#the coven system

[whotfelsewantedtobelynnyx]

Now, I have no way of proving this, but...

Given that Lilith Clawthorne and Darius Deamonne were:

A- Schoolmates (and likely friends, given that between Eda and Raine their social circles probably overlapped) ,

B- Coven Heads at the same time,

and C- The only two Coven Heads of a similar age at the time they worked together,

I like to think they were pretty good friends during their years as colleagues.

BECAUSE IMAGINE THEM.

Mean girl duo Darius and Lilith knowing all the gossip. Between the two of them, you can bet any affair, breakup, or scandal is no longer a secret.

Workaholic Lilith refusing to take a break, even to sleep, and her annoyed BSF Darius showing up to force her to actually rest.

Fashion icon Darius coming over to help Lilith get ready for any major event. Hair, makeup, nails and all. He even sometimes helps her pick an outfit.

Darius lounging on the floor at the end of Lilith’s bed, complaining about his latest man while his aro/ace BSF strokes his hair sympathetically and thanks the Titan she doesn’t have to deal with this.

Lilith and Darius casually having completely wordless conversations during a Coven Heads meeting and the other head witches nervously wondering what they’re missing.

Darius and Lilith constantly having to deflect rumors that they’re dating, to the point where even Eda questions if they’re an item.

Eberwolf having to hold back Darius as they throw Lilith into the cage during Eda’s petrification ceremony- NOPE. Bad OP. *smacks with rolled up newspaper* No throwing angst into a wholesome post.

Anyway, just…them.

[its-rat-time-babey]

Headcanons, Speculation and analysis of Bard Magic:

This is part of a series where I analyze and make headcanons about each form of magic.

[Bard] [Oracle] [Potion][More coming soon]

Bard magic is simultaneously the most freeing and most restricting coven. On one hand you have the ability to cast a wide variety of spells, some of which can technically be considered wild magic because it creates effects that imitate the magic of other covens, but on the other hand you have the fact that this magic must be cast through music and musical instruments. You can’t use spell circles for the majority of bard spells, all magic enhancements do to bard magic is make it louder and palismen are almost completely useless.

Bard magic is cast through sound. The bile sack is still used to give said sound it’s magical effects but in the long run it’s just sound.

Bard magic also cannot be cast with spell circles. There are a couple exceptions like the containment spell that holds and summons the bard’s instruments, but all spells that actually affect the world around them must be cast through some sort of musical instrument.

This is why palismen and staves in general are almost useless in bard magic. The entire point of staves are to easily create large spell circles, and bard magic doesn’t use spell circles. The few bard spells that do use spell circles don’t need a massive staff either, as they’re all mostly storage and transportation spells. You don’t need to create a spell circle the size of your own body to summon a lute. Plus trying to hold a staff and a musical instrument at the same time is just asking for trouble.

This doesn’t mean that bards don’t have palismen though. Many still have palismen, they just don’t actively use them when casting spells. Bards often have palismen to help them when they’re not actively playing music. Doing things like helping clean and maintain the instrument and helping memorize new songs. Palismen are also used for travelling long distances.

The palismen of bards are commonly creatures that are associated with sound and music. Creatures that can mimic sounds like parrots and songbirds are the most common bard palismen, but as long as it can work alongside whatever instrument the bard uses it’s a valid palisman.

Skara’s spider palisman is an example of a bard palisman that works alongside their instrument. As a bard, Skara knows how to use more than one instrument, but Skara’s main instrument of choice is a lyre, aka: a stringed instrument. So if a string on Skara’s lyre breaks, her spider palisman can very quickly fix it by making a new string out of web.

Also worth stating now before I start talking about how bard magic works is the fact that there are a few universal spells that every coven can learn, those being the basic elemental spells, Fire, ice and light/basic magical energy and shield spells. These four spells are classified as “universal spells” and everyone, regardless of coven, is allowed to learn and use them because they’re so basic that it’s impossible to NOT learn them. How to use energy, ice, fire and shield spells is taught in all tracks because they’re that basic and important to learn.

Now on to how bard magic works.

Bard magic is cast through a musical instrument, and the notes played and general sound of the music affects the spell being cast. The more complicated the spell is, the longer the instrument must be played. For example, A basic energy blast fired from the instrument only requires one note, while a more complicated levitation spell requires an entire song (raine’s rhapsody).

The tone and tempo of the song also heavily affects the spell. Faster, more chaotic songs tend to be more destructive while slower, more calm songs tend to be less so. You can play the exact same song at a different tempo and get a completely different effect.

Bard spells can even imitate the spells of other covens. For example, a bard can play a song that causes small illusions to appear around them, a trick that is commonly used when attempting to tell stories through song. Bards can also do things like make plants grow or wither and even heal injuries.

But these imitations have strict limits. A bard can make plants grow faster with a song, but the second they try to make the plants do anything other than grow faster or wither away the spell becomes classified as plant magic and the coven brand stops the spell. They can summon illusions, but can’t make them too realistic or it becomes illusion magic. They can heal injuries, but only a small amount before it becomes healing magic. And so on.

In general, bards are powerful, but it’s a double edged sword. You have access to a wide variety of spells, but it must be done with an instrument.

