fade rift app
PLAYER
Name: Abby
Age: Old
Contact:
Other Characters: Flint, Wysteria, Marcoulf
Interests: Mouthy magic shenanigans. Also, the idea of complicating the concept of 'So Rifters, are they demons or what?' question is extremely funny to me.
CHARACTER
Name: Bartimaeus of Uruk (aka Sakhr al-Jinni of Al-Arish aka N'gorso the Mighty aka Wakonda of the Algonquin aka the Serpent of Silver Plumes aka--)
Canon: The Bartimaeus Sequence
Canon Point: Halfway through Book 3: Ptolemy's Gate, after Kitty Jones summons him to form an alliance and he tells her to eat dirt.
Journal:
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
reshapesAge: 5,000+ (but who's counting?)
Canon World
The world of Bartimaeus takes place in an alternate history of the world as we know it, the 'What If' in this case being 'What if magic was real and the most powerful use of it was summoning spirits from a magical parallel dimension, then enslaving those spirits to do the bidding of their summoner?' Throughout history, great empires have risen and fallen on the backs of spirits enslaved by their magicians. Presently, that great empire just happens to be the British one.
In the British Empire (a place very much like the Britain we know, only they've been an unstoppable force for a few hundred years longer than per usual), there are two classes of people: commoner and magician. The majority of the population are commoners, "The People" of the Empire who are kept deliberately under-educated, are constantly surveilled, and generally have very little hope of anything resembling upward mobility unless it involves licking a more powerful magician's boot than the boots of the one their grandfather licked. The one flicker of hope for the commoner's plight is the growing manifestation of Resistance - the ability to negate or see through magic to some capacity.
Meanwhile, magicians hold the reins of society. They make up the entirety of the government, they run influential businesses, they regulate trade and decide on when to go to war, and generally do whatever they like. On the plus side: anyone can become a magician. On the downside: the way to be apprenticed is for your parents to sell you, to have your identity stripped from you, and to be raised by scheming, ambitious, constantly backstabbing or war of being backstabbed men and women who want their proteges to both be powerful and talented... but not too powerful or too talented to unseat them.
But nevermind the people. The ones that really matters are the spirits stuck doing all the dirty work between them. Suffice to say, spirits (often called demons, but that's rude) are numerous and vary wildly in strength from the lowliest imp to the mightiest marid. Doomed to do the bidding of their masters for as long as they reside in the physical world, most are simply desperate to finish their work so they can be dismissed and return to The Other Place - a formless, boundless realm of magical energy from which spirits are pulled when they're summoned. If they sometimes find a way to shorten the duration of their service by getting their masters killed-- well, who could blame them?
History
Personality
Bartimaeus of Uruk, a 4th level djinni, is described in Trismegistus' Manual as 'possessing great ingenuity, no little power, and dangerous.' He more or less makes good on those descriptors, but consider also: sarcastic, witty, lucky as sin, agile and adaptable, and poorly acquainted with the concept of humility. Bartimaeus prides himself on being clever, cunning, and knowledgeable. Successfully staying alive for a few centuries despite the best efforts of just about everyone he's crossed paths with while being charged to accomplish truly outlandish tasks is a hell of a way to cultivate an ego, and Bartimaeus is something of a know it all with a flair for the dramatic as a result. Personal failings? Who's that? He's never met them.
(That's a lie; he has and he's sulked over it, but that's none of your business.)
His long history with magicians - and the poor end for what was in his book the singular exception in a long line of demanding and/or poorly behaved masters - has bred him into something of an irascible cynic, capable of cruelty, great violence, and more than his fair share of nefarious scheming in the right circumstances. He is, however, grudgingly willing to acknowledge good intentions (or the potential for them) in people when they (rarely!) manifest. Some spirits would consider this a great character flaw. Bartimaeus prefers to think of it as refusing to stoop to humanity's level. He secretly admires anyone who uses their cleverness and benevolence for some good end, and acting honorably but not blindly so is a great way to win Bartimaeus as a heel dragging ally.
