#bartimaeus au

bartimaeus is a gangrel, vampires with the power of shapeshifting and meld with the earth. he’s probably kinda ancient - not as ancient as he is in canon tho bc vampires that are That Old are usually Assholes(TM). he absolutely hates the tremere, and probably the giovanni too. gargoyles are ok tho.

ptolemy is one of the salubri, the children of saulot, maybe the only vampire ever existed that wasnt a total asshole. he, kinda obviously, died horribly, and his clan fell out of grace. the salubri have a third eye, and there are three kind of them: the healers, the warriors and the watchers. ptolemy is one of the healers, embraced when he was still young and kind, and helped bartimaeus a lot. when he disappeared, after the diablerie of saulot, bart was absolutely devastated.

asmira is an assamite, and that was kinda obvious. judges, assassins, sorcerers and they come from middle east. she fitted very well into the archetype.

faquarl... i’d say he’s either a tzimisce or a lasombra. both are royal, and both have history with... weird-shaped things. i like tzimisce bc fleshcrafting is cool and also absolutely fucking disgusting, but i tend towards lasombra bc living shadows!!! oh and they can also make weird ass tentacular arms made of shadows. so yeah. id say lasombra.

jabor is either a brujah (passionate and ready to FIGHT) or a gangrel (jackal head). i like brujah!jabor a lot more than gangrel!jabor tho.

kitty is a brujah, hands down. as i said earlier, they are passionate, ready to fuck shit up and hate authority. tell me they don’t scream “kathleen jones”.

nathaniel is... complicated. i like him as a ventrue (royal, arrogant and usually competent), as a tremere (magicians, arrogant, literally one of the youngest vapire clans, phyramidal gerarchy) and as a giovanni (necromancers, italians, arrogant and rich, probably dedicated to incest and necrophilia, literally destroyed an entire clan). i’ll go with the tremere bc hey, blood magic! and also the founder was a literal mage but then he had the great idea of drinking vampiric blood.

my poor baby jakob is a nosferatu, bc they are ugky as fuck, super strong, have the power of invisibility (more or less) and they usually know everything about everyone. if im feeling particularly evil, tho, he’s a samedi, an haitian bloodline of vampires that are, quite literally, walking corpses made out of rotting flesh. they’re even uglier than the nosferatu!

jane is a gangrel, bc WEREWOLVES!

solomon is probably a tremere. either that or a cappadocian (the clan that gave unlife to the giovanni and was consequentially destroyed by them. they were, also, kinda obsessed with death for some reason).

uraziel is a true brujah bc HELL YEAH TIME MAGIC! tbh tho he also sounds very calm and collected and the true brujah are like that 

khaba is a child of seth, evil fucks that hate sunlight even more than most vampires, which clan’s discipline, serpentis, gives them snakes’ characteristic, like... a very long tongue. and hypnotic eyes.

and obviously ammet is a lasombra.

rupert devereaux is a toreador. “beautiful and also really unreliable”, they are obsessed with all kinds of art. it’s like an obsession for them.

queezle is... uh, really a problem? idk where to put her. maybe she’s just a caitiff, one of the clanless. maybe a gargoyle? they have a great sense of community, can fly and have some kind of earth magic called visceratika and i really love them.

verroq is absolutely an assamite. he’s an assassin, for crying out loud! 

rebecca piper, poor thing, is probably a gargoyle that works for nathaniel. she doesn’t mind it, tho, and nathaniel is much kinder than the majority of the warlocks.

rosanna lutyens? she’s a tough one. probably a toreador, bc art.

Only once the ceiling was covered with blackened scourge marks and the room crackled with unbearable heat did he let the flames die as quickly as they'd come, scattering ash over the ground as he twisted his body again, reshaping it from flames into seething rats, black and grey and scar-covered and ugly.  Disease and pestilence and hunger and anger, let this Robe him for what he was, let them see what they had the audacity to summon.  With hundreds of tiny feet, he stormed over the floor, hundreds of bodies with a single mind racing over top of each other, clambering at the invisible sides of the circle, shrieking their sharp, yellow teeth, and testing every inch of it with probing, sensitive whiskers.  If there was any slip, any smudge, any smear to the summoning circle, he would find it.  And then he wouldn't even have to wait for his trap to click shut around the mage, he could just destroy them with their own incompetence.

“Enough.”

