OKAY HI some initial brainstorms for a fun and fresh WHA verse for chiaki:
incorporating a bit of her ancient verse, her family breeds a special type of silk moth that feeds from the silverwood tree that grows behind their house. the silk produced by the moths conducts spells and interacts with conjuring ink particularly well. when the moths die, their wings can be used as casting materials and the rest of their bodies fertilize the ground beneath the tree!
her grandparents weave cloth from the silk and export it to the great hall. they also take on occasional specialized tailoring work for witches.
because of a curse on their bloodline bestowed before the pact (aka some fucked up forbidden magic that had genetic repercussions), chiaki and her grandma are able to see the hidden energy weave of magic.
primarily, this means they can see activated seals even behind barriers, and little threads of light leading to whatever spell/effect they're connected to.
this curse is their family secret. no one is allowed to know, as none of them are sure what the knights moralis would even do to them if they found out.
chiaki spent much of her early childhood living with her grandma very far away from larger witch society, going to school in the neighboring town alongside outsiders, but she visited with her parents often (the opposite of her modern verse!)
still bullied in her town for being albino. but also bullied for being a witch. being so far out, the town is very superstitious and unnerved about magic because they don't know a lot about it + general outsider-at-witch envy, so she was always sort of an outcast from the other kids.
on top of that, her grandma, though not in league with the brimmed caps, is a hedge witch whose magic does not follow the principles. she practices forbidden magic 'responsibly,' aka no evil harmful shit, and still adheres to the 'no spreading knowledge to outsiders' rule, but she will perform minor feats of healing under the guise of assistive contraptions + encourage the effects of the local doctors' medicine.
though the townspeople are suspicious of her, they still come to her for aid. they all kind of hate/don't trust upper-crust people and city witches in general, so even though they feel weird about chiaki's grandma, they still stonewall any attempts from the knights to get information about her. classic small town 'we don't talk to you unless you're one of our own' dealio.
i still have to figure out how her grandma gets past the watchful eye :/ maybe they're a turncoat?
i feel like there's another, bigger, older silverwood tree in the middle of the neighboring mountain forests, surrounded by a shrine, that chiaki's family has worshipped as a god for a very long time. maybe they believe it's the tree from the origin myth (kind of like how theres that place in japan where jesus is supposedly buried). they also have shrines for + worship the spirits of the different sigils that are used in magic!
with lots of secret training deep in the woods, chiaki has been learning how to discern different types of magic with her "weave sight" (ie. what sigils and signs were used, the power level/size of the seal, etc) and increase her general sensory awareness of other magical energy latent in the world. the weave present in animals and plants that produce magical effects. the weave in silverwood trees, connecting their bodies to the ink and wands made from them. these links are much more faint and difficult to see, and she hasn't yet learned how to differentiate each tree and its offshoots from the others.
she's known about the truth behind the trees for a long time,