I’m sure you can see the first problem here. Playing an instrument is difficult, and what instrument you play can change everything about how you cast spells as a bard. A portable instrument like a violin, lyre or recorder is extremely useful as it allows you to move around while playing, but they can be hard to learn. All instruments can be hard to learn. I’m speaking from experience here. I could never play the clarinet or guitar properly and I can just barely play the piano. Some instruments just don’t fit the individual.

A stationary instrument like a piano or harp can also be used for bard magic, but they aren’t exactly useful in combat or out on the field because it’s a massive stationary instrument and can’t be moved around easily in the middle of a fight. Some bards get around this limitation by using enchanted instruments that can move around on their own, a bit like a musical vehicle. Most Bards also attempt to learn a variety of different instruments, some big, some small, so they don’t have to rely on just one instrument, but like I said before, some instruments just don’t fit the individual.

There’s also whistling and singing, which like all instruments has it’s strengths and weaknesses. For the obvious strength, you don’t need an instrument to whistle or sing, making it a powerful source of bard magic, but this comes at a cost.

For whistling, that cost is the fact that it can only cast simple spells. Even if you whistle a long song that’s meant to cast a complicated spell, it will only cast a basic one. Whistling simply doesn’t have enough power to cast powerful spells. Raine’s whistle transmutation is one of, if not the most complicated spell that can be cast through whistling.

For singing, that cost is the fact that singing is extremely complicated. For one, the lyrics of the song don’t matter at all. You could sing an entire song about plants and not affect the smallest sprout. All that matters is the notes, tempo and tone of voice. In fact, using lyrics actually makes the spell harder to cast because each syllable of each word can count as a note, and you need to make every note be just right for bard magic to properly work. So lyric-less singing, like opera is actually the best choice when casting bard magic with singing.

Singing also takes much longer than using an instrument. A magic bolt is just one note when using an instrument, but to cast that same magic bolt with your voice, it takes several seconds of singing to charge the spell and one final note to fire it. This can be tiring both for the bard’s voice and their bile sack.

There’s also the danger of missing a note or playing a note wrong. Bard spells rely heavily on playing the correct notes at the correct time. Playing the wrong note during a song could at the very least seriously change the spell in unpredictable ways and at the very most cause the spell to backfire and quite literally blow up in the bard’s face. The more complicated the spell the more dangerous a mistake becomes.

There’s also the number one weakness of bard magic: it relies purely on sound. If you cannot hear the music, you cannot be affected by it. This rule even applies to bard spells that physically affect things. A bard can fire a magic blast that cuts through metal like a warm knife through butter and have it hit a person point blank, but if that person can’t hear the spell, it’ll hit them and have no effect. The person won’t even feel it. Just like I said at the very beginning, in the long run, it’s just sound.

In combat, Bards are strong against Beastkeepers, because a lot of bard spells, and I mean a LOT of bard spells can calm down and even control beasts. Hell, some bard spells that have nothing to do with beasts have some sort of effect on them just as an unintentional side effect. So beastkeepers have a very hard time using beasts during fights with bards, which is their entire specialty.

Bard are weak against illusionists. This is because illusionists have access to two spells that can make all bard magic next to useless. The first is a silencing spell that mutes the entire area. This literally removes all the power that a bard has because no one can hear their music now. The second is just basic auditory illusions. An illusionist can force the instrument of a bard to play the wrong notes or force the instrument to sound off when the bard is playing it, causing the instrument to constantly backfire whenever it’s played.

[tennessoui]

I'm begging on my hands and knees for more Twilight au, and those are words I never thought I'd say! Anakin being able to resist compulsion, and Obi-Wan seeming instantly obsessed, and poor Shmi! Pretty please 🥺🙏

hey!! sure! here's some more!

(2.5k)

Having a sheriff for a mom sucked a lot when he was a kid growing up in a small town. There was probably nothing Anakin was rebelling against more at eleven, at thirteen, at seventeen than the rule of law his mother represented. 

All things considered, she was pretty good at separating her home life from her worklife. It was Anakin who was bad at respecting the separation, Anakin who couldn’t keep son out of delinquent.  There’s only so many times he could be pulled out of wreckage and bars and buildings with Keep Out No Trespassing signs on them before he got The Sheriff at home and out in public.

He’d hated it growing up and had come to grudgingly respect it later and in fits and starts. His dad dying had, terribly and ironically, helped a lot. His mother had had a stroke just before and then Anakin had been faced with the possibility of being an orphan, and the terror of that had mellowed him out.

Sorta.

He still hates a lot of things about his mother’s job. Especially the fact that she’s the sheriff of a very small town.

And when people talk, she listens.

The thing about small towns is that everyone’s always fucking talking. And other people are always fucking lsitening so they can talk later. One big fucking community, which means when Anakin comes home from his weird doctor’s appointment with Dr. Kenobi, a few hours later because he took a detour biking along the edge of the seaside cliffs just to spit in the good doctor’s metaphorical face, Shmi Skywalker already knows more than Anakin ever planned to tell her.

Like, for instance, “Sheila says that Dr. Kenobi thought it would behoove you to spend some time at the local library volunteering.”

Anakin pauses, backpack half-slung off his shoulders. He hangs his stuff up slowly, careful to keep his tone very light. “Did Sheila say what I told him after he said that?” 

