Brennan’s description of Invisibility is so interesting and breathes so much life into the magic system of this hyper-arcane world. I’m always more of a sucker for hard magic systems and as much as D&D alreadydelivers on that front, I love hearing these little details that combine common knowledge of physics and light with the arcane.
It also gave Cerrit’s 31 Investigation check the appropriate depth and dimension. It can sometimes be hard as a DM to find nuance within the success or failure of a roll. How does a 19 Persuasion check manifest compared to a 23? What does it mean to get 30+ on a check and how does it go beyond the standard success? The way Brennan handled it was kinda - for a lack of a better word - elegant? He let the narrative reflect Cerrit’s specialized abilities which made that 31 feellike it was a success beyond the norm.
An interesting thing about Cerrit is that, actually, I don’t (yet?) get the pointed sense that he specifically believes himself better than the gods like so many in Avalir, and Exandria, do. He’s arrogant and self-important, just like everyone else, but his hubris is not the hubris of the mages around him.
He doesn’t think himself better than the gods. He thinks himself better than mages, especially mages who think themselves better than the gods.
He spends hours of his life standing over the bodies, viscera, ashes, bloody smears of mages who got themselves killed because they followed the whims of their hubris. He picks up whatever personal effects they left behind, maybe even picks the mage themselves up in pieces, then files a report detailing their missteps. He snorts when he hears about ~yet another~ wizard trying to ascend to godhood. Although he lives in a mageocracy in the Age of Arcanum, he is not a mage, and he works with people who are also not mages in a building that does not hum with magic the way others in Avalir do. Rather, the cold and somber silence of that absence is specifically what makes the Hall of Eyes a place of sharp clarity.
Cerrit stands in a replica of the sanctum of Vespin Chloras and performs the work he does every single time the Sightwardens scrape off the floor some wizard who tried to challenge a god. He thinks about all the times he’s seen an idiot mage doing stupid things, and he must feel superior to every last one of them. And, sincerely, it’s exceptionally easy to understand why he does. After all, he is standing here when they no longer can (so he believes).
The problem is that idiot mages doing stupid things can destroy the world, and his superiority and arrogance about feeling better than they are will never help Cerrit prevent them from doing so.
ALT
