The anniversary snuck up on me; but I was sketching this the day of in a little hotel after a hike. I can’t believe it’s been (over!) a year. Always gonna have a space carved out in my mind I think
One of my favorite parts of The Magnus Archives is the star-crossed tragic romance between Oliver Banks and Graham Folger, spelled out only by implication. Genuinely excellent embedded storytelling.
This is my second attempt at her and I am glad I gave it some time and practice before trying again, since I am much, much happier with this version. Hands are still a pain though…
image description: [softly painted, digital portrait of Annabelle Cane in front of a medium dark purple backdrop. She is a dark skinned, young woman with short white hair, which sputter over parts of her forehead in fine web-like silky threads from the side. She wears goldrimmed, octagonal glasses,a golden nose ring. and big teardrop shaped creoles with thin threads crisscrossing in the loops. Her dress is dark violet and has a white peter pan collar tied together with a black silk bow. A white, crocheted cardigan lies causally over her shoulders. Her foreamrs come out from under the free hanging sleeves. Between her hands, she playfully holds a golden zippo lighter with a violet web design thinly edged into it. Barely visible very fine threads stretch out from her fingertips, glowing in a faintly purple light. The same light glows in the deepned of her pupils, which which she cautiously glances down at the viewer.]
Miss Annabelle Cane I am still thinking about what the spiders did to you.
Anyway, i saw this post a few months ago that went in-depth about the evidence we have that the spiders kinda…ate…most of Annabelle’s fashion sense and personality. We can can say yessss fashion spider queen all day long but what happened to her was sad. I still wonder what the OG Annabelle was like.
[Image ID: A fullbody drawing of two Annabelle Canes, both facing the viewer, on a bright magenta background. The Annabelle Cane on the left is posing and winking. She is wearing a dark frilly elbow-length cape, a knee-length black mermaid skirt, and white mid calve length socks with bows on the hems. She is wearing flat-heel Mary Jane shoes, frilly white gloves and is carrying a purple handbag. Her hair is in a short poofy bob. In the center of the drawing is black, all-caps text that reads “I cannot stress this enough. What happened to me was not a glow up.” The Annabelle Cane on the right has white thread wound around her hands and is wearing tennis shoes, ripped jeans, a jacket with a furred hood and a black wide-necked t-shirt. Her hair is shorter and one side of her head is shaved. There are four stylized black spider legs that sprout from the shaved side. End ID]
Anyway if you know the post im talking about PLEASE send me a link i want to read it again. Its essay-length and pre-dates mag194
(TW: Spiders) Characters currently going through the Web Issue may purchase these powers and blessings with MP. This is an MP Shop, though the blessings granted are not objects. They are physical powers, or corrupt mutations, or the like.
Typically, purchased blessings become inaccessible or fade away if a character goes more than 1-2 books without the Web issue, or earlier if the player wishes.
1 MP
A +2 tool bonus to make someone think about spiders.
A +1 tool bonus for getting to speak first.
An unnerving smile that makes people forget what they were talking about. One use.
Strings of some kind reach out and pull you away, into the darkness. One use.
2 MP
You can make a spider or two scuttle across your face or body from nowhere. They aren’t mostly real, but anyone who sees this faces a level 1-2 obstacle to remain calm.
A +1 tool bonus for making someone doubt themselves.
Filling an entire building with cobwebs that no amount of effort will remove. This lasts at least a book. One use.
Knowledge of a single secret that someone dearly wishes to keep quiet.
4 MP
A sense of dedication and resolve. You can spend this to commit to a single project or scheme you have running. You gain miraculous will when you’re keeping the scheme cooking, or keeping it from falling apart. You can use it to aid intentions that keep the scheme from being discovered or ruined, or to adapt it if something bad happens. One use.
A +2 tool bonus for using psychic powers in areas of heightened fear or massive spider overpopulation.
You turn into some kind of horrible spider monster. This power is single use and permanent- you may shift some points of inherent skills into Superior Spider Monster, up to a maximum of 2-3. Like other blessings, it may fade over time without access to the Web’s power- roughly at a rate of 1 point per book. You may move these points into other mundane skills.
There is a thing that sits at the center of the world. It sits replete upon the wheel of destiny, and the laws of the world it weaves.
A strand of that web has brushed on your life. A bit of the terror of dominance, power, of being controlled and used- of manipulation and lies and paranoia- it has touched you.
How intermeshed will it become?
You may pick up the Web issue by…
Loitering in abandoned places filled with cobwebs and hidden spiders.
Being affected by, or pursued by, one of the acolytes or monsters of the web.
