Thank you very much.
Team Analysis: TC and CA
Knight of Heart, Seer of Breath, and Mage of Void
Alright. Since you have acknowledged these are not the only players in the session, we won’t talk about what you need. We’ll instead go right to work discussing what their roles are in any session at all together.
A Knight of Heart is a bit of a tricky player. On the one hand, they have the ability to weaponize their soul, whoever they are as a person, be this splitting into multiple versions of themselves to make an army of the aspects of their soul, or arming themselves with a weapon symbolically representing them. On the other, they’re probably trying to hide whoever they are in some way shape or form behind a mask. We’ve discussed this before with other Knights, but so you know, Knights have a bad habit of hiding who they are behind any one aspect of themselves they want to accentuate, Karkat’s anger, Dave’s coolness, Latula’s G4M3RG1RL persona, often as an attempt to make sure that their weaknesses don’t get found out. Karkat never wanted to let anyone know of his mutation, Dave of his feelings of being a coward and his abuse in childhood. So Knights have something they want to hide. And they need to stop. They may not need to open up completely to be capable of using their powers (their class, after all, is one of self-discovery and self-reliance, achieving their own full potential by their own power), but if they want to be able to help their teammates with their land quests, and with the session in general, then they need to learn to let go of their mask, at least in some small part. Find a teammate to confide in, perhaps? Either way, a Knight of Heart would prove a great and easy mediator between people in the session, and while not necessarily a leader (whether or not they are depends on whoever else may be in the session), certainly someone who can take care of the team. Also important: the presence of a Knight of Heart indicates that the session lacks either emotion (perhaps in the sense of everyone being as “cold” as Dirk) or a sense of self to provide distinction between players (as we suggested before with the earlier Knight of Heart post, perhaps the session is comprised largely of twins or triplets to physically denote this lack of self).
The Seer of Breath would be able to see what’s needed to free people from their connections to things, people, and places…to put it bluntly. There is a lot more to this Seer’s powers but I’m focusing on this aspect of it right now because while we’re on the subject of the Knight of Heart and the Seer of Breath together, I think this is probably the person most likely to help the Knight break down their mask! Their ability to see what it would take to free anyone from their connections by pushing them in the right directions to make their own sort of self-discoveries partners perfectly with the Knight’s need to do things themselves to figure out how to use their powers. The Seer would say things, little things, push them in the right direction to seek out their own freedom from needing to hide who they are. The most immediate comparison I can think of would be Cole from Dragon Age: Inquisition (forgive me, for I am likely to be making these references far too much for my own good). His desire and innate ability to sense pain and try to, in his words, “untangle it,” is very similar to the Seer’s ability to free people—this analogy I’m making would be even more accurate if this Seer uses their powers purely to help others, freeing people from toxic relationships, from obsession, from addiction. But the Seer can also use their powers for not-quite-so-good things, too—breaking apart perfectly healthy relationships for the sake of the team dynamic, breaking apart people from their coping mechanisms to make the session far easier, but the further and further they go to get rid of things, trying to shape their teammates, the more likely they are to invert—begin to free people from their external connections just to strengthen their devotion to the team, that’s not Seer of Breath territory—that’s a Witch of Blood. Breath players are likely to be leaders in their sessions because of their innate freedom. Nothing’s holding them back but themselves, and of the three here (you need at least three other players, the Time and Space and one last player to even things out), this is the person who’s most likely to be the leader. They can make the hard decisions, they just need to be careful to not meddle too much.
The Mage of Void, as we noted before, in the post we crafted about them, is someone who can see a lot. And for the Knight of Heart, that’s probably a bit too much. The Knight didn’t ask them to figure them out, to figure out their secret—it just happened, and now it seems to the Knight like they’re just holding it smugly over their head. Screw them and their stupid face, the Knight thinks, just waiting for the other ball to drop…in actuality, it’s nothing like that. The Mage has no intentions of using this information, or giving it to anyone. They just kind of don’t care. Not to say that they don’t understand the gravity of the Knight’s need to keep their mask on for the other members of the session, they just don’t care about their finding out the truth. For all intents and purposes, they invite the Knight, you can keep on pretending with me, too, act like it never happened. The Knight can’t bring themselves to, though. Something about doing so just feels wrong. In any case, we’ll talk more about them later. The Seer and the Mage get on well together. As the Mage and Seer come into their powers, they get closer, the Seer going to the Mage for information, secrets that impede on their ability to untangle the bonds keeping people around them stagnant. The Seer depends on the Mage for a lot, and the Mage in turn, trusts them. They help because they know the Seer won’t misuse their powers for stupid stuff, and the second they try to, the Mage pulls the plug. In a series of checks and balances to keep the team leader from screwing the session over, the Mage of Void is the first line of defenses. In hindsight, perhaps they’re a better leader?…Well, it doesn’t matter much. Without the other players, we can’t figure out too much.
Sadly, without the other members of the team listed, we can’t draw too many conclusions as to how this would go down, but you seem to have a neat little cell here. Be careful who you choose to put in with them.
Relationships: CA and TC
Knight of Heart, Seer of Breath, and Mage of Void
Knight of Heart <> Seer of Breath: This relationship needs to be this level of strong friendship for anything to get anywhere on the Knight’s part of understanding their powers. Anything less that this level of trust and respect and it might not work. But beyond it needing to be this, their titles actually lend themselves to it pretty well. Passive-active groupings work pretty well together, one pursuing what the other points out in their sitting on the sidelines. A Seer of Breath would be able to learn how to remove bonds and the Knight of Heart would be able to create emotional ones. They would bond over their differences, recognizing the other’s strengths for the advantage they are, and would likely learn to compensate for each other, the Knight moving where the Seer cannot, and the Seer knowing what the Knight doesn’t. Their cooperation makes or breaks the game.
Knight of Heart <3< Mage of Void: Now what I described before, the relationship between the Knight and the Mage, it’s a bit one-sided. The Knight has all these feelings of anger towards the Mage because of this sudden unmasking, but the Mage just doesn’t really feel this great, undying need to use this knowledge, this dirt on the Knight for anything at all, no desire to humiliate or expose them. There are two ways this could go from here, and really it depends on how much of the Knight’s dependence on the mask the Seer manages to dismantle. Either a lot of the mask comes off and the Knight mellows out, this relationship would dissolve into simple and unpassionate professionalism, or the mask still manages to stick around, and so does the Knight’s animosity towards his teammate.
Seer of Breath <> Mage of Void: We talked about this before—a healthy respect and trust between them? Their methods of teamwork? Their ability to control each other (and not in a malicious way, more that they’ll stop each other from being stupid)? That’s a moiralliegance if ever I’ve seen one. It just needs to stay that way. Too passionate in either positive or negative directions and we have them trying to control each other or being far too lenient, neither of which is really any good. Okay, good? Good.