Enigmatic Magic

Enigmatic Magic Lulamoon
Half-Changeling Warlock [Mage/Necromancer]
HW: 5/5
Combat Talent: Face-Stealer; automatic spell recharge 4: The mage may take the visible appearance and basic Racials from any being she has in her form library. When she does so she may also form clothing of any complexity, variety, or mundane material to cover the new form. Clothing produced by this spell is fully real and provides any benefit ordinary clothing of that type would, but dissolves within minutes of being removed or when Facestealer is recast. The mage may add any intelligent sapient being between the size of a breezie and a young dragon to her form library by successfully using Lifestream upon them, or by convincing the target to voluntarily give her their form. This replaces Changeling Shapeshifting.

Noncombat Talent: Witch's Broom; spell; passive: The mage may use any Flight racial she possesses even while in forms lacking wings, provided she has a broom to ride.

Racials: Changeling Shapeshifting [Face Stealer], Changeling Flight, Enthrall
Skills: Witch's Broom, Unholy Elementalist, Magic Bolt, Homing Magic, Lifestream

Form Library:
-True Form
-Young Female Unicorn Student [Primary Disguise] [Telekinesis, Natural Catalyst]
-Old Male Unicorn Teacher                        [Telekinesis, Natural Catalyst]
-Young Male Unicorn Teacher                      [Telekinesis, Natural Catalyst]
-Young Female Breezie                            [Breezie Flight, Tiny]
-Oisin Everfree                                  [Woodscraft, Antlers or Longhorn?]

Enigma's Personal Inventory:
-Prothorax' Magic Wand [Catalyst]: She wears a magic wand at her waist that is capable of flipping between a small bar and a full length pronged wand.
-Broom: She has two brooms upon which she flies, one built for comfort she bought herself and one issued by Von Aether to students of the witchcraft course. She usually carries one of these with her.
-Clothing: Usually conjured by her magic, but she keeps some outfits on hoof regardless. She keeps several pairs of back-up glasses on hoof, even though her magic is capable of producing them.

Saddlebag or Satchel:
-Paper+Quill+Ink
-Books [One or two, varies, never her Grimoire]
-Water Canteen
-Food [typically only one small meal, as she's been rarely seperated from her wagon]

Enigma's Wagon [Oisin's Aravel]: Enigma travels in a fairly large gypsy-like wagon that is probably much more comfortable then whatever the other Migrants are traveling in. It was built by Oisin in the form of an aravel. Its back is a bed that is seperated from the rest of the wagon by a hanging curtain, beneath which is a chamber holding her chest. The rest of the wagon includes a foldout desk, a chair, and a sink [it drains water from a wooden tank, and the drain simply leads out the bottom of the wagon]. On the wall are hooks for both her brooms. The wagon carries a tent for Oisin's use, though he sleeps within the wagon when it rains.

Fireproof+Waterproof Locked Chest:
-Prothorax' Grimoire
-A record player and several vinyl records
-Telescope and Star Charts
-Most of her books and a year's worth of college work.

Supply Chest:
-Paper+Quills
-Lanterns [Electrical or Oil, one hung by the outside entrance, one for use inside]
-Cooking Supplies/Cutlery/Tea Kettle/Food [Amongst other things, spices, sugar, tea, wine, coffee, saltpork, and beer, most of which are in low supply by the time they arrive in Thedas]
-Equestrian Fashion Magazines
-Broom Repair Supplies
-Mortar+Pestle [Other Alchemical Supplies]
-Clothing [Only a few outfits, she produces most with magic]
-Laundry Supplies
-Equestrian Bits [Also in low supply by the time they arrive in Thedas]

Character Description:
Enigma is mysterious, illusive, subtle, of low cunning, steely in expression, quick to anger, noble in bearing, predatory in desire, alien in outlook, deep in knowledge, obsessed with status and wealth, desirous of fitting in and being accepted, ignorant of the world.