His mom’s silence is very loud.

“I don’t want to do i—”

“I asked the new librarian about it on my way home from the station. She thinks it’s a wonderful idea. Apparently we used to have a program like that in the forties but it died out during the war.”

“Mom, come on—”

“It’ll look good on resumes, saying you created and supported a local reading program.”

“Yeah, but I’m a bit too old to be applying for babysitting positio—”

“It’ll look good for me as well,” Shmi says in her sheriff voice. “Elections are coming up soon. It’ll be good, if my kid was involved in the community.”

Anakin’s glad that his back is still turned to the living room, where his mom is sitting. “Are you gonna run again?” he asks, paying special attention to his tone this time.

“Why wouldn’t I?” his mom replies. “I’ve been sheriff for a decade and a half.”

Anakin lets his eyes fall closed for a second, knowing that his face can’t be seen. This is how they end up half the time: Shmi’s ardent belief that she is invincible, going up against Anakin’s desperate desire for her to be so.

And they just don’t talk about it. As if they’re actually in agreement.

He knows how this is going to shake out.

“Do you have any plans tomorrow?” His mother asks.

Anakin’s eyes remain closed. “I guess so,” he says.

—--------

Mrs. Kenobi—call me Satine—is sort of scary up close. She’s tall. She glides between bookshelves. Anakin’s never met someone who glides before. And she’s so intensely, incredibly, blindingly perfect that Anakin would rather be anywhere but in her vicinity. There’s something incredibly unnerving about the symmetry of her face, the sharpness of her cheekbones. She’s obviously an absolute knock-out, just drop-dead gorgeous, but it makes Anakin’s skin crawl and his heart beat fast, but not in a good way or a normal teenage boy way.

Anakin tries to keep the unease off his face as Satine leads him through a tour of the library, a gentle hand on his forearm. That’s another thing Anakin doesn’t really like. She’s wearing satin gloves. He doesn’t know anyone who wears gloves anymore.

It’s just all a bit…unsettling.

“I put in a few words around the school yesterday afternoon,” Satine tells him. They pass by the mystery section, the fantasy section, and take a hard right into the young adult section. The shelves are smaller here, and Anakin feels rather stupidly gigantic as he and Satine walk through them. “To some parents picking their children up after school. They agreed it would be good exposure to bring them to the library for an hour or so of reading before supper.”

Anakin highly doubts it will be, but Satine hasn’t really asked him.

She sweeps past his figure and pushes open a pair of double doors with a flourish better suited for a Russian tsarina hosting an elaborate ball than a small town librarian showing off a small, cramped, and dusty room filled with padded seats and threadbare rugs.

And then, as if she has been waiting to put the last nail in the proverbial coffin, Satine adds, “A few students from the local high school will be here as well.”

“Sorry,” Anakin says, “are you saying I’m going to be reading to high school students? Can’t they do that themselves?”

After all, Anakin went to high school here. Academics hadn’t been too rigorously challenging, but they’d taught the fucking basics.

Satine raises one perfectly plucked eyebrow in his direction. “They’ll be volunteering as well.”

Oh. Right.

“It looks good on their college applications,” Satine waves a hand through the air and the words linger there. Anakin looks out the rather dirty window, jaw clenching. “I’ve already chosen a handful of books I think the young ones will enjoy.”

Anakin, committed to his fate, pads over to the titles placed carefully ontop of a short, stout side table. 

“Peter the Rabbit,” he reads off the top. “Peter Pan. Alice in Wonderland. Treasure Island. The Prince and the Pauper—look, you’re the librarian here, but don’t you have anything written this century maybe? Harry Potter, even.”

“These are classics,” Satine tells him, her nose raised into the air as if she has encountered something particularly foul-smelling. She turns away, presumably to return to the front desk so she can welcome half the fucking town inside the library so Anakin can read them fucking Anne of Green Gables and become a better person.

“These are fucking boring,” he mutters to himself, flicking the cover of the first book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz open. Publication date: 1900. “I’d rather be in Kenobi’s office getting lectured at.”

There’s a sharp noise of disapproval from the doorway, and Anakin’s head snaps up to see the tail end of a very heated look from the librarian before the door closes behind her.

He shivers, alone in the emply room, and it takes several long minutes for his heart to settle back into its normal pace. 

—----------

After the fourth kid sneezes, Anakin closes his book with a snap and stands from the very small chair they’ve got him sitting on. “Come on,” he tells the cluster of children he’s been assigned to. “We’re getting out of here.”

“Are you kidnapping us?” One of them, a snot-nosed kid who’d started the sneezing says, rubbing at her cheek beneath her glasses. “Cause mommy says that’s not allowed.”

“I’m not kidnapping you,” Anakin snaps back, barely holding in his natural follow-up to the sentence which is of course, I don’t want to be around any of you in the first place. “Also, just for future reference, you shouldn’t ask if someone’s kidnapping you after you already start following them.”

The girl scowls and reaches up her hand to hold onto Anakin’s. 

For the love of Christ.

“We’re just going to go into the main part of the library,” Anakin tells his children, all six of them. “They have windows out there.”

