| Morgan Le Fay |
 |
| Name: | Morgan ferch Igraine |
| Gender: | Female |
| Place of Birth: | Britons |
| Age: | 1,600+ |
| Aliases: | Morgan Le Fay |
| Origin: | Mystic Alien |
| Origin Earth: | 616 |
| Present Location: | London |
| Occupation: | Mage |
| Team: | Independent |
| Alignment: | Anti-hero |
| Significant Other(s): | none known |
| Powers and Abilities: | Immortal Mage |
| Portrayed by: | None |
When Atlantis fell, a faerie princess rescued a portion of Avalon and secured it within Roman Britain. Igraine wed Gorlois of Tintagel, a powerful warlord, and bore a daughter renowned even in childhood for her intellect and bewitching beauty. They named her Morgan. History remembers her as Morgan Le Fay, lover and half-sister to Arthur Pendragon, High King of the Britons.
Myths recount Morgan's close relationship with Arthur and his mentor, Merlin, who in turn mentored her closely throughout her adolescence. She lived among the priestesses of Danu, and promoted goddess worship against the rising tide of Christianity. A major figure in the court, she would delight in the dream of Camelot and despair at her isolation and ostracism in a patriarchal society. She succeeded as high priestess of Danu and, by marriage, became queen of Gorre (Tintagel), yet Arthur found no place for the ladies in his court but ornaments. Her son by Arthur, Mordred, she surrendered to her elder sister Morgause to be raised without shame. Anguished and angered, she turned to darker arts and wicked plans to thwart what she believed would be the demise of Britain/Camelot and her faith — and Avalonian society, with it. Everyone knows the outcome of those plots.
Morgan bound the Darkhold and summoned Chthon to aid her quest in what she realized was her greatest error. The demon revealed his true nature, and she imprisoned him, then sought other means to claim the High Kingship for her son, the rightful heir. Mordred's treachery, Arthur's belligerence, and Merlyn's meddling (as she thinks) threatened all she held dear. Upon the death of Mordred and Arthur, she transported her son and brother into the Otherworld, burying Arthur's body with his knights among a heavily warded hill with the promise they would return when the time was right.
Then Morgan passed into legend.
For decades, Morgan built her power and aided the old faith where she could. She eventually transported her realm into the Otherworld, carving out a pocket dimension that expanded over time. She renewed her associations to other powers dark and neutral to hold the Saxons and Normans at bay. She projected herself into the future from her stronghold to influence events as she could.
Her future selves interacted with her at the past to thwart Merlin's plots and avert their timeline from coming to pass, never with total success. But the earth goddesses under Danu (Gaea) never relinquished their gifts to her, and she sought out sunken Avalon to return it to the earth. Instead she discovered Atlantis and nearly annihilated the nation by raising it to the ocean surface. Eventually her estranged son once more entered her company and they plotted to fulfill their destiny.
Morgan gathered the Norn Stones and the Twilight Sword to remake reality in the likeness of the 11th century, retroactively turning the modern age into the world she so desired. The imperfections and the interference of the Avengers unravelled her spells, however, leading to a conflict that would see her ally to Dr. Doom and a host of mythological and Asgardian figures to regain her influence and exact revenge for the slights. Yet to her these were hollow victories, driven far more by Mordred's bitterness, and she started to question her direction.
Britannia had lost so much of her stature, and the endless meddling of Merlyn with Captain Britain and other 'knights' demonstrated he clearly recreated the Knights of the Round Table in another form. Doing so to fulfill his ancient goals sent both sorcerers into a tailspin of purpose, though he played his hand too openly for Morgan not to notice.
The insult smacked of an impossible dream and overweening pride she could never let stand. She retreated, focused once more upon building a loyal corps of knights and safeguarding her island home. She gathered magical artifacts and casters, subtly influencing the leylines and practitioners within Britain to prepare for much greater ritual. Erecting series of defenses and building alliances, she devoted herself fully to anticipating whatever trouble Merlyn was likely to court in his intentions to reveal Brian Braddock / Captain Britain as the new successor for Arthur. For surely, she felt, he was prepared once and for all to drive home his ancient claim.
In the conflict that arose between Captain Britain and Morgan, she struck him low and in turn, his successor, Kelsey Leigh, attempted to banish the sorceress with the Sword of Might. It proved a false hope, and she tapped into the protective powers laying in wait for a threat upon her. Thus she was enveloped in the gossamer protections into the Otherworld, arriving not long in the time sequence before Roma, Merlyn's daughter, perished in an assault.
A shard of her self'was manifested in the Weirdworld during the timeline collisions of the Secret Wars. She ruled over the Weirdworld, challenging other denizens for control under the God Emperor as an astral projection. The whole time her body was hidden in her Otherworld sanctuary, guarded and warded, even as the causality folded in and cracked. Before the timelines settled, the power display in the Weirdworld and the barren results left in Morgan a deep resolve that her actions would lead to a bleak destiny for the land she swore to defend.
Some part of the great darkness in Morgan's soul completely burn itself out in the Weirdworld, devoured or destroyed in the project she sent forth. At least that seems to be the way she awoke, repulsed and horrified at some of the acts committed in her long history. There lay something in that vast spread she could not name that was awry, and with Merlyn's apparent disappearance and the world fragmented and restitched, she has set forth to discover what has become of it all.
And perhaps, this time, she can raise Britannia back to its glory.
Morgan has been wrongly characterised as a one-dimensional villain, an ice queen stripped of emotion, a stock mustache-twirling bad girl who vamped it up and lost. None of these really represent Morgan la Fay.
Passionate and fiery, she is the high-spirited, tempestuous Celtic woman remembered in song and story. As quick to joy as wrath, she has learned to temper her outward emotions without losing the vibrant core of whom she is. If anyone thinks her cold, it's only due to the weight of lese majeste and mantle of high priestess of Gaea on her shoulders. She was raised to be queen, the daughter of a mighty warlord, favourite of the High King of the Britons. Morgan wields power and authority like she was born to them because she was. The idea of being separate from issues and people behind cool veneer is a highly modern concept she puts no stock in. Her pragmatic and direct approaches balance a strong mystical side, a balance between her religious and secular/magical education.
