Of Light
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Background
Born to a poor magical family, who passed on the scarse general knowledge each of them had gathered during their lives from generation to generation, Charles grew up to be resourceful with his magic. Other than being financially poor his family also consisted only of unpracticed mages as they had no means to buy advanced books for witchcraft and had no access to the high-standing magical world due to their economical status. As they did not affiliate themselves with aristocratic magical families, they had no available tutors with superior abilities to teach them and develop their magic. They dabbled in basic Witchcraft and dark magic, basically gypsy-type magical methods - curses, readings, tarot cards (readings that tended to be eerily accurate due to those with precognitive abilities in the family). They employed their resourcefulness to innovate the traditional magic they'd learned from their ancestors - The Eppsteins were the anonymous inventors of many methods in charmwork and potionsmaking. They were also a family in which the development of rare supernatural gifts wasn't uncommon (precognition, retrocognition, teleportation, control over light and anti-light, blood manipulation, etc.)The Blood Bond
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In order to step up the social ladder they had to affiliate themselves with a family of high standing. The members of the Eppstein family had a history of offering themselves as 'servants' to non-magical aristocratic families, who wanted to have magic at their disposal but couldn't request the services of older, better educated mage bloodlines due to the hate the magical world still harboured towards normal humans. In exchange for their basic magical services, the Eppsteins were paid, which enabled them to afford a better education in charmwork, potionsmaking and witchcraft in general - their employers were funding their further education in exchange for having the magical knowledge the Eppsteins gained to their disposal. Throughout the years they'd struck and consecutively broken many such deals with different aristocratic families, often falling off with them due to their own dishonorable behavior. It was easy to swindle one out of their money when they didn't know a thing about what you did, but most eventually picked up on it.
Until a certain point when the Eppsteins, in desperate need of money, found themselves striking a deal without a loophole to crawl out through. To secure the deal and to make sure they would be able to have at their disposal the magic that they pay the Eppsteins to study, an aristocratic family - the Valentino family - made the Eppsteins take a vow that as long as the two bloodlines were both existent, the Eppsteins were bound to the Valentinos. The deal necessitated strong blood magic - one that would last through generations and, stuck making a choice between servitude and barely feeding themselves, the Eppsteins agreed to bind themselves eternally to the Valentinos, naming the latter 'masters' of the bond. It worked on all members of the lesser family, but the strongest bond existed between members of the Eppstein family and Valentinos born around the same time - they were unofficially deemed 'master' and 'servant'. No Eppstein could disobey a Valentino - at least not without severe consequences - members of the Eppstein family who refused to go under servitude found themselves often ailing or (in more extreme cases) dying due to the blood bond punishing them for disobedience. It was strong blood magic, which was incapable of being broken - just 'forsaken' by the master, who, after making a reverse-vow, could release their servants from the bond. The blood bond could also be 'moved' to another master so some Eppsteins found themselves sold to other high-standing families. Already aware of the things blood magic could grant them, the Valentinos were smart enough to strike such deals with other poor magical families, whose magic they had at their disposal.
Disobedience
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Charles' father and uncle - Hugo and Peter Eppstein respectively, had been bonded from birth to two Valentino brothers. They worked under their pay and served them as the bond commanded - in every way possible. Menial work, lackeyship, magical services, rituals - anything the Valentinos desired. Their wives tended to a third Valentino, the sister of the two brothers, and split duties between each other. Peter's wife was a witch so she did the magical work whilst Hugo's was a human woman and thus she performer more mundane tasks like maid's work and the wise.
It wasn't until Peter and Hugo's sons were born that problems began occuring - Hugo's son - Charles - was a mage and, with a human birth mother, he had turned to be a problematic pregnancy due to the woman's lack of magical core affecting the baby's growing magic. Hugo, despite being obliged to serve Franklin Theodore Valentino, the older of the two brothers, insisted on spending time helping his family, but when his unavailability increased, his master called him back into servitude. Hugo refused - he valued having a healthy son more than working in slavery. He told Franklin as much and unofficially resigned from the Valentino household.
It was hardly that easy to set oneself free of a blood bond and, as expected, it came back to haunt him. Usually Eppsteins were punished with ailments or sicknesses and Hugo was ready to make that sacrifice to raise a healthy little boy - sickness truly befell him and he fought the entire way but he did not stop fading once he had begun and his hospital bed became his death bed, two years after Charles had been born. The same year Hugo died, his son's mistress was born - Faye Thora Valentino, the second child of Hugo's master.
