Snakecatcher Quest Party

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Characters & Companions

Alchemist
Name: Cennen

Age: 20 years old.
Appearance: A tall young man of otherwise wiry build with messy brown hair that is currently cut into a very acceptable and somewhat handsome style. Currently clean-shaven. Almost always contrives to look generally dirty or grungy in some way. His clothes lack the usual blue coloration that denotes practising alchemists, preferring to dress in shades of green and muted brown. Was obviously born a peasant but has a pleasant enough cut to his jawline to be considered fairly attractive for his kind, even if he does have a bit of a big nose.

Physique: Impressive (thanks to magic)
Resilience: High
Perception: Adequate
Speed: Regular
Charisma: Likeable

Magic:
Brand: Cennen has been branded by Hiss, creating a conduit of Art between him and her. It grants him complete immunity to all poisons and toxins, whether they be magical or non-magical in nature.

Master Alchemy: You have taken the first step upon the grandest and most dangerous tier of alchemy. You can currently produce the following effects in a brew:
-Soulmender Flask: A potion that removes all links and alterations to a soul, undoing all effects they might have. Probably not good for a snake to drink.
-Wordtheft Elixir: Works like Bloodkin or Shapestealer Brew, allows you to borrow one language from someone else who drunk of it for a day.
-Inferior Heal-All: A strong healing potion that can heal nearly any wound in time and even regrow body parts if taken for long enough but it is not as powerful as the usual master-tier Heal-All.
-Treekin: Anyone who drinks from this potion is given the soul of a plant for a day. This doesn't change them in anyway but it makes them a valid target for any effect that usually only works on plants.
-Soulsight Brew: Drinking this grants you awareness of all nearby souls.
-Serpentbane: Only affects snakes. Drinking this not only removes all links and connections to a soul like Soulmender but also breaks any wishbonds and separates a snake from their souls for an hour.
-Soul Guise: Drinking one of these per day wraps your soul in a shroud that makes it appear as any other soul. Was originally concocted with Hiss' help.
-Demorph: Drinking this potion will revert any alchemical changes to your physique.
-Major Love Potion: Drinking this compels obsession with a chosen person in the same way the minor love potion does and can last indefinitely.
-Persistence Brew: Can only be made with a lab. Drinking this renders all magical effects that ever afflict you permanent.
-Persistence Antidote: Ends all effects of the Persistence Brew.
-Antimagic Flask: Can only be made with a lab. Drinking this gives you a one-use shield against magic for the next three hours.
-Thoughtbrew: Drinking this drops you into a hallucinogenic state that can be influenced by the suggestions of others.
-Soulgrasp Brew: Drinking this lets you grasp spirits as if they were physical and tangible beings. Also allows you to perceive and touch the souls of the recently deceased.
-Hissbrew: Really more of Hiss' brew (hence the name hurr) then yours, you can't make it without her. When drunk by someone with their own venom, it turns them into a walking venom biohazard of incredible proportions.
-Soulguard Brew: Drinking this will keep your soul right where it's supposed to be and nowhere else for one hour.
-Improved Wordtheft Elixir: Works like the Wordtheft Elixir but allows you to borrow written language as well.
-Weakening Cloud: Creates a cloud of gas that vastly weakens the physical strength, speed and resilience of anything that breathes it in. It is made from the alchemist's own blood so they are unaffected.
-Defang Elixir: If someone who possesses at least one Snake Art ingests this, it disables all of their Snake Arts for a day. Only works on humans.
-Mindbalm: A potion that can help a damaged soul regrow. It can't restore lost pieces but it can allow the soul to heal and eventually become whole once more.
-Thawing Solution: Drinking this will 'thaw' out the drinker's Spiritbane if they possess one. Otherwise it will just induce a warming sensation.
-Heal-All: A strictly better alternative to your Inferior Heal-All's.