Morgan doesn't suffer fools gladly. Her time is important and she resents those who don't respect her enough to get to their point. Manners and discretion are highly prized, almost inborn to her, and a sure way to eternally end up in her bad books is divulge a private issue. Morgan cherishes her privacy, having been betrayed far too many times in the past. She conceals her inner self from nearly everyone, shielding herself from harm through a series of masks appropriate to a setting. However, she tends to project a sense of immense personal presence no matter how much she tries to downplay herself; she can't hide her light under a bushel very well.
Her faerie heritage gives her a strong sense of honour and the value of the spoken word. A promise is good as a sworn contract to her, and failure to live up to expectations will incur punishment and wrath. Oath breakers are next to anathema to her, and she inflicts geasa on egregious sorts to set them straight. She's very much a 'learn by experience' sort of person, slow to anger and quick to inflict lessons. Her heritage also gives her a penchant for half-truths. She never fully tells the truth in matters, guarding it only for the worthy. Getting a straight answer out of her is something a person has to work for, and she doesn't feel entirely comfortable being bald faced and explicit, except in matters of her faith and her magic.
Morgan can harbour a grudge for centuries, cultivating a vendetta better than a Corsican don.
Her vengeful streak originates from a strong (if warped) sense for justice, a history of epic heartbreak <see also: Arthurian legend>, and her faerie nature. As a fae, she cannot simply let something go when a grave wrong has been done to her. Those stories about the Fair Folk suffering ills badly are completely true, and she finds it difficult for forgive, let alone forget, something done to her. A long memory for slights does not ease this in the least, especially when she feels her honour and sense of justice are besmirched.
Morgan watched women lose their exalted place in British society, turned into chattel for nearly 1, 400 years. It leaves a foul taste in a goddess worshipper's mouth. Too often she found they had no recourse so *she* became their instrument of justice on a personal and national level as well. Morgan is the one so many goodwives and scorned maidens, desperate mothers and devout nuns whispered to in the dark over history. She is their vengeance and their promise, and maybe drank a little too much of their kool-aid.
Live a millennium or longer, and drink deep of the well of collective memory, and the world tarnishes. Morgan has been there, done that, and mostly lived to tell the tale on so many occasions that very little seems new or fresh to her any more. Hip hop isn't much different from Shakespearean sonnets. She believes truly she's seen nearly everything there is to see and do, and that leaves her rather easily bored. Enthusiasm is very often a mercurial thing with her, and others might wonder why her interest burns out so quickly in the newest, greatest thing.
She excels in finding patterns and correspondences because the patterns of history are so obvious to her, and Morgan was trained as a priestess on the significance of cycles, repetition, and bindings. In preliterate days, students trained by mnemonics and rote memory. Lessons from those times keep her exceptionally alert for signs of something repeating itself.
Morgan believes wholehearted and deeply in Gaea, and would never consciously against her religion. In childhood she knew the great earth goddess as Modron or Danu. In time she came to learn all goddesses are facets of the same matchless gem. She was (and still is) the high priestess of Gaea in Britain, unyielding in her devotion. Her abiding love has set her on crusades against Christianity and other faiths as much as provided solace during the hardest of times. Love for Gaea connects her through the tapestry of creation to all other living things, and restores her wonder and joy at the world. Faith is, literally, what keeps her alive.
You don't get to live for centuries without a healthy dose of confidence. Morgan possesses an unshakeable certainty and determination in her purpose in this world. The high priestess of Gaea, a rightful queen of Britannia, she knows exactly who she is and what she needs to do. Her drive to achieve whatever end she chooses for hersef makes her both a formidable ally and a terrifying enemy. Attempts to shake her to her core simply don't tend to get through the deep-seated, resolute sense of self that keeps her going. Setbacks are simply part of life. She is enduring, absolute, and certain. She has to be careful not to trip up on her arrogance and condescension, or the natural sense of superiority her confidence inflicts on her, though.
Morgan lives for the thrill of a challenge. She believes that with enough time and resources, she can achieve any goal. This quality makes her a brilliant leader when tapped into properly. With Arthur and Merlin, she shares the ability to think strategically and hold a long-term focus while executing complicated plans with precision.
When energy flags and morale drops, she pushes her goals through by sheer will. More importantly, a motivated Morgan pushes everyone else ahead of her, drawing the team in with her. She respects intellectual rigors and talents in others, often daring to cultivate the unexpected in people to further their joint ends. However, in this she can seem especially unkind, making tools to serve her own purposes. Always must she be wary of using and manipulating others.
On the other side, she can be dominant and relentless. don't mistake her for being vicous — she likes the battle of wits, the challenges from her environment, and rejoinders as she closes in on victory. Nothing valuable was ever worth having without a fight.
Morgan has charm in spades and persuasive gifts to spare. Her personal magnetism is a blend of compelling vision, a genuinely warm nature, smoldering grace, and manners cultivated at the finest medieval court. Add to that a very heavy dash of fae charm, and she can be almost as deadly as Amora in her way. People tend to habitually underestimate her, falling prey to the lovely words and the mindful gestures. She doesn't hesitate to deploy manipulative influences to get what she wants, either.
Morgan does not give up on her goals when the going gets tough. Long after everyone else has collapsed from fatigue or lost morale, she rises to the occasion to find her way to the finish line. Churchill's line about blood, sweat, and tears resonates with the very crux of whom she is. She will set forth to conquer her goals, though she still manages to be adaptable like a river if a barrier seems insurmountable. There's no shame for her to go around or find another strategy to attack a situation. In part, this verisimilitude makes her frightening to her opponents and awe-inspiring to her followers because she *will* get it done. Just watch her.
- Restore Britain to her proper place in the world, mostly by promoting pro-British interests.
- Protect magic and promote its healthy development, guard it from abuse, and preserve its relics in a modern world.
- Gather all the magical artifacts.
- Supplant Merlyn as the foremost caster.
- Become the sorcerer supreme.
- Restore the prominence of Gaea's worship among the worthy and especially women.
