Solium Speculorum Starting Obsessions

The Throne of Mirrors

Requirements: Any
You viewed it but once. Taken by your mentor to be introduced to the grand Hierarch of London, the Draco Cruentis XIV himself, seated upon his throne of red leather and carved teak with gold inlay. But it was not the powerful magus who rules London's Awakened - a monarch as surely as any in Buckingham Palace - that drew and held your attention.

No, it was the chair.

The Solium Draconis, the Dragon Throne of London. You scarce heard even a single word that they spoke, when your mentor and the elders of the Consilium exchanged introductions and pleasantries. You'd done something worthy of their attention, to be sure, but you recall none of it. You spent the whole of your time looking to the chair itself.

It engraved itself in your mind, so that even when you looked away, you saw it still, in all the colors of light, a kaleidoscope of thrones boring into your very psyche. You don't remember leaving, or being returned to your residence afterwards. For three days after, you were feverish, in and out of terrible dreams, of all kinds of horrors. When the fever finally broke, it did so with one thought in your mind:

You must have the chance to examine the Dragon Throne once more.

For You To Do

• Decide what it is that merited a young mage such as yourself being welcomed and acknowledged by such an esteemed audience as that you got.
• It should be something relatively important or difficult for you, and something tied into your character's strengths or theme.

Traits

• Take one dot in Consilium Draco Cruentis Status. This reflects not membership in the consilium, but an acknowledgement of their debt to you.
• Additionally, take the Nightmares Persistent Condition. When you sleep, you sometimes dream of it all over again, and wake sweating through your bedclothes, and unable to return to your rest.

Walking the Thames

Requirements: Any
It's not something you plan. It's not something you intend. Hells, it's even something you tell yourself, over and over, that you're going to never do again.

And yet, on some night, there you find yourself, walking the shores of the Thames, squelching through the mud and stepping over the gin-soaked, passed out poor (at least, you hope they're only passed out).

There is something uncanny and strange that calls to you. It doesn't always do this, mind - in fact, most of the time when you find yourself out on its shores, you're not following that call. You're looking for it. Because when you do hear it, that call overwhelms you with its beauty and power. You begin to understand a little about it already; you're sure it has something to do with why, since before Romans landed in Britain, folk have founded settlement after settlement along its shores.

History aside, you long to hear that call again.

For You To Do

• Decide what state of mind or other situation leads you to being out walking the lengths of the Thames at night.

Traits

• Take one dot in Contacts (River Folk). These are the people you've come to know, here and there, as you walk up and down the shore night after night. They call to you now when they see you, offer to share a sip of their rotgut and the warmth of their fires. From the way they talk, you think perhaps they hear the call sometimes too.
• Take the Fixated Condition. Its effects are not constant, however - it only comes into play when whatever it is that triggers your desire to hear the call again occurs. On nights when you do hear it, however, take the Inspired Condition.

Of Fogs and Miasmas

Requirements: Any
No one knows fogs quite like Londoners do. There are entire days where the city all but shuts down because of days worth of thick, roiling, yellowish-brownish fogs that roll in off the Thames, making it impossible to see anything outside of an arm's reach in front of one. It's not just a horror show for the eyes, either (though everyone ends up with red, itchy eyes for days after). It bounces and muffles sounds, leaves a grit on the skin, stinks of old smoke and gasses, and even leaves an acrid, hideous taste in the mouth.

But the fogs do more than that to you.

For whatever reason, your Mage Sight is terribly sensitive to the fogs. Your Peripheral Mage Sight is triggered perhaps an hour before they roll in off the river, and once they are there, it's awful. You can see nameless horrors stalking the deeps of the fogs, swimming silently past in blasphemous shapes like terrible sea creatures through dark waters. The fogs ripple with their movement to your Mage Sight. You know that you need to investigate them, but when you're the only one who can see them…

For You To Do

• Decide how you react when the fogs roll in - what precautions do you take? How does your life change during the fog days?

Traits

• Take one dot in the Trained Observer Merit. Your paranoia and fear of the mists has made you exceedingly wary and alert in general.
• When you are subject to thick fogs and mists, you immediately take the Shaken Condition.

The Bells of St. Giles

Requirements: Matter •
You've heard them toll, toll, tolling many times before.