Generally speaking, Bartimaeus acts as he's expected to: like a slippery, conniving spirit just waiting for the opportunity to crack open his master's bones and suck the marrow from them. Get treated like a monster while being treated monstrously and is it any wonder he has a chip on his shoulder? That said, when given the opportunity to act with a little grace and kindness without the expectation of being made to do something in return...
Well, he'll spit on it and make fun of you for offering. But he might just come through too.
Strengths & Weaknesses
SHAPESHIFTING: Can change into a variety of guises at will. Prefers animals, but isn't above a horrible gargoyle or nightmarish monster for dramatic effect.
DETONATION: An green explosive spell capable of blowing holes in walls and vaporizing organic forms.
INFERNO: A flash of light that scorches the target with fire. Exactly what it sounds like.
CONVULSION/SPASM: An attack that causes the object or creature hit to convulse and/or shred their essence. Hell on magic creatures (demons, etc); probably just a bad time for flesh and blood targets. Great for wreaking havoc on beloved architecture.
FLUX: A wide area of effect spell that negates magic. Can only absorb one "impact" (typically one spell, but in the astronomical instance two spells hit the Flux field at the exact same time, it'd absorb both).
SHIELD: A domed construct of protective magic that shields the user. Smaller area of effect, but can take more of a beating.
PULSE: A sonar-like spell that detects environmental magic and relays how powerful it is back to the caster. Good for detecting traps.
Suggested Nerfs
In general, my thoughts for nerfing Bartimaeus involve reducing the effectiveness and how frequently he can use his magic, and having his shapeshifting require a lot more thought and planning (or having it exhaust him considerably more than usual). In canon, Bartimaeus can change shape and throw detonations around willy nilly; to reduce his ability to do both, in addition to the limitations of his humanization (see below), I'd like to say that the rift shard he has stuck in him essentially sucks up half of his spell casting and either reduces the effectiveness of everything he does by half (no blowing up large swathes of people or knocking out entire walls of houses :(( ), and that excessive spell use weakens him to the point of uselessness. It also makes shapeshifting difficult - every time he changes shape, the rift shard chews up some of his essence. The larger the shape, the more energy expended to keep it. The rift shard also completely limits him from shapes that are too small to house the shard. Lion? Fine. House cat? Yikes, that puts the shard awfully close to all the vital parts of him, doesn't it? Better not stay that size for long. Mouse? The rift shard would just eat him alive.
Let me know if you want additional limitations or for me to get more relentlessly specific re: power levels, but that sounds exhausting to read/write.
Arrival Inventory
Absolutely goddamn nothing. Be glad he isn't naked.
'Human'ization
Bartimaeus' unadulterated physical form resembles a small measure of oily dishwater-like substance. Usually, he makes up for this by taking on a variety of semi-transformative and semi-illusory guises. Things that fly and spit fire are favorite shapes; anything with an intimate relationship with the ground (insects, moles, etc) tend to be a real bummer but he'll do what he has to. He also frequently takes the guise of a young Egyptian boy (see: aforementioned Ptolemy), and generally isn't shy about taking on the shape of a human if it'll get him somewhere.
So it's a good thing he's comfortable in a human shape, cause he's mostly going to be stuck in one once the Fade spits him out. Bartimaeus' default shape in FR will be a human boy, somewhere in his late teens.
Fit
I'm here for pipin' hot demon and magic discourse. I like the idea of Bartimaeus, who is awfully used to 'how things are' in the place he comes from, to have to acclimate to an entirely new series of rules in a society that nonetheless still has strong believes when it comes to spirits and people's relationship to magic. As a character with poor history when it comes to dealing with magicians, while simultaneously being - y'know - a spirit who has a vested interested in making sure no one decides to murder him over it, Bartimaeus adds a complicating voice to the whole mage freedom-and-responsibilities/the-dangers-of-forces-from-beyond-the-Veil debate.
Look, he's just here to mind his own business and get caught with his hand in the proverbial cookie jar. No one can prove he isn't an apostate hedgewitch of some kind -- except that he'd be furious over anyone comparing him to a magician in any way shape or form. How dare you.
SAMPLES
TEST DRIVE
YE OLD TEXTING MEME