- Restore Camelot in the modern age.
Long, long ago Morgan le Fay was raised to be queen, priestess, and living emblem of the sovereignty of Britannia. Her destiny all but equals her half-brother Arthur's. Their dream of Camelot fell apart in family squabbles and great pressures in a barbaric time, thanks in no small part to Merlyn's meddling (she says). Those ancient dreams remain with Morgan in modern days, and she feels her fate is shared with Britain itself. She wants to guide the lands to prosperity and favour with Gaea, a place more respectful of magic, tradition, and nature. She wants to see society pulled away from its capitalist, devouring roots, and the selfish 'me' generation. Many of the ideals in ancient Camelot, raised to a modern time, are very much in keeping with the changes she would like to see. She aims to protect and guard the wealth of the Isles, especially as they have been plundered of so many of their secrets, and she is a devoted guardian with harsh ideals for anyone who wants to interfere with that destiny.
By blessing of her faerie heritage (and too many spells), Morgan is functionally immortal. She does not age or suffer from infirmity of years, debilitating illnesses or health conditions, or weakening faculties. She will not look any older than her current appearance short of shape-shifting. Her life expectancy is functionally unlimited from a temporal perspective.
Morgan is *not* invulnerable, but she is damnably hard to kill and may, in fact, not be possible to permanently end. She has been slain, soul separated from her body, and functionally beheaded, all while still retaining her faculties and identity. When Sentry ripped her head from her spine, a move that very well should have killed her, she simply discorporated and reconstituted herself elsewhere in a highly laborious and unpleasant mystical process that wasted an awful lot of time. In no way can she accelerate or rush the process, short of intervention with the goddess Gaea, who is very much responsible in some arcane fashion for putting her priestess back together. Morgan is in no way immune to pain, suffering, and any sort of discomfort, nor the ramifications of apparently being capable of returning from death. Someone could feasibly torture her in very nasty ways and she has no outlet of 'going to the other side.' Because she's always going to come back.
Morgan's mind is second to none, a worthy competitor to Merlyn or Roma, when she lived. Her lightning quick reasoning and problem-solving skills are honed to a rapier point, and wielded by the seasoned hand of an Olympic fencer. She has that rarest of combinations, raw intelligence wedded to practical experience and an inventive streak that allows her to accomplish breathtaking feats or schemes. A very smart woman with a penchant for scheming and illusions… What could ever become of that? :)
Morgan's capacities as a high priestess of Danu (Gaea) enable her to manipulate the natural world and invoke a channel of power through pure, divine energy. It is conceivable that other earth goddesses might allow her a similar capacity on their homeworlds; Gaea and the twelve Skymothers have demonstrated an alliance. She can tap into the energy in the earth, a nearly limitless pool, shape it into a spell, and release it upon others. The outcome depends very much on what her intentions are. A simple blessing to ease the pain in another person charges their body with extra energy, a fairly straightforward task, whereas elaborate constructions like physically raising a lost continent from the ocean demand immense concentration and time. Earth magic by nature tends to focus much more on concrete effects rather than ephemeral ones, with a decided preference towards manipulating the living world or the physical bedrock of the planet itself. Morgan has a deep connection to Gaea through her Avalonian heritage and her personal belief in the goddess, so her talents lie towards protection, healing, and influence over living creatures. Some would say it's also why she can reincarnate at the drop of a hat. At its basic elements, she is aware of the events, persons, and living things in her vicinity and she can extend her awareness over a natural ecosystem to impressive lengths. Through her tie to the earth, she frequently watches over Britannia and its surroundings.
SAMPLES
SHAPE-SHIFTING: Morgan can take on the physical form of any animal (living or extinct) or cryptid in a total transformation. She retains her mind and identity during these shifts. Any natural or supernatural abilities the creature would have she can use with instinctive understanding how these work. She does not need to learn to fly or breathe water or peck another person to death. The transformation is voluntary and semi-permanent until she reverts to human form, or a full lunar cycle passes without a petition to Gaea. Though she prefers predatory animals, especially lions and raptors, she can take most any shape as long as she has a concrete idea of what the animal is or looks like. As a cryptid, her preferred form is a dragon.
HEALING: Morgan can channel immense amounts of healing energy into a target to heal grievous injuries, close wounds, and restore function to severed nerves and arteries. Conceivably she could reattach or regrow a patient's limb, correct genetic maladies, and purge disabilities like blindness. She can counteract viruses, bacterial infections, and cure most long-term diseases, except purely psychological disorders without a physical component. However, she rarely uses the full scope of her healing powers nowadays. If she wants to bring someone back from the dead as other than undead, this lies entirely at Gaea's discretion but it's reasonable to guess she can do it (for plot purposes), as Roma, Merlyn, and others of her power level have been seen to do it. Whether she would is another matter entirely. Arthur was lucky, after all.
TERRAKINESIS: Alterations to the living earth are something of a specialty for Morgan. She can erect barriers, smooth fields, and reshape landforms on the local scale to suit her whims. Through her deep senses, she detects imperfections or chambers in the earth, like buried ore veins and tunnels. Reshaping is taxing, but with a proper ritual she can terraform on a broader scale with all the requisite earthquakes and problems locally that causes. She has a good sense for geological turmoil, calming surface faults or shoring up a cliff to stop a building from falling. This is largely a passive ability for the game.
CHLOROKINESIS: She can manipulate the growth of plants, causing them to snare people, block someone's path, or move aside. Imagine all the druid spells that messed up someone's progress, and this control applies. She generally has to be among the plants for them to flourish.
Thanks to tutelage under Merlyn and access to Asgardian magic, Morgan is one of the finest temporal sorceresses on Earth. She is rivaled only by Merlyn and Loki in this field. Beyond the obvious application of moving back and forth through time, spells of this nature augment the personal perception over time and the actual flow itself in a localized field. Its limitations are concrete: she cannot take an action that would wipe herself out of existence (like her own birth), affecting a wide area takes enormous energy, and backlashes can cause severe injuries or dislocation. Though Morgan /has/ shifted time on a global level (via two mystic artifacts, a massive ritual, and draining the Scarlet Witch), this is not possible except for staff plot purposes. Her larger temporal manipulation is strictly a *staff and RP only* event. Period.