The blood bond never let the Eppstein family forget about the disobedience as sickness took a toll on Charles as well, rocking his health during infancy and childhood to the point where money for medication was never enough. Hugo's widow and his son were taken in by Peter and his wife so the former could sell their house and afford medicine. Charles grew up in a loving family despite his misfortune and was raised to be a kind and loving man.
Sins of the Father
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After Hugo's death things in the Eppstein family were incredibly rocky. The family had split into two opinionated sides, which surprisingly featured Hugo's widow and son on the Valentinos' side. Lucille Eppstein, Charlie's mother, didn't understand or stand behind the hate Peter and Elric harboured for the family and she allowed her son the right to come in contact with the family that had been the cause of her husband's death - or so Peter hatefully put it. He was furious that the woman he'd given shelter to was letting his nephew go anywhere near his toxic masters. Lucille had different opinions. She did hate the man of the Valentino house, but his children and wife were genuinely good people. Elric and Peter, on the other hand, she was very wary of. The two males seemed adamant about indoctrinating her sick little Charlie with as much hate as they could. She didn't want her child growing up hateful and thus she chose a side and made sure it was the lesser of two evils - the Valentino residence. She and Charlie were moved into an adjacent guest house, from which the woman had easy access to her work.
Avoiding Frank Valentino Sr was an easy task as he was rarely around, so Lucille was mainly spending time with his wife and his children, Valerie, Faye and Frank Jr, all of which were contrastingly kind. She made good money tending to the house and cooking and even little Charlie, shy, closed off and scared of almost everything, was faring much better with the Valentinos. His hemophilia hindered his social development and prevented him from making any friends in school, because he was the scarily thin boy with the glasses who was pardoned from every P.E. class ever. His magic was also manifesting itself in negative ways - the boy was discovered to have retrocognitive and precognitive skills, though not very honed, which caused Lucille to worry when he would come to her with terrible dreams he'd had the night prior, which sometimes turned out to be true, sometimes they didn't. The neighbouring kid got hit by a bus last night, the night before that Mrs Valentino shot Mr Valentino, the next night he'd wake up crying because 'Momma, Uncle Peter died'. He was an odd one out almost everywhere he went, but the Valentino residence. He actually had a friend there. The daughter of his father's master and his direct blood-bonded - Faye Valentino - 6 years old at the time they met - was a girl two years younger than him and sociable enough for the both of them. He was quickly swept away by her cheerfullness and the two became fast friends. She didn't seem to care much that he wasn't very mobile and incapable of indulging in more careless children's games due to his hemophilia - she was his friend regardless. He and his mother found themselves very much happy after years of wilting in the shadow of the blood bond and its consequences. Lucille didn't mind that her son had found a friend in the face of Frank Valentino's daughter - it was happiness and even if it was fragile, then so be it.
She found herself even contributing to the household more, but as she got more acquainted with the environment she discovered that Frank Sr was just as much of a bad man as he was rumoured to be. He was negligent of his children and a very toxically strict father and there was also something very unnerving about the way he treated his daughter. Lucille loved those two children like her own already and her motherly instincts immediatelly kicked in. She would insist on children's slumber parties at the guest house, she'd make sure the kids were never alone in a room with their father. Anything to get them away from that man...
All the respect Peter had for the Valentinos diminished and he'd reverted back to the bad habits his ancestors had developed under servitude - stealing money, taking house items and selling them, all without his master's knowledge. He considered it to be the pay he deserved for having to bear serving his brother's killer (as he saw the Valentinos as such). Though what his father did was not exemplary, Elric, Charles' cousin, made sure to watch and learn, alreading harbouring enough negative opinions for the Valentinos on his own. Growing up his mother had advised him against rebelling, but Elric heeded his uncle's brainwashing deathbed ramblings more than he did his mother's advice. Charles didn't see the appeal in petty crimes and thievery, but his bigger cousin did. He saw the thefts as some sort of revenge on the Valentinos, though financial means hardly mitigated Peter and Elric's anger. They wanted to do further damage to the entire family and thus Peter aimed higher, attempting to steal the two Valentino brothers' business plans.
Their company was earning a fortune, one that Peter Eppstein believed he was owed a part of and was determined to take what was his and his family's by force.
