Thread: The Grimoire (FutaFanatic/Flassche)

Chapter one The fledgling mage The Grey Note brings out soul's darkest secrets and desires. It can sense within a person a hidden darkness in the smallest corner of their soul. With every name written in this plain notebook a life is changed, innocent or not, dead or alive. Throughout the ages the book had been used countless times, often resulting in myth and legends. Witches, wizards, shamans and holy men were created from this very book, mistaking magic for something else that was supernatural. An example was Merlin, a wizard who had used the book to change mens heart, shaping a powerful and righteous nation, yet even he had succumbed to depravity and insanity, using the book finally to kill his enemies. Willing to do anything to achieve his divine vision, while letting nothing and no one get in his way, he changed the world. Now with full possession of the horrific and alluring book, sitting by the window, a young man gazed at the Grey Note. He wondered, fascinated by the idea of a supernatural book in existence. He imagined how men claimed and controlled their victim's fate just by writing their name down. The night grew cold and deadly silent. The wind blew gently flipping the white pages of the grey note. Lance leaned in closer, surprised to find something visible. Words. Instructions, to be specific. They were faded as if someone had tried to erase them. The book itself looks like an old tomb, leather-bound with a wooden spine, giving off a smell generations worth of old dust. The front of the book is stained with red, no doubt old blood from centuries ago. Dabbling in Latin he decides to translate the instructions, quickly discovering it to be a rather lengthy introductory.. The first page was rather quickly translated, offering him a little chuckle. Could this simply be ancient pulp or some book written by a delusional old fool? He had read up on history quite a lot, being his favourite subject. This however sounded so. Unnatural It even made him smile. A rare sighting these last few years. Deciding to give it a shot, seeing as he had nothing to lose, he decided to pick a human. A second later he had found the perfect candidate, his relative! She had made his life a living hell since the day he entered puberty. Remembering every word carefully he began to work. He penned down the full name and pictured the face that went with it. The introductory had been rather precise on that part, seeing as some people shared the same name, yet not the same face. He waited for a long time, hours perhaps, however nothing seemed to happen. At first he was rather disappointed, frustrated even, soon enough it turned to chuckling and laughter. Had he actually believed this book for more than a minute? He began to shake his head and was just about to close the book when he noticed the ink suddenly moving. The first and last name that was written on the page was shifting from left to right, words disappearing and forming intricate sings, symbols and scratches on the paper. Within a minute the once proper English first and last name had been stripped apart and spread out on the page. New words began to form, Latin and others, forming neat lines and paragraphs. The young man was quite taken back, his face pale and mouth dry. He tried letting go of the book, yet he could not. He tried to pry his own fingers of it, yet was unable. The ink on the page finally stopped, the whole page now covered in precise handwriting, symbols and mathematical marks. It took him a few minutes of deciphering to realise that that all of it was about his relative, describing height, weight, sizes, age, personality, traits, everything. It was as if the whole physical and psychological makeup had been recorded and written down. The page flipped back to the first page and at the bottom was a small bar, indicating the number 50. Above it stood the Latin word for essence essentia. When the ink finally dried Lance was able to remove his digits from the book, fingers aching and throbbing from the ache of holding it so tightly. He noticed several more pages that looked similar to the page about his relative however all of them were blank in some areas. Did this mean that he could write down several more names, find out about another person, their physical and mental aspects? When he finally reached the last page he found a list of things, each listing several phrases and containing a number behind it. The list was almost endless, containing commands from dying to falling in love, each of them having a tiny sentence of explanation and a precise number for how much it would cost. It barely took any time for the young man to put two and two together. He could give commands and traits to the people who were written in the book, provided that he had earned enough points to spend. Was this actually happening? Could this book truly be the real thing? The young man decided that there would only be one way of finding out. He glanced over the list and found a thing that was within his point range, yet at the same time be relatively harmless. He wrote down the phrase generous and next to it financially. The effect had been written down, next up came the recipient. He then wrote his own name and specified the amount that he would require, writing down the word petty. Next came up the word repeatedly and daily. The book waited a few minutes before the words started to shift, morph and finally stay put. A small line of runes was written down at the page and below it a description and the cost of the effect -40 points. If all things worked out his relative would give him a set daily of amount cash, little as it might be. He knew that this relative was quite strict with money, so even a little cash would be proof enough, let alone repeating it each and every day. One month later. That first week had been a week of triumph and most importantly innocence. He had written his mothers name and had given her an effect of wealth, giving her the desire to share some of it. At the meagre age of 17 the young man had never once had the pleasure of allowance, simply believing it to be a fantasy other kids only got, or something