Leliel

Apologies for the late post, I had a vacation.

Would dockworkers be able to help with analyzing shipping?

Corrected.

Is cool!

Talking to him sounds good.

Venni is going to advocate heist-style; he doesn't trust police. That's him though - on my end, heist-style seems less likely to be gummed up.

I vote for #5, for the sake if closeness.

5 is something Venni can help with given his union link, but he'd be fine in 6.

Fair enough! Could get Venni's mother in if we need a fallback. Or invoke a Path.

Indeed.

I believe so, yes.

Was actually waiting for someone to make a successful roll in case I needed to cast another spell. Basically, you spend successes on damage versus stunts, after Defense is subtracted from is; one success=one damage, but you can spend successes equal to the opponent's Stamina to knock him down, which is what I'm assuming you want. Since I created a spell pool to subdue him, you also have 2 Enhancements - bonus successes, so you actually have a pool of 6 successes to spend, before Defense is subtracted. You can also Empty the Clip, sacrificing the rest of your ammo for 1 more Enhancement.

Divination Technique (Saints and Monsters). I call out an action, and create a pool of Enhancements that people can draw on to roll attempting that action. Since I rolled two successes on the spell, you can add up to two Enhancements before it runs out (technically, each individual draw can only draw up to three at once, but since I'm under the limit anyway, that's not an issue).

Did we just win? It seems like it, but the post implies the cultists are still up.

Same!

Fair. I was waiting for someone to interact with.

Okay! While I had Elias as being a bit less skeptical of Venni, I can't help but see him as someone who is willing to accept superstitions and possible supernatural abilities when dealing with someone who clearly isn't a cult leader and avoids abusing people who trust him. His divination could be just as much a natural instinct for educated guessing as it is seeing the future.

Me, of course.

Up and ready, I think!

So, I got Venni done a couple days ago, brainstorming connections. I can see him as someone who has talked with anyone in the Band who has dealt with the lower classes fairly, he's a bit of a living urban legend and known for "You got weird problems? Call up Sokolov Bakery, they can help."

Got him done, minus derived stats!