Junkrat stilled.  He was never fully still, not truly, especially not in this form with his many bodies twisting and twitching and piling on top of each other, moving like fleshy sacks of bone and blood, but he drew himself together enough to give focus to the person who had the nerve to speak so calmly and demandingly in his presence.

Fucking Robes.

Now that he gave the room he had been summoned into some better attention, he was rather surprised by the spartan quality of it.  Normally Robes were vain bastards, and they loved their workrooms to reflect that.  There should be bookshelves filled with texts they liked to pretend were older and more important than they were, work tables full of projects, expensive trinkets and baubles hanging off shelves and draping from the ceiling.  Magic was only a small portion of what it meant to be a Robe, as far as Junkrat could tell – most of it was making sure everyone else knew you were one, and knew you were a better one than they were.  This room though was very different.  The floor and walls were painted a stark white, and while it meant the space in the circle was now rather satisfyingly covered with his filth, it succeeded in unnerving him as well.  The room was bright and well-lit – of course, for a summoning, you didn't need a gloomy room lit by a million, dribbly black candles, but most Robes seemed to think you did.  Or at least seemed to think the aesthetic was important.  This one clearly wasn't fooled by that.  Junkrat could count exactly six candles place around the circle, the exact number needed for this sort of summoning, and it was a plain, undyed tallow, obviously freshly lit and not at all ominous or dribbly looking.  Shame, Junkrat had once been summoned by a Robe whose candles were so old and well dribbled, that one had guttered before the contract had been sealed.  That of course, had been all Junkrat had needed to break free of the circle – ha, that Robes face when he realized.  Remembering it kept Junkrat warm on those lonely nights.

Not only was this Robe missing all that ridiculous extra stuff though, but even the room itself was strange.  The walls and floor, besides for being perfectly white, were also perfectly smooth rather some Robes' workroom which were made out of stone- or wood-work.  That meant there was nothing to accidentally cause a bump or gap in a summoning line.  And these summoning lines were done with an almost military precision, and were all drawn in very clear, black chalk so there was no room for fanciful misinterpretation of the lines – frustrating.

In a smaller circle, attached to his own by single tethering line, was a blue gemstone, obviously used to help power the spell.  Normally a Robe would want at least half a dozen of those things, just to show they had them to use. Of course as Junkrat pressed at the circle, it was clear that this single stone was all it really.  With some disappointment he could see that it wasn't even worth anything, it was a very basic, magic-charged grounding stone.

There wasn't a single thing about this room or the equipment used to summon him that wasn't clean, utilitarian, and brutally efficient.  Not only was it disappointing and more than a bit boring, it was also unnerving.  Robes were supposed to like things unnecessarily complicated, and he liked that they liked it – it made it so much easier to exploit.  Just to be sure, Junkrat flicked his vision through the first several planes of vision, in case there was something magical being hidden.  If there were something else in this room, besides the Robe facing him and her bare bones summoning equipment though, it had a glamour woven over it tightly enough that it was hidden on six separate planes of vision. Junkrat wasn't actually sure what was more likely – that someone had gone to the trouble of hiding something that well in a room like this, or that he'd run into a Robe that didn't feel the need to show off at every opportunity.

The Robe herself though did look like she fit in this strange workroom though, that Junkrat could admit.  She was obviously a formally trained mage, and she stood prim and straight, with long hair drawn back into a severe bun, and a simple, flowing blue robe – it must be a modern fashion whatever it was, Junkrat figured with some irritability.  Magic was magic, and he was a djinn that could burn her straight through to her bone marrow if he was unleashed, yet Robes still insisted that there should be a fashion to it.  Sometimes he came over and everyone was carrying a damn staff, as if they needed one and it wasn't their summoned imps and demons doing all the work, next there was that weird time when everyone was wearing oversized, bulging pouches on their belts, like they'd decided to leave the house with half their workshop on them. This mage's robe was slit around the base, showing off her legs, was trimmed with gold, and was sleeveless.  Well, he supposed it was a step up from the stuffy black that kept persistently coming back into fashion.

More interesting than the Robe's robe though, was her arm. Even on the first plane you could tell it was magical, and on every plane up from there it seemed to glow.  It was sleek and white – almost like the room itself – and had very powerful feeling stones set into its shoulder and the back of its hand.  Of course, she also had amulets worked into the necklace she wore and a pair of shimmering blue earrings, but those were simple things – protection, clarity, power – and even the blue visor she wore, obviously a magicked glass to see planes beyond the first – wasn't that interesting.  Not compared to the arm.  Hmm.  Maybe he'd take that back with him when he'd finished dealing with her, might make a nice treasure to add to his stash.  