They have windows out there and they also have parents. Parents who absolutely should be doing other things with their lives and precious hour of extra freetime.

Parents who are clustered instead around the library’s front desk as the town’s newest librarian holds court.

“Is reading time over?” one of the kids asks him, turning his head to look up at Anakin.

Anakin thinks about it. “Do you want reading time to be over?”

The kid thinks about it back. “Yeah,” he decides. “You don’t do the voices good.”

“It’s a boring book,” Anakin tells the kid. “Voices aren’t going to make it better.”

“Voices always make it better,” another kid says. “They make everything better.”

“Oh look,” Anakin says. “Is that your father?”

He gestures vaguely towards the cluster of drooling middle-aged somethings focused on Satine.

The kid peeks around his thigh and then shakes his head. “No,” he says. “That’s Dr. Obi.”

“Dr. Obi!” The kid holding Anakin’s hand says, and she lets go.

Anakin gets a bad feeling about this, a feeling that only doubles when he turns around to see Dr. Kenobi sauntering towards him, hands tucked into the pockets of a long dark jacket that makes him look even more pale than he already is.

He scowls automatically as the man gets closer. “Dr. Obi.”

Dr. Kenobi spares him a look that’s far too amused for Anakin’s pleasure before he crouches down to the level of the kids. “Hello there, young ones,” he says, opening his arms to accept a hug from the traitor of a girl Anakin’s just spent thirty minutes reading to. “Are you eating all your vegetables? Even the brussel sprouts?”

“I like brussel sprouts,” one of the kids reports sounding proud, and that starts a cacophony of opinions about brussel sprouts from all around Anakin.

“Wow! One of mine just absolutely hates them,” Dr. Kenobi says. “She refuses to eat them, so you’re very brave, Michele.” He lets go of the girl and turns his golden-brown gaze up to Anakin. “And what does Mr. Skywalker think?” he asks, raising a hand for Anakin to take. It’s very obvious he’s asking for a hand up and Anakin is obeying before he thinks about it. He snatches his hand free almost too soon, but Dr. Kenobi doesn’t even have the grace to lose his balance and fall over. 

His hand is like ice in Anakin’s, and Anakin stuffs his fingers into the pocket of his jacket automatically a second later.

“Do brussel sprouts help with circulation?” he’s biting out before he can stop himself. “Cause you may need some then.”

Kenobi’s head tilts very slightly to the side as his eyes catch and hold onto Anakin’s. “Oh?” he asks lightly. 

“You’re cold,” is all Anakin mutters in return. He swipes his other hand against the back of his neck. “”S poor circlutation, isn’t it? Something in your diet maybe?” Dr. Kenobi blinks at him and then breaks into a wide smile. “I can assure my diet is very…circulation-mindful,” he says. “Blood health positive.”

Anakin’s mouth thins into a line. He guesses that’s what he gets for trying to give health advice to a doctor, especially a doctor like Kenobi who just so happens to be devastatingly attractive and also smart.

And also an asshole. And also married.

Speaking of which. “Are you here to fend off your wife’s admirers with a scalpel?” Kenobi’s eyebrows raise. “Young ones,” he turns his head away from Anakin, down to the children.

The strangest feeling breaks of Anakin the second Kenobi looks away, almost as if a strange pressure he hadn’t even realized had been building was suddenly dissolved.

The very small beginnings of a headache begin to thrum in his temples.

“Young ones, it’s time to find your parents, isn’t it?” Kenobi says, and like fucking magic, the crowd of six children around Anakin disperse, children swarming away from him towards the group of adults surrounding the front desk.

“Can you teach me how to do that?” Anakin blurts out, even though he’d meant to ignore Kenobi now that he doesn’t have to make nice in front of small kids. Not that he was really making nice in the first place. But now he definitely doesn’t have to.

Kenobi gives him a half-smile, eyes heavy-lidded. “It’s a special sort of skill that takes, above all else, much practice.”

Anakin scowls. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Does Kenobi think he can’t commit himself to something even as mundane as a fucking commanding persona? Does he think he doesn’t have it in him to be–-

Kenobi’s eyebrows go up again. “Has anyone ever told you that you are exceedingly defensive?” 

“You’re extremely nosey,” Anakin snaps back, crossing his arms over his chest. “Don’t you have better things to focus on right now anyway?”

He gestures loosely towards Satine, who has started playing with one of the mother’s bracelets as the other woman stands and looks at her rather dumbfounded.

Kenobi follows his gaze and then lets out a huff of laughter. “Satine can take care of herself,” he says, even though it hadn’t really been Satine that Anakin was worried about.

He’s about to open his mouth to say so when Kenobi turns back to him. His eyes are piercing, a dark, captivating sort of gold. 

“Do you find my wife beautiful, Anakin?” he asks.

Anakin blinks. His headache is getting worse, which is probably down to what can only be a trick-question fashioned to look like a grenade lobbed at his feet. “I don’t think there’s a good answer to that,” he mutters, rubbing absently at his forehead. “What the fuck.”

“An honest answer is a good one,” Kenobi says lightly. “Tell me honestly.”

The words feel pulled from Anakin’s stomach, and he’s opening his mouth before he realizes it. “No,” he says. 

Kenobi’s eyebrows crinkle together. “No?”