Being so afraid of someone controlling or manipulating you that you become isolated and hostile.
Being in the wrong place at the wrong time, because the world is terribly unfair.
Web 1
Omens of encroaching strings
Something skitters just outside of your line of sight. You feel like something far away is.. calling you. You feel an intention that is not your own. Your dreams are becoming strange.
It’s probably nothing, though.
Web 2
Signs and portents only you believe
You see them now. You see.. Something. Maybe fleeting dreams fill you with an unsettling sense of déjà vu. Or, just for a second, you see thin grey strings wrapped around your friend’s arms, vanishing up into the sky. Or you wake up every morning with webs woven between your hands.
Something is happening, you just can’t understand the pattern yet.
…but no one else sees it. No one else understands it. They can’t face the encroaching web.
At this point, traditionally, you begin to experience supernatural changes to your being. This manifests as a level 1 Superior skill. Often this is Superior Affinity to Spiders, but it can be any Superior skill that conveys extrasensory awareness, mental control of others, precognitive powers, skittering movement, lying prowess or affinity for webs and silence.
If this is the first time you are experiencing the Web issue, you may not manifest any power at all.
This superior skill remains until the issue is resolved.
Web 3
Establishing what’s controlling your life.
You see it all the time now, inescapably. You find yourself doing things sometimes, things you don’t really want to do, or you didn’t plan to do. You make decisions and find they somehow get passed over.
You see the lights in the sky that tell you what you are going to do in excruciating detail. You see the puppet strings that connect everyone and everything, winding into buildings and down streets. You see the men in black suits watching everyone and you see the people they take away.
The web is all around you.
At this point, you should establish what, specifically, is controlling your life.
What has your fear writ wide across your world?
Is it something like…
Premonitions that unfold in your waking dreams and extinguish any illusion you may have of your own free will?
A vast conspiracy that weaves through everyone and everything you know, revealing them all to be part of some organization or power that wishes you ill?
An unseen puppeteer that moves people by invisible strings, crouching like a vast spider in some unseen celestial web?
A vampiric cult that calls innocent people into the dark streets, only to suck them dry?
Something else?
This level of the issue intensifies your supernatural affinity with dark forces. You may raise the Superior skill granted by this issue to 2 and choose one of the following:
An affliction that revolves around destiny, your loss of control or the physical changes to your body and mind that are happening. It scales with the Web issue.
A bond representing your fear, fascination or desire for power and control. It scales with the Web issue.
If you choose to bear more of the power of the web, you may also complete the Acolyte’s quest to solidify your connection. The powers granted by this Issue typically vanish soon after it is resolved, but they may linger in much the same way you might keep a wound (Chuubo Core book, 129).
Web 4
A final moment of freedom
Despite the strangling cords of destiny. Despite the feelings of helplessness that wash into your soul- you have a moment, a chance to escape.
Perhaps you fought and marshaled your will. Perhaps a friend came through when you least expected. Perhaps the web just loosened, unexpectedly.
When your Issue reaches this level, you may make a choice to escape or to remain.
If you choose to escape, you may close out this issue by…
Choosing a fiery baptism, immolation, and reconstruction from the ashes.
Choosing desperate, sudden violence against them. Turn the tables.
Choosing to run away from this life, abandon order, embrace chaos and live.
Choosing to accept help, to put yourself at another’s mercy, to trust again.
It is possible that your choice may embrace another power to escape this one.
If, in this final moment, you falter and choose to remain, then your fate is sealed. It’s only a matter of time now.
Web 5
Make peace with how your dark fate will manifest.
The world seems so unreal. The world seems so gray. It wasn’t like this. It wasn’t like this. You are surrounded by it. Your body is not your own. Your mind is not your own. You do not control your thoughts, but- Mercilessly your feelings are still your own.
They’re going to take you soon. They’re going to eat you. They’re going to render you down into whatever they wanted from you.
And the worst is, you know that the entire course of your life has been leading up to this. Destiny is the tool of a dark and evil god, and you never had a choice to begin with.
This issue is resolved when you are taken by dark powers. The character disappears for a time, at least a chapter or so.
They may be dead, but they are always gone.
If they return, they are not the same.
Their player may move points from mundane skills into a Superior skill representing these changes, or rewrite Bonds or Afflictions to suit this. These changes always mark their connection to dark and insidious forces, to spiders and to consumption. They typically interfere with the character’s free will.
The Spider Acolyte’s Quest [30 XP] Bindings 1
This is a quest about cleaving to the dark powers. It is about becoming part of the spider, of the mother of puppets, of the web. It’s about giving in before you are eaten.