Concept: Forest witch who became a political agitator in college.   Origin: Heir to Witchcraft The Zubikhas are an old clan for whom Sorcery is their business - diviners, mostly, but to be frank they've become so intertwined with the hidden world that they understand the public one largely academically. Which they are good at, but one always gets a sense of talking with a curious stranger when meeting someone raised among them, even if they've been in town their whole life. Venni is a bit more down to earth than his family, but he still see things in terms of politics and economics...which also means he's one the least racist and sexist persons you could ever meet, he's aloof enough and experienced in the dead to know that at their core, we're all human. Just don't ask him about nobility and inherited wealth.   Skills: Empathy, Persuasion, Survival (Tertiary) Connections: Extended Family, Eastern European Emigrants, Scholars Who Recognize His Clan   Society: Well-Educated Union Rep and Revolutionary (Related to Saint) Veniamin is something of a black sheep in his family due to his practical, massively pragmatic nature, but it wasn't bad - they just realized he wasn't one who would enjoy being the cunning man in the woods you go to for advice and solving the curses of other sorcerers. No, he was an urban creature, one of the middle classes, and desired the Scholomance for the education. To help him, his family pulled on some strings for him to attend a university in a local lord's last name, where he met a few early Communists who promptly enthralled him - and he became aware of just how much of a terrible leader Nicolas II was, along with the stupidity of divine right. He jumped into socialism with both feet, but unlike too many of his contemporaries, Venni is willing to accept movement and partial victory - he quickly became something of a union representative even as he settled into his mother's "specialty shop", quietly advising strikers and workers on the best ways to resist and get rights - and since cracking the art of Summoning, also helping with security.   Skills: Academics, Culture, Leadership (Primary) Connections: Old Classmates and Professors, Leftist Political Movements, Labour Unionists   Role (Pantheon): Necromantic Family Business There has always been a cynical edge to the Zubikhas' role in their community, and its transferred to their branch families; they're good at what they do, and they expect to paid for it, or at least respected. They aren't heartless, they're prone to charity when genuinely touched or faced with someone who needs their expertise but can't pay, but a la fairy tales, rudeness and entitlement is a good way to have a curse laid on your head. They're artisans of magic, and they expect to be treated as such - quite literally, as zagovory is a craft that relies somewhat on poetry and singing, prayer is simply an aspect of that. Now that several branches are in the United States, they've opted to not change what ain't broke and opened "curiosity shops" that are entirely deliberately unsubtle places for the occult-interested to look into magic, and potential blessings. As far as his official job goes, Venni is a cashier, accountant, and translator for his mother, the official owner of their new backery business (under her long-dead husband's name of course - it's so convenient when you can seance a signature if needed), and his primary teacher in sorcery, with the younger of his two sisters (his twin, actually) being the cook (and no, she doesn't do gingerbread houses - they're not that cliche).   Skills: Integrity, Occult, Subterfuge (Secondary) Connections: Customers, Antiquarians, Local Supernatural Community   Short-Term Deed: Find a full grimoire so as to not have to rely on cribbed notes and oral lore from his mom.   Long-Term Deed: Start a sorcerer's apprenticeship with someone part of the labor unions he assists (Society)   Skills   Academics 3 (Mathematics), Culture 3 (Political Literature), Leadership 3 (Inspiring Rhetoric)   Integrity 2, Occult 3 (Eastern European Occultism), Subterfuge 2   Empathy 2, Persuasion 3 (The Voice of Reason), Survival 1   Technology 1   Attributes:   Favored Approach: Power   Mental (Primary): Intellect 5, Cunning 3, Resolve 4   Social (Secondary): Presence 4, Manipulation 2, Composure 3   Physical (Tertiary): Might 3, Dexterity 3, Stamina 1   Workings   Motif: Zagovory (Through prayer, poem, song, and faith, I may shape the sound of the world's being into enchantments.), Necromancy (By wielding pieces of corpses and the remains of those passed on, I can command dead spirits to perform magic.)   Source of Power: Prohibition (Cannot break the letter of a promise, of any kind, and must make it clear he is refusing a promise when he doesn't want one.)   Divination: Read the Signs, Synchronicity, Pronouncement   Summoning: Familiar Spirit, Evocation, Forces of Nature   Callings (Sainted Sorcerer)   Leader, Saint, Sage   (All one dot due to him being a full Sorcerer)   Virtues   Found [ ] [ ] [*] [ ] [ ] Wayward   Knacks:   Leader: Captain of Industry   Saint: It Is Not In Heaven   Sage: Office Hours   Paraphernalia (Birthrights)   Tooth-Knife (Relic ***): It's said that any practitioner of zagovory needs a full set of teeth to fully embody the life force and voice that is needed for their magic, but if a few are missing, a knife can substitute. This knife has a tooth knocked out from an ancestor who died with all of his, infused with his knowledge, although Venni still has all his teeth, and has his ancestral knowledge of how to speak to everything in it. (+1 Enhancement to Sorcery rolls, Boon: Dvoeverie Innate Power)   Dockworkers Union (Followers ***): By this point, a lot of the local work unions are aware the strange, spirited Russian has a bit of power beyond mere charisma - and they want that on their side. It helps that what spread the rumors initially were a group of Pinkertons who were amassing for a massive break suddenly vanishing for a few days and then reappearing with no clothes but soiled underwear, pale as sheets, and suddenly very sympathetic to the plight of immigrants (after they were coaxed out of a church). So they help him out, especially when he needs heavy lifting for larger rituals and schmoozing out potential "acquisitions" he needs. (Heavy, Tags; Entourage Archetype, Group, Helpful)   Mama (Guide *): Aglaya Sokolov is far more of a mystic than her son, and recognized his suddenly burgeoning talent as a connection to the Gods and their natures, as well as a growing sense of his own connection to Rod. So if anything she's become more involved with him, and is surprisingly hard to avoid for an old woman who is notoriously bad with English (or given how she is a skilled diviner, maybe not that surprising). (Asset Skill: Culture, Guide Stunt (1-3 successes): Gain an Enhancement equal to successes spent to the next roll you make in the current session while taking an action that slides you away from the center of your Virtue track.)

Okay, got Venni's backstory up. I realized that someone who is that much of a spirited Communist is probably also a Saint, with his Found Virtue advocating direct action, Wayward compromise and accepting frustration. I do not plan on him being political all the time, he's more than willing to hear out anyone who has a premise of "protect innocents"; that indicates they aren't completely heartless. It's just that he sees capitalism as feeding a very dark strain of magic as well as a brutal system, so for him, it ties into his magical style as "emissaries of the workers willing to serve their class beyond death." EDIT: He's heavily based on an indie game called The Hammer And Stake, for the record - Communist Idealists Versus Dracula, essentially.