out of a fairy tale. Still the Grey note did what it had promised, giving the young man wealth, as meagre as it might be. One day one he had gotten five bucks, on day two he had gotten three. Within in weeks time had had gotten twenty bucks, mere pocket money for some yet a treasure for him. Most importantly was the fact that he had gotten proof, actual proof that the book did what it had promised, not just a fancy book that absorbed ink and displayed things. The arrogance of youth even had him proclaiming himself to be a mage, stupid as that might be. In the three weeks that had followed the young man had been constantly tinkering with the book, finding out more secrets by translating the Greek, Latin and other languages, even guessing at what others meant. Some things he had to lean by trial and error, as do most things in life. He had removed the command from his mother, finding out that he would get at least half of the points back in return, a harsh, yet fair trade. It would prevent him from just switching back and forth, trading in commands when he needed to. The Karr family lived a relatively modest, if not comfortable, live style, being housed in a large apparent building on the very top floor. Their father had been a rather successful architect and had been doing well for him before he passed on suddenly, leaving just the mother and his offspring behind. With his mother working as a secretary at his fathers old job, it usually meant that the Karr family spend a great deal of time with one another, seeing as it was a nine to five job and close to their family house. There were two bedrooms, and two people to house them all. Lance would sleep in the bedroom on the top left, giving him a bit of more room for his excursive mat and large collection of books. His mother slept in the room at the bottom, with access to the larger walk in closet. If his mother wanted to take a bath she would have to go through Lances room, yet there were never problems with this, simply a healthy understanding.The family was close and did not share too many restrictions, although there were rules. If you wanted to stay in for the day and simply walk around in pjs or just a boxer, you did not get a scolding or a raised eyebrow, simply a casual comment and a pat on the hair. The financial situation was mostly stable, their father had paid of most of the apartment before his death and their mother made a decent amount of income, although it wasnt much. It Lance had spent most of the evening reading up another page or two of the old tomb, learning about how to maximize Essentia profit by using the reward system. It all came down to a matter of perspective. For example if you spend 500 points to effect a person to rob a bank, you would only get a small amount of essential points back, seeing as the effect was to much like a command and would not generate much. If you took that same person and spend the same 500 points to slowly diminish their financial situation and expose him to certain criminal elements, letting the person come up on his own with the idea to rob the bank, the reward in essential was much, much greater. The same was with all things in the book. Lance wasnt about to kill someone or rob a bank, yet he did want more essential points, preferably generated on a daily basis without him having to do too much on it. He decided his relatives would be the best source of Essentia, seeing as how close they were with him, allowing him to keep a close eye on the subject. From his experiments on his mother he had gotten a small collection of Essentia points and already knew how he was going to spend it. For it to be successful and manageable, Lance would need to find a way to properly monitor his relatives. It was these thoughts and others that Lance wanted to know, structurally. Last Christmas he had gotten hera Digital-Diary with a security mechanism, wrapping their digitally printed out passwords up in presents with a nice poem to go along with it. How fitting that her gift would also be a gift for Lance, making it easier to keep track of her thoughts and what not. She did not know that Lance had direct access to them, seeing as he could open them from his own computer. Still, he needed to be sure that she wrote more than just random things. Kimberly Karr Diary honesty Level 1 -50 Points See list All of this would ensure that she wrote down at least once a week, her thoughts for her family that was present in the house. It would all be truthful, yet the depth of it all would depend on the amounts of points that were being spend and their own nature. With points spend on his monitoring system, he needed to establish a source of revenue, to reward him with a healthy daily income of Essentia points. Everyone in the family knew that Incest was wrong and foul. His mother would probably never try their hands at it, knowing full well that it would be wrong beyond words. What he needed was a way to spark a fire within her, yet without her conscious mind resisting it. Kimberly Karr At home Forgetfulness Bra Level 1 -150 Points See list The command for his mother would make her more forgetful in wearing a bra at home, although she could still override the command if she paid attention to it. If she were to wake up and make breakfast, chances were that she would forget to wear a bra underneath her morning shirt, yet it was unlikely that she would forget it if she was to go outside or to her job, yet it could always happen if she herself was preoccupied with other thoughts. He let the ink be absorbed before he closed the book, hid it, and made his way downstairs, joining his mother for a nightly cup of tea and spending the rest of the evening reading a book or watching tv. The next few days were spend similarly, pretending nothing was off and just being his same old self. He went to school with his friends, staying in the same classes as them, and also going back as a group. Nothing was off, yet strange clumsy situations kept happening around the house with his mother. It was a Friday night when Lance opened up his Grey notebook, glanced at his newly accumulated points and checked to see the diary entries of his relative.