A recent commissioned art by @looceyloo from @socialpoison and myself, featuring his Traenor and my Zarunpel. I've been wanting an official look and reference for Zarunpel for a while, and the piece turned out amazing as both its own thing and as a first official art for her (well, full body).
If you're interested in Zarunpel in specific, a quick sheet for her just went up, I was surprised I didn't have one already. For Traenor, I'm sure @socialpoison will have something linked somewhere, possibly in a comment or reblog!
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Recently, I've created a magical item for one of my MtG characters, and I tend to spend a lot of time refining unnecessary details for these, so I felt like writing down what I've got on it. Feel free to include it or a variation on it in your own creations. I'll put up the story side of things with the historical model and a short description first, then go into the unnecessary details under a read more.
The Myth:
The legend associated with the Hydra's Tear harkens back to days long past, and long forgotten, on the plane of Theros. It is but one small part of the tale of the Founding of Meletis, the story of the Aesthelith. It is known to only a few yet, woven as it is into the story of Kynaios and Tiro, the Guardians of Meletis.
After defeating the tyrant Agnomakhos at the goddess Ephara's behest, the two lovers founded a city who the goddess would be the patron of. To show their love to each other and devotion, they declared that the first ceremony to be conducted in Ephara's temple in Meletis, as soon as it would be finished, would be the kings' wedding.
Ephara was pleased by their dedication and success and delighted at this announcement. She set forth to find a wedding gift fit for two kings, and for a goddess to grant as well. After giving humans magic to fight in the war against Agnomakhos, she wanted to show the good magic could also bring in peace.
Knowing his skills with magical crafts, Ephara went first to her cousin Purphoros, god of the Forge, with her requests. Purphoros assented to help her, but only if she procured for him the centerpiece of a creation he had in mind, but escaped the grasp of even the god: a tear from a hydra. Cunning Ephara assented, with already a plan to extract it from such a beast.
In Nyx, she found the great hydra Polukranos in its lair hidden in the stars. There, she waited for it to sleep, then started telling him the story of Kynaios and Tiro, of their bravery, but more than anything, of their love. The story was so beautiful that the sleeping hydra wept a single tear. The goddess was swift to claim her prize and return to Purphoros's forge.
In Purphoros's hands, the tear became a gem, and holding it firmly, the god split the green stone in twain. From its halves, Purphoros fashioned two gold brooches to his and Ephara's design. She thanked her cousin, and took the jewelry to the city of Meletis, where a wedding was being arranged.
When the day came, the goddess officiated the wedding herself, and gave to each of the kings one of the brooch. "Behold," she declared, "by my word, you who were two are now one. These are a symbol of your love, and of mine. While a brooch can fasten clothes, these will fasten people together. Like the hydra it hails from, for as long as you keep it against your skin, you will be as two heads of the same body. You shall see what the other sees, hear what the other hears, and feel what the other feels. Never again shall you be alone, in life or in death."
And as she spoke, so it was. Through the magic of the brooches, even when their duty sent one of the kings to a far-off country, they were never alone. Never separated from the other's voice, or touch, for the rest of their lives.
Then, as it does for any mortal, their time came. Tiro died first, and on that day, Meletis wept, and Kynaios grieved. And nowhere on his body could the brooch be found. Ephara had spoken true, and the brooches, created by the gods, were not impeded by death. By the next night, Kynaios smiled once more, hearing his husband's voice, seeing through his eyes the groves of Ilysia, and feeling his touch.
With his husband's counsel, it is said that Kynaios reigned in his last few years with wisdom beyond compare, for he had seen sacred Ilysia, and could through his husband seek advice from heroes past. When his own turn came, he passed with a smile, and once again, his brooch couldn't be found.
Legend tells that they used their magic still that day to find each other in the vast and lush groves of Ilysia. And that they still wore them in the centuries thereafter, their love as strong or stronger as the day of their wedding.
In Practical Terms:
Hydra's tear sensory brooches, or Aestheliths, are pairs of rare magical items that allow the wearer of one to share one of the primary senses of the other, and vice-versa. The main uses are to share hearing, sight and touch, but taste and smell are also possible. Some more nebulous uses might be possible, but if they are, their use isn't as simple. All the current examples known of the items can only share one set of senses back and forth at once.