Anakin curses his stupid impulse control. “She’s beautiful,” he adds quickly. “Really. But…it makes me uncomfortable.”

Kenobi’s lips purse, and then there’s something like disappointment in his eyes as he examines Anakin. “Ah yes,” he murmurs. “I’ve been told my wife can make countless young men feel rather uncomfortable. It’s normal in men your age, Anakin. Sexual ar—”

“Uncanny,” Anakin blurts out. He doesn’t mean to, but he also doesn’t want to listen to  Kenobi trying to lecture him on fucking arousal in the public library. When it’s not even relevant. “She’s so beautiful, it’s uncanny.”

“Uncanny.”

“Yeah, like. Monstrous.”

Kenobi’s mouth falls open, pink lips parted in what looks like honest surprise.

Anakin’s own eyes widen as it hits him that he’s just called Kenobi’s wife a monster to Kenobi’s face.

“Shit,” he says. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that. I’m going to go.” 

He throws a look at Kenobi, whose eyes are lit with something a lot like interest and then across the library to where Satine’s head is turned, cocked, and eyebrows up high on her forehead, as if she’s just heard everything he’s said.

He decides rather immediately that he’s going to take the backdoor exit.

[kingoftheu]

I’m sorry but it’s funny that Belos managed to impose a Puritan fear of Wild Magic over the Boiling Isles but wasn’t able to impose the slightest bit of Puritan Homophobia over that same time period.

[alyssumflowersgarden]

Looking for pagan/ witchy Discord servers? Here's a few I'm in:

Hearthfire House: https://discord.com/invite/p4E3NBu2yW

Raven Masters Keep: https://discord.com/invite/UgVr5dvxg3

Gravekeeper's Inn: https://discord.com/invite/PxrHSnT4gB

Crossing Paths: https://discord.com/invite/Ubvt8te6HY

Rasenna Polytheism: https://discord.com/invite/DmUeMPBusZ

Lavender Apothecary: https://discord.com/invite/KyeGVx6vzt

Everlasting Moon Coven: https://discord.com/invite/wdHnYU7E5H

Most of these have a lot of overlap of the same people on them, and if I remember correctly, they're all godspouse and plural friendly. Obviously gay/ queer friendly or I wouldn't be there.

[viridian-forest-collective]

Otherkin Discord Coven

Hey all! Just wanted to advertise the new Coven Discord!

This discord is specifically for Vampires, Vampire Familiars, Ghosts, Undead, Werewolves (+ other weres), Demons, Angels, and Dragons. These are the specific groups this discord is made for. We feel like these kins are underrepresented and we would just like to make a community for these kins!

I know its a little cringe that I'm advertising a discord server but I would really like to have a nice community for these kins.

In this server we are also a practicing witch/vampire coven and we'd like to include the above listed kins into our group. We host talks, classes, tips, streams, movie nights, vcs, and game nights. We have pluralkit and tupperbox for systems as well. Nontraumagenic systems are not welcome (sorry). This is a safe space please no drama.

I would really appreciate it if you join! There is a verification process so please don't just join and do nothing T-T. Can't wait to see you all there!

https://disboard.org/server/1198392187101118474

[rainestormcoven]

I love the small detail of Jerbo being part of the sigil removal. He says in Any sport in a storm that he wants to update the system, and in the finale we see him being apart of that!

[imminent-danger-came]

continue being a little mean to toh fans please it is really irritating how some act like its got the best writing of any modern cartoon

Daawwwww I don't have it in me. TOH fans love it for a reason, and there are legitimately good moments! It's just not the most complex or well-written show out there—which it doesn't need to be—but I also totally get your exhaustion. It gets tiring seeing people praise it so highly over and over again when it's just like...fine. It didn't do nothing but it also didn't do something, you know? It's main couple is cute and queer, but that's pretty much all there is to them. It has a fun cast of characters, but they all tend to fall into archetypes. Luz is a sweet main character, but she doesn't have any real flaws and kinda takes a back seat to Hunter and Eda (the white people lol). Her foil with Philip was interesting...but then they kinda backed off and went the "you and Belos are nothing alike" direction.

((I'm also going to answer this anon with another: ))

And It's not that an unsympathetic villian is bad, or that Belos would even be sympathetic with added backstory, it's just that...there were a lot of interesting things to explore with his character that were left hanging.

Like, while he's definitely not at all a good person, it's intriguing that he would bother to recreate his brother over and over again knowing that each time the grimwalker was going to betray him. It's intriguing that he was even willing to kill his brother to begin with (though Caleb was super underutilized in general). Like, you can give a villain depth without justifying or victimizing them (hi Finnegran from tdp, I'll also add Spider Queen & LBD here). So it just feels like a missed opportunity all across the board. It's still surprising to me that we got a confirmation on the Wittebane backstory through an unrelated background character, rather than Philip himself (who had literally possessed a main character, and mindscapes had already been well-established....the pieces were all there me thinks).

And obviously it's like, people can love something despite it's flaws, and they can cherish it for the good it has, but they still don't need to praise it as an ultimate form of media, you know? We don't need to pretend toh was this dark and complex story—it was just a story a lot of people liked and resonated with. Which I'm glad it's there for those people, and I'm glad there are options when it comes to queer pieces of media!