-Dispel Elixir: Anti-magic in a bottle! Destabilizes and destroys magical effects it touches.
-Danger Flask: A Snakebreaker mixed with Hiss, along with empowered venom and snake blood. Extremely dangerous.
-Snake Dispel: This brew makes a cloud that weakens and renders useless the Snake Arts of anyone who breathes it in. Only works on snakes.
-Shapeshifting Brew: Originally developed by Master Yolan, this brew lets you alter any of your physical principles for either a day or until you lose consciousness.
-Spiritbane: A special antimagic acid that dissolves a spirit's manifested body.
Soul Revelation: Your alchemical focus is based around matters of the soul and using your brews to push boundaries that have never been touched before.
-Soulbirth: A fusion between Soul Guise, Thoughtbrew and Mindbalm created in a fugue state. Brewing this potion takes many hours and if done correctly, generates a Homonculus Soul.
-Speech Elixir: A potion that works like the Wordtheft only it shares language instead of stealing it. Comes with the downside that the recipient of the language grows to look slightly like the target during the potion's duration.
-Soulshape: Dropping a soul into this brew should let it form around it as a body suiting it. Still a work in progress.
-Magetheft Brew: A potion that works like the Wordtheft only with the siphoning of individual magics instead of languages.
-Champion's Elixir: Drinking this renders your skin like steel, able to shrug off and deflect blades and other such blows. Also dulls pain to nothing at the cost of all that pain coming back once the brew wears off after several hours.
-Skinshedder Elixir: An upgrade to the Shapeshifting Brew, this potion  allows the subject to switch between their natural form and the shapeshifted form at will.
-Communion Brew: Suspending a disembodied soul within this brew and then drinking from it allows the drinker to establish a link between their souls and the transmission of mental messages.
-Stabilizer Fluid: This brew can be administered through mouth or syringe. It slows biological instability and restores any shapeshifted creature to its natural form. A supplementary note mentions that the flesh-shaping accomplished through the Stage I-V Solutions count as being the subject's new 'natural form' for the purposes of the Fluid and any other effects like it.
-Mutagenic Medicine: This brew focuses not on curing or restoring but on a more proactive healing. Heal-alls will only restore after all but that doesn't do anything if the state you're being restored to is the problem. You can't cure deformities with Heal-alls but you can with this. Moldrun notes extreme mutagenic properties as a 'side-effect' and states that it has equal effects on dead organic matter.
-Advanced Thoughtbrew: Works like the normal Thoughtbrew only it can also induce temporary alterations to the soul, allowing you to suggest new memories. The subject's mind will fill in these memories and they will last for a few hours or until the memory is properly examined, whichever comes latest.
-Soul Substitute: Not remotely a real soul but it tastes like one and helps fill the craving.
-Bramblebrew: Drinking this induces a permanent upgrade for as long as you are a plant. At a whim you will be able to adorn yourself with long thin spikes and thorns wherever you wish. They are extremely sharp.
-Tangle Elixir: Injecting yourself with this will causes a change that is permanent for as long as you are a plant, allowing you to hasten or slow your transformation as you will. You will be able to put down roots or grow additional muscle mass or prehensile branches just by thinking.
-Oakskin: This brew is permanent and as long as you are a plant, will toughen up your body as if it was carved entirely out of solid wood.
-Spiritbalm: Made with mindbalm and snake blood as its primary ingredients this brew works like Mindbalm only it can grow spirit tissue even from things that aren't technically spirits but are related (like a Bane).


Skills:

Basic Forestry: You can make a decent try at woodsmanship and living off the land.

Nobble: You gather small things about yourself often and have a surprising amount of thieving/kidnapping/disreputable ability.