Having two sets of sensations for one sense is quite disorienting and overwhelming at first. It takes days of training with any one before one can learn to act normally with it active, and weeks or months before being able to make reflexive use of it.
It is entirely voluntary on both ends, and can be used by anyone, even if they cannot wield magic. While the item can be controlled with a hint of magic with thoughts, it can also be set and used by hand. It is done by turning parts of it to select the sense, and pushing lightly on the gem to activate it or accept the activation from the other of the pair. The effect can be interrupted from either end with a directed thought.
Despite being called brooches, these typically sit directly on the body of the user, under any clothes in the way. They don't have traditional pins or clasps, but they stick to one's body magically, and can be moved around their skin easily with a finger to slide it around.
Besides the lack of magic necessary to operate them, they are notable against other forms of magical communication devices because of their incredible reliability. They are almost impossible to disrupt or intercept, instantaneous, and can work even through planar boundaries and other magical limits. On Theros (and probably Kaldheim and other planes with similarly physical afterlives), this includes allowing direct contact between the mortal realm and the Underworld, which is otherwise particularly difficult. Of course, getting it there involves someone dying with one of a pair, and still wanting to contact the person on the other end after their deaths, so that makes exploiting it a bit harder a task.
The Unnecessary Details:
The Gem:
A Hydra's Tear is some form of magical gem. Whether or not it actually originates from hydras and their tears is unknown. It has a rough appearance due to its property to regenerate from its largest fragment when splintered or cut, a dark green lump of irregular shape. As such, extracting it from rock is fairly easy, you can just smash the rock and get the bit that regenerates from there, but further sanding or cutting it into shape is impossible, and each Hydra's Tear will have a unique natural shape.
When cut into two exactly equal pieces, the magic of the stone doesn't regenerate it, it instead acts magically as if the stone was never cut in the first place. This link transcends distance, Realms and Planes, and is almost impossible to disrupt, offering room for interesting enchantments.
However, cutting such a stone exactly in two is an incredibly difficult task, and has only been achieved by Gods or master craftsmiths with a divine favor. Even for those, it has required a lot of trial and error and sometimes days of work. As a result, the following experiment of further cutting the two halves into exact halves (quarters of the full thing) has so far never succeeded. It might not be fully impossible, but since each stone is unique, it would require succeeding in this arduous task twice in a row, and it's impossible to tell whether a failure is due to it being outright impossible or just the result of a minor mistake. The gem is pretty rare in the first place, as are those able to cut it once, so experiments such as those have been few in numbers.
Notably, once a gem is cut in this way, it doesn't lose its regenerating properties, but as far as its magic is concerned, it is still a single gem, so chipping or breaking it doesn't cause the link to fail or anything of the sorts. It simply regenerates whichever half got chipped or broken into its proper half.
The Brooches:
The most common (but still incredibly rare) item created from cut Hydra's Tears are brooches modeled and enchanted after the mythical pair, though not all those that have made them knew the myth. Those are called Aestheliths after the Theran term, or sensory brooches. As was mentioned earlier, they allow the wearer of both brooches to pick a sense they both have, and experience at the same time their end of that sense and the other wearer's. It is disorienting at first.
It does not function when the sense only exists for one of the wearers due to different species, but it does function if one of the wearers has that sense impaired but would otherwise have it, such as with blind or deaf humans, who can see or hear through the other wearer's senses. If both wearer share a sense but differ greatly in its characteristics, such as being able to perceive different wavelengths of light or a much wider sense of smell, it will still function but will be even more disorienting and difficult to parse for both people involved.
They technically can work with any sentient creatures, but are only really practical with sapient ones. Training an animal to wear, activate the brooch and then not immediately panic at the flood of sensations and interrupt the connections has proven beyond the skills of any who have tried it.