Enigma is an alien. She is a shapeshifting insect who spent the majority of her life underground and the rest in a vast snowy tundra. She grew up among a people obsessed with status, luxury, and knowledge. A people ruled by factions of hypercompetive mages led by centuries-old monstrous elders, who together formed a decadent nobility. A people with wildly different ideas about society, family, friendship, culture, and economy. A people who preyed upon ponies for nourishment, and who viewed their prey alternatively with hatred and fascination. Her entire roleplay should be built upon and informed at every level by the fact she is not merely a pony with a different philosophy, she is a vampiric alien.

She possesses an in-depth but possibly slightly antiquated education. She can read and write in several languages, has a deep knowledge of minerals, metals, and gemstones, of herbs, plants, fungi and their chemical and alchemical properties, of the stars and planets and their movements, of geometry and mathematics, anatomy, taxonomy and magical beasts, the history and folklore of the Changelings [and a much shallower knowledge of that of other peoples], and especially of the theory and practice of magic.

She is an initiate in and practioner of the Mysteries of Metamorphosis, the complex religious-philosophy of the Changeling Magi that teaches spiritual illumination and personal transformation through the practice of magic.

She has a great admiration for beauty, both mare-made and natural, and the desire for and enjoyment of beautiful things guides many of her lesser motives. She has a very intense interest in music, especially baroque classical music, and keeps a mana-powered record player in her wagon in a waterproof fireproof chest [along with other important personal effects] as a prized possession. In similiar fashion she has a strong interest in fashion and brought several Equestrian fashion magazines with her on the Migration.

Her primary disguise is very beautiful, drawing the attention of others despite her conservative manner of dress. Her body language is perfectly graceful, she carries herself with poise and posture, and every little action she takes from sipping tea or lying in bed looks rehearsed and posed. If long studied it becomes uncanny, as regards of circumstance, whether dirited, disheveled, injured, or weary she never stops being graceful. All her motions are the result of someone whose been tortured for years into returning to the exact same sets of elegant poses for walking, eating, drinking, reading, relaxing. If seen only occassionally it is only very elegant, but long analysis makes it feel inequine, unnatural, as it becomes understood she never isn't graceful.

Enigma finds ponies unusual, alternatively disgusting and fascinating. She might write reports on them and their strangeness, or draw pictures of them.

She is exceptionally polite, well-mannered, and sophisticate, refers to everypony by their proper titles [even if she despises them or they ask her to be more casual].

Enigma will not willingly violate a sworn oath. While she is willing to lie in most other cases, if she makes a formal vow she would rather die than break it. The sacredness of the sworn Oath is held by all Changelings, even those most debased and distant from tradition. She is unaware this view isn't held by all peoples, and if anyone ever swore an oath and broke it [even if the Oath wasn't to her] she would disregard that person as the most loathsome and foul of enemies. Among the Changeling, Oathbreaker is a worse epithet then traitor or murderer, it is to violate their most sacred law. The Changeling do not break their word once they have bound it with an oath.

She has the instincts of a solitary predator and enjoys stalking, cornering and ripping the life from someone. She can 'sense' the love coming off of ponies and is often aware the people she's talking to are food. She enjoys the ring of battle for much the same reason, the visceral pleasure of killing, the catharsis of indulging her predatory instinct, the rush of using her magic.

Motivations:
She is a student at Von Aether, Canterlot's premiere magical university. As the school was the first place to give her positive recognition, she holds a sincere desire to fulfll her duty to the Migration by upholding the school's reputation. She is attached to the Migration by letter of recommendation from Von Aether with the tactit approval of Princess Twilight, to act as the leadership's advisor on any strange magical phenomena encountered. It is her duty to ensure the Migration isn't undone by poorly understood foreign magic, and thus her primary initial motive is acting as a kind of 'occult detective', though she will also accept nearly any other order the leadership issues. Her loyalty to Von Aether could develop into a loyalty [or disdain] towards Mitternacht von Aether himself.