“Demon, you will listen to me and you will obey,” the woman said.  It was clear she would allow no resistance.  Junkrat toyed with the idea of being obstinate just for the sheer pleasure of riling her up, but decided against it.  There was never anything fun about being stuck in a summoning circle; the sooner she let him out, the sooner he could incinerate her and move on with his life.

“Sure,” he drawled, and with a final heave the mound of rats surged together and formed a solid figure in the shape of a human man.

Of course the fire, the rats, even the shape he had now of a man, those were all images project on the first few planes (the first four, as it happened – she wouldn't be able to see any of the planes past that even with that fancy eyewear so why bother).  Those shapes simply cloaked his true form and allowed him to interact with objects on the first plane of existence.  The shape he chose to show now was a scraggly one, barely better than the rats he'd been before.  Long limbed – too tall for a normal human, even hunched over – and unnervingly bony.  His nose was sharp and long, as were his teeth, and his hair rose from his head in patches, constantly smouldering with fire while soot settled over his face and shoulders.  He leaned leisurely against the empty air and leered at the Robe.

“To what do I owe the pleasure?” he asked.

“I have a job that needs to be done, and you will be the one to do it,” she replied.

“Eugh, you wound me, shiela.  Straight to business, not even a g'day – that cuts me deep, that does.  'Least you could do it say hi, if you're gonna be, ha, hiring on my expertise.”

“You may call me Symmetra, that is all you should need to know besides for the mission parameters themselves.”

“Symmetra, eh?  I'd say it's a pretty name, but I know well enough that it's not your name at all, is it?”

“Just as you should also know that you will not trick me into revealing my true name.  ...Especially not with such a clumsy, transparent attempt.”

Junkrat shrugged.  It was always worth a shot.  This “Symmetra” was clearly well-trained, almost certainly formally apprenticed, and that would mean she'd had the importance of names drilled into her head plenty over the years.  It wasn't often Junkrat was able to get a real name out of the Robe that summoned him, but it did happen, and it was always worth at least a shot.  The things you could do to a person when you had their name...

“Only seemed fair, given that you clearly know mine,” Junkrat pointed out.

“And that is how it will stay.”

“Fair enough, fair enough.  I am curious though – what's with the arm?” The Robe stayed tight lipped, simply blinked coolly at him.  “Aw come on, tell me this at least: did it get bitten off by some beastie you didn't have a good enough hold of, or did you cut it off yourself to scrape up that little bit more power?” She said nothing.  Junkrat hugged, “Pah, I can tell already we're gonna be the best of friends, mate.  This'll be a right treat for me, no doubt.”

“I don't particularly care,” said Symmetra.  “You will perform your function, and that is sufficient.”  

With that cheery proclamation, Symmetra knelt to a smaller, pre-drawn circle within the protective circle that held her.  That would be the contract summons then.  Junkrat squinted at it – there were all types of contract you could draw up.  Sometimes people underestimated his strength and chose to weak of a contract to hold him.  And then the stronger the contract got, the more complex to draw – sometimes mages made mistakes.  Not that she seemed like the sort of person not to triple check her contract summons, so Junkrat wasn't surprised with a cursory glance revealed no errors.  With a well-practiced sweep of her chalk, Symmetra completed the summons and Junkrat felt his hair stand on edge as the tell-tale charge of a contract appeared with in his own summoning circle.  There would be no choice but to sign it now.  A Robe could do terrifying things to an unbound demon in a well-made summoning circle.  Of course, you always got some drongos that resisted but Junkrat had never seen the point – they just hold you longer than you'd be held otherwise and then they had an excuse to rough you up in the process, and Robes rarely needed too much prompting to exercise their power over something.  So with a sweep of his hand – his real hand, unseen by the Robe beneath his glamours – he made his mark on the contract, a process that simply meant his essence was tied to whatever the Robe had written and the ancient magic of it.  As he did so, Junkrat couldn't help but grin to himself, biting his lips to hold back the laughter that he could feel building in his gut.

Snap goes the trap.

He gave the Robe a flourishing bow.  “All done, your humble servant is ready to serve.”