With the typical design, as far as manual (non magical) use, a ring of sorts surrounds the gemstone, and can be turned to select a sense, then pushing on the gem sends a "call" to the other wearer that makes them aware of the initiated link, that they can accept with a push of their own end of the gem, or dismiss with a thought. The sense shared is always the same on both ends, and there can only be one shared at a time.
The brooches adhere to skin, but can be slid around freely on there, like a magnet would behave on a large magnetic surface. They are impossible to pry off without removing the skin they're attached to when active, and require quite a bit of effort to remove by a third party even when inactive. The wearer can remove their own with much less effort if they want to. Much like other controls, they can be moved around one's body with a though and a hint of magic channeled at it, if the wearer is able to channel magic.
Here are some notes on stuff to expect with the typical senses.
Sight:
Sight is perhaps the most disorienting of senses to share at first. It helps to acclimate someone to it to start with both people involved keeping their eyes as close to each other as possible, and looking in the same direction. Learning to move your body according to a point of view that is not centered on your own head takes practice, and when that point of view is itself moving, it can lead to nausea at first.
While the brooches allow one to focus on a different part of the other's vision than they are, it doesn't allow one to move the other's eyes, or head. As a result, it can be a confusing and frustrating experience to want to look at something at the edge of the other's vision, when you physically can't turn your head or pivot your eyes to see it better.
Because sight can only be shared on its own, communication is difficult with it while in different locations. Many pairs of wearers eventually develop a code, often based on blinks for humans and similar, for some common actions... Or to switch to hearing for more complex discussions.
Between species with similar sight characteristics, there can be slight differences of color in how the world is perceived, or large ones in the case of some color blindnesses.
Between species with different sight characteristics, the mind of each will eventually adapt to recognize more colors they wouldn't usually perceive, but the process can be slow and headache-inducing.
Some have reported an unusual feeling upon seeing themselves through the eyes of another, likely linked to the fact people usually only see their own face through a mirror, whereas the brooches do not mirror the images they show.
Hearing:
Hearing is possibly the most often shared of the senses with Aestheliths. It allows conversations at any distance or simply seamless eavesdropping.
It is not typically as disorienting to share hearing as sight, though it can be when trying to locate the source of a sound. Your mind will associate the location depending on the position of the ears of the other wearer, not your own. This is even more disorienting when standing in the vicinity of the other wearer, but looking in different directions.
One of the quirks of sharing hearing is that both wearers hear a different voices than they expect for the other (and themselves), but not any other person. Because people hear themselves through not only their hear but the resonance of their own body, the voice they hear for themselves and the voice others hear are different. As a result, when sharing hearing with someone else, one will hear the "internal" voice for the other when they speak, and the "external" voice for themselves as well if they speak anywhere the other can hear. The speech of any third person will be heard the same as normal.
Due to sound moving relatively slowly in air, there can be a slight feeling of echoing when speaking and listening while sharing hearing, particularly as the distance between the two wearers grows larger (but still within range of hearing the same sounds).
When hearing is shared between two species with different hearing ranges, similar to sight, the mind slowly expands to understand sounds beyond the normal reach. But, similarly, those sounds can only be heard through another's ears still.
Touch:
Touch has a lot of unique traits as far as being shared. It goes beyond just being touch and some other characteristics are shared as well. Some elements of proprioception as well: sharing touch involves knowing the position of the other's body and how it feels in many places, though the mind will try to assign that perception of the other person's body to the wrong position in space. This can be changed with trust and training, and a learned pair sharing touch can move around each other without ever getting in one another's way or looking at each other.
While touch will share many physical sensations, be they pressure, temperature and pleasure, it also has a special handling of pain, that is... Othered, in a way other shared sensations through the brooches aren't. When sharing touch, you *know* the pain the other is in, but you don't feel it as your own. This peculiarity of the enchantment is very purposeful, and one of the reasons replicating the enchantment is an intricate and involved process.
Touching the other wearer while sharing the sense of touch with them feels like touching your own body in many ways, since you receive both the feeling of touching and being touched at the same time. A fascinating experience.
Smell and Taste:
Smell and Taste are separate, but I'll address them here together, as they're similar in being more rarely used, and less unique in their handling.