Certainly not all the time. The church of St. Giles-without-Cripplegate is smack in the center of the Square Mile, the very center of London. And even if you do have cause to be out there all the time, the church is a small one, its bells modest, and they don't ring very often.

Oh, but when they do. It does something to the very air. Their leaden clanging isn't simply sound - it is presence. Something about them excite your peripheral Mage Sight, sending your Supernal senses all abuzzing. It's sickening, actually - as in, literally nauseating, as though someone were scratching fingernails down the chalk slate box that served as your coffin.

There is more to it. You know there is. But first, you have to study it. It's not every ringing that causes that reaction, and you've gotten the impression that not every mage senses it. But you must know, lest the bells haunt your dreams with their eternal toll, toll, tolling.

For You To Do

• Who was it who had died the first time you heard the tolling of bells of St. Giles in this way? You were at the funeral, and the tolling nearly killed you, though the others at the funeral chalked it up to terrible grief.

Traits

• Take the London Churches specialty under History, and the Interdisciplinary Specialty Merit for that Specialty.
• Take the Chronic Sickness Condition, only the trigger for it is the tolling of the bells of St. Giles. Even when they don't trigger the strange sensory overload, you have come to become ill anytime you hear them.

The Sword of St. George

Requirements: Prime •
In truth, you do not remember finding the sword. You merely remember having it.

You woke, in your own bedclothes, but in the early morning mists of a summer day. It took you a little wandering, but you identified the park where you came to your senses at as being one near your home. But you were halfway home, drawing very concerned stares from early morning passersby, before you realized that you carried with you a medieval style broadsword, still dripping with fresh blood.

The sword itself is finely made, with a very keen edge. It depicts on one side what you assume to be an image of St. George, a knight slaying a dragon that is half-wrapped around him, flames all around them. On the other side of the blade is writing of some kind, but it's not in any alphabet you recognize.

Worse still is that sometimes you lapse into these losses of memory. When you awaken from them, you always bear the sword in hand once more - even if you've gotten rid of it or put it elsewhere for safe keeping. And most disturbing still, it is always covered in blood when you return to your senses.

For You To Do

• Choose someone in your character's normal life that has seen them with the bloodied sword In hand. What happened as a result of that?
• Additionally, name someone who the news has said was found dead of wounds from some large bladed object. What is notable about them? What makes you think that perhaps you are responsible for their death?

Traits

• Take the Mana Sensitivity Merit and the Enhanced Item Mert (a broadsword, with a +1 damage).
• Additionally, take the Fugue Persistent Condition.

The Rooks of the East End

Requirements: Mind •
The East End is a rough place. Barmy, it is, a place full of mad folk. Some of them were born broken, some of them were made so by awfulness or desperation or just bad gin.

But some of them? Some of them are filled with rooks.

You know how that sounds. You do. But that doesn't change the fact that you have seen men and women - God above, even children - through whose eyes the rooks have seen you. They're stuffed positively to bursting with horrible, small, black rookish birds who wear their skins and walk and talk and jape.

You've even seen what happens when one of them is killed: the skin twists and bulges, and finally splits open, and a whole murder of rooks take flight like the empty bag of flesh were a nest they were leaving forevermore, each of them shiny with the juices inside that once-human skin.

For You To Do

When did you see the rooks take flight? Who was it, and what was the situation? The death is always a traumatic one, and you were the only one in the area to see it happen.

Traits

Take the Dream (•) Merit, for when the rooks bring you secrets in your dreams. Additionally, take the Madness Persistent Condition, focusing on Paranoia, applying to social interactions with strangers, any of whom could be filled with rooks.

The Solstice Hounds

Requirements: Life •
They come! They come! When the day is at its brightest, and the night at its darkest, they come!

The first time it happened, it was several years ago - yes, before you Awakened. Your family was very concerned in its aftermath…to say nothing of deeply scandalized when the stories started to trickle in from neighbors and friends, who'd all seen you fleeing like the Devil himself was on your heels.

Now, though, you are Awakened. You'd hoped that might make a difference, but no - this last Midsummer they came for you again, seemingly unphased by your as-yet feeble sorceries. But you know that if you can but study them, understand them better, you may be able to overcome your terror of them.