That said the show with the best writing of any modern cartoon is The Dragon Prince (streaming on Netflix).

[lonelysa1lor]

I think Philip's death was not what be deserved.

I don't mean this as in "he shouldn't of died" because i think we all knew that's how his story would always end,My actual issue is HOW he died.

He didn't die feeling bad, maybe he was a bit scared but he didn't have to face the consequences of his actions (atleast not all of them). He had no realisation that everything he'd done was wrong. He didn't see hunter, or caleb, or anyone else on the boiling isles who's he caused lasting damage to. He didn't suffer, instead he gets stomped on, barely painful.

During the entirety of Season (and the last couple eps of season 2), its been shown that Philip knows deep down that he's guilty, and its shown even more with the Hallucinations of Caleb and the Grimwalkers. But he's too stubborn and too far ahead to admit he was wrong. I thought that was what WAD was going to be, Philips 'realisation' and ending.

All in all it was anticlimactic.

[crimeronan]

sometimes i see really heated arguments over whether hunter is a really built soldier or whether he's a scrawny pipsqueak and i think these arguments are hilarious because. it is SO relative. like, not even in the storytelling, i mean even his actual design. he's taller and broader than everyone in the hexsquad because he is sixteen. he's shorter and thinner than everyone in the emperor's coven because he is sixteen. the boy is simply a normally proportioned sixteen-year-old who looks like a badass jacked military asshole or a very thin very wet very angry cat ENTIRELY due to circumstance. like to luz and co he's obviously bigger. but amity notes that he's scrawny because she's expecting someone with the proportions of, you know, AN ADULT SOLDIER. the adults push him around like a shitty little pipsqueak because they're all terrible and very funny people & when you get to be above the age of about 26, every 16-year-old you meet REALLY DOES START LOOKING LIKE A BABY. holds all of your hands. embrace the magic of perspective and contrast with me. hunter is whatever you want him to be.

[i-am-a-scholar-of-magic]

The Emperor’s Relics: Artifacts Of A Lost Time

Among the many positives of “The Owl House” is its rich setting. Though many - including myself - might say we were not given enough detail about the Boiling Isles, there is no denying that the show’s setting is rich and fascinating. Why else would we want to know more?

One such example of worldbuilding that was established but never elaborated on is the relics in the castle’s Relic Room. The artifacts, said to be incredibly powerful, are only seen in “Agony of a Witch,” in which (HA!) Luz tries to steal one to help Eda and Willow and Gus use a few for fun. Though described by Kikimora as “reminders of our great Emperor’s overwhelming power,” Lilith refers to them as “decrepit” and “useless,” implying that they have vastly declined in power over the years and are now used as propaganda. 

Curiously, though seeming to intend to have a relic for each major coven, only eight are depicted, and only three of them elaborated upon:

The Green-Thumb Gauntlet: A glove carved of wood, the gauntlet is described as allowing the wearer to grow any plant they can imagine. Willow herself uses the glove to grow trees with fists to knock down an armored door. 

The Oracle Sphere: Described by Gus as telling the user how to become their best self, he uses it to conjure a purple-tinted illusion of himself that merely tells him,” You’re always your best self.”

The Healing Hat: Written as able to heal any disease or break any curse, Luz attempts to steal the hat to cure Eda. The hat is destroyed in a confrontation with Lilith, but given her description of the “decrepit” relics and bizarre nature of Eda’s curse as non-native to the Boiling Isles, it is probable that the hat would not have cured her - else Lilith might have tried long ago.

After these, the relics are only shown visually, but it was a fun thought experiment to wonder about each:

Golden Harp: Presumably tied to the Bard Coven. *I like to imagine that the harp intuitively plays music to cast any spell the user might imagine without having to know how to play the harp. 

Globe of Abomination Clay: Presumably tied to the Abomination Coven. I imagine it contains an incredibly ancient and very strong Abomination, likely holding far more clay than it seems. 

Golden Vial: Presumably tied to the Potions Coven. I like to think that the phial can produce large or infinite amounts of any potion that is poured into it. (This was admittedly based on the White Phial from “Skyrim.”)

Silver Mirror: Presumably tied to the Illusion Coven. I imagine the mirror can capture minute details of whatever it sees, and so aid the user in creating far more specific illusions. 

Golden Bell: Presumably tied to the Beastkeeping Coven. I imagine the bell can be rung to influence any beasts within its audible range. Specifically, it can summon them to the user, calm them down and put them to sleep, or enrage them into a frenzy. 

These all seem to exclude the relic of the Construction Coven, though there is a faint possibility we see this relic later. Mason, head of the Constriction Coven, is seen wielding a hammer emblazoned with the fist sigil of the coven. Assuming this is the Construction Reic, I like to think it can break down and then reshape any solid material it strikes, in the image of alchemy from “Fullmetal Alchemist” or Overhaul from “My Hero Academia.”

Even a year after the series’s conclusion, it is beyond evident that the setting of the Boiling Isles, with all of the rich details that often act as a framework with more than enough space for us to fill in the gaps ourselves, continues to be a rich mine of creativity in worldbuilding. Who knows what else is waiting to be conceived of that patchwork of glorious setting?