Symmetra checked over her own, chalk-drawn contract circle rather than taking his word on it, nodding with approval when she saw the marks twist and change to show that he had been tied to it.  And then came for that sweet moment of release, when she stepped forward out of her own circle, thereby severing the spell that kept his own circle together. After all, she didn't have to be afraid anymore.  When you were bound to a contract, you couldn't hurt them any more, after all.

But, of course, the Robe needed to know your name, to bind you in contract.  Your true name.

As soon as the summon circle's power flickered out, Junkrat surged.  He was fire and explosions and destruction, and he shot from the summoning circle.  His ash streaked the walls and his hunger made the air so dry it crackled and his laughed filled the room like splinter glass.  Before he could touch her though, before he could shred those pathetic protection charms she wore, he felt his muscles lock and then the pain hit.  He went down and he went down hard, the fire immediately dying and theatrics fizzling out.  All that was left was his simple, human-like form writhing on the floor as the Robe's spell bit its fangs into him.

“Did you not hear me, perhaps?” Symmetra said, and damn her Junkrat swore he could hear amusement there at the edges of her voice.  Like she had expected this. “You are bound to my will.  You will not attack me.”

“How the fuck–”

“You don't truly believe I would have made the amateurish mistake of summoning you here under that false name you've circulated, do you?”

Junkrat growled and the flames in his hair licked higher in annoyance.  Yes, yes he had, and now he was perfectly embarrassed about it, thank you. But in his defence, it had been working perfectly fine for decades now.

A djinn (or imp or demon or whatever other nasty you were groping about for) couldn't be summoned unless you knew its name.  A summons wasn't a contract though, it wasn't binding in the same way, and it did not require a true name – something mages had a way of overlooking. They had a delightful tendency to be very cocksure and self-satisfied when they thought they'd found a demon's name for summoning, so it hadn't been that hard of a thing, to attach a false name to himself. “Junkrat” was a pseudonym he'd been going by for almost longer than he could remember.  Mages dug it up, decided they wanted his power, summoned him over, and then Junkrat got to enjoy the delight of their panic and fear when they realized they had no hold true over him once they'd made him sign a contract written with a false name. Once they were gone there was no one to tell the world about this silly little mistake, and the name Junkrat would resurface again some time later with another hopeful looking to take advantage.

“I am not some child witch looking to play with spirits,” Symmetra said as she stood over him – no longer did Junkrat feel tall in this body, and he considered for a moment being petty enough to change back into the rats and scamper over her boots.  Then again, she didn't look like the sort of person who'd be scared by that.  At best he'd probably get exasperation.  “I conduct my research professionally and thoroughly, and I know your name, Jamison.  It is by that name your contract was written, it is by that name you are bound, and it is by that name I will command you.”

Jamison spat in annoyance, before finally pushing himself upright.  His body shifted as he did so, a long, whip-like tail forming and his teeth and nails sharpening further.  Annoyance thrummed through his body – he did not like being tricked and he did not like being beaten.  He was the hunter, he lay the traps, not the other way around.  It had been some time since a human had managed to hold his leash.

“I'm not sure you made a good choice there, shiela; I don't take orders well,” he warned her.  And he didn't.  Anything less than an iron-clad command, he would take advantage of, he would break their contract, and he would destroy her.

“I do not make bad choices, demon,” she informed him, “I make educated ones.  I require something very specific and difficult performed, which means I need an expert.  All my readings suggest that that is you.  In any case, I think you may actually be intrigued by what I intend to do.”

“Oh yeah,” Jamison sneered.  “And what's that?  Mess up your rival's hair?  Flub some opponent's spell?  Put on a little fire and lights show to show off a bit?”

“Something very rare and very powerful has recently resurfaced from obscurity. The one to unlock and wield its power would, quite literally, have the power to shape the world – for the good or ill.  My company has taken an interest in it, and therefore so have I.  I require it stolen from those that currently possess it.”  She gave him a considering look.  “My sources suggest that you are considered something of a thief among demons.  A treasure hunter.  Get this for me, and do so well, without fighting me every step of the way, and I think we can work out an arrangement that will please us both.”

Jamison felt his heart pick up a little, tail twitching with interest, though he would never admit it.  “Junkrat” was known for his affinity with fire and explosions.  When Robes summoned him under that name, they were looking for big, raw power, plain and simple.  It had been a long time since he'd been sent to steal anything of even remote interest.