Skilled in telepathy and mind control, the man managed to put to sleep the guards in front of his master's safe room and break in undetected, or so he thought. He was caught in the process of telekinetically cracking the safe's code by his master himself and was not given a chance for redemption. The man was furious and unapologetic, with a gun in hand and no qualms about losing a servant of Peter's standing. Magic could not stop bullets and the man did not stop either until Peter was dead, laying on the floor perforated by six rounds. The blood bond did not allow the servant to bring harm upon the master, killing the perpetrator and not allowing his family closure for the crime.
Peter's death was covered up - Valentino Industries would not allow a stain of such epic proportions to linger on their reputation. Peter had died due to an accident on the job or so Charles and his family were told. Lucille removed Charlie from the environment, then moved back with Peter's widow and elric. The mages knew better than to believe the claims that Peter had died due to an accident because their sixth sense did not lie and they could empathetically pick up on the untruthfulness of the statement. Elric began deteriorating from them on. Whilst Charles was undergoing basic magic training and learning crafts that would serve his future masters, his cousin was dabbling in dark magic and was beginning to distance himself further and further from what family he had left alive. By default, this made Charlie the man of th house and the main center of attention of his doting mother and aunt. Having two loving women dependant on him made the boy strive to become a respectable young man they would be proud of. He learned many useful skills from them as well - cooking, cleaning, sewing, basic household chores that came to good use in his servitude later in life.
Charles was progressively getting over his bad health - his efforts to prepare himself for servitude under his masters' pay had mitigated the blood bond's anger and his immunity returned, releasing him from years of various illnesses. He recovered miraculously from hemophilia and color blindness and was in top health condition by the age of 18. Whilst Elric sunk deeper, Charlie matured into good looks and his first income of money in Valentino Industries. He found the Valentino household and its residents in bad condition. Mrs Valentino was deteriorating physically from an unknown illness, Frank Sr was an even more cruel than before. Their children weren't the happy boy and girl Charlie once remembered. Their cousin, Layla, had moved in with them after her father had been discovered to be a serial killer - she was an anxious girl, shy but kind. She was affected by her uncle's nasty tempers too. Charlie met Faye, his only childhood friend, again and discovered how much the two of them had changed. The girl had sunk into a life of corruption - drugs, alcohol, partying all night. Her brother, although he was feigning stability, wasn't faring much better - he was an equally big wreck. There was nothing left of Charlie's childhood friends and he soon discovered why. At first he only bore witness to the beatings Frank Sr put his son through, but didn't understand why. Until he dscovered that Frank Jr was protecting his sister from Sr's carnal desires. The man was sexually abusing his daughter.
Charlie was unable to put the man of the Valentino house in jail or legally stop him without bringing harm to himself, due to the blood bond punishing him. He knew that his hemophilia returning might kill him. Regardless, he did his best to protect Faye; he could magically lock Sr in his office and made sure she was never alone in a room with her father as long as he was around. He couldn't be there all the time, however. The accidents continued...
Until Faye and Frank's mother - Valerie- discovered what was transpiring in her house. As soon as she found out she flew into a rage, confronting the man over what he'd done. She barricated them in Sr's office and got a hold of the man's gun. Charlie, Faye and Layla were on the other side of that door, trying to convince the woman not to act rashly. The two girls were a mess and Charlie was trying his hardest to handle the situation, but Faye was a wreck of tears and self-accusations, whilst Layla was halfway through having a panic attack. It was then that Frank Jr appeared, taking in the sight of his distraught family and realizing what had made his mother react like she had. He couldn't break down the door if he tried, which is why he requested Charlie's help, knowing the other man's telekinetics could bust the lock.
However, Charlie refused. If he had wanted to go into that room he would've already done it, but he hadn't even made an attempt. He knew what was going to happen. He knew how this altercation was going to end and he didn't want to interfere. Years ago, in his childhood, he'd had a precognitive dream - in it, Valerie Valentino killed her husband in a situation that fully resembled this one. She'd emptied the entire clip into Sr's body and Charlie wanted that to happen. He knew that he had the power to interfere and save the man's life, but he didn't want to help him. He wanted Sr dead.
And before Frank Jr had even had the chance to protest against Charlie's refusal to help, the gunshots rung out. Ten in total. All aimed at the infernal man on the other side of the door. He was gone... Finally, the Valentino family were liberated of their personal hell.
Only they weren't. The murder was covered up, just like Peter's had been, and Jr took over the family business. The task of keeping everyone together fell on him too. It also fell on Charlie. Who didn't quite know how to keep three families from falling apart. But by God, he'd try.
