Spill the beans on Black Raven! Spill the beans! Spill the beans!
(in regards to this ask game)
You are going for the THROAT, my friend.
Black Raven is the working title for a truly old, deeply teenage angst inspired power fantasy I haven't actively worked on in quite some time. It's based on me and my older sibling. It came to me in a dream. It's so old that I wrote it in German, okay, which should tell you something about how deeply I cringe when I have to go back through the earliest parts.
But it's also... kind of cool?
Explanation of magic system and my fucked up birdgirl of a protagonist under the cut.
First of all, there's the magic system. Creating new spells is a lifetime effort: They're personal things, confined to the bearer. They're also weak, powered only by the emotions and dedications of one person. But - upon the bearer's death they do get passed on. That's when they get stronger.
Noble families have Spells that have been passed on through countless generations. They're powerful and unwieldy and highly regulated. Lesser families might have developed a spell of their own: they can develop spontaneously, but they rarely reach the kind of strength that is cultivated in a family with preparatory studies and passing-on ceremonies.
It is possible - if dangerous - to hold multiple spells at once. They interact with each other in unpredictable ways, and can rip away your humanity as easily as make you stronger. It is therefore highly illegal.
It is also possible - if difficult - to force someone to pass their Spell on to you. If you are the only person present at their death, well. Who else could it go to? It might not work as well as a proper ritual, but it does work.
And there is one surefire way to ensure that setup, isn't there? You just have the one who kills them.
Unsurprisingly, being a Spellripper is even more illegal than just holding multiple spells. Of course, those who make a career out of it tend to do both.
Second, there's my certified little freak of a protagonist. Care's parents died young and she was raised mainly by her sister; until Aria was offered a job for which she had to leave the country. We know Aria only agreed to it because it gave Care the opportunity to go to school. We also know that that did not work out as well as they thought.
Fast forward by ten to fifteen years. Care is a quiet student of thaumaturgy; known to be a commoner whose family came into money late in her life. She rents a room from an old lady outside of Campus, who has decided to give the clearly anxious girl as much family time as she possibly can. When that lady figures out that Care's missing sister is the famous singer Ariadne, she tries to get the sisters to reconnect.
The problems, in order, are these:
Aria feels incredibly guilty about having ever left Care behind, and vows to take her along this time.
Now she feels incredibly guilty about keeping secrets.
This would be because Aria's work as a singer is only a cover. She was actually scouted as a spy all those years ago.
Care is very well aware of this.
Aria doesn't know that Care knows about it though.
She also doesn't know that Care ran away from school as a mere teen, turning instead from petty thievery to serious burglary, to full on Spellripping.
Or that at some point throughout this, Care was actually caught by the city's government, and force pressed into working for them.
marty and otto’s dynamic in this fic is buckwild. marty is like, this new scientist is an asshole but if i push the right buttons i can train him to be a good enough person for me to fuck him. im going to enchant this man with my knowledge of OSHA and the flat cadence to my voice. and otto is like. this tiny woman scares me so fucking bad and i need to look SO cool around her. im going to see if being an asshole helps
theyre going to become better people eventually but rn the toxicity is off the charts and so fun to write
establishing that my main characters are gay in the most ridiculous way possible (one is seduced by a hot pirate woman and gets all her stuff stolen, the other proceeds to seduce the hot pirate woman and manipulate her into giving the shit back)