, change colors of hair or eye, take away or build up portions.
Trap Possibility (Named by Lucy): Maricica could become the same disguise and create drama.
Trap Possibility (Named by Lucy): Maricica could now go after Pam.
Trap Possibility: Do we lose power or presence if we become a little less us?  We swore the awakening rituals as Verona, Lucille and Avery.  Lucy’s remarked on how much the Others keep going back to Lucille because she used that name then.  How attentive are spirits?  Could we lose our practice temporarily while wearing the wrong face/using a different name?
Trap Possibility:  There was talk about me getting stuck as an animal?  What happens if we get stuck in a disguise?  If Avery stayed as Kell so long she forgot who she used to be?
Gift Rating: 9/10.  Really cool, good, probably going to be useful at some point.  Just have to be careful.
Was it actually declared as a gift?  Yes.

Lucy’s big glamour thing is pending.  I think we get the bits of glamour to keep around the time she gets that.

…Maybe one thing we could ask the goblins for is an emergency way to break a bad glamour situation.