Personalized functions allow Morgan to detect temporal rifts or anomalies, time displaced persons, and have an atomically accurate sense of the time or duration. She can influence time around herself, others, or objects, speeding up or slowing a target down with considerable results. A quick alteration gets her a free seat in a bar or puts her a split second out of a bullet's path. A car narrowly avoids a pedestrian. Greater applications might bring together two people 'serendipitously' because she warped their timelines as they both appeared in a building, visibly 'hasting' someone, or bullet time effects that leave a projectile midair. Someone like Quicksilver can bypass these spell effects or sync up to them, and they are still magic. Usual dispellation applies.
SAMPLES
DELAYED SPELLS: Morgan can suspend spells to trigger when specific criteria are fulfilled. With proper modifications, she can enact rituals days, months, and even years after their casting.
Better called 'death magic,' Morgan channels energy imbued by a death aspect and shapes it to detect ghosts and the dead, communicate with them, and affect intangible beings; and apply entropic effects upon organic and inorganic matter.
Celtic necromancy differs substantially from voodoo. Otherworld beliefs see death as a transformation, and their spells reflect this. Dead figures do not typically rise as rotting zombies but animated effigies of themselves, shades (essentially things made of shadowstuff), or almost indistinguishable from the living whenever possible. Rot and gore aren't part of their canon. When Morgan channels death energy, its applications are typically to affect the dead/spiritual directly, like weakening or bolstering ghosts, detecting their presence, and altering the effects of a haunting. She can conjure or reanimate the dead on a varying scale, though a battlefield or other morbidly aligned location greatly strengthens her rituals. Further, she frequently uses her powers to affect items, breaking locks or deteriorating an electronics system, aging something prematurely, or simply willing away an offending weed into dust; iron into rust. In the case for almost all her spells, volume and proximity are important factors. Something in touch range and fairly small, like a body, takes a quick spell to affect whereas tangibly tearing a hole for ghosts to form or raising an undead army takes weeks of preparation and alignment. Most of her necromancy spells are derived from her time as the ruler of the Darkhold; or connected to her faerie heritage, particularly the Asgardian/Svartalfheim connections she has. Necromancy comes easily due to her heritage, but it's somewhat unpleasant. Though she would tell you, quite rightly, it's not inherently evil in its own right.
SAMPLES
RAISE DEAD: Morgan can reanimate dead bodies with a semblance of life. These are shades, with only a fragment of their living personalities and motivations, unless she invests the person's actual spirit in the body. Depending on the spell, reanimated bodies can function with semi-independence for quite some time. A complex spell may even allow a risen corpse to behave almost normally on a much shorter time span, but these are extremely high-level applications. All risen dead usually have a bane, typically mistletoe, and restrictions on their activities called bans. Her summonings are far more effective with fresh corpses in death-aspected areas, like a graveyard.
DEATH SENSE: Morgan can detect the presence of unquiet dead, and allow others to perceive intangible dead like spectres, death auras, and taints left by violent or untimely death. Her attuned senses can determine people close to the brink of death or otherwise marked by an aura of doom, much like the disir/Valkyrie, though she must concentrate and cast for this to happen.
ENTROPY: Morgan can imbue a target with a concentrated wave of entropic energy, prematurely aging or damaging its structure. In a quick, dirty spell, it's like using a sledgehammer against a pane of glass, breaking down the structure to destroy it. Affecting material patterns, like iron or glass, is much more responsive to this than attacking a living pattern. When she uses a more delicate spell, she can pinpoint rust out a tumbler or destroy the bindings holding an ally fast. Attacking a living being this way is hideous and noticeable (not to mention painful), causing them to break out in boils, lesions, suppurating flesh and dead cells.
DEATH SHIELD: Morgan can use necromantic energy as a barrier to prevent others from influencing her or another target. This includes necromantic magical attacks. Her barriers can act as wards or bans against undead, as well, preventing a vampire from touching a chosen target. Her protective abilities tend to be stronger than her utility ones, so her shield can be quite durable.
Morgan has proven herself versatile as a summoner, conjuring up spirits in ephemeral and physical form into this plane. She can also conjure mundane creatures (like animals) but rarely elects to do so. Far more impressive to call up nymphs, dragons, and winged sea lions. She uses her own energies to create a gateway through which spirits can pass into the real world, and then be bound or cajoled by offerings of energy to perform certain tasks.
SAMPLES
INVOCATION: Morgan releases a general request into the spirit world (usually the Otherworld) for a particular kind of entity to appear, like a fire spirit or a hippocampus or a spirit of joy. The spirit can then choose to answer the summons of its own volition, and has no compulsion to arrive. Using sympathetic materials or offerings greatly enhances the broadcast, and is seen very much as in friendly/favourable terms. Creatures conjured this way stay as long as their bodies can normally be manifested, prolonged as below.
EVOCATION: Better known as a binding summons, this form of a spell demands a spirit appear. More powerful spirits are capable of resisting, or outright ignoring the request, though they are severely weakened if Morgan possesses their true name or anything with a sympathetic connection. (A piece of the spirit, their sigil, their kid…) By the nature of this sort of spell, the spirit feels a compulsion to come but not to agree to help her, as she needs to use mind control or her persuasive abilities for that. These spells gain great strength when used with a fixed summoning circle.
BANISHMENT: As well as she calls, Morgan can banish summoned creatures, and not only her own. It's essentially a reversal of the principles of conjuration, forcing unwilling entities to discorporate and return from whence they came.
Faerie magic deals heavily in illusions, glamours, and mental influences, which makes Morgan a particularly terrifying opponent given her command over each of these aspects. She naturally gravitates towards the 'mental arts,' ones that influence the psyche and the mind. At a personal level she uses spells to reinforce her psyche against violation or manipulation, honing her already formidable intelligence and reflexes to superhuman mastery. She can absorb knowledge at phenomenal rates, accelerate her mental functions, and perform simultaneous tasks flawlessly. Her magic can give her a perfect recall of events even hundreds of years ago, especially in conjunction with temporal magic. Used against others, her effects are often insidious, subtle, and every bit as devastating as a telepath with one key difference: immunity or resistance to psionic energy doesn't affect her nearly so strongly because her crafts are pure magic.
