Caliga

The Caliga (Latin: "The Boot") was a dangerous and notorious black mezzite  crystal that belonged to magi Zeroth, originally found and harnessed by his mother, treasure hunter, thief and magi Arla Van Dreesen in 1980. It was split cleanly in half down the equator of the crystal millennia before Arla discovered it; despite being split in half as two crystal sides, the magic acts as one unit.

### History

The mezzite's history before Arla discovered it is unknown, but she estimated the burial site in South Africa where she found it may be over 3000 years old.

When she first found the crystals Arla was raiding an excavated tomb in South Africa, not too far from her hometown in Johannesburg, already a self-taught magi Arla had the ability to tune, which allowed her to sense the crystals under the dust and dirt at the bottom of the crypt. They lay under a black spear that was held by what was left of a poorly-preserved skeleton.

When she picked up the crystals she immediately noted that they were flat on the bottom, and connected to eachother perfectly. While the crystals clearly had some kind of magical properties, her first instinct was to sell them; after all that was her job; to find priceless artefacts for money. Even if it meant stealing a few that were only going to end up in some museum anyway.

On her way back to her home she noticed how she kept being drawn to them, and the more she touched them the more the crystal 'whispered' to her; clearly possessing some kind of magical properties; while stopped at a gas station Arla was attacked by armed contractors who were clearly hired to find whoever stole from the dig site. Taking the crystals in her pocket she drove off into the countryside only to be chased, eventually her tires were blown out and the car flipped.

When confronted the crystals in her pocket reacted, and the men seemed to emit black flames that were drawn towards her pocket; the whispers increased to the point where they were almost deafening, but when she opened her eyes the men were on the floor, seemingly experiencing some kind of seizures. She took the opportunity to run and stole their truck and weapons.

Paranoid until she returned home, Arla dumped the truck far from her apartment and walked, almost in a trance. She felt unusual and heavy, and at some point she assumed she passed out, but when she awoke it was 3 days later; on her desk the start of what looked like a magic project, two leather gloves and next to them and in her diary, furious scrawling of magic symbols she didn't remember writing, bottles of whisky she didn't remember drinking and all of her maps and treasure targets open.

The crystals sat before on the desk, she could still feel them humming, although the whispers had subsided; it looked like she was trying to create some kind of harness for their power; whatever it did to those bounty hunters was clearly something not meant to be handled by magi with such limited power. But what did the strange symbols in her diary mean? In the diary were also other words in Latin; "motis nimis" which meant "too much emotion" and the Latin word for "The Boot" "Quod Caligae" from the Latin callus ("hard leather") What the terms meant exactly was unknown, but one theory was that the crystal was trying to describe its power to Arla during the trance, using Latin, and 'Caliga' was mentioned when creating her gloves, that she did in a trance, and Arla ended up naming the crystal "The Caliga" the next day.

More than freaked out and dreadfully hung over, Arla originally decided to go ahead with her original plan to sell them so the were out of her hands, and as quickly as possible; Contacting one of her associates, a con artist and collector of rare items Alan Linton, who lived in Britain and would be an excuse to get out of the country for a while.

However on the way to the airport she noticed she was being followed, but acted calm, boarding her flight to the UK, believing she was safe when the plane took off Arla relaxed, only to have the plane she was on hijacked by yet more contractors; Whoever wanted these crystals was powerful and perhaps even another magi. Curiously no demands were made and the plane was diverted to Venezuela.

TBC

### Properties

The Caliga displayed a deep and twisted dark magic that Alra described in her grimoire diary as "*negative* *emotion transmutation, capable of drawing out, manipulating, absorbing* *and transforming negative emotions into something more real."*

One of the Caliga's primary signatures was it's black flame which was created by compressing negative emotion into the crystals, which act as one unit despite it it being split in two, it amplifies that negativity by shifting it through deep and dark dimensional frequencies and then hooking on to the magi's own magic ability, regardless of power, re-emitting it as a black miasma that can manifest as fire or black, leathery constructs.

Curiously the black flame became surrounded in a coloured glow depending on the colour of the user's magical aura, in the case of both Arla and Zeroth a golden yellow.

Caliga also acted as a magical amplification aspect to other spells and forms of magic, including altering magical items (such as fusing Zeroth's trenchcoat with the Cloak of Alaepalli), twisting too that magic to a dark version of itself, and Arla believed that it could be used to access and control the potential magical powers of other mezzite.

It was later known that Caliga's power was amplified by leather materials, in particular Zeroth noted how easily he transmuted the Cloak of Alaepalli to his leather trenchcoat, and how his mother's gloves still retained a massive amount of Caliga's power even without the crystals present. Some of it's more advanced abilities created constructs that appeared to be made out of solidified darkness, had a leathery texture and qualities.

### Spirit of Chernobog

Like many Mezzite, Caliga was created by the Dragon Quetza over 4000 years ago across the world by sacrificing halfbreeds and that the name 'Caliga' was simply what Arla referred to the crystals as after it tried to commune with her based on what it needed to propagate (leather materials). One of these was an ancient Slavic halfbreed known as Chernobog who may have been the son of the Dragon Erebus, due to Chernobog's connection with what might have been The Sideways, he was in contact with, and may have inadvertently become a host for a Ghk before his murder, the resulting process used by Quetza created an mezzite aberration, and she sent the crystal as far away as she dared, where the crystal ended up on the shores of Africa.

Several centuries later an African mage came across the crystal and used it to bring chaos to ancient African nations where he used the mezzite's true name of Chernobog. This mage, whoever he was likely ended the peaceful rule of Vijiti (The Staves) who served as magi for a long-forgotten kingdom while group of warriors known as the Mkuki (The Spears) served as their army.