#classpect pairs

The Knight and Witch pairing may seem odd at first glance but hear me out. At least by my definitions, Knights exploit [aspect]/protect with [aspect] and Witches manipulate [aspect]. I’ve explained these before so I’ll gloss over why I think that for now. The comparison between manipulating your aspect vs exploiting it is... kind of blurry if you think about it. They both can be summed up as manipulating the aspect so it sort of calls into question the definitions I use, but there’s still distinct differences. 

Just look at Jade and Dave: One of the obstacles Dave encounters is Caledfwlch. It’s a legendary sword in the stone, something vital to his session. But he can’t pull it out. So instead he breaks it and rewinds Time for it back to when it was whole. This solves a bunch of his problems at once: needs a strong weapon, needs this weapon, he gets a, practically speaking, unbreakable weapon, and he doesn’t need to derail John from the important shit he has going on to pull it. And this is all done with a minor, but clever use of his powers. It’s nowhere near the scale we see Jade use her powers, shrinking entire planets, moving the ship at near-light speed, etc. Most of Dave’s journey went something like this, where he really worked his ass off to get the most out of what he had. Dave sprite spent months grinding the same enemies to farm grist. He really worked for all he got, found clever solutions, and made things work. 

Jade on the other hand, just kind of plays the game and just gets her powers. Not to diminish her importance or the work she did, but her powers came very naturally to her through just playing the game, rather than fucking with shit to squeeze out every last drop that she could. But at the end of the day, both master and manipulate their aspects, just in very different ways. 

How might a Witch of Time approach the Caledfwlch situation instead? Maybe by just being able to pull it in the first place or not needing the sword at all and finding another solution with their mastery over Time. With more obviously powerful Time powers maybe they just don’t need the sword. Maybe they just pull some Time stop Dio knife storm bullshit and that cuts the mustard until they manipulate a ‘real’ hero like John over to pull the sword out when it’s actually needed. Or how would a Knight of Space approach a comparable Caledfwlch situation? Same three problems: Needs a strong weapon, needs this specific weapon, and doesn’t spend too many resources on this (+ squeezing out any bonuses they can get from this). Maybe they could recreate the sword from alchemy? It has a code after all so they either just figure out what they have to combine to reach that or maybe they just ghost image the thing and make a fake version. Or maybe they realize why the sword is important in the first place and pull out the actually important bit. Like, is it the actual sword itself? Ehhh kinda, more it’s the magic cue ball inside it really. Which is why Jade has Dave combine the Cue Ball with the Broken Royal Deringer. They needed a strong weapon capable of harming Lord English, something they could only do by using a weapon related to him. Could the Knight of Space just make Doc Scratch’s magic cue ball and combine it with another weapon? Maybe they give it to another member of their party more suited to fighting Lord English and, now that they have the cue ball, they give that to another party member to help them out. Or hell maybe they make a bunch of weapons capable of hurting the big man, so even if they specifically have to deliver the final blow cuz of fate bullshit, the other party members can still actually participate. Imagine if during the fight John had a cue ball hammer that Lord English couldn’t eat? Or if Rose had cue ball - Quills of Echidna? That’s also only limiting the alchemy to weapons, maybe a cue ball, I dunno, belt or some shit comes out useful? It’s not like it has to only give Lord English-harming powers or omniscient clairvoyance, whose to say what sort of whacky things come out of some experimental alchemy with it?

Now Prince vs Knight, because I haven’t rambled enough apparently. Specifically, I want to talk about them as foils. So Princes destroys [aspect]/destroy using [aspect]. Again there’s the manipulation thing going on here where destroying with the aspect is a specific kind of manipulation, but I more want to focus on the second part of the Knight class: protect with [aspect]. I’ll keep this part shorter and skip the lengthy speculation. There’s also the whole ‘Lack of [aspect]’ both classes have going on. For Knights it’s in their session but for Princes it’s in themselves. Not much Time in Dave’s session while Dirk is heartless. Funnily enough, we do actually get to see the Prince/Knight pair in these two. And they really are very similar while also acting as great foils to one another.