Smell can be very useful if one of the wearers has a much more developed one than the other, such as when a human and a leonin are paired. Similar to sight and hearing, one learns to decode those new signals with time and headaches. Unlike with hearing and sight however, some of those might become recognizable without needing to be sharing smell anymore eventually, as faint but present. It might even allow one to become receptive to pheromones they normally do not notice or react to.
Taste has a bit more to it being shared, like touch, in that you can also get the texture and warmth of what is being tasted through the link. Interestingly, individual preferences also are translated through the shared sense of taste. If something is found delicious by one of the wearers and disgusting by another, how it is experienced by both will depend on who actually eats it, it will feel either disgusting to both or delicious to both.
Other senses:
Beyond the five traditional senses, some might be able to be shared with the brooches, though they might require being able to magically choose the sense to share, as the selector ring doesn't typically cover anything beyond the five main ones (and an standby position to avoid accidental activations.)
Other senses that can be shared this way include magnetoreception (the perception of magnetic fields), thaumasthesia (the perception of magic), vestibular sense (perception of balance and acceleration, generally pretty useless and nausea-inducing to share with another), and more... As a reminder, both wearer need to have the sense, or the potential for it, to be able to share it this way.
There are rumors that one can also share a sense of self through the brooches, in a way that would allow two people to perceive each other's thought processes. While there has been successful activations with this idea, the process is so overwhelming, disturbing and disorienting that everyone that tried it ended the connection after a fraction of a second at most. It is possible something like that could be sustained, but it would take years if not decades of very brief and lengthening contacts to be able to maintain a usable link for any reasonable amount of time. And there are worries that doing so would permanently alter both wearer's personalities and thoughts to match the other closer in the process.
Colors: Primary Green, secondary tied between White and Black
Appearance:
Zarunpel is a very short (about 146cm/4'9" tall) black woman, and her most striking feature is of course her hair. It is long enough it would drag on the ground if left untended, and its way to reflect light gives it a metallic appearance. The exact color is difficult to pin down, depending on lighting or environment, it has been described as copper at times, gold at others. She looks pretty thin and unscarred for a knight of Garenbrig, but appearances can be deceiving. Her hair is usually kept in braids, wrapped around her body when she's prepared for combat.
She's typically encountered in armor, light or heavy depending on the occasion, with the colors of Garenbrig and her family. She has a few, but one notable is an armored suit she got made on New Capenna that is still armor while looking less like one. Rarely in public, she'll be in something more casual, be it pants or dress.
(art by @looceyloo)
Sometimes she doesn't cast a shadow. This is a sign that her mount (and friend) Velumbra is out and about. Vel is a shadow Panther of Urborg and either lives inside of Zarunpel's shadow, or is Zarunpel's shadow.
(art by @duskguard)
Backstory:
Zarunpel is the seventh daughter of a Baron and a Knight of Embereth, the last born of their happy ever after. She and her six sisters all received at birth a "blessing" of Wilds magic from a fae close to their parents. As any fae blessing tends to, they come with some drawbacks, though Zarunpel ended up pretty well in the exchange.
Hers is a blessing of beauty, that manifests most obviously through her hair, shining, indestructible and heavy. But it has also molded her appearance into people's idea of a pretty fairy tale princess, whether she liked it or not.
While her parents and their fae friend had a path intended for her, she didn't want it herself. After some drama that'll be a story for another time, she became a knight of Garenbrig, of strength, taking advantage of the extra strength granted to her by her blessing to carry around her hair, almost as dense as the metal it resembles.
She sparked a few months after being knighted, while questing in the Wilds. She arrived on Kaldheim, and thought it only a trick of the Wilds among many at first. It's on that plane she met fellow planeswalker and knight of Garenbrig Traenor Blackwood (a @socialpoison character), who would illuminate her through her doubts about her new status.
From there, she would spend a few years questing across the planes. On occasion with Traenor, but mostly by herself. Eldraine, Kaldheim, Dominaria, Alara, Theros, Capenna... At the end of one of those quests, spanning Dominaria and Jund, Zarunpel was bonded to a shadow panther of Urborg, Velumbra, who became her friend and mount, able to follow her through her planeswalks on account of being her shadow.
