Soraya Tavalokian, the Wizard
Look and Demeanor
Disheveled. Could be traditionally attractive if she cared.
Loyal to her tribe, customs, and culture. Serious. Burdened.
Stats
Moves
Channelling
When you channel and collect your magics, roll with Spirit. On a 10+, hold 3. On a 7-9, hold 3 and choose 1 from the list below. On a miss, hold 1, but you cannot Channel again this scene.
- Take -1 ongoing until you rest
- Suffer 1-harm(ap)
- Mark corruption
Your hold lasts until you spend it. You can spend it to cast any spell you have as per the spell’s details. Spells:
>> Memory wipe
Spend 1 hold to cause a helpless target to forget some of their short-term memories, up to an entire hour’s worth. You can spend an additional hold and mark corruption to put alternate memories in their place.
>> Teleport
Spend 1 hold to teleport yourself a short distance within a scene you’re in.
>> Shielding
Spend 1 hold to provide armor+1 to yourself or someone nearby, or spend 2 holds to provide armor+1 to everyone in a small area, possibly including yourself. This armor lasts until the end of the scene. You can stack multiple uses of Shielding at once.
Sanctum Sanctorum
When you go to your Sanctum for a spell ingredient, relic, or tome, roll with Spirit. On a 10+, you’ve got pretty much just the thing. On a 7-9, you’ve got something close, but it’s flawed or lacking in some significant way. On a miss, you don’t have what you’re looking for, but you know someone who probably has it in stock. The Sanctum:
- Contains old tomes, ancient relics, an apothecary, and magical booby traps
- Attracts otherworldly attention
- Location is known by my sisters
Drama Moves
Corruption Move
When you strike a deal with someone dark and powerful, mark corruption.
Intimacy Move
When you share a moment of intimacy—physical or emotional—with another person, decide whether you care about them or not. If you don’t, they go about their business as normal. If you do, they take -1 ongoing to Escape until they get some intimacy somewhere else
End Move
When you die, you may place a devastating curse on someone nearby. Specify the effects of the curse and how they may end it.
Gear
- Simple bookstore with apartment above and sanctum below
- Magical turquoise ring (focus; inflicts +1 harm when I use magic)
- Cell phone
- Persian scimitar (3 harm hand messy)
Corruption
X X X X ☐
Harm
☐ Faint
☐ ☐ Grievous
☐ ☐ Critical
Debts
- Even in slumber, Ima is protecting me from the DreamEater. I owe her a debt.
- Claudia is refraining from reporting The Psychic Eye to the department of permits and regulations. I owe her a debt.
- Jan, an old friend of Ima's, is the only other person who seems to care about her. He visits often, always bearing pastries or flowers, then goes upstairs to sit by Ima's bedside and holds her hand. I owe him a debt.
- After Oggie got busted, I turned to Terry to score opium for Ima. I owe him a debt.
Debts owed to Soraya:
Claudia - 1 - for blackmailing you to get occult information & close to Estie
Questions
How long have you been in the city? All my life.
What keeps you up at night? Studying the tomes for a way to banish the DreamEater. My sisters' spite. Getting opium for Ima.
What have you sacrificed for your power? When you become aware of the DreamEater, the DreamEater becomes aware of you.
What do you desperately need? To keep Ima alive so that our family does not suffer the consequences of the blood oath.
Soraya and her middle-aged sisters run the Psychic Eye, an occult bookstore and fortune-teller's shop in the middle of a block that used to be part of the slums. Soraya's grandmother, Ima, holds the deed to the shop. Ima purchased it in 1930 and lives in the apartment upstairs. At 115 years old, Ima has survived everyone in her family except her three granddaughters, and although her body is still strong, she stays cocooned in her bedroom most days... and dreams. When the opium wears off, Ima's dreams become awful tapestries of deaths long-suffered, past lives squandered, and aspirations that should have come to pass but never will. But as long as Soraya can procure enough opium, Ima's dreams are peaceful.
Over the past decade, BZBB Development Ltd. has developed the area considerably, and while the new bougie residents in the area and the burgeoning tourist traffic have been good for business, the Psychic Eye has become the investment target of several industrial players whose interests would be well-served if Ima would sell the property. Soraya's younger sisters, Mercedes and Mandana, want their grandmother to sell out - they do not have Ima's talents and would happily trade their parlor tricks and inventory of curiosities for an early retirement. But they hesitate whenever they remember their family's blood oath. As long as Ima is alive, her kin can not abandon this building.
"The hag will not die," her sisters hiss. "Must we wither in this dreary shop like our mother did? This blood oath is nonsense - Persian superstition, and surely, at Ima's age, death would be a mercy..." They look to Soraya, but her loyalty is steadfast.
Soraya turned to the books in the basement of her shop for solace. At first, their tellings of the old Qajars and their Zoroastrian traditions brought her comfort. But the more she read, the more she understood the truths they contained. And now that she has mastered some of their instruction, she knows three things...
One, Ima was a practitioner of these arts. This basement was her sanctum, and now it is Soraya's.
Two, the blood oath is real. If her sisters betray Ima in any way, the consequences for them all will be dire.
Three, there is an ancient DreamEater soaked into the soil beneath their shop. It sustains Ima even as it taints her slumber. But it can be dispelled if Soraya can bind it and send it back to its unearthly source. She must hurry. As Ima's opium doses increase, its appetite grows sharper for new food. How long before it seeps into Soraya's dreams?
Soraya studies and experiments. She grows more confident in her abilities even as they terrify her. As she casts a successful Tracking spell, she makes yet another discovery. She must also find a new opium dealer. Oggie just got busted by the po-po.