Talia of Clan Castis

**Info**
History
Relationships

Talia is one of the main characters in the Mage Errant series.

Talia of Clan Castis by u/TheMellifluous

Talia of Clan Castis, is a mage who was sent to Skyhold academy to try and help her use magic in spite of her tattoos. Talia is from of Clan Castis, a barbarian clan famous for the fire mages it produces. Clan Castis has developed series of spellform tattoos designed to improve fire magic. The earlier the tattoo's are applied the stronger the benefit and Talia got her tattoo's before her affinities manifested, which were not fire affinities. This prevented her from using her affinities as her tattoos were warping them to act like fire magic should. Talia is chosen with Hugh and Sabae to become Alustin's apprentices. From the pact with Hugh, Sabae and Godrick, she develops the affinities her friends have. Talia already had the potential to fight with the lesser great powers, namely killing the Herdsman, and after developing her friends 10 affinities (giving her a total of 12) she can undoubtedly become a great power. She is exceptionally dangerous compared to many mages and especially by the standards of her age. She has been recognised as a great power by Ilinia Kaen Das.

## Appearance

Talia is short, pale and has short red hair. She is covered in interlocking blue spellform tattoos over her body. The tattoos glow if enough fire magic is used around her.

In *The Last Echo of the Lord of Bells* upon entry to Havath she was described as:

> Talia descended slowly and gracefully using her bracer kinetic anchors... Her bones glowed burning red through her flesh, and her tattoos a blue almost as bright as starfire, leaving her looking more like a murderous elemental or spirit than anything human.
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## Personality

Talia is loyal to her friends above all else. She is prideful and stubborn. She gets angry when she thinks people don't believe her. She has no problems with killing people who attacker her and her friends. She also worries about people judging her, and she becomes more aggressive and ridiculous when nervous and stressed. She likes exploding things and her main solution is to blow her problems up.

## Abilities

### Spellform Tattoos

Clan Castis work on developing powerful tattoos that should massively enhance fire magic but because she lacks fire magic the tattoos have changed her affinities. Talia was given the tattoos before she developed affinities so the tattoos distorted and warped her magic. These tattoos have the base effect of enhancing fire magic, but because Talia has no fire magic, it forces her other affinities to act like fire magic by forcing the properties of fire onto her other reservoirs The tattoos would have only worked for a natural fire affinity, developing one artificially would have caused Talia to explode.

There are also a number of other functions built into the tattoos, notably: fire and heat resistance, increased flexibility, range and control over spells, formlessly flooding mana without the need for spellforms, casting a few fire spells without spellforms (doesn't work properly because of the lack of fire magic), heightened affinity sense range, self repair, empowering flame wards, burns healing without scars, glowing when using a lot of power, a specific segment over her left wrist lights up when people nearby are using lots of fire magic, protecting clothing from fire and a low mana cost light flaring.

### Affinities

Affinities are the "elemental" types of magic that a mage can use. Talia has two naturally developed affinities: dream and bone. She developed ten more affinities through the four-way warlock contract. Crystal, stellar and planar from Hugh, stone, steel and scent from Godrick and wind water, lightning and healing from Sabae. To cast her spells Talia has to visualise the spellforms and then channel her mana through the mental image. Overlapping domains of affinities like crystal and stone or bone and healing produce powerful compounding effects that are stronger than either affinity alone. As a general rule, the more specific an affinity the move powerful it is.

#### Dream

Talia's dream affinity is a meta-affinity meaning it can act like multiple different affinities at once. Talia's tattoos distort her dream mana so it acts like fire, meaning that she can easily produce dreamfire but otherwise the affinity is limited. Dream magic is very, very rare.

**Dreamfire Bolts**

Dreamfire is a manifestation of dream magic that looks like strangely coloured, purple-green flames which strangely twists shadows. The effects from dreamfire hitting something are absolutely random, from turning a man into bronze, to causing someone to fall through the floor as if it doesn't exist to turning a sea serpent into a handful of wooden coins. Dreamfire is excellent at breaking wards due to how erratic it is. Dreamfire is weak against dragons.

**Dreamfire Nightmare Removal**

Dreamfire can also be used on a sleeping person to burn away their nightmares.

**Dreamwasps**

Dreamwasps are swarms of tiny dreamfire bolts. This spell was designed to give Talia better fine magical control and range, compared to her regular dreamfire bolts. The dreamwasps have less direct weird effects individually but can be manifested in large swarms and the swarms can be manifested continuously without pause. The dreamwasp swarm spellform is simple and Talia can repeat the spellform in her mind's eye over and over at once which creates a massive swarm.

