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identity
explorer
Pick up the trail
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Somebody in the village needs help. You:
Make them something. It will taste odd, and it will work.
Deal with whatever caused it, loudly, at the source.
Tell them what is actually going to happen, gently.
Go and stand at their door until the thing leaves.
Where do you actually learn things?
Slowly, from something living, over several years.
In dreams, and from people who should not have told you.
From books, in order, with notes down the margins.
From watching animals, who lie considerably less than people.
Your workspace:
A kitchen. Jars, string, something drying over the stove.
A table, a cloth, and objects that have been handled a great deal.
Outdoors, ideally somewhere nobody has tidied in decades.
A desk, in order, and nobody else touching anything.
What would you find hardest to give up?
The feeling of a storm coming, and knowing why.
Knowing that everybody under your roof is safe tonight.
The hour after midnight, when things get honest.
Being trusted by something that trusts almost nobody.
Pick a source of power:
What you have grown, dried, and put into a jar.
A threshold, and a promise made across it.
Time. Anything that grew slowly is stronger.
Something wild that agreed to stand next to you.
What people get wrong about your kind of magic:
They think it is temper. It is mostly timing.
They think you are predicting. You are only paying attention.
They think it is dark. It is the part with the lights off.
They think it is dusty. It is the only part that repeats.
How you would handle somebody who wronged you:
Their luck would become quietly, persistently poor.
They would know it was you, and they would know at once.
You would wait. Some things resolve themselves in a season.
You would learn the thing about them that they had buried.
Pick something you are good at that isn't magic:
Reading a room in about four seconds.
Making a house feel like somewhere worth staying.
Spotting the one word in a contract that matters.
Getting a frightened animal to come to you.
What draws you in:
Something practical, that works, that somebody needs tonight.
Somewhere that has been looked after for a hundred years.
The thing nobody mentions, at the edge of what is allowed.
A pattern that has been there the whole time, unnoticed.
The flaw you would have to admit to:
Going enormous when small would have done it.
Telling people true things they did not ask to hear.
Waiting so long that it becomes somebody else's problem.
Trusting animals more than you have ever trusted a person.
Pick a night:
Somebody at the door at two in the morning, needing something.
Wind coming across open ground, and everything moving.
One candle, one question, and an honest answer.
Everyone asleep, the doors shut, the house holding.
A hundred years on, what are you remembered as?
The reason the wood is still standing.
Who people went to when they could not go to anybody else.
The one who wrote it down properly, so that it survived.
The one the animals followed, for reasons nobody could explain.
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Your explorer
Changes show on the trail as you make them.
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Design
Wren
Nova
Liana
Flux
Skin
Coat
Pack colour
Hat
Pack
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