He did not want to be intrigued a human.  No good ever came from it and he knew he got involved in their petty squabbles too easily – Roadhog would never let him live down the time they'd been summoned together and Junkrat's idiotic, blindly won trust in their summoner led to both of them nearly being killed along with the Robe.  No, better to avoid it all.

...Yet he couldn't help but be a little intrigued by this woman who had so easily put him to heel, who was so efficient and skilled and yet was apparently willing to toe one of the most cardinal rules of magic: do not enter deals with a demon.

most of the other spirits Mark watches over come and go because it takes a lot of power to control so many, but the permanent fixtures in his house are Host, Dark, and Wilford. Wilford and Dark are both incredibly powerful but Wilford has lost his mind entirely and he has zero fear of any punishment so he’d be really dangerous if he was ever controlled by another magician. he doesn’t have any concept of death anymore and kills at random if Mark doesn’t help reign him in. Wilford likes to be a ridiculous animal of his choosing usually wearing a party hat or something else ridiculous, a man in colorful clothes, or a big pink bubble. Dark, meanwhile, is severely disabled by his pain. A magician put a curse on him when he got caught in the crossfire of an affair turned into a violent revenge plot and now his body is in constant pain and confusion even in the Other Place. Once an incredibly powerful spirit, he can’t do much now but lie in the room Mark gave him and plot his revenge (although the other marid, Wilford, seems to have taken an interest in him and has started regularly sneaking in to entertain him).

Mark is working really hard to find a cure for the curse, but Dark is slightly out of his mind with the pain and the anger and he hates Mark more than he can express, eventually coming to mistake him for the magician who cursed him in the first place. once Mark meets Jack, they actually start making progress on finding a cure cause Jack is a really good researcher. meanwhile Host is the oldest spirit there, not as powerful as Dark and Wil but clever and cunning. he is blind and usually takes the forms of animals. sometimes he will allow Mark to carry him around as a snake around his neck, threatening to crush his neck at any moment, but he never does.

however the biggest drama queen is probably this dramatic, showy little foliot Mark occasionally summons named Bim. Bim got a taste for human flesh while fighting in the American Revolution and Mark checks on him occasionally because human blood is basically an addictive substance for spirits, the equivalent of a bear huffing petroleum, and Bim’s kind of out of his mind from it. he’s working on getting him detoxed but Bim keeps trying to trap him in game show-style death matches with other spirits, so it’s always a struggle. i think also Google is the one who is the most furious whenever he’s summoned, but he’s been magically bound to another demon named Bing and they both want to be separated from each other! it’s painful for them to be bound together and they can’t get apart even in the Other Place. one of their old masters bound them together as punishment for plotting to kill him and they’re both kind of miserable now. when they’re summoned, they usually take the shape of mismatched animals like a fox and a rabbit or a snake and a mongoose. or, when they’re actually getting along, a pair of almost identical dogs or a pair of human twins with eyes that aren’t quite human. there are others too, like this imp Mark found that just refers to itself as “the Jims”, a creature that likes to mimic the Judeo-Christian concept of an angel called the Silver Shepherd, and a djinni called Iplier who’s seen so much death that he thinks every human he looks at is dying within the next few days and has come to develop a reputation as a death omen (Mark hopes this isn’t true because Ippy really likes to stand at the foot of his bed late at night as a huge black dog and it’s uhhhhh a little weird lol).

and yes, Jack does have Chase and JJ! he finds his spirits in the same order as they’re created in canon, so those two are the newest to him and actually he never intended to keep either of them, just summoned them for research purposes. but when he found Chase he discovered what was essentially depression in spirits and he could not just let that go for both research purposes and because Jack is so fucking empathetic haha. and Chase was fascinated by what the heck was happening in his house and actually curious to be a part of it, so he let Jack keep him and eventually they developed a trust for each other and won’t leave! Chase is technically the weakest of Jack’s spirits because he’s only a foliot. His demon name is Blood Chaser and he likes to be a puppy dog haha. one of those little Target dogs lolll. he’s like the sweetest little guy. he made the mistake of falling in love with a human woman he was sent to seduce and assassinate last time he was summoned, but he never could get himself to assassinate her so another spirit came and did it :( now Chase is paranoid about Jack getting hurt and likes to sleep in the same bed as him to protect him.