Right, so I'm a little late to the party. In fact, I've been avoiding this thread because I tend to get carried away with proof-reading and such and I like having free time.
Anyway, here's what's happening.
Some of you may be familiar with my newest character, Mercutio. For those of you who aren't, let me attempt to sum him up in a way that doesn't make him sound like the biggest Gary Stu ever.
Mercutio is a devil from
RivalHappyturtle and Kid Kris' faction, the Hell of the Iron Queen. Specifically, he's from the sub-circle Pride over Life, which deals with sins committed in wilful ignorance or the quest for knowledge. For example, a witch hunter from medieval England and a Nazi scientist are quite likely to rub elbows there. Mercutio is also a Planeswalker,
ala the card game
Magic: The Gathering.
Now, one of the challenges I set for myself at Mercutio's creation is that he's only allowed to summon creatures that he's acquired on-screen. This added a certain amount of randomness to the character, but also kept him from getting too powerful. I can't just say "oh he learned how to summon this 8/8 flying creature with First Strike and Trample in his backstory. =3" Nope. I've gotta earn his power.
Except then I realized that this slows him down way too much and prevents him from having any sort of theme in his creatures. Also, it means that any time I want a specific creature I need to run a plot or beg someone else to run a plot for me.
And that's just not fun.
So in order to get around it, I decided on a loop-hole. I still have to show Mercutio learning or gaining access to a creature, but in addition to doing this in RP, I can write it out as a short story. The stronger/rarer the card, the more effort I need to put into it. The story I wrote up features a vanilla 1/1 Human Wizard, and it took me about an hour to write. But if I wanted him to get, say,
Sphinx of Magosi, I'd have to spend quite some time on it.
So without further ado:
Fugitive Wizard
Spoiler
The City Guard had been hounding Maya Doss for three days. She'd taken shelter in an abandoned hovel in the Deepslum district It was cold, dark and rank. The young hedgemage sat in the corner of the one-room house. There were two doors: One behind her that lead to more crowded alleyways, and one in from that opened onto the street proper. If the Guards came around, it'd be through that door. She could run out the back and lose them in the alleys.
Even so, she didn't dare light the tiny coal fire in the centre of the room.
It had all started a year ago. Maya had been an apprentice to a wizard living in the City Popper. She'd studied alchemy under him, in hopes of one day making a decent living selling health potions. But then a man with sideways, orange eyes like a goat's started visiting. He and her master would retreat to her master's private quarters. Sometimes for a matter of minutes, sometimes for whole hours at a time. Around the same time, things had started changing. Her master's studies began to shift focus, and thus so did Maya's. Instead of learning how to cure illnesses, Maya started learning how to inflict them.
Then one day, instead of the goat-eyed man, a squad of City Guard broke down the door. While Maya watched in terror, they stormed into her master's private quarters and were driven back by a massive stitched-together homunculous. Driven by her master's magic, the roaring husk threw the armour-clad guards about like toys.
Maya didn't know what happened to her master. She just ran. They'd followed her, losing and gaining her trail almost by the hour. That's how she ended up here. Hopefully they'd leave her alone now. She was so very tired.
"Miss Dross, was it? Maya Dross?"
With a cry of terrified surprise, Maya twisted and drew back from the source of the voice. There, leaning ever so relaxed in the frame of the black door was the man with the goat eyes. How did he get there without her noticing!?
"I'm sorry to break this to you this way, but you've been found guilty of Accessory to Necromancy. Do you know what the punishment for necromancy is?"
Slowly, Maya nodded. It was death.
A smile crept over his thin lips. "I can give you an escape."
Mercutio has acquired Maya Doss,
Fugitive Wizard