History

There's a story passed down between generations in my family, that tells of a curse lain upon our bloodline. It is said that some time in our distant past, an ancestor named Kylan returned home drunk. He staggered through the door and found an intruder. Panicked, Kylan grabbed the nearest weapon he could find and beat the invader bloody. A classic tale of self-defense and protecting one's home. But, it wasn't his house that he stumbled into in that drunken stupor and it wasn't a burglar he beat. It was the home of a widow and her young son who had been sleeping near the hearth when Kylan entered.

The boy suffered for over an hour before succumbing to death. His mother was inconsolable and enraged. Lashing out, she told Kylan that as Christ had done to Cain for the murder of his brother, she cursed Kylan's blood for the murder of an innocent.

That curse was not seen in life. Kylan lived his days well and prosperous, but in death, he could not rest. His spirit was made restless, bereft of oblivion's comfort, unknowing of what ending, good or bad, his deeds had wrought. As living members of his family began to die, they all suffered this fate, put into the grave but finding no peace. Forever unsettled.

The women of Kylan's line were made to worry over their own as the boy's mother had, given powers that always grew in pairs. One witch, one necromancer. Our charge was..is..to keep our ancestors from rising up and going into a rampage as they seek revenge for an eternity of damnation. Their wrath is unfocused, falling upon any who cross their path.

Now, my sister and I are all that remain to defend the world. Whether our deaths would end the curse as our bloodline dies out for good, we do not know, but neither is it a chance we are willing to take. A cluster of our late kin buried in Chicago have grown active, drawing us here to put them down.

A Risky Binding

I had, or have, a heart condition. Lest it kill me before we've broken the family curse, I convinced my sister to bind a vampire as her servant. To offset his feelings of imbalance, I became his servant, completing his triumverate alongside a lycanthrope he'd already bound. It is a tenuous relationship at best, but we are adapting.

As his long time servant attempted to help me understand, navigate, and control the links between us, we became bedmates. He was not supposed to be able to have children due to an injury in his own youth, something that seemed true given his promiscuity. Perhaps there is something in the Grey blood, or something in the magic of my sister and I, but when she too went to his bed, it did not take long before we both were filled with child. Her twins and my son were born upon the same day. Whatever we thought would come of our attempt to prolong my life, it was not this. While I am still irritated at having Kali sleep with Ashrom too, he cares for us both, and for his three new children with a surprising ferocity.

Magic Sources

• Blood - The magician uses blood to fuel his power. This can be his own, or it can be someone elses.
  • Passive Power: Blood Storage - The magician becomes capable of storing blood in a specially prepared vessel. This vessel can be anything but must have a lid or a flap to cover the blood. So long as the blood is in this vessel, it will not rot or clot, nor will it spill out of the vessel if overturned accidentally.
  • Weakness - If the magician loses its store of blood it cannot use the magical technique(s) linked to that source with the same degree of strength.
• Lifeweb - There is another type of energy which is fueled by the earth, but this one takes the form of the energy that all life generates. The magician is able to tap into this energy, drawing on the power of the life around him to fuel his magical prowess. In so doing, the magician must be cautious, drawing too much power from the things around him can kill those self-shame things.
  • Passive Power: Pulse of the Invisible - Because the magician draws power from life and living things around herself, she gains a sense of the amount of life, and thus energy, around her. This makes the magician incredibly difficult to sneak up on, as the magician becomes aware of living things around her.
  • Weakness: This connection with all living things around the magician can be a curse. Because the magician draws power from living things, she can draw on these things hard enough to kill them. When this happens, the magician feels each of those deaths.
• Power Item - The magician draws his magical prowess from an item. This item can be something significant to the magician himself, an heirloom passed down through the ages within a family, or something found and must be portable. Magicians who have an object as a source must carry their object with them in order to work their magic.
  • Passive Power: Reinforcement - The magician with this source subtly changes the nature of the item which serves as it's source. The item becomes supernaturally strengthened, capable of intercepting bullets or taking hits from supernatural strength without breaking.
  • Weakness - The item is the source of the magician's power and if stolen or taken away the magician is unable to work magic.
• The Elements (Earth) - There is a wealth of power within the natural world, most of which manifests through the four primal elements of the world: earth, wind, water, and fire. The magician with the elements as a source can draw power from manifestations of those natural elements and use them to empower their magic. Pick a single element. This element becomes a source for your magical efforts.
  • Passive Power: Elemental Strength - When you cast a spell that resonates with a given element its power is amplified singificantly.
  • Weakness: You are vulnerable to magic or effects which use an element opposite of your chosen source. Air feeds fire and fire is consumed by water. Earth smothers air, but is weakened by water. Air consumes water.

Magic Techniques

• Curses - Magic which is used to impart negative effects to targets, and perhaps the targets descendents.
• Destruction - The deployment of magic in order to destroy people, places, objects, and things. When people think of magician warriors, this is what they're referring. Magic which is used to destroy. This technique also encompasses magic used for combat applications.
• Protection - Wards and magical barriers, spells which protect from evil (and good) and spells like it. All can be done with this school of magic.
• Soul Manipulation - Maniuplating the vital energy of the living and souls
• Healing - The art of using magical power in order to heal injuries, cure diseases, and soothe restless souls.
• Unweaving - Unraveling magic as it is being cast, or the capable of undoing magic currently affecting someone or something.
• Relocation - The art of moving objects & people through space.
• Enochian Magic - Magic that deals specifically with angels and demons

Magic Item Techniques

• Charms - Magical trinkets imbued with a spell or two that have a limited number of uses before they must be recharged.
• Inscriptions - The technique of making a magical effect permanent or activateable, by imbedding it in runes, tattoo's, or carved into a surface.
• Potions - Magical drinks which can impart some sort of magical effect to the person drinking the potion.