She grew up in poverty and spent most of her life envying and craving the life of the leisured aristocrats and academics who together formed the upper class of the Northern Ice Hive. Now that she is herself a mage one of her highest priorities is being able to live like one. Expensive teas, cakes, spices, fine foods, wines and spirits, satin or silk bedding, luxurious living arrangements are all at the top of her desire and she is easily motivated by the promise of wealth and luxury. She also enjoys the lifestyle of aristocracy, musical performances, fancy artwork, galas and the like and would seek to attend such things.

She was born of very low social status and without natural talents, and in addition to the wealth of the upper class she seeks the respect and admiration of one. She desires greatly to fit in, to be accepted and admired and the promise of recognition [if by the right people and with no higher desire in mind] could motivate her. She has however no ambitions of nobility and little desire for fame as such. It is this motivation that causes her to have a sense of duty towards

She is a magus in the Changeling tradition, an initiate into the Mysteries, and as such her highest duty [in theory] is the discovery/recovery of True Magic. True Magic is not an precise term, it refers to any magic capable of violating the laws of magic. Time travel, true resurrection, long-distance teleportation, the ability to create souls or intelligence from nothing, travel to other worlds or their creation, lesser magics on a scale exceeding the norm or any other feat that would cause an educated mage to dismiss stories of it as absurd would all qualify as True Magic and rumors and legends of such things would draw her like a moth to flame. Whether the ability to perform True Magic is due to lost magical knowledge, a potent artifact, or some other cause is not known to myth and Enigma would follow any lead even remotely promising to unearth the legendary lost magic of antiquity.

Ignorance:
To Enigma all social interactions are transactional or based in a shared duty to the existing social unit [the hive, the Migration, Equestria, etc]. She interacts with people by first determining their social status, comparing it to her own, and adjusting her conduct accordingly. She is very status conscious and has little concept of friendship or fraternization. The closest she comes to understanding this is shared cultural pursuits such as dances, operas, and banquets. The idea of 'hanging out' would be alien to her.

Enigma has no concept of family. The mere words 'father', 'mother', 'sister', 'brother' would be unknown to her, and once the meaning is explained she would not fully understand that to ponies that is the primary unit of social organization, that those of close blood live 'together' in the same 'house'. Enigma also has no concept of romance. Reproduction is a sexless formality among her kind and Lowborn females [and Thinbloods such as herself] do not typically reproduce.

Enigma doesn't understand the idea of private real estate. Among the Changeling the hive belongs to the hive, and its use is alloted by the nobility. Much of the hive is left unclaimed and new tunnels and chambers are frequently made with no oversight, and among the lower classes tunnels often pass through chambers that form the private dwellings of one or more insects. In practice she would not understand that in a human city each building is exclusively by a single person or family, that it is not lawful to travel upon privately held land, or that people other then the rich can reasonably demand privacy in their dwellings and articles. She would know to announce herself upon entering someone's domicile, that it is not lawful to take others possessions, and the powerful do not tolerate those who come to them uncalled for.

The only environments Enigma has seen are those the Migration has passed through. She has never seen a desert or the sea. She spent most of her time underground and is mildly uncomfortable under open sky.

She is completely ignorant of the varieties of food on the surface, as she lived on a very simple subsistence diet in the Northern Ice Hive.

She is generally ignorant of anything outside of her experiences in the Hive unless she read about it in a book.

Abridged History:
She is a Thinblooded [half-breed] Changeling from the Northern Ice Hive, a gigantic Changeling hive in the very far north that has preserved its numbers and culture through its extreme isolation. The Northern Ice Hive is built into a mountain, carving its way through the icy rock like the world's largest anthill. The hive's bottom layer is an abandoned underground metropolis known as the Depths, above this is a frozen hell of tunnels known as the Old Hive, and above this is a vast palace-city-complex known as the Spires. The Depths are the former hive center abandoned after a disaster centuries ago, the Old Hive where the majority of Changelings live, the Spires the Versaille-esq home of the nobility and magi.