Apprentice Alchemy: You can put together basic potions from things you find lying around. Stronger brews require specific ingredients however. With your current skill at Alchemy, you can produce the following effects in a brew:
- Restoration
- Small Healing
- Various Bad Smells
- Artificial Food Coloring/Flavoring
- Nonlethal Poison
- Lethal Poison
- Irritating and Obscuring Clouds
- Scents that attract animals
- Makeup and Hair Dye
- Alcohol

Journeyman Alchemy: You have started to learn the next level of brewmeistery. While you are not yet a full Journeyman Alchemist, you possess a growing mastery of your art.
-Antivenom
-Treebrew: A potent brew that helps living things grow and set down roots.
-Snake Oil: An oil concocted from snake scales. It seems to have a very intoxicating effect on snakes, requiring dilution to reach a point where it doesn't just cause sleep outright. You've promised Hiss that you won't make any more of this.
-Explosive Concoction: A brew that merely needs to be shaken heavily and then thrown to explode on impact. HANDLE WITH CARE. Currently not quite as strong as they could be.
-Acid: Flasks of acid strong enough to burn skin and carve tracks in stone if applied enough. Currently not quite as strong as they could be.
-Healing Potion: A step up from your brews of Small Healing, these things can close wounds all by themselves. They can't cure diseases but they will suppress them for a while. Needs to be taken fresh.
-Beastmaster's Brew: A variation of the Beastcall Brew you already know of. Feeding this to beasts over extended periods makes them tame and manageable.
-Identification Potion: Drinking this lets you identify one magical potion, item, spell or effect
-Souldrift Brew: An extremely magical potion that you made using snake blood, shed snakeskin and bunyip hair. Frees the soul temporarily from the body.
-Scalebane Brew: Crafted from acid and snake scales. An acid that devastates scales but has little effect on anything else.
-Snakebreaker Flask: Crafted from explosive concoctions and snake scales. Explodes in a cloud of armor-piercing shrapnel. Effective against more than just snakes.
-Dream Oil: Crafted from snake blood, snake scales and snakeskin. Intoxicates snakes and draws the soul inward.
-Potence: Crafted from Bunyip hair and healing potions, this brew gives you the strength and endurance of the bunyip for a time.
-Regen Brew: Crafted from Bunyip hair and healing potions, this grants the drink regeneration for a period but does not heal already existing wounds.
-Collapsible Potion: Crafted from shed snake-skin and drawing inspiration from Eugene's rejects, this potion can shrink any non-living object down to a very small size and weight. Giving it a good shake restores it to its normal state.
-Alteration Brew: Crafted from shed snake-skin and drawing inspiration from Master Yolan's shapeshifting brew, this potion lacks the power and permanency of the former. It can change superficial features but cannot alter height, weight, gender, species, etc. It lasts for half an hour at longest.
-Rumpleskin: Crafted from acid and shed snake-skin, this potion works on skin contact. Anyone touched by it has their skin bubbled and crinkled into harsh pebbly lumps which can quickly spread over the rest of the body. This causes immobilization and lasts for several hours unless it is cured.
-Rumpleskin Cure: Alright you never actually made this but you're pretty sure you know how to brew it anyway. It requires shed snake-skin so you don't think there's much chance of anyone else being able to come up with it.
-Bloodkin: Crafted from snake blood and human blood, this brew links the souls together of everyone who drinks from the same bottle. Lasts one day.
-Shapestealer Brew: Crafted from snake blood, human blood and shed snake-skin, drinking this lets you perfectly assume the form of anyone who has drunk from it. Lasts for one day.
-Knockout Brew: Crafted from your own Art-venom, nonlethal poison and bottled smoke, this brew produces a cloud that should knock out anyone who breathes it in save you and Hiss.
-Farsight Brew: Drinking this enhances your vision greatly during the day and allows you to see in the dark.
-Journey Brew: Hallucinogenic brew that some claim can lead to visions of greater understanding and perhaps even the Dreaming itself.
-Sun Potion: A clear liquid that can be shaken for an extremely bright and smokeless light. Favored by explorers.
-Minor Love Potion: Motivates the drinker to become obsessed with the first person they see that is sexually compatible.
-Love Potion Antidote: Cancels out the effects of Love Potions with whoever drinks it.
-Warmth Elixir: Once shook, this bottled potion starts radiating a constant stream of heat that lasts an hour.

Caster Alchemy: Just a separate category for potions related to the Caster for convenience's sake.
-Ignition Elixir: Explosive but to a much lesser degree then the Explosive Concoction and more easily funneled.