**Dreamfire Colum**

Talia once cast a siege spell level dreamfire attack which created a writhing column of dreamfire and it was incredibly strange. *Something* radiated from the beam and there were ripples of hallucinatory nonsense pulsing out from the beam. It had even stranger effects than normal as the lava under the bolt turned into fanged flowers and oatmeal shoes whilst the air began to sparkle and turn blue. Talia no longer uses this as using a siege spell too much will twist an affinity into only being able to cast siege spells.

**Dreamfire Web**

Talia can produce a web of dreamfire that descends gently.

**Dreamfire Beams**

Talia can produce twin beams of dreamfire from her index fingers with a spell. The beams shoot from her.

**Dreamfire Barrier**

Talia can form a half-circle of dreamfire act as barrier at least three feet thick and Talia can make the dreamfire rise higher.

**Dream Lightning**

Dream Lightning is a unique ability to Talia. No one has ever made dream lightning before Talia and she can only use it by mixing her dream and lightning mana together in a very carefully designed spellform and her spellform tattoos enable her to use dream lightning somehow. The spell shoots lightning and then the dream weirdness applies to whatever is hit. The "unmooring" effect that dream magic has through dreamfire is changed to act more like lightning than fire. Talia has the dream lightning spell high up on the "Special Occasion list". Dream lightning is effective against dragons. When Talia used dream lightning against Heliothrax it left lightning scars across her body that transmuted the scarred flesh into wood and it even travelled through some of the brains of the extra heads Heliothrax attached. Then when the lightning stopped transmuting flesh to wood it dispersed into Heliothrax's nervous system causing a seizure as fragmented dreams travel through.

#### Bone

Talia's bone affinity is her most distorted affinity. Her tattoos forcing fire properties onto bone enables her to cause bones to detonate with multiple different effects. Using her bone affinity is painful and using multiple bone spells at once even more so described as: "the mana felt sluggish, angry, and full of knives". Her bone affinity is also changed because Talia's dream mana reservoir is leaking into her bone reservoir creating a strange hybrid mana, bonefire. This magic is exceedingly destructive.

**Ignition**

Talia can use her bone magic on bones, not inside a living creature, and cause them to grow massively into an almost fire-like shape, build up heat and then detonate violently. This has been called bonefire. The type of bone used impacts the explosion. The rate of growth Talia produces for bones is insane for how little mana she uses, considering that growing solid matter is so mana hungry, it is revealed that she is not actually growing bone and instead the dream mana mixing into the bone is causing her spells to convert air, dust and other matter into bone temporarily. This basic spell simply directs her bone mana into bones. Bones from sea creatures have the greatest variety of effects. Talia also found that mixing bone with other materials help make her explosions stronger.

* Dragon Bone: Reacts strangely with bone mana. Rather then explode, they glow and then expel fire violently in jets and ignite. The heat can then remain in the bone for a long time.

* Whale Bone: Produces a blast of burning oil when detonated.

* Bird Bone: Grow and detonate quickly. Bones from birds do not detonate as hard as other bones.

* Cuttlebone: Produces a blast of superheated air when detonated.

* Squid Pen: Produces a chocking black smoke when detonated. Produces very little to no flames.

* Sunmaw Bone: Detonating sunmaw bone expands on a living sunmaw's ability to distort the aether and spells nearby. Sunmaw bone bonefire causes nearby spells to detonate explosively. This distortion lasts for around ten minutes.

* Cow Bone: Produces a normal explosion.

* Fossilised Bone: Talia can use fossilised bone for her bonefire and this and this explodes with heavy chunks of burning fossils instead of the normal light bone shards.

* Whale Oil Bone Mixture: Talia and some alchemists from Skyhold found that they can mix bone dust with oil it produces a slime like material which Talia can still manipulate. The oils are highly flamable and some dragon bone powder makes the bonefire produced burning oil even hotter.

* Mixed Bone and Magnesium: Talia can fill vials with multiple types of mixed bone and magnesium which causes a blinding blast.

* Modified Squid Pens: Applying ink to bones that Talia detonates can modify them. She modified some squid pens with an ink that is "unfriendly" to the lungs which mixes with the chocking black smoke from the squid pen.

* Bone and Copper: Mixing powdered copper into her bones, causses the explosions to be green. Talia did this for some mixtures because "it look[s] cooler".