Enigma's lack of skill in shapeshifting and lowly heritage doomed her to poverty until a Changeling noblewoman named Lady Hemalytra decided to send her to school in the Spires in hopes she could become a magus. Despite years of effort she showed no talent in magic. The theoretical aspects she grasped readily, with considerable intellect, but she showed no ability to cast spells at all. When she failed her final exam in front of the Queen, she fled into the Depths where she lived for several years 'I Am Legend'-ing through the abandoned historical city, living in the lost laboratory of a dead mage named Prothorax. Armed with his grimoire and his painful and difficult techniques for increasing one's mana and one's control over it she eventually learned many of his spells. She considers herself his inheritor and hopes to prove that claim by going out into the world and discovering True Magic, the holy grail/philosopher's stone of magic. Magic capable of violating the Laws of Magic.

Now capable of a limited but highly resilient form of shapeshifting, she stole the identity of a girl in a college in Canterlot hoping to use the college to access the Canterlot caves. She is discovered by Princess Twilight who [unknown to Enigma] has pity on her, gives her a position at the college and attaches her to the Migration to get rid of her. Enigma summons a powerful familiar by the name of Oisin Everfree, the man in whose honor the forest is named, and is assigned to the Migration as the resident expert on non-Equestrian magic.

Her Cover:
She is Enigmatic Magic Lulamoon, age 20, a college student from Canterlot.

She is attached to the Migration by recommendation of Von Aether with the heavily implied approval of Princess Twilight Sparkle to serve as as the resident expert on all unexplained magical phenomena. If the Migration encounters anything uncanny she is to investigate and either recommend suggested action or if possible deal with the matter herself. She is qualified to do this because she was technically given a faculty position at the school, the Chair of Foreign Magic, the resident expert on magic outside the Unicornian-Starswirlian [Equestrian] tradition.

She was awarded this title because she was taught Changeling magic by a Changeling mage while living among the Changelings, a story that is supposed to sound very suspect but not immediately grounds for disbelief, as most ponies with a background in magic assume that Changeling shapeshifting is based on an innate racial gift and cannot be learned without it, and know Changelings do not typically trust or work with ponies, let alone letting one live in their hive like Jane Goodall. The story is supposed to sound remarkable, and slightly suspicious for those with a background in magic, but not immediately falsifiable [especially since the story is verified by none other then the Princess]. As supposedly the first person in modern history to live among the Changeling, she would be perceived as a strange mixture of Jane Goodall and Marco Polo, a window into a foreign race or culture into which very little is known for certain as they typically imprison or kill anyone unfortunate enough to stumble upon their lairs. She would be mildly famous, in a turn of the century academic sense.

As far as the Migration leadership knows she is nothing more or less then a unicorn prodigy with a remarkable [if possibly suspicious] background, notable primarily for her unusual and curiosity provoking expertise, her beauty, and the fact she represents an undesirably high amount of help from a country whose rule and institutions they are trying to escape. Still, not willing to look a gift horse in the eye when dangerous poorly understood magic could easily sink the entire expedition the Migration leadership welcomes her to her post. She's spent the three months in transit staying away from the other Migrants unless called upon for duty and parking her wagon as close to the outer ring of the encampment as possible, mainly to avoid any unnecessary social gaffs and to keep Oisin from making a scene or revealing himself before they're safely through the jungle.

Changeling Lore: The following is selections of Changeling lore, mythology, and anatomy as it holds for My Little Age of Dragons [subject to approval and revision].