Morgan can deliver almost untraceable mental damage when pressed, causing an aneurysm or debilitating sensory loss, shutting off someone's hearing or causing intense, confusing synaesthesia. More delicate applications revolve around mind control, the subtle touch to suggest or influence an emotion escalating up to an outright reprogramming of someone's base nature for a temporary period. Extremely strong-willed individuals slough off the effects quicker than impressionable ones, and as always, her mental magic works better by adapting existing tendencies or traits rather than creating fundamentally new ones. She cannot easily stir a peaceful person to become a violent psychopathic killer, and personal knowledge of a person's triggers makes her effects much more subtle. Her magic can also counter these effects when encountered in a contest of wills.
Illusions are her strongest stock in trade; few living casters can match her for creating independent, elaborately designed set pieces with lavish attention to detail. Morgan's illusions can stand up to regular interaction and rigorous inspection, though large elaborate pieces (say, a castle) are taxing and difficult to manage. She is limited by audience size, duration, volume, and dimensions when creating an illusion. It's easier to make a sudden noise than convincing someone they are staring at a brand new crater. Her personal energy will deplete if she has to convince the Bronx there is an illusionary crater. Her illusions can stand up to electronic devices and external inspection when they are actually formed with magical energies, but if they work upon the mind of the viewer(s), then they will only appear to those individuals and the spell may be shaded by personal expectations. Directly influencing the mind is harder than constructing an actual illusionary construct over the long term.
SAMPLES
LOOK PAST ME: Illusionary concealment prevents the target from being seen. This can be an actual warping of light or a mental effect where the brain refuses to register Morgan's presence. The latter has the disadvantage that highly unlikely actions might trigger the target's attention and break the spell. This spell allows her to easily slip through crowds or fail to leave a memory in someone's mind. They might remember a woman dined in a restaurant but not one description will agree and no one will remember what she ate.
ASTRAL PROJECTION: Morgan can project her soul independently onto the astral realm, a psychic plane, or tangibly manifest herself in a ghost-like form that cannot be interacted with in any physical sense. On the astral form, she is tangible to other astral entities, and may use her full suite of mystical powers normally. She cannot be harmed by physical forces unless they are brought to the astral plane. In her manifested intangible form, she can still be heard, talk, and conceal herself by turning mostly transparent. She is not harmed by physical attacks, though magical ones may affect her if they'd normally bother ghosts. She cannot be exorcised, though she can be warded and entrapped. Her spells can affect physical subjects. Unlike many sorcerers, Morgan survives if her body is completely destroyed or her soul severed from it. There is no known way to prevent her from reincarnating into a physical body, though the effect can be pretty damn painful and unpleasant. This also doesn't make her immune to pain, discomfort, psychological torment, etc.
BODY POSESSION: Marry Astral projection and mind control to get the ability to control another person's body. Morgan does not have to be present to puppet someone. She can force them to speak and act the way she wants. Implanted suggestions allow some degree of autonomous function, whereas direct commands will be performed to the best of the subject's ability. She cannot force them to commit suicide this way. Navigating takes considerable focus unless she's split her mind into two tracks. If Morgan projects her spirit directly into a vessel, she cannot maintain her own conscious mind in her body and will appear to be sleeping. This is a /nasty/ power that she avoids using freely and it does not grant her instantaneous knowledge of a person's abilities. Mostly here for RP completeness.
MIND CONTROL: Morgan has a deep, finessed talent for controlling another person's mind, even if that mind is alien, dangerously powerful (Merlyn) or vastly intelligent. A direct assault pits her will against theirs, but a more corrosive, long-term influence is more common to give her control as the target doesn't even realize they've fallen under her enchantment. The applications are considerable, allowing her to augment or lessen emotions, deteriorate or enhance mental faculties, read surface memories, access buried memories, conjure fake memories, etc. None of these are capable of being lasting effects.
Morgan is considered one of the strongest sorcerers ever on Earth. Agamotto considers her a worthy replacement for Doctor Strange. 1,600 years of raw improvement and continuous progress give her a very deep breadth of faerie-derived magic, and strong knowledge of universal and earthly principles. Her manifestations follow a straightforward pattern: visualize, gather energy, form finished spell, release. As a ritualist, she uses sympathetic and complementary incantations or objects to enhance her spells.
Morgan has a very broad array of abilities learned over the centuries from other mystics, experts like Dr. Doom and Merlyn, and created for herself. She has the innate ability to detect magic around her, the nature and effect, any mystical signature, possible effect, and source <e.g., demonic>.
SAMPLES
BINDINGS: She can create intangible or mystical force bonds around a target, prohibiting them from moving or acting. Useful for keeping someone out of trouble. Through them she can also energy leech (dangerous, though).
ENERGY BOLTS: Raw beams or bolts of magic deal pure energy damage upon the target. Morgan projects these up to 100m without deep stress, and she can alter the projections to take on an elemental character.
FLIGHT: With her magic, Morgan can fly at considerable speed. She can bring along others, but this requires more magical preparation and that they stay in a fairly close formation. As a result she tends to make others fly separately.
SCRYING: She can perceive people and things at distances, and observe events while not physically present. Attempts to conceal or shroud, like invisibility, are contested by her prowess.
SPELL SHAPING: Using raw magic, Morgan can augment, diminish, alter, or twist magic to have a different effect. These may be her own spells or others, like halting a pyromancy effect before it can burn a witch.
TELEPORTATION: Morgan can cross space in the twinkling of an eye. Bringing additional people is stressful and taxing without a ritual, not done easily on the fly. Distances are usually limited within planes; she needs to open a portal to cross dimensions.
WARDS: Morgan creates mystic shields that can block magic, hedge out specific effects, or contain magic or individuals. A ban specifically prevents someone from crossing, and acts like a barrier. A ward is more of a prison, when used to contain.