**Growth Control**

Talia can impact the rate the bones she powers grow at.

**Detonation Timing**

Talia can slightly influence the rate at which bones detonate at.

#### Crystal

Talia got her crystal affinity from Hugh. Crystal affinities have great versatility due to the fact most stones are crystalline so she almost always has materials to work with. Due to the overlap of crystal and stone, Talia will be able to wrestle control over crystalline stones very easily and can manipulate them effortlessly. One of the most important aspects of crystal magic is the ability to determine the patterns crystals are made up of as this understanding allows Talia to force crystals to grow. Crystal magic uses very few spellforms. Crystal magic struggles to manipulate substances that have a mess of multiple different crystal patterns. Talia's tattoos cause crystals she is manipulating to heat up.

**Carving**

Talia can use her crystal magic for simple carvings in crystalline materials.

**Digging**

Talia can use her crystal magic to dig through crystalline materials.

**Crystal Melting**

Talia has a spell for melting crystals.

#### Stellar

Talia's stellar affinity is from Hugh. Although it is sometimes known as "starfire", stellar magic is not close enough to real fire for Talia's tattoos to empower. This affinity is relatively unaltered by the spellform tattoos. Stellar mana is mana hungry as it is effectively magic for plasma manipulation and Talia needs to create containment components to prevent the starfire cooking her when she begins to generate it. Stellar affinities have a small overlap with lightning affinities with lightning mana being capable of forming containment for stellar mana. Stellar affinities work on any world as it is an affinity for all stars.

**Stellar Nullification**

Talia mentions that she has the ability destabilise stellar and solar spells cast by others.

**Starbolt**

Starbolt spells are a basic stellar attack spell. It is a complex spellform with over half of the design dedicated to forming a containment for the starfire. The containment part of the spell forms first as a sphere of ripples. This sphere then fills with starfire and launches from Talia's hand. The starbolt releases huge amounts of heat and light when it hits something.

#### Planar

Talia got her planar affinity from Hugh. It is one of the most lethal affinities with mistakes being fatal and absurdly complex maths needed for each induvial spell. Planar spells each need adjustment based on current conditions. Planar magic is one of the few types of magic that no-one has naturally. Planar affinities work on any worlds unlike spatial affinities. Talia has not learned any planar spells.

#### Stone

Talia's stone affinity is from Godrick. Due to the overlap of stone and crystal, Talia will be able to wrestle control over crystalline stones very easily and can manipulate them effortlessly. Talia's tattoos cause stone she is manipulating to heat up.

**Carving**

Talia can use her stone magic for simple carvings in stone materials.

**Digging**

Talia can use her stone magic to dig through stone.

**Stone Melting**

Talia has a spell for melting rock. This is especially effective because of her tattoos heating the rock.

**Stone Launching**

Talia can use her stone magic to rip stone out of the ground and launch it at her enemies.

#### Steel

Talia's steel magic comes from Godrick. Talia heats up steel she messes with because of her tattoos.

**Melting**

Talia admits that she has the capability to melt steel.

**Steel Blasting**

Talia claims she can blast steel with magic at her target.

**Levitation**

Talia can levitate steel with he steel affinity and she can use this ability to move around steel without touching it.

#### Scent

Talia's scent magic comes from Godrick. Talia believes that her tattoos will only enable her to produce the scent of burning.

#### Wind

Talia got her wind mana reservoir from Sabae. The wind that Talia produces is burning hot because of fire properties being pushed onto her wind mana.

**Gust**

Talia can send out gusts of burning hot winds, using a basic wind mana spellform.

**Wind Shield**

Talia can cast wind shield spells. Wind shields are spinning wind domes that surround the caster which block attacks. Talia can continue to pour mana into the spell which makes the dome grow larger and larger and because her tattoos heat the wind, the dome heats faster and faster. This burning wind causes a massive updraft. Talia can also spin wind shields around.

#### Water

Talia's water magic comes from Sabae. She developed her water magic into siege magic so she can only cast one, hyper powerful water spell each time her water mana reservoir fills. Her water magic is heavily impacted by her tattoos so that Talia boils water when she casts spells on it.

#### Lightning

Talia's lightning magic comes from Sabae. Relatively unimpacted by her tattoos. Lightning overlaps with water and wind affinities for storms which is one of the most common types of magic for great powers. Lightning affinities have a minor overlap with stellar affinities being able to construct the containment for starfire.

**Lightning Bolt**

Talia can use lightning bolt spells.