Thanks for reading! More to come …!

[ophanim-vesper]

Pls tell me someone else thought this too

ok I'm just curious about this but did y'all also think the coven heads had their own 'coven centers' or something? I assumed every coven had their own main building somewhere on the Isles and that we'd get to see it.

But no I guess all the coven heads just live at the castle? I suppose this would be better for Belos to monitor them, but I kinda wish each coven had their own building where they can get together, I think it'd be cool.

[its-rat-time-babey]

Headcanons, Speculation and analysis of Oracle Magic:

This is part of a series where I analyze and make headcanons about each form of magic.

[Bard] [Oracle] [Potions] [More coming soon]

Oracle magic is one of, if not the most powerful and most difficult to control form of magic there is. It has a lot of unique utility spells like spells that allow you to see the future, and offensively it is next to unmatched. But Oracle magic is also infamously difficult to control and utilize properly.

Oracle magic can be divided into two different types of magic; utility spells like future vision, telepathy and possession and offensive spells like spirits and energy blasts.

Before we look at either of those things though, we need to look at what Oracle magic is and how it works.

Oracle magic uses spirits, ghosts and raw magical energy to do things, whether that be telling fortunes or burning someone to ashes.

The first and most important thing about these spirits however, is the fact that they aren’t the actual ghosts of dead witches. They also aren’t sentient. Oracle spirits are made of raw magical energy and are sentient the same way abominations are sentient, meaning not at all unless their creator actively gives them sentience, and even if given sentience, they still aren’t intelligent enough to do much. If you ever meet an oracle that claims they can truly talk to the dead, they’re lying. Oracles can sometimes hear the voices of dead loved ones when they’re casting magic, mostly quick little whispers that are hard to make out, but no one has ever been able to hold a full conversation with a dead person.

Oracle spirits also come in all shapes and sizes. The vaguely humanoid mummy-like spirits are the most common ones that Oracles create because they’re easy to control and don’t require an absolute ton of magic to create, but spirits can variety in appearance wildly, ranging from floating skulls to giant skeletal worm-dragons.

There’s also the very important focusing crystals that Oracles use. Oracle magic CAN be cast with a spell circle, but summoning a spirit can be time and magic consuming, so all Oracles use focusing crystals to make it a bit faster and less hard on the bile sack. These crystals come in all shapes and sizes, from the training orbs at hexside to Odalia’s necklace, but they all work the same way. An Oracle charges the crystal ahead of time with Oracle magic and when they need to summon a spirit, they use the energy already stored in the crystal instead of using a spell circle. The result is a spirit that can be summoned quickly and efficiently. It’s basically a magic battery. The crystals also allow the user to communicate telepathically with the spirit, making it easier to control it.

Moving on from the basics, here’s how the future sight works:

In order to see the future, the Oracle needs specific equipment. The smaller crystals that Oracles like Odalia wear simply don’t hold enough power to see into the future. You need a proper crystal Ball.

Hexside actually has “training orbs” that are specifically designed for future vision and nothing else. They serve as a way for young Oracles to learn how to look into the future without the risk of summoning a much more destructive spirit by accident.

Those “training orbs” are the purple crystal balls that Luz picks up and uses in The First Day. The fact that it’s a training orb designed for witches that are still learning the basics explains why Luz was able to use it easily without magic. It was already charged up beforehand by an actual Oracle and all Luz had to do was tell it to look into the future.

There are two ways to use future vision spells. You either summon a spirit that tells you the future or you see the future in either the crystal ball or a very vivid hallucination.

The spirits summoned by future vision spells are a bit different when compared to other Oracle spirits. First of all, they’re always the vaguely humanoid mummy-like spirits. You cannot make them appear any different. The second major difference is that they’re much smaller than other spirits, are completely intangible and are capable of speech.

Once summoned, the spirit will tell exactly one prophecy and then disappear. The Oracle can tell the spirit to look at a certain point in the future or look for a certain person or object, but after exactly one prophecy the spirit will disappear. No more and no less. The same rules apply to spells that let you see the future through the crystal ball/hallucination.

The prediction, regardless of how it is done, isn’t 100% accurate all the time. If you’re only looking a few minutes into the future then the future you see is basically inevitable and nothing you do can change it, but if you start looking further into the future, it gets less and less likely to be accurate and more things can suddenly change the predicted future.

How specific the prediction is also depends on how far into the future you’re looking. If you look one day into the future then the prophecy will be very specific and on the nose, but looking several years into the future will give you a riddle or very vague answer if you’re using a spirit and an assortment of seemingly random images if you’re looking into the crystal ball.

Not everything can be seen either. It’s possible to make things “immune” to Oracle predictions. It won’t appear in visions, spirits will act like it doesn’t exist and the entire prophecy will refuse to account for it. Belos, the Collector, King, the Owl Beast (but not Eda) and the Day of Unity as a whole are examples of this. Belos has a bunch of magical safeguards, the Collector and King are both extremely powerful entities with a natural immunity, the Owl Beast Curse’s anti-magic properties make both Eda’s cursed form and Harpy Eda not show up in prophecies and the Day of Unity had hundreds, if not thousands of magical safeguards set up by Belos and the Collector so no one could figure out what it really is. Belos also declared it both a sin and a crime to attempt to view the Day of Unity or the aftermath through Oracle magic, the same way it’s considered a sin to try and predict the rapture in christianity.