For You To Do

Describe the horrible time when the Solstice Hounds first came for you, and what happened in the aftermath of it, when those who know and love you found you once more.

Traits

Gain the Fleet of Foot (•) Merit for free, from your years of fleeing the terrible, silent beasts. When the Hounds come hunting for you, you take the Hunted Condition for a full twenty four hours starting at midnight of the day of the solstice.

Thorny Jack o'the Green

Requirements: Time •
You knew there would be wonders with your Awakening. But there was also a small part of you - a part that whispered warnings against the sins of sorcery and with meddling with unspeakable blasphemies - that there might also be horrors.

When first you saw the strange, faint scratches on the floor, you couldn't imagine what made them. Faint, oh so faint, so much as to be almost unseen. They gouged the floor in strange, writhing patterns. So, you thought to use a new trick your master had just taught you, that of seeing into the past through Time magics.

You watched in horror as the strange, sickly looking monarch - with skin like parchment and eyes like jade, wearing a cloak seemingly woven of still-living hedge briars - walked through the room when you were last in it. He towered over you, studying you as you remained blissfully aware of him. He leaned down to whisper something in your ear, and you watched as your own eyes glazed over with the unheard, but very felt, power in those words.

And then, he looked up and right at you. Not past-you, so blissfully unaware of the spindly monarch with a crown of thorns. Current-you, the you looking into the past. He raised his dead green eyes, and the past looked into you.

Now, you can't stop seeing the signs of his passage. Small things, here and there, always accompanied by the gouges that Thorny Jack leaves in his wake. One morning, you woke up to find a strange book with a wooden cover that seemed to be made of pressed and lacquered thorn-tangles, with a pair of nursery rhymes in it.

Hesitatingly, you cast your senses back to the night before, and found yourself sitting abed. Thorny Jack sat behind you, with you leaning your back against his thorn-frayed tunic, his arms wrapped around you possessively, his long spindly legs crossed so that they clutched at your own legs, his bird-like head leaned down to whisper for long hours into your ears. And ere he disappeared once more, he looked up again, to see you and to smile at you, before leaving the book next to you on the pillow.

For You To Do

• What was the strange thing that made you first investigate the gouges on the floor? Something was wrong or out of place or otherwise simply weird. Where did it happen?

Traits

• Gain the Grimoire (•) Merit for free. This is the thin sewn-together folio you discovered. It contains the rotes Peer Through the Ancient Henge (Postcognition, Time •, Empathy) and Ribbon 'Round the Wrist (Constant Presence, Time ••, Subterfuge). Others that you show it to can see it and register its existence, but they do not find it of particular interest, and promptly forget about it once it leaves their sight. When you give it, lock it, or even throw it away, it returns to your pillow every morning. You have the option of increasing this Merit through Experiences if you wish, as more rotes appear in the book over time.
• Evidence that Thorny Jack has been somewhere always triggers your Peripheral Mage Sight. Every time you encounter evidence of Thorny Jack, you take the Spooked Condition.

The Thames Ferryman

Requirements: Death •
You'll always remember that tragic day by the river. Sudden loss of life is always horrible, but there is something unhinging about watching people die and being able to do nothing about it because it happens on the river. But that's not why you'll never forget that day.

No, you'll never forget that day because it was the first time you saw the Ferryman on the Thames.

No robed and hooded Charon was this, however. No, he was a tall, gangly man, his patchy hair hidden under a tall gentleman's hat. He wore finery that might have been almost festival in its cut, but it was a grey-green patchwork color, like waterstains on fine fabric, allowed to mildew for too long.

He poled the waters in a swoop-hulled barge, a lantern glowing with a dull pewter light hung out at its nose, suspended over the dark waters of the Thames. Where that light touched the drowning and sinking, they died, and by its horrifying light you could see their souls bob free from their bodies, strain heavenward as though seeking their eternal rest before sinking beneath the black waters of the Thames which consumed them.

For You To Do

• What was the tragedy on the river that caused you to first see the Ferryman?

Traits

• Gain the Destiny (•) Merit, with the Doom of "devoured." You have the standing option of increasing this Merit through Experiences if you wish.
• Each time you witness the Ferryman or one of the signs of his presence, you gain the Disquieted Condition.