It is about forging a bond of fearful reverence with something that controls the world.
Major Goals
The HG may reward you with 5 XP when…
You wield vicious lies, rumors, cruel jibes or similar horrible tricks to hurt or coerce someone, or when you bear through and accept the same as an inescapable part of life.
You are subject to some kind of terrible psychic or mental trauma associated with isolation, spiders, authority figures or distant gods.
You begin to act, physically or metaphorically, like a spider.
Your Web issue rises to 4 and you choose to embrace, rather than reject the Web.
You accept, in your heart, that even an evil god is better than none.
You can earn each bonus once, up to a maximum of 15 XP.
Quest Flavor
1/chapter you may earn an XP towards this quest when:
[Green] You feel sick and terrible, and then see that it’s part of your metamorphosis. Describe the horrific changes in as much detail as you can bear.
[Green] You open a window or leave an external door uncracked so that spiders can enter.
[Blue] You experiment with wielding social conventions, power dynamics and lies to make your environment better for you.
[Gold/Green] You feel ecstatic joy at your body and mind doing things without your input or decision.
[Red/Gold] You flee from an alien being of burning hatred or ecstatic violence.
The reward for completing this quest is an Acolyte perk:
Acolyte Perk: You gain a Connection 1-2 for the Web as a concept. In addition, you are so deeply connected to it that you can never really escape- After resolving the Web Issue, you gain a point in it at the end of the current scene.
There once was a boy who was a good listener. As he had patience in spades and a clever way with words, he soon found he had many friends.
But the boy also had a spider nature, and this he feared.
For he could never really tell what was the call of his human heart and what was that of his innermost nature. Sometimes he asked himself if he had a human heart at all. It could be a cunning spider trick so well done even he was taken in.
The dark clouds of anxiety that troubled him swelled as he feared his friend trapped in an invisible web, being pulled ever closer to something he neither knew nor trusted.
He… detached. His heart was torn between his fear for them and his fear of the terrible silence of solitude. A web of deceptions was born to cover the clouds of his mind, for who could trust a boy with a spider nature?
They spun and spun…
Until his cocoon was so complete that he could no longer tell the lies from truth, the pure from the corrupt, the sincere from the artificial- and his every action only wound the webs around him tighter.
And to him, his heart said nothing at all…
Someone who possesses a spider nature may be represented be either the following Superior Skill or with an Affliction Perk, both detailed below.
1: You have the focus and patience required to be a good listener. You read just a bit more of the subtext of their words they really intend. You have a touch more social poise than normal, a way of knowing what people would laugh if they heard.
2: People like to be around you. They open up to you far more than they should. You don’t read minds, but people make jokes about it. You have a keen knack for always knowing how people feel, and you can always read a room. You have to make a conscious choice to show fear, anger, impatience or anxiety. Not that you feel impatient much anymore. You could wait, completely still and silent, for hours at a time if you needed to.
3: It’s so easy for you to know what people want and what they are afraid of. You can tell by looking at people what their soft spots are- you can see the fractures of a person’s heart and know exactly where not to tread. Consequently, people adore you. You’re very comfortable to be around. You can just.. not say the things they don’t want to hear. No one feels they have to explain themselves around you, no one worries you’ll see what they’re like and leave.
….but you can also draw people close, even from a distance. People show up when you want them to. People call when you need them, they give you the things you require with barely any prompting. It’s impossible for you to show that you’re afraid, that you’re angry, that you’re anxious- the emotions slide off your face and out of your words, leaving charm and brightness instead. You couldn’t stop the people from laughing and coming closer, even if you wanted to.
As an Affliction Perk, Spider Nature scales off of Sickness or Hollow issues. It provides you with an increasing awareness of other people’s desires and fears as the issue’s rating rises. The HG can invoke Spider Nature to perform intentions that make people feel better around you, draw people closer to you, or prevent you from articulating your own feelings- even to yourself.
Whenever you want to say something, but can’t- Whenever you want to push people away, but can’t- Whenever you feel like your actions are manipulative and awful, but people just can’t see it-
The HG can award you with Will or MP up to the rating of the chosen Issue.
[image id: two paintings of annabelle cane from the magnus archives. she has dark brown skin, red eyes, and short, curly white hair. a white spiderweb emerges from it at her temple. she is wearing a long-sleeved vintage purple dress with gold buttons and a red bow around her neck. it has a large, lace-trimmed white collar embroidered with spiders and flowers. the background is dark red, and spiderwebs surround her. in the first painting they are white and in the second they are black. above her shoulder is the artist’s signature: opia. /end id]