Image Spoiled For Size: Show this Illustration by deWitteillustration Name: Veniamin Sokolov Yulinovich (goes by "Venni" for short) Pantheon: Bogvoi God: None directly, though he invokes Veles a lot. Is a Saint and a Sorcerer. (Working, crunch on the sheet later) The Sokolov clan of Konotop, besides being (by their own admittance) Russians that do an adequate Ukrainian pantomime, are a branch of the Zubikhas, a family long associated with the occult. They like to say the first real Zubikha was in the second graduating class of the Scholomance, the academy of dark magic and natural sciences said to have trained Dracula and run by the Devil, and every generation has had one member at least scouted. They like to imagine they are the reason Konotop is known for its witches in a rather famous satirical short story, with the Sokolovs just a branch that became more associated with Moscovites and the "big brothers" until they were mostly ethnic Russians. The business didn't change; the Zubikha have a talent for zagovory, Slavic prayer magic, in particular the necromantic aspects. Prayer magic in general, mind - they assimilated Orthodox Christianity as well, though the main part is the bones and the ancestors. They have long been the professional conjurers and curse-breakers of their communities, and engines of fairness against the boyars and noblemen. Veniamin was looking forward to inheriting the business - and expanding it to more political ends, as unlike his apolitical and mostly salt-of-the-Earth family, Venni was an adventurous and bookish lad who turned his growing magic to forcing his way into a full education, where he met several dissidents against the idea of the Tsar, won over by Marx's promise of a classless society without the alienation he felt as a minor black sheep of a feared family. He feels sorcerers and Saints are emissaries of a New Man that exists as equals and peers to the divine rather than servants, and sees education in magic as the most sure and ethical way of "equalization of the mystical" - unlike more stereotypical Communists, Veniamin is no atheist, though he is someone who sees the divine as something that should be comrades, not kings. (It helps he's met the divine.) That's part of why he and the entire Zubilkha clan left when they took one look into the future, and saw Lenin. And what would come after him. And realized they were but a single extended family, and some of their allies. So the vast majority, including Venni himself, emigrated and joined other Eastern European communities shortly after the end of WWI, forcing Venni to turn down a term at the Scholomance and become a true man-of-many-talents in favor of helping the evacuation and starting up the new business in America. And he is bitter - not just for the denial of what would be the apogee of his mundane and supernatural learning, but because it was for legitimate reason. He loathes what is happening for his homeland and the betrayal of the ideal in favor of rage and imperial ego. He especially loathes the growing anti-Semitism, which he views as a cancer in and of itself as well as personally cruel - the Anticapitalism of Fools, as he puts it. Which is why he catalyzed from a mere conjuror to a wizard capable of standing shoulders with true chosen of Heaven. This idealistic rage focused him, drove him, sharpened him, until he understood not just how to speak to the dead for the sake of divination and curse breaking, but call them into new flesh, and to commune with other, less human comrades And how to speak to people in a way that always was listened to - and to neutralize the power of the unjust and unfair systems of Fate. Realizing what happened to him, he's since gone from "the keeper of that creepy shop" to "union agitator" - because he's realized that there are horrors who want the horrific status quo of the depression to remain without change or social safety nets. Literal ones. Ones that are far more literal predators on the proletariat. And ones that need his magic to break the hold they have on not just the means of production, but the soul.

Up for a player? I'm interested in an idea for a Sorcerer - a Russian scholar who's actually a sorcerous disciple of the Bogvoi who fled the growing chaos of revolution along with a bunch of his coven - they're people who were nearly part of the Scholomance, but the Cultural Revolution was too chaotic even for them, especially when they checked the future and saw the USSR, deciding their friends and families did not deserve to suffer the constant paranoia. Ironically he's a full self-admitted Communist; he sees true sorcery as "seizing the means of mythological production" and thus, teaching it is a socialist obligation to unlock full ability of a wonder-worker - he just doesn't think what will happen back in the motherland is true Communism, and besides he can do more good in the States given the ominous economic catastrophe; people are going to need his magic to survive the Depression. When it comes to the Nyarlathotep cultists, he's going to see a menace produced by the elite and offer his services.