Zarunpel is direct, brash, sometimes rash, but effective. She's used to be underestimated and looked down upon, and she hates it, so she acts in a way that'd hopefully dispel the illusion of a princess in armor.
After March of the Machine and the anguish caused by that (generally and personally), she still sees herself as a knight and upholds the high standards she sets for that title. Knight of Strength if not of Garenbrig anymore. She believes her role is to be strong for those weaker, to fight and carry burdens that others can't.
Some months after MOM too, Traenor and Zarunpel convinced each other to try a more formal romantic relationship than the casual thing they had for a few years. They now live together... When neither is out on a quest and Zarunpel isn't helping her sisters back in the family home.
Magic, gear and/or abilities
Let's start with a few paragraphs on Zarunpel's hair, blessing and how I see Wilds magic (that I would abbreviate to Wild magic in the rest because it's easier to say). Her blessing is one of Wild magic, and as such isn't as clean a spell as one would expect it to be. Wild magic has been shown to be powerful in Eldraine, able to flaunt some normal "rules" of magic and bring back the dead with their souls without an issue, destroy curses capable of destroying planes, and more. Given the nature of Eldraine, I consider Wild magic to be a powerful, if somewhat eldritch force, parallel to regular magic. It tries to tell stories, fairy tales or otherwise. There isn't really a mind behind it, but it encourages and manipulates things to form "better stories", whatever that means and on a somewhat meta level. Because Wild magic might not technically be the same kind of magic, Zarunpel's blessing also often goes undetected by spells and devices that scan for magic outside of Eldraine, though some are scanning for elements common in both and will pick it up.
A lot of that manifests in Zarunpel's blessing. It makes her stronger, so that she can carry around her hair because it wouldn't be a very good story if she just couldn't move on her own. How much stronger it makes her varies depending on the needs of that story, though. She's often just strong enough to get past an obstacle, or just not strong enough to raise tensions, even though the latter might require less strength than the former. Her baseline is stronger than the vast majority of humans that aren't assisted by magic.
Her hair is indestructible (to mundane means) and absorbs hard blows (that she doesn't strike herself), dissipating all the energy and momentum in what hits it into seemingly nowhere. Some powerful magical artifacts have been capable of cutting her hair in the past, including the sword her mother pulled from the Irencrag, Lovestrike. When cut from her body, her hair retains its properties for a seemingly random amount of time, from seconds to "it hasn't failed yet". Mostly, how long those properties last depends on how interesting or compelling the use is: trying to use it to mass-produce magical items would likely fail immediately, but a singular handcrafted gift out of love might last a lifetime.
Zarunpel doesn't have active magical control of her hair, though because it makes for a better story, it usually acts conveniently to her. When she spins it, it goes where she wants it most of the time, and rarely gets tangled into itself or her legs. It will sometimes conveniently be just in place to stop even an attack she didn't expect or foresee, though that is far from a reliable thing. "The knight got hit by a surprise arrow and died" isn't a very compelling story.
She uses her hair as both additional armor and weaponry. She uses thicker braids of it weighted on their end with blunt or piercing metal, and weaves thinner braids overtop her armor to stop most bladed weapons or large blunt ones from even touching her.
Aside from that, her blessing has a few other effects. She doesn't heal faster than other humans, but she does heal more completely, she never keeps scars or marks. Her body tends to heal damage so that the exterior of her body looks pristine before tackling other non-dangerous issues, which isn't always ideal. She doesn't know what would happen if she lost a finger, limb or organ and she isn't interested to try. Animals tend to fear her less and trust her more as a baseline, though they can still get scared if she acts aggressively or frighteningly around them. This might extend to people though people usually have a lot more biases and factors on how much to trust or fear someone and that typically is more influential than her blessing.
Her main form of active spellcasting is further protective in nature. She can extend the magic that shields her hair to other parts of her body or others, though that usually lasts only a couple seconds to a minute if she really focuses on it. The shorter bursts of protection she can whip up almost as fast as she can think of them, representing instant-speed cheap protection spells. She can also set up longer-lasting wards against specific magic over an area of land, though she's far from an expert in that.