Universal Lore: The following statements hold true for all Changeling hives [barring actual subspecies with different anatomies]
1) Changelings can consume normal food [including meat] but get no nutritional value from it.
2) Changelings live purely off of love and water [except Thinblooded who require normal food and love].
3) Love energy is an emotion-colored life energy or mana with various tastes based on emotional context.
4) Changelings are naturally long-lived, living roughly twice as long as ponies, Queens living even longer.
5) Changelings do not practice marriage or have sex. The Queen and upper-class females lay eggs which are fertilized externally.
6) They are capable of such in an appropriate disguise however, though they have no inherent instinct towards it.
7) Changelings are born from eggs, hatch into larvae, enter a pupal stage around age 4 or 5, then emerge as nymphs [colts and fillies].
8) Most Changelings never leave their hives and have limited knowledge of the outside world. Only a select type [Infiltrators] do.
9) Changeling occupations are tied to specific shapeshifting techniques related to the occupation in question.
10) All but the smallest Changeling hives capture pony captives to use as a persistent food supply, feeding upon them repeatedly, releasing them only years later [if ever].
11) Changeling half-breeds are extremely rare, and are caused when a Changeling female mates with a pony while shapeshifted, laying an already fertilized egg, only about 10% of which are valid.
12) These are referred to as Thinblooded, not as 'half-Changelings'. They are viewed as diluted or watered down or mongrelized Changelings, not as 'half-pony'.
13) Changeling Queens are not born, they are the result of 'promotion' from lesser nobility through a magical-biological process.

Traditional Lore: The following statements may or may hold true for a given modern hive, but were nearly universal in antiquity and the medieval period. They represent the traditional Changeling high culture, and the further a modern hive has fallen from them the more Enigma would regard them as 'rustic'. Even an otherwise civilized hive, if far developed or removed from the culture of the old high kingdom, would be regarded as hillbillies or barbarians by Enigma, the 'wood elves' to the ice hives' 'high elves'.
1) Changeling society is organized through the Title system, in which profession, social role, and certain privileges and duties are bound into a 'Title' which is received by a process of Initiation involving apprenticeship to one owning that Title [or to a superior].
2) Changeling Mages refer to themselves more commonly by the antiquated Magus [plural: Magi], follow a complex pseudoreligious philosophy known as the Mysteries of Metamorphosis, and obsess over the discovery of True Magic a concept that simply means 'Magic capable of violating the rules of magic, such as you can't create Mana from nothing and you cannot raise the dead or go back in time'.
3) While most Magi are not Nobility, Nobility is only selected from those initiated into the Mysteries [that is, Magi].
4) While they lie freely in any other circumstance, Changelings do not violate a sworn Oath under any circumstances.
5) Antiquated euphemisms such as The Changing Folk, the Kindly Ones, the Gentry, the Good Folk, and other flattering pseudonyms are at least as commonly used as the  modern 'Changeling' to refer to their species by members of a traditional hive.

Historical Lore: The following statements hold true for all hives as matters of history, though of modern ponies only historians likely know the full details [and then, only from their own side of things]
1) At the time of the founding of Equestria, Changeling hives were far more potent, numerous, and traditional in culture then in the present. Early ponies regarded the Changeling [who wielded powerful magic, dwelled in wild untamed places, and usually appeared in beautiful disguises] as a capricious, beautiful Fair Folk who toyed with or helped ponies as often as they captured them.
2) Equestrian colonization of the continent brought war with the hives which led to a gradual shift in pony views of the insects from a cultured faerie race to horrific vampiric monsters with no goals other then draining ponies of their love.
3) The hives were united in a loosely confederated 'unified kingdom' from earliest lost antiquity to several hundred years after the founding of Equestria, when the last High Queen of the Changelings [Mesothorax] was defeated in the Last War of Broken Promises. Many, if not most of the modern Queens trace descent from Mesothorax.