#### Healing

Talia's healing magic comes from Sabae. Talia believes that she will not be able to heal people and instead will just burn people if she tries.

### Cantrips

Talia's tattoos heavily impacted her cantrips, causing explosions and burning and heating things. Alustin managed to help her use cantrips without detonation.

### Wards

Talia's wardcrafting has been influenced by her tattoos, meaning she can produce fire wards quite well.

### Mana Techniques

Talia has developed the mana technique siege magic whilst training on limnus.

**Siege Magic**

Siege magic is a mana technique that permanently warps an affinity. It works by constantly emptying the mana reservoir into a single spell which then prevents that affinity being used for anything other than one massive attack. Talia developed it on her water mana reservoir so she can only cast a single water spell each time her reservoir fills up.

### Scrimshaw Ward

Talia's scrimshaw ward is a complex ward tattooed into her bones covering her skeleton. Talia can power the ward with her own mana and when it is activated it produces a faint shimmering around her which blocks attacks. The ward can block very different styles of attacks, from sheets of paper to fireballs. When the ward is powered by a lot of mana, the ward glows from within Talia's body lighting her up from the inside with an eerie red light. The ward is designed to protect from injuries but does have issues, like how sufficient force will not hurt her but will send her flying. The scrimshaw ward can be activated in an instant with how fast mana be sent into the ward. The ward has self repair functions for if her bones are ever damaged.

### Warlock Pact

Talia is not a warlock but she is part of the four-way warlock contract that Hugh made to try and heal Kanderon. This pact includes Hugh (as the warlock), Talia, Godrick and Sabae and they each developed the affinities that the other contractors have. This results in the whole group getting twelve affinities. They can also track each other through the pact and determine how injured the other members are. Kanderon declared that this warlock contract would allow the group to share power "fascinating ways."

### Alien Magic

Kanderon has instructed Talia to obtain magic from alien worlds with her friends so that they can all become Named. Talia has obtained magic from Limnus which makes her body adapt faster. She is currently on the world of Raigon to obtain memory improvement magic. Kanderon has told the group that they must decide what alien magics to pickup but she recommends passive magics that make them harder to kill.

#### Limnan Magic

Talia and her friends spent a short amount of time on the alien world of Limnus which allowed them to gain the first stage of the world's magic. The magic from Limnus does not grant direct energy manipulation but instead grants body adaptions that are developed in response to the amount of stressors that are experienced. Due to the short time spent gaining magic Talia can not go far outside the human range of adaptions meaning that she would be fine in a few degrees of temperature less or more, be a little more resistant to illness etc. Limnan magic also provides a decent boost to physical strength.

#### Raigon Magic

The magic from the world of Raigon boosts memory capabilities and sensory processing. The first stage of Raigon's magic allows people to learn entire languages in a matter of weeks. It will take Talia around 6 months to develop the first stage of this magic. Kanderon pushed for Talia and her friends to get this magic for two reasons: to prevent their twelve affinity senses causing them to develop sensory processing disorders, and learning languages at a rapid rate enables them to act on foreign worlds.

## Equipment

### Mana Battery Ring

Talia, Hugh, Godrick and Sabae each have an aether crystal ring from the use of an aether crystal in their 4 way warlock pact. Each ring has a different colour with Talia's being the same blue as her tattoos. The rings hold a small amount of mana but they are growing over time. The mana is less responsive than the mana from Talia's mana reservoirs and it refills slower. Each ring has all the affinities of the group due to their mana mingling inside the warlock pact. This means that each ring has crystal, stellar, planar, stone, steel, scent, wind, water, lightning, healing, bone and dream mana making the rings invaluable.

### Storage Tattoo

Talia has a tattoo on his arm made by Kanderon with her planar affinity and by using some of her aether crystal. The tattoo is usually invisible except when active and it glows the same blue as Kanderon's wings. The storage space started at the size of a small closet but can grow massively over time as Loarna's storage space was the size of a warehouse after several decades. The tattoos are anchors for extra-dimensional spaces. That space acts as a new direction in space and Talia can take anything from any part of the space.

## Senses

### **Pact Sense**

As of the four way warlock contract with his friends Hugh, Godrick, Sabae and Talia can all share senses. Upon awakening from the pacting they all unintentionally received the other's sense however after an hour the pact got strong enough to stabilise the senses and they would have to actively try to send and receive their senses. If the senses had not closed off they would have been driven insane but with effort they can convey information like their location, distance and direction from the others and injuries, etc.