Other than that, she has her armor(s), and a few things she's collected over the years. She has a sawblade slinger from Innistrad (a giant crossbow-like thing that fires circular sawblades) though it is big and bulky so she very rarely pulls it out and it spends most of its time in storage at home. She wears half of a Hydra's Tear Brooch on her neck, paired with one worn by Traenor, that allows them to share a sense from any distance or across planes when they wish to. Sharing hearing makes for a neat way to communicate long distance.
You know what, it's been a while since I talked about my various planeswalking guys and gals from the focus group, time to see if a portion of the spreadsheet can get people to ask some questions about them. Even basic questions if you don't know them, it's good for me to to restate the facts every so often and I don't expect anyone to know them in advance.
So before Bloomburrow comes out soon I want to get a MH3 ask in so if you want could we hear about Sezashi, Arnoss, Dancing-Hands, Zarunpel and Ranek Origins cards?
Origin cards take a while to design because they have a lot of moving parts and need a flip trigger that's flavorful, original but also happens just the right amount and at the right timing for it to not be awkward.
With that said, I do have some of those already made!
Sezashi's represent on the front his time with Adima, a Merge-Gate Keeper trying to balance traditional magic and new technology. He flips when the gate gets destroyed, and keeps going in the same way, honoring Adima after their disparition.
Arnoss has a mistake of a back side, but something I felt like experimenting with. A Planeswalker Creature interacts funkily with plenty of parts of the game, which his passives try to somewhat remedy. Other than that, the card is very simple, he flips as he did in his story, after his close family got massacred and he was the last survivor of it.
I've started on a Dancing-Hands origin card several times, but have scrapped all my attempts so far, they weren't satisfying enough. Instead, have a pair of creature/background for him, since I did experiment with those too.
Zarunpel's origin card was made as a part of a cycle along with all six of her sisters, all Legendary Creatures, so she matches them and has a legendary subtheme that's not present on most of her cards.
Ranek doesn't have an origin card either yet... But he does have a Saga recounting his origin, when he first put on the Stormplate that would become his name. It's fairly simple and lackluster by 2024 standards, probably only worth an uncommon slot these days, but I still like it.
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Kinda want to write a summary of how some of my magic characters have evolved since they were created, but I don't know if there's any interest in that or in any specific character, so to start...
Which character should I start with?
Anedia Kosel (Human Dimir Reporter with some sleep-based magic)
Dolores (Black-Red Demon with pain magic, torturing people for a living)
Lhur (Mono-Black Giant ruling a country he deeply cares about)
Zarunpel Alernis (Green Human Knight of Garenbrig, resisting a Rapunzel story)
Arega (Simic [undefined] who can pilot artificial bodies and adapt)
Arnoss Beldrun (Red-Green-White Crocodilian with a drive to protect)
I know I'm a bit late but I was really enjoying Thunder Junction as a drafting experience, even if I found it a bit muddled from a lore perspective.
But I wanted to ask the question if Jaspar, Vaalin, Dolores, Dancing-Hands, Zarunpel and Ranek had there own Mount what would it be?
Alrighty, let's start with the really easy ones, the ones I already made cards for before this ask...
For Zarunpel, her Mount would obviously be her mount, Velumbra. She's a magical panther from Urborg that lives within Zarunpel's shadow when she isn't stalking around in the real world, and was granted to her as a token of friendship by the Soul of Windgrace after she did him a service helping his people and him personally with an off-plane errand, during the Dominaria United period.
For Jaspar, something less specific but I do have this design for a mount for him. His magic allows him to call upon the echoes of life past imbued into parts of creatures for various magical effects. This is him using a discarded antler of some form of elk to summon a spirit version of it to carry him around. Since antlers are shed periodically and don't stay with an animal for their whole life, their echoes are fainter than what he may obtain from most bones or other parts. As a result, they stop working with his magic after some time or intense use like this. Thankfully, finding "fresh" antlers to restock is also pretty easy.
That's it for the cards I already have figured out (at least for the list given).