Homunculus Alchemy: Just a separate category for potions related to Homunculi for convenience's sake.
-Soulbirth: Replicate Tolemy's Second Miracle. Creates an unbodied Homunculus.
-Soulshape: Dropping a soul into this brew should let it form around it as a body suiting it. Still a work in progress.
-Anti-Spirit Recipe: Soulbirth with added Spiritbane, Soulgrasp and Soulguard
-Companion Recipe: Soulbirth with added Bloodkin, Speech Elixir, Soulguard and Soulsight.

Spiritbane: You are a mortal human who has slain a spirit, an unfallen servitor of the Creator from the Dreaming. The mark of this deed has forever been scorched onto your soul, rendering it immune to being eaten or meddled with. This soulmark is clearly visible to all spirits and cannot be disguised in any way. Pure spirits are almost always hostile towards a bearer of the Spiritbane.

Snake Lore: One would hope that you would have picked up at least some of this by now.

Plant Nature: You're technically still a plant thanks to your exposure to dangerous dandelion brews. You aren't green and you don't absorb sunlight to grow anymore, in fact, you bear no physical principles of a plant whatsoever. But deep down in your essence, you are a plant.

Standard Swordsman: You know how to use a sword well enough to be considered passably good by those professionally employed in such means.

Snake Wishes; Sarminda owes you one. She is currently bound to do whatever you tell her to and forbidden to hurt anyone or anything without your permission.


Snake Princess
Name: [Untranslatable]
"Hiss"

Age: 12 years old. This is a perfectly respectable, albeit still young, age for an adult of her people to be. She refrains from speaking of it to humans since she's figured they carry strange preoccupations on just what years mean based on their own unusually lengthy maturation cycles. Can be reasonably expected to live to several hundred years old.

Appearance: A glossy black serpent with a crimson underbelly and dark eyes. Her human form is usually that of a beautiful and elegant young noblewoman with a slender yet tastefully curved body. Her hair is jet black and is short, cut evenly just before it can reach her shoulders and her right eye is missing. Wears a glossy black jacket over a red tunic with black trousers and boots. Despite all appearances speaks with the exact same peasant accent that Cennen has. She can alter her human form to many different shapes but seems to prefer this one.

Physique: Above Average (This can change, see Magic)
Resilience: Standard
Perception: Powerful
Speed: Fast
Charisma: Professional Awful Person

Magic: Knows the following Snake Arts:
- Shed Skin: Can shed her skin to take the form of lesser beasts such as humans. Can use this to imitate anyone whose soul she has eaten.
- Hypnotic Gaze: Can hypnotize prey animals into staying still or even becoming comatose. "Prey Animals" meaning anything that is scared of her.
- Devour Soul: Once having hypnotized something, she can constrict herself around their soul and forcing them into a communal trance with her. This allows her to read through and eat their memories as well as help copy their mannerisms and emotions.
- Life's Blood: Can pluck out a half-digested soul from anyone she kills, provided she has immediately eaten some of their flesh. Helps for Shed Skin and can be used as a shield to detect as that species to magic.
- Scales: The scales of her true form are very tough and are almost impenetrable. Her human shapes are not scaled normally but she can raise her scales on any of her forms with but a thought.
- Constrictor Strength: Hiss can increase her strength in any form to a monstrous level, allowing her to overpower nearly anything.
- Soul Gullet: You have vomited up your souls and swallowed them back down again. You now have greater control of them and can access their physical skills.
- Snake Eater: Hiss can devour the souls of other snakes.
- King Cobra: Any of Hiss' Snake Arts that target humans also target snakes as well.
- Soul Kingdom: Hiss can summon up the souls within her and can regurgitate them entirely if she wishes.
- Royal Blood: If Hiss sees a Snake Art she does not yet possess, she can copy it and master it until the original owner has left her presence and for a few hours after that.
- Artskin: Hiss' scales protect her from all mortal magics. She can now not be targeted or affected by non-Snake magic as long as her scales are up. The scales themselves can still be afflicted however.
- Dragon Scales: Hiss scales protect her from elemental damage and reduces the impact of blunt impacts and falling damage to basically nothing.