Above and beyond her talent with mental magic, Morgan's other strong fae magic is twist luck. The fae are famous for their oaths, bonds, and twisting of fortune. Spells of this nature give someone blinding good luck — or conversely, take it away. One of those days when every shoe drops marks her displeasure. The guy who finds all the lights are green for him on a policy chase knows her blessings. Most effects are short term, specifically aimed towards a goal, but the exact manifestation /how/ this takes place is usually not something Morgan can control. She wants a heckler to have a bad day, she can mark him out for bad luck and watch how things go wrong. She cannot specifically make his boss fire him.
Oaths are serious business with Morgan. She can create a sworn oath that coerces someone subtly to follow its conditions and give escalating warnings when they don't. Typically that is an ominous feeling or bad luck. The stronger permutation is a geas, banning someone from a particular activity with dire and deleterious effects as long as the pact is unfulfilled. A broken geas is often fatal or worse than death.
A unique facet of this power lets Morgan attune an object or place as a boon or bane. These objects have special strength or weakness to a person. Excalibur (or a fake version) is very much a boon when used in defense of Britain. A silver-tipped arrow to wound Thor is an example of a bane. Abusing fate magic is hazardous to the caster, and Morgan knows it. A spell might backfire used for the wrong reasons or repeatedly cast on a target who resisted.
Morgan draws her power from four distinct sources, with capacity for a fifth demonstrated.
AMBIENT: The world is full of plentiful energy sources, and Morgan draws this power to fuel her rituals and spells. The more energy she needs to gather, the longer she needs or the more potent a source. Natural leylines and upwellings provide concentrated energy, and she can naturally detect these as part of her sorcerous abilities. She can null ambient power from other magical sources, like artifacts and existing spells.
FAERIE: As a native denizen of the Otherworld (and an Alfar/faerie), Morgan inherited an array of personal powers oriented towards glamours, mind control, illusions, and luck magic. She finds these powers come more easily than other types of magic, just as Loki excels with ice or Enchantress with fascination. Her personal energy is more efficiently used for these purposes, giving her a better punch.
PERSONAL: All living beings can potentially fuel their magic through their own energy pools, which tap their life force/soul. Morgan has a druidic/faerie outlook, which holds every person has a personal reserve controlled by the strength of their identity, practice, and inherent potential. Spells fueled in this way deplete that natural 'spring,' and running out of soul energy is a *bad* thing.
RELIGIOUS: Direct petitions and prayers to Danu (Gaea) give fuel and force to prayers and blessings, especially manipulating the earth or healing. This is not a contract so much as drawing energy from an enormous wellspringthe Earthwith permission of the earth gods. When she casts, Morgan asks Gaea to channel power directly through Morgan as the instrument/vessel.
EXTRADIMENSIONAL: Though she doesn't often do so, Morgan can wield extradimensional energy without hesitation. She has augmented her spells and channeled extradimensional power into effective rituals or items, like the bands of Cyttorak. This is an underdeveloped area for her, but deprived of other sources or energy starve, she can reach out to other dimensions for power.
BRITANNIA: While in Britannia or Hibernia (holdings of Great Britain or Ireland), Morgan is considerably more powerful than elsewhere. She is approximately 20 percent more powerful as a caster. Home ground advantage is severe.
Morgan does not currently hold the Darkhold. If she did, though, the world is going to shake to its very foundations. There may be no living sorcerer as familiar with the book as her—after all, she nearly dominated /Chthon/ using it. She remembers much of its contents and how to assemble it, the protections and limits, and a host of hidden lore, like the true names of demons.
DARKHOLD BENEFITS: Only apply if she has the book.
SPELLS: The black magic spells of Darkhold contain the most corruptive sins imaginable. With them, a sorcerer can corrupt the most virtuous of souls into committing acts of complete sacrilege, sacrificing whole nations for personal power and gain. They allow Morgan to summon powerful demons and entities directly from Hell, or conversely banish them. She's read nearly all of the ones available to her during her tenure.
PHYSICAL: The Darkhold book gives Morgan peak human strength, superhuman flexibility and endurance.
GENERAL: Apply with the book or not.
- RESISTANCE: Morgan has proven resistant in the past to the corruptive influence of the book. Her soul is incredibly hard to take from her or merge with Chthon's, though she was not able to contain him. Neither could he takeover her despite plenty of opportunity.
- BINDING: Darkhold is partially bound via Chthon to Wundagore Mountain as the result of Morgan's spells. The Tower of the Darkhold is a ruin on the Isle of Wight, which Morgan is aware of, and further another anchor point for the dimension.
Morgan is well and truly versed in the matter of enhancing her own physical traits to peak human performance or outright supernatural levels using sorcery. This can often be dangerous or taking to an unprepared sorcerer. However, her physical capacities as half-faerie (Svartalf) would exceed a human level if she set herself to attain that sort of prowess naturally. See also Malekith as an exemplar of the race, or Roma as another Otherworlder.
MAGIC: Morgan can raise her endurance, reflexes, strength, and general condition to superhuman levels through magic. She nearly -always- has a spell to boost her reflexes and strength, expecting enemies to manifest as she does basically always.
SHAPE-SHIFTING: As noted in her earth magic entry, Morgan takes on the traits of whatever creature she shapeshifts into and may augment from there. She can make herself as small as a mouse or as large as a giant. If she turns into a dolphin, she has the physical capabilities of a dolphin while still retaining her own mind.
In Celtic mythology, the Aes Sidhe are known as the Fair Folk, and not without good reason. Victorian whitewash made the epithet about manners and avoiding giving insult to a horridly powerful supernatural being, completely discounting the fact the Sidhe are as glorious, terrible, and majestic as the old stories make them out to be. Everything enchanting about a lovely youth, multiplied by a factor of ten, applies to the faerie folk by whatever name they are given. Even the most grotesque among them are compelling in a primal way, captivating as a glacier crushing a sailing ship. Insert as many poetic allegories as you like, Morgan fully inherited her birthright and she is shocking, striking in a bone-deep way. Beauty standards change, blah blah blah, still intense in a way hard to explain. In high rage, she seethes with the glory of a summer storm. At her darkest, she looks good doing it. For anyone affected by looks, she's got an upper hand rivaled only by Amora and the various love goddesses across pantheons.