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Magical lore
Take a coin. A simple one. Look at it. It has two sides - heads and tails.
It represents you. Two sides of the same coin - two worlds that you experience. One side represents your own little personal space - your inner world, hence - heads. The other side, tails, represents the outer world, everything physical around you, including your body. The outer world is corporeal, palpable, a sensory and locomotory experience, whilst your inner world consists of thoughts, memories and ideas, all of which are perceptory experiences; mental ones, which cannot be translated into the physical world directly from the mind, but use a conduit - the body.
The two worlds have no way of becoming one as the coin has two sides for a reason - one cannot view both of them simultaneously. You cannot make a perception physical and, normally, you cannot affect the world with your mind directly.
But we can...
Now spin the coin
Observe as the two sides blurr together imperceptably.
That is magic...
According to that there three types of magic:
The Pledge:
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The first main branch of magic is pledge magic. It is the simplest. It pertains only to the outer world that one experiences - it is the ability to use one's inner world to affect and alter the world around them. All types of magic that affect the physical environment fall into the category of pledge magic (telekinesis, elemental control, charmwork & transfigurarions, to name a few).
The Turn:
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Branch of magic, characterized by the ability to manipulate and alter a world one does not experience and, in normal circumstances, would not have any access to - another person's inner world (their mind). Turn magic is mental magic. It is much more dangerous and complex than pledge magic as each individual mind is uncharted territory, navigable only to those mages with great perception of the depth of the human consciousness ( consciousness, subconsciousness and deep subconsciousness). Like pledge magic, turn magic has several levels of difficulty, according to the part of the mind one seeks to affect. Threading through the subconsciousness is the easiest, as the thought process there isn't volitional - it is much easier to manipulate involuntary desires and thoughts than voluntary ones. Affecting the subconsciousness usually happens easily during dream states as the mind is most volatile and flexible whilst in deep sleep - signs of a mage tampering with one's subconsciousness are usually odd and unexplainable dreams. As dreams stem from the uncontrollable part of the mind, they are altered when a change in the subconsciousness occurs. Controlling conscious thought is harder as that part of the brain works actively against the magic user when it detects an unwanted thought. That type of turn magic is commonly referred to as mind control.
Conscious and subconscious turn magic doesn't require more than a fifth of the mage's mind to be concentrated on it and thus the magic user can remain fully conscious whilst performing the turn. It can be done whilst the mage itself is sleeping - basically, dream-walking. So to say, only a tendril of the mage's mind needs to be connected to the target's.
Entering the deep subconscious requires the performer's mind to be fully connected to the mind of the target - to be fully submerged in the target's inner world where they have no control over the environment. Even when the target is human, their mind has natural defences which can neutralize the threat - throw the mage out of their personal space or, in some extreme cases, destroy the parasite mind latched onto theirs.
The Prestige:
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NOT APPLICABLE IN THE NEW VERSAILLES CONTINUITY
The Prestige is the most intense and impressive magic that a witch performs in their entire life - it is an incredible phenomenon, which happens only once, if at all, to a magic user. Theoretically speaking every witch has the potential for a prestige, but less than a fourth of the magical population of the world ever achieves one. It transpires only in the case of incredibly intense emotions, which birth single-minded thoughts and desires.
In the case of such extreme emotive states even humans are capable of spinning the coin - telekinesis can form by normal humans subjected to huge amounts of stress or those who undergo traumatizing events; the phenomenon 'hysterical strength' (I.e. parents lifting whole cars off their children) is also a magical burst achieved by normal people.
When born magic users are subjected to similar factors, the results vary, but one tendency remains - The Prestige is always the highlight of a witch's magic; the peak of it. It is a moment of impact when the magical mind is overwhelmed with so much emotion that it gains the ability to alter the fabric of time and change reality. A thought forms so intensely and persists so strongly that it is made physical, real. It's often referred to as a 'dream come true' or a 'granted wish'.
Prestiges tend to hold a negative connotation in the magical world and with reason - happiness and positive emotions are rarely the cause of the prestige and thus little good usually comes out of a Prestige magic. Furthermore, the emotion felt most intensely and the one that causes most single-minded thoughts, is anger and one's desires during such states are hardly logical. Prestige due to sorrow often has distorted results - turning back time to save a loved one leads to witnessing their death again, only in a different manner.
The Prestige changes a person, depending on the thought they've made physical, the wish their magic has granted to them.