#warmains

Based on the character by Cory “Ovid” O’Brien. Built partly using Chuubo’s Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine, and partially using technology found in Glitch (kickstarter coming soon).

Hard-pressed you feel?—fey fever-ill?—and yet you must. And yet you must!

A spirit-seizing vision is unfurled.

This is the Warmain whose test is the fruit of knowledge. He will offer to sell you quixotic genius on a seven-year instalment plan - a transformative vision of what might be - the kind of vision that “turns tinkerers into deviant scientists and painters into artists”. He will offer to sell you “a madness”, and his only condition is that you be able to bear it until he returns in seven years to collect.

Many of his clients break before the term is up. It’s not easy to stay functional - to remember to eat, to pay the bills, and so forth - eaten up inside by a vision like that. The jewels of lost Ninuan he scatters, like that mythical sower, will only flourish in a particular kind of soil.

But occasionally he finds someone able to ride that wave of otherworldly genius, to flow with it between the Scylla of failure and the Charibdis of self-destruction. It is these, to whom he returns seven years later, to reap the harvest of what he’s sown - soil and all.

Ragridius is unusually selective about whom he even attempts to Test. He only sells to people willing to buy, and only those he thinks have good chances to succeed. Every sale seems to cost him something ineffable - as though he himself is in debt to the Not, and his business is driven in part by a desperate need to keep those debts from coming due.

Okay, that’s an exaggeration. Also, it’s because Deceivers have a book, but Deceivers also have cool self-referential pseudoEstates and hypocrisy in their viewpoint!

But I like the idea of making their pStates/un-elements more descriptive and evocative. While Deceiver pStates are all self referential and are all worded to convey how the Deceiver in question interacts with their “reality hack”, Warmain pStates could talk about the kind of test and weaponry that their Tests are. 

Instead of just “Harmfulness”, Marozia Carolin could wield “Insidious Harmfulness” or “The Harmfulness That Hides Inside You”. Teja Heimerich could have “The Cold and Unfeeling Void” or  “The Void That Seeps”. And of course they have properties that are close enough to their real properties but are twisted - yeah, Warmains don’t have Persona miracles, but these properties define the un-element as different.

Other possible examples, where [X] is something like Fire or Void:

The Wicked Trial of [X]

The Scouring [X]

A Creeping [X] (terror, betrayal?)

The Tribulations of [X]

The Testing Grounds of [X] (for a more environmental test, something like Keeper of Gardens or Impresario)

and example properties, to differentiate that while ordinary void is a vacuum and seeks to be filled by air and everything, the Test of Void disdains air and isn’t so easily replaced - and while ordinary silence is fragile and broken by a whisper, the Test of Silence is more like this.

The Wicked Trial of Harmfulness... ... hides inside ... seeks to lash out ... hurts to experience ... turns its host against others

The Cold and Unfeeling Void... ... disdains air ... chokes those who respire ... cares not for anything

The Scouring Silence... ... extinguishes sound ... refuses to be broken by anything ... stifles the heart and the mind