Skills:

Expert Queen: People are forced to recognize and respect you, even if they don't want to. Those sworn into your service find it extremely difficult to disobey you.

Venomous: Is deadly in all her forms.

Spirit Nature: Can hear close-by prayers but has yet to directly answer one.

Snake Lore: Knows stuff. About SNAKES. Is far from the definitive authority however.

Human Lore: This skill grows slightly more advanced with every passing day.

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False Merchant
Name: Ophi / Oster

Age: 40 but doesn't look it.
False Appearance: Ophi is a large well-built man wearing shades of cream and brown who wears a wide-brimmed hat and a dirty poncho. He has dirty blonde hair and carries an air of youthfulness with him though his exact age is not immediately discernible from looking at him. He's a big guy(for you) but the way he usually carries himself helps hide that.
True Appearance: Oster is a large well-built man with a pale complexion and the mark of the Serpent King branded upon his cheek. His hair is black and curly, forming into natural ringlets down to his shoulders. He has an aquiline nose and bears an almost-permanent melancholy expression. Makes no attempts to disguise either his size or his strength.

Physique: Strong
Resilience: High
Perception: Decent
Speed: Fast
Charisma: Inherently Suspicious

Magic: Has been personally branded by the Serpent King and thus bears an aspect of his power. His is the ability to change his appearance to match that of another. Unfortunately Oster has no scales to shed nor the ability to devour and assimilate souls so his ability is instead dependent on the masks he carves himself. The masks are not inherently magical but they use a human concept that snakes are not particularly familiar with, (works of art that can capture the essence of a person) that allows him to focus his magic into bearing that semblance.

Skills:

Master Woodsman: Excellent at almost any survival-related task while in the wilds. Can move stealthily, track, hunt, forage etc.

Expert Swordsman: Has the skill of an experienced professional, someone who makes their living off the blade.

Snake Lore: He grew up in Snakehome.

Expert Interrogator: Knows several methods of torture and coercion. Usually used to pump people for secrets before taking their identity.

Good Timing: Has a knack for showing up just when it suits him best. In the same vein, has a gift for disappearing shortly before the situation becomes inconvenient. Not infallible.

Jack of All Trades: Can temporarily emulate a Basic level of any skill, provided that it is not magical.



Snake Priestess
Name: [Untranslatable]
"Aashenpreet", "Aash"

Age: 16
Appearance: A huge pale yellow python spotted with patches of slightly darker coloration. Her human form is usually that of a tall woman with brown skin and long black hair. Usually wears a dress and sari, changing colors often. Likes to wear pointed slippers, regardless of practicality. Currently restricts and makes her human form more diminutive that most constrictors and giant snakes in order to hide her true nature.

Physique: Extreme
Resilience: Durable
Perception: Standard
Speed: Average
Charisma: Friendly

Magic: Knows the following Snake Arts:
- Shed Skin: Can shed her skin to take the form of lesser beasts such as humans. Can use this to imitate anyone whose soul she has eaten.
- Hypnotic Gaze: Can hypnotize prey animals into staying still or even becoming comatose. "Prey Animals" meaning anything that is scared of her.
- Devour Soul: Once having hypnotized something, she can constrict herself around their soul and forcing them into a communal trance with her. This allows her to read through and eat their memories as well as help copy their mannerisms and emotions.
- Death Rattle: She can strike a sound that fills all nearby humans with fear, forcing them to flee.
- Growth: She is very large in her natural form, granting her increased power and the option to make unnaturally large forms with Shed Skin.
-Camouflage: Allows her to cease all movement and blend in with your surroundings no matter what form she is using.
-Sidewinder: Aashenpreet can put her prodigious strength to use in boosting her overland speed and stamina.