Moving on from future vision and prophecies, the more aggressive side of Oracle magic:

In combat, Oracles mostly attack using spirits, but they aren’t completely limited to them. There are Oracle spells that don’t require the creation of a spirit, including creating phantasmal fire that can’t be put out by regular means, energy blasts, Oracle teleportation and even the ability to briefly turn intangible, but the most common attack involves spirits.

There are multiple steps in using a spirit. First, you need to create one. As it forms, you must add effects to it so it can do what you want it to do. For example, do you want it to pass through objects or physically interact with things? Do you want it to fade or explode when it reaches its target or do you want it to stick around until you dispel it? That kind of thing.

Then, you let the spirit go. But that’s not the final part. The entire time that the spirit is active, you gotta fight it for control and keep it on the right path. Spirits may not be sentient beings, but they aren’t completely mindless constructs that always obey the first command they’re given like abominations. Spirits are powerful, chaotic entities that tend to travel in whatever direction they want and almost never follow a straight path. So as the spirit travels towards its target, the Oracle needs to keep the spirit firmly on its path until it gets extremely close to its target, at which point it’ll start obeying without question, home in on it’s target and do whatever it was created to do. Without the Oracle’s guidance, the spirit will travel in seemingly random directions until it is either dispelled, destroyed or comes close to its intended target by random chance, at which point it’ll home in on the target and do whatever it was created to do.

This is why Oracle magic is considered so difficult. Oracle magic is powerful as all hell, but the chaotic nature of spirits makes it very, very difficult to actually hit what you want to hit. Oracle magic is also the most magic-heavy coven, because you need to use a lot of magic not just to create and hold the spirit together, but also to actually control the spirit.

Even some of the most powerful Oracles struggle to use multiple spirits at once. Odalia is the most powerful Oracle we’ve seen in the show besides the coven head and they can just barely handle five spirits simultaneously. And that’s talking about the humanoid mummy-looking spirits, which are the easiest to summon and control. The larger and more powerful spirits are even more difficult to control.

In short, Oracle magic is the most powerful offensive magic there is, but that power comes at the cost of Oracle magic being extremely taxing on a witch’s magic reserves and being extremely difficult to aim and control.

In combat, Oracles are strong against both Plant Witches and Abominations.

Oracles are strong against Plant Witches because they have access to one specific spell that is the absolute bane of plants everywhere; Phantasmal Fire. Phantasmal Fire, also called Spirit Fire or Oracle Fire, is a type of magical, purple fire that Oracles can summon with a basic spell circle. It cannot be put out using water, wind or cold temperatures and will burn until it is dispelled through magical means. Not even the boiling isles plants that are naturally heat resistant because they have to deal with the boiling rain can survive being burnt by Oracle Fire, and Plant Witches don’t have access to any spells that can get rid of it. So once the Oracle starts using Phantasmal Fire, the Plant Witch has no way to counter it and can only dodge as the Oracle effortlessly burns through everything.

Oracles are strong against Abominations for two main reasons. The first is the fact that possession spells work on Abominations. They actually work really well on Abominations because the mindlessness of Abominations makes it very easy to take control of them. The Abominations witch can just dispel the Abomination as soon as the Oracle takes control but that still gets rid of an Abomination. The second reason is the fact that Abominations just don’t handle Oracle magic well. Abominations are very resistant to chemicals and physical damage, but the raw magical energy that spirits are made of just cuts through them like a hot knife through butter.

Oracles are weak against Healers and other Oracles.

First off, Healers. It sounds crazy, but it’s true. 90% of Oracle magic can be neutralized by basic healing magic. Some larger spirits require more complicated healing magic, but they can still be neutralized. This makes all of the Oracle’s most powerful spells useless against a healer.

Secondly, other Oracles. They can communicate with and even control the spirits of other Oracles if they try hard enough, so they can either force their opponent to miss or just straight up sent their opponent’s spirit right back at them.

[childlikegoblinqueen]

SCOM Next Chapter Preview!

Pretty noose is pretty hate...

Tomorrow's chapter is ALMOST THERE and Hunter has a ton of rage -- but this mostly closes out the False Golden Guard arc as it had been established A YEAR AGO?!?!?!?!?! I hope you all enjoyed that ride.

After this we will be heading to the Inner Circle Parole Hearings. Or at least the first of the three.

Preview for tomorrow below.

“I JUST WANTED YOU IN MY LIFE!” Hunter shouted. “I N-NEVER NEEDED TO BE YOUR PROTEGE. I JUST WANTED TO KNOW YOU CARED ABOUT ME AS MY OWN PERSON!”

[desertsportshipping]

So @texasflowers made an art post explaining how they think the Snag Machine works, so obviously I had to contribute.

Patreon - Etsy

[vickysaurus]

"Those are the heads of the main nine covens. Each one excelled at a magic school like Glandus, St. Epiderm, and, of course, Hexside."

Some early bird cameos! I spot Darius, Eberwolf, Terra Snapdragon, and Adrian Greye. Notable by their absence is Raine, who wouldn't become coven head until season 2.