Morgan's is not the nice girl next door beauty, either. It's the quality of a starless night on the sea, the moment before the hurricane hits, the perfect cold when the fire goes out. It has a promise of the elemental, a restrained violence, all edges and regal splendour. For all this, it makes her highly memorable and easily targeted by people who react viscerally to her. When the crowd wants someone to single out or storm, she's near the top of their list as a random candidate. Further, she knows how to wield this effect to, well, good effect.
Amassing money and filthy lucre over the past 1,500 years or so, Morgan has a queenly pile of riches that would make a dragon swoon. Over time she has converted a healthy amount of this bullion into modern money stored in secure funds from the Cayman Islands, Liechtenstein, Singapore, Switzerland, and a host of other places essentially impervious to financial laws, and she has the rest secreted throughout Britain and Ireland. She also keeps a huge residual chunk in the Otherworld, just in case. Needless to say she can live comfortably, and auction off a few priceless relics through black market or legitimate antiquarians to scare up some cash if she needs it.
As a sorceress supreme candidate and one of the best known spellcasters on Earth, Morgan possesses an occult trove that's the envy of any magician. She's had centuries to acquire and accumulate objects from across the world. During the height of the British Empire, her agents scoured continents to secure precious tomes, artifacts, spellbooks, and magical objects for her archives. She has been in a thousand year arms race with Merlyn to secure the best and brightest of objects, and the pair of them seem to find it a rather enjoyable game.
Morgan has encoded a number of magical tomes and texts to a cipher only she knows (and frequently updates) as a level of protection, beyond the usual wards, fire dampening technology, and variety of other mundane and mystical methods she protects her collection. She also doesn't keep it all in the same extradimensional basket, assuring her precious and well-guarded pieces are widely distributed to safe houses so she always has access to what she needs. Beyond actual magical objects and treasures, she has a vast body of recorded work and materials of varying rarity preserved against time, especially from vanished peoples; ancient traditions; and anything pertaining to Celtic or fae society. If she needs something weird for a spell, like the laugh of a cat, chances are she has it bottled up and she simply needs to search it out. As extensive and vast as her collection is, it does have a rather terrestrial focus. She hasn't been scouring the universe looking for everything, though she /does/ have an information network of agents to do that for her. Any realm that touches upon the Otherworld, particularly Asgard, is also a source for her that she taps regularly.
As an active magic user and spell or artifact developer, she's got a number of custom objects found nowhere else, and these are rarely doled out or even mentioned to those in her employ or acquaintance. Nonetheless, it gives an advantage to her.
At one time or another, Morgan has possessed some of the most powerful magical times known in the Nine Realms. She possesses a shard of Excalibur, King Arthur's holy sword; several Norn stones she knows how to use with full proficiency; a set of shadow armour created for a knightly champion in her service that conveys considerable magical protections; and very notably, her reality's version of the Twilight Sword. It's under so many bindings that she dare not use it without great consideration, but it came back (or was there all along) to her and she hasn't thought to make use of it.
Morgan's attitude that it should be preserved but kept away from mankind explains the sheer size of her library.
Morgan has informants and agents throughout the world forever on the lookout for magical items, interesting spells, and promising artifacts. She also keeps abreast of developments in the occult community, especially when matters pertain to Britain's security and hegemony. She has a deep and vested interest in the health of magic in the world, and not for nothing has she been considered a sorceress supreme candidate when the Eye of Agamotto was searching for a candidate. These informants can give her plenty of information about corners of the world she's probably forgotten exist.
Morgan has her own pocket dimension tied to the Otherworld, a place where she can take refuge and escape. She has retreated there many times in the past to heal, restore her energy, and prepare major workings. The plus side, it has most of what she needs, including servants and those amenable to her nature. On the other hand, it's out of sync with time and not easily accessible. Defensive wards protect her activities from within, but she's still cut off from what everyone else is doing without relying on a scrying basin or the like. There is no internet and no connectivity to cable, so she is dependent on outsiders and her contacts/agents to supply her with information she needs to know.
A good many people in the world still idolize Arthur, Camelot, and the court of chivalry. Arthurian romances are hands down the most popular mythological and fantastic topic in the English-speaking world. People know who Morgan is, given she is the most significant individual female in the whole tale. People recognize her, and that fame can be used to her advantage.
Throughout history, certain practitioners and believers in Britain and elsewhere have revered Morgan as a symbol of femininism, the mother goddess, and more. Ever since the 1800s, several religious cults and magical cabals formed in honour of the Witch Queen, Morgan le Fay. These groups ebb and flow in popularity but the rising tide of feminism and goddess-oriented paganism have put her back into the spotlight. These groups somewhat believe that Morgan exists in the flesh, and certainly her presence invokes awe, excitement, and odd shards of faith. Beyond harvesting the faith energy for herself, she has contacts and assistants.
Morgan has been alive for the better part of a millennium and a half, though her influence stretches over centuries before her birth and after the present due to her exceptional time manipulation skills. Few living sorcerers match her in terms of entities she knows.
MERLYN: A multiversal sorcerer committed to the defense of Britannia and the otherworld, her chief rival and frenemy. He educated her in magic and mystical elements.
MORDRED: Her son, often confused as her nephew, the product of an incestuous relationship with King Arthur. Technically the rightful heir as High King of Britain. A deeply conflicted and powerful individual, he has long allied with Morgan in the past and would unhesitatingly do so again. That said, Morgan knows she can't trust her son further than she can throw him.
MODRED THE MYSTIC: A sorcerer in the Darkhold, Modred encountered Morgan during her rulership there and holds very conflicted opinions towards her. He is a talented sorcerer and skillful in group casting along with her.
CHTHON: The elder god probably doesn't appreciate Morgan entrapping him in Mt. Wundagore, though she's the only living entity (nearly) capable of containing him. She did more with Darkhold than most, and they are terribly connected in some fashion. He answers her spells and petitions, rare in this day, and they have unfinished business.