Skills:

Standard Priestess: Knows how to maintain shrines, how to speak to spirits, how to play and teach Tash, the appropriate veneration of Aashmid and the Compact, etc.

Compact Lore: Knows quite a lot about this, more than she often tells.


Spirit
Name: 'Rock'

Age: 136
Appearance: A small seven-legged spider roughly the size of a human hand and is made up of swirling dust and small chips of rock. Usually appears to be very fluffy and coated with soft hair. Typically intangible and very warm. Wears a magma-red halo that is fashioned out of small independent segments approximating a shattered ring. Likes to live on peoples shoulders and can drift through the air on non-existent winds.

Physique: Flimsy
Resilience: Fragile
Perception: Strange
Speed: Fast
Charisma: Fuzzy

Magic:
Halo: A segmented portal to the Dreaming that acts as a conduit to keep Rock existing. While in the Mortal Realm Rock requires this Halo to survive while manifested. Breaking her Halo will result in a sudden and irreversible failure to exist. Spirits do not have proper bodies or even souls so any destroyed in this way are gone forever. Currently Rock's manifested body is weak and does not make many demands on the trickle of energy that the Halo provides but even so, Rock has only limited time in the Mortal Realm without an additional source of energy or protection.
Invulnerability: Rock is as intangible as dust on the wind, shrouding her otherwise fragile body in a form of invulnerability that is difficult to bypass. Rock can choose to become corporeal enough to affect physical objects and to cause harm to others if she so desires while retaining her intangibility. The weakness to this approach is that she can be dispersed and scattered with enough effort. Rock may also shroud herself in a Mantle that renders her immune to all worldly harm but doing so drains a huge amount of power and shortens her lifespan here.
Soul Manipulation: Rock is greatly skilled at manipulating souls and only needs physical contact to clearly perceive a beings soul(or lack thereof). She uses a form of this for communication, etching -speech- directly into the minds of those nearby. Rock can also, upon physical contact, make a soul sleep for a short amount of time. Rock is technically capable of devouring souls for their energy (whether through human sacrifice or 'riding') but it is not inclined to do so.
Natural Magic: Rock's current manifestation is literally made of magic, relying on links of spell and Dream to give life to a being that doesn't exist. That gives her several applications of magical prowess, most of them related to the theme chosen by her form. She knows the following:
 -Magical Intuition: Rock understands the basic building blocks of Art in a very fundamental sense, allowing her to catch hold of and even subvert magical links and rituals. For example, this allows her to control magical constructs that are designed to be controlled but gives her no influence over those that are autonomous. She has most influence over 'freestanding' magic that is out in the open and significantly less so over magic bound into objects like wizardly reservoirs or alchemical brews.
 -Earth Manipulation: Rock can exert control over the rock, dust and sand of the Mortal Realm in line with her Domain. Her control and manipulation of such is limited to her skewed perception. She mostly uses it for small tricks and to build herself bigger and sturdier bodies when she needs them. She can use it for more large-scale operations but risks taxing her Halo energy in order to do so. There is no upper limit to this ability, provided that Rock is provided with the energy required. It bears similarity to the kind of powers deployed by the first spirits when they helped shape the world.
 -Ethereal Burrowing: A subset of Earth Manipulation, Rock can transmit her Halo briefly through stone and earth and remake herself on the other side. This allows Rock to move around quickly and stealthily if she desires but she cannot take anyone else with her without significant harm.

Skills:

Immortal Dreamcrafter: Rock is an exceptional dreamcrafter, able to claim and hold a Domain despite having no allies or being a member in any faction.
          -Domain: Suzerain of the Mountain

Spirit Nature: Rock can both hear and answer prayers as well as being able to use them to determine locations and to learn things about the supplicant.

Mortal Lore: Rock's understand of mortals and their short yet beautiful lives is a flawed one but she is always looking to expand it. Was initially limited to only mortal magic but was jumpstarted when Cennen taught her what it meant to die. Can tell mortals apart quite well due to the differences in their souls but still has trouble identifying things like height, gender, ethnicity and basic physical form.