Dancing-Hands doesn't use a mount very often, but in the past he's been seen on the back of an origami horse animated by his magic when he first arrived on Amonkhet's desert, a few years back at this point.
Dolores and Ranek are less likely to have mounts these days; Dolores's wings mean flight is more often a faster option, and flying mounts that can keep up are a hassle. Ranek travels in his Stormplate, as much mech as it is armor, and even if he supplemented that with other forms of transport, it'd more likely be a vehicle of some sort than a mount.
Vaalin... I genuinely don't know. We don't see enough underwater content to have a wide range of options there, and given he evolves on land too, would have to be amphibious, but he's not exactly riding around a lot either. Vodalians have seahorse mounts, but I doubt Vaalin could get one of these with his status, and he's not Vodalian proper either. Could see him riding a drake through the air!
So I saw a post about this concept and thought it would make for a interesting ask. Magical damage, like a necromancers fingers slowly turning black and losing sensation or a wizard with lighting bolt scares across their arms. What dose it look like when Arnoss, Zarunpel, Sezashi and Dancing-Hands push their magic beyond what their bodies can handle?
I find this question funny because of all my characters you could have picked, those are probably the ones that can strain their magic the least! So instead, let's talk about why they don't really do that, and we'll touch on the question! But I do appreciate the effort of narrowing down your questions to some characters for the copy-paste when it comes to my inbox, it hasn't gone unnoticed.
Most of the magic for Arnoss and Zarunpel is passive.
Zarunpel's "blessing" from the Wilds might not even function under the same rules as traditional magic, it follows more narrative rules. It affects her body and hair in many ways, but when it comes to the limits of it, it often is more about what would make a better story. She's stronger than someone that looks like her should be, but depending on what she has to do, the exact degree to which this is true varies. As long as it's somewhat reasonable, in important situations she's often just strong enough or almost but not there, depending which tells a "better" story. Of course, she has no idea how that works.
As far as her spellcasting, it's mostly temporary protection spells, they're more likely to be cast too late or not last long enough than to hurt her when she overuses them. Which means she or whatever she's protecting gets hurt the way it otherwise would have been. When the Urborg panther living in her shadow gets "killed" or banished in some ways, Zarunpel can also be left without a shadow for a time while Vel reconstitutes.
Similarly, Arnoss's magic is mostly passive buffing and reinforcing his scales, when it is overstrained, he gets hurt the normal way. However, it also depends on how many people need and want his help nearby, and in some cases that can be overwhelming to feel during major disasters in populated areas. So many people needing help and he can't help all of them. And he's found that when he tries to help all of them in a city when it's not a disaster, he exhausts himself going from one to the other for hours and days, there's always something in large population centers.
Sezashi has a hard cap on the number of spells he can maintain at once, at four, represented by the floaty objects that orbit him. While some are harder to maintain than others (maintaining multiple charges of the same nature on someone else requires concentration and effort), the failure point is usually just that one or multiple of the spells slip and come back to him, and he probably isn't in a state to reuse them just yet. With that said, premature failure of magic that can manipulate sizes and create duplicates is generally not a good idea, plenty of unfortunate timings possible. Also duplicates that are ended in this way don't fuse back as cleanly to the original, which certainly causes headache and can cause the loss of memories the duplicate had.
Dancing-Hands's innate telekinesis can be overpowered or overwhelmed, but it's very difficult, and it generally doesn't strain the kitsune much to use. Using it on non-physical things is more relevant here. It only works on nonliving elements. Using it on eldrazis, even scions and briefly, made him feel sick and gave him headaches, and he couldn't sustain it for more than a few seconds. He rediscovered how to use it on magical effects not too long ago, and that has taken a lot more out of him, and could potentially replicate or redirect harmful effects to him if he's not careful. The telekinesis itself is invisible if not for its effects.
As far as his Kanji magic, well, he typically only uses ink, and on paper, but much more powerful and dangerous opportunities are possible when this type of magic is used with blood (or other living material) and on living tissue. Be it using his paper blade on himself or drawing with his own blood on paper, the result would be white paper and fur marred in reds. It's not something he'd ever want to do, but in theory, it's possible.