Northern Ice Hive Lore: The following are statements Changelings from other hives would likely know of the Northern Ice Hive.
1) The Northern Ice Hive is one of the largest Changeling hives remaining in the world, both by total size and by population. It is also among the oldest [if not outright the oldest still standing].
2) The Northern Ice Hive is one of, if not the, most traditional of the Changeling hives. Its culture cleaves very closely to that of Changelings in antiquity and the medieval period. This is due to its extreme isolation which has protected it and its historical records and cultural relics from destruction. Many other Changeling hives been destroyed and rebuilt multiple times [or destroyed and rebuilt elsewhere] or been exposed to more foreign influences.
3) Its extreme isolation means even relatively few 'nearby' hives have much contact with it, to say nothing of those anywhere near Equestrian population centers. Its Queen is named Elytra.
4) In short they would regard it as a vast and ancient capital of their kind, but very far out of the way and not relevant to modern affairs. In like fashion to ancient cities like Rome or Jerusalem, its a place more noteworthy for its historical value than anything occurring lately. Unlike those cities however, they likely don't know much about it beyond the above.

Equine Knowledge: Ponies have little knowledge, let alone interaction, with the Changeling hives. Most of the remaining hives are located in secluded locations and gather food from very far away to feed the hive. They are viewed as nightmarish vampires who steal away the innocent to hold for years in a horrific existence. Any residue of the old view of beautiful but capricious 'people of the wild' is largely lost except among the most rural ponies who still superstitiously flatter the 'Good Folk'. Equine understanding of the insects is filled with misunderstandings, demonization, and centuries of paranoia, and there is nothing resembling an academic understanding of how the bugs view themselves let alone a diplomatic contact. In this respect Enigma [as regards her cover] is like a Spanish explorer bringing back news of the New World to an audience with little context and fewer facts to refute anything she says of the strange foreigners.

Changeling Religion and Folklore: Changelings believe the green flame-like energy that surrounds them when they shapeshift are their souls reshaping their bodies, and view the ability as proof they are superior to other races who are imprisoned in a single form. As such they symbolize the spirit with green fire and their highest religious concept is 'the Flame', the cosmic principle of transformation, social order and inviolable truth. According to myth the Changeling folk-hero Prince Archid the Many-Hooved stole the knowledge of the Flame from the gods granting the insects the power to change their shape as well as most of their early social structures and cultural norms. The Flame is simultaneously the souls within all intelligent beings, the reification of their social organizations, and the imagined wellspring from which they descend to be born and return at death in endless transmigration. It is not a god, but rather a kind of natural law or force of nature. Compare the Chinese Tao or Egyptian Ma'at, or the Qunari Qun or Dwarvish Stone for non-theistic cosmic forces of moral law.

Changeling folklore acknowledges various divinities, but worships none of them. In most Changeling myths the gods are distant celestial functionaries who exist only to be gotten the better of by the various trickster-heroes who form the true focus of such tales. They are almost without exception viewed as foreign or alien to the Changeling, and while rarely hostile they are usually an obstacle the folk-hero must overcome in order to secure her hive, capture her prey, or otherwise fulfill her duty. Changeling folklore is less a strict canon and more a vast collection of 'faerie tales' of often questionable history meant to demonstrate important truths, justify Changeling social organization, or explain or justify historical events with great dramatization. The earliest of these myths chronicle the life of Prince Archid, the Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and how he carved a place for the Changing Folk in the world through tricking, deceiving, and overcoming vastly more powerful foes with his wit. His enemy was the very remote Beetle the All-Maker who rolled up the world, who appears in myths as the good-natured but very remote and distant antagonist of Archid. In most such myths Archid's life or the life of the people is interrupted or Archid's pride is wounded by some act or another of Beetle's, and Archid attempts to get the better of him. Archid wins, but it is typically revealed Beetle let him win or was otherwise amused by the Many-Hooved's antics. The myths end with the Prince realizing Beetle is his friend, and that it is Archid who makes necessary trouble for himself on behalf of the people through his belligerence.

Changelings have no temples or priests and say no prayers, and express their 'faith' primarily through their sense of duty to the hive and Queen which together embody the sacred order and through the telling and retelling of faerie tales. Mages from traditional Changeling hives form the exception to this rule, practicing the Mysteries of Metamorphosis, an esoteric occult mystery religion that teaches personal transformation and enlightenment through the practice of magic and a complex many-layered reinterpretation of the concept of the Flame inspired by Platonist and Hermetic thought.