so i had an absolutely horrible (and by horrible i mean upsetting) idea today for my thw fic in regards to skuld the sorceress and im kinda torn on whether or not to do it because i dont know if i want her to be quite as evil as this would make her

so for context: skuld is a sham sorceress who tricks people into thinking she has powers, etc etc. at the point she's at in my plot, i want her to be very good at making her intelligence look like magic - so her "prophecies" will be very astute observation wrapped up in confusing language with some smoke and a trance like state for pizzazz. her "curses" might be psychological manipulation or a stealthy poisoning disguised behind mystical words. she's very willing to pull out the bells and whistles because it makes people more likely to believe her. ultimately she's an advisor but because she doesnt come from a powerful family or anything like that, she needs an in to get people to listen to her - thus, magic

i was thinking about the idea of having one of her divination practices involving haruspicy (divination through examining the entrails of a sacrificed animal) - although im not sure if her character would get her hands dirty with something like that (need to reread the comics for chracterization)...she might have someone do it for her and then observe (ok actually yes i like this)

BUT i was also thinking it would be particularly dark if the animals she were sacrificing were dragons - probably smaller and more common ones on a more regular basis (sorry, terrible terrors ) and then bigger or rarer ones before important battles

i havent made up my mind yet because i dont know if i want her to be quite this cruel , especially considering that she doesnt even believe in her own powers, so all of it is really just for show, or what she might think is a necessary evil to maintain her position of power

i also dont know how much value drago (who she's advising) would put into magic. he might have been skeptical at first but then got on board when he saw that she was right more often than not? im thinking she's spinning it as doing the will of the the gods (whose gods? uh...good question because idk what religious beliefs drago's culture may have...just...gods in general for now) maybe shes convinced him that some of the more powerful the norse gods support him and he finds some of them to be analogous to his own) abhoring the idea of humans and dragons being equals (uhh something about dragons being forces of chaos that upset order, say theyre the spawn of nidhogg or something and is dragos destiny to subdue them etc etc) and at first he's like yeah i can get behind that as a general idea - and then over time he takes the more mystical elements seriously because she's convincing

alright i think i do want to go with the order vs chaos prophecy angle. still figuring out the dragon sacrifice though