ROMA: She's dead now, though if the omniversal guardian survived, she could be counted on to help Morgan defend Britain. With difficulty, and definitely not seeing eye to eye.
GAEA: The supreme earth goddess, and other earth goddesses, look highly favourably upon their high priestess. Morgan has served Gaea faithfully throughout her entire life and preserved worship of Gaea wherever possible. Morgan's true and real faith gives her a very close relationship with a divine entity of great fervor, probably closer than almost anyone except Thor.
AGAMOTTO: This figure is well aware of what Morgan gets up to, and has considered her in the past for the role of sorcerer supreme. Theirs is a fraught relationship considering she believes she already fulfills the role for Britannia, and perhaps - just perhaps - her moving into a more neutral role will finally see her in that position. Maybe.
Morgan speaks a number of ancient (dead) languages, including Latin (her native language) and all forms of Brittonic, including Welsh, Cumbric, Cornish, Pictish, and Breton. She is fluent in Irish, Manx, and Scots Gaelic, and the "old" forms of these. Among more modern languages, she is capable in French, Spanish, and German, and can get away with any Romance language passably thanks to her Latin fluency, Hindi (due to commonplace status in the UK), and Norwegian/Icelandic (Old Norse, basically). She also is perfectly fluent in the language of the Otherworld and a litany of magical and runic languages used widely in spellcasting. But let's face it, she'll probably cheat and cast a spell to understand someone who isn't speaking English. Or more likely, make *them* speak English to her, which she also understands in all its permutations. She's old. She's got skills.
Morgan has been active in the world for 1,500 years and more. In the breadth of her experience, she engaged with scholars and trends, pretending to live among nunneries and courts of power as much as villages. Since the Enlightenment, she has devoured knowledge at a prodigious rate. She kept abreast of changes from pseudoscience to natural sciences, and hungrily seized on the developments in physics as much as political theory and medicine. In short, she has a vast body of theoretical knowledge to call on and she's probably forgotten more of her studies than she actively uses, but that's a serious advantage with a very good memory. Morgan is the Encyclopaedia Britannica for most topics between anthropology to zoology, though don't ask her to actualize everything she knows. Extremely advanced scientific and modern studies may be beyond her; she is not knowledgeable enough to tell you off the top of the head how the the Large Hadron Collider's new module works, but give her a bit of time, and she'll probably figure it out.
Though largely defunct now, falconry was /the/ sport of noblewomen in the medieval world. Morgan is especially competent with a peregrine falcon, the raptor typically limited to royalty, though she can make a jolly good show of it with just about any kind of hawk. This skill covers caring for a bird, launching it and reclaiming it, and successfully hunting everything up to really bad serfs. She is equally competent on horseback as foot, and her skill unusually extends to her trademark birds: corvids. Usually ravens, rooks, and crows can't be bothered but she has conquered that.
For most of her life, Morgan has relied on horses to convey her over reasonable distances. She has a good seat on a horse and can handle a steed at full gallop across uneven territory, if not very happily. She is also well accustomed to using only a set of reins, and no stirrups (an invention that reached Europe when she was around 400 years old). As befits a faerie, she can also ride a number of exotic quadripeds, including faerie horses from the Otherworld and dragons.
As someone travelled widely between the realms and capable of using interdimensional magic, Morgan has an extremely solid understanding of the universe's cosmology. She was taught much of this directly from Merlyn himself, a man no slouch in the subject. She has since refined her awareness by traveling the planes, particularly through the Alfheims, the Otherworld, and even occasionally Asgard. She ruled over the Darkhold for a very long time. Dimensional rifts and oddities are her bread and butter, and she can deal with their manifestations better than many.
Hufflepuff made herbology cool, but the Chinese and Celtic druids practiced herb lore to a degree modern medicine only started to explore. Her first lessons at the feet of Gaea's priestesses preserved the healing lore from Atlantis, and Morgan has since refined all the techniques she uses to promote health and treat ailments. She has a broad understanding of the native and invasive species of temperate regions, and she knows the properties for many strange species in her extensive pharmacopeia. Along with this goes the ability to identify, harvest, and safely prepare her concoctions in various forms.
Reading the stars is an essential function of western magic and the society which Morgan was born to. She can identify the constellations and stars, phenomena, moon and sun phases, and chart planetary movements with striking accuracy. She also finds astronomy downright fascinating for non-divination purposes, so has a secret fascination for NASA, the ESA, and all.
It bears noting that because she was present for so much of western history, Morgan is a firsthand source for many events. Of course, she's not perfectly knowledgeable and has her biases, but she can give a reasoned discussion of Napoleon's invasion of Russia as much as the Varangians invading Byzantium. And how exciting it was when silk came from China!
For much of her life, Morgan has lived in remote, wild environments unfriendly to unprepared individuals. She thrives in such situations armed with little more than a stick and her wits. An urban setting to her is almost ridiculously plentiful with supplies and resources, whereas she could probably get along well in a high desert. Her ability to survive and navigate, create shelters, and locate safe food supplies are much better than even seasoned outdoor enthusiasts. They have to be; for so long, she had to live off her Aptitude alone.
When it comes to telling fortunes by divining patterns in the world and the will of Gaea and the fates, Morgan can use a variety of standard techniques. She prefers to use water and meditation, inducing visions, but she is also perfectly comfortable casting with runes, reading tarot cards, or invoking trances with sacred herbs smudged around a room. The method matters much less than the will and seasoned reader behind them. Morgan is also gifted enough at drafting an astrological reading or an interpretation based on reading a target, which dovetails well with her bead on people.
Morgan uses a large number of violent, offensive spells. A strong sense of tactics allow her to commit acts of devastating skill.
Morgan has lots of hard-won experience learning to detect illusions and see through glamour. She uses them all the time, and her ability to distinguish when something isn't quite real (or merely a visionary construct) is very refined. Importantly, this makes it fairly hard to hoodwink her mystically or psionically, though she can be deceived through standard means, and particularly technological ones. An optical illusion is still an optical illusion.
Morgan excels at a very specific kind of lie: the half-truth. She can insert enough truth into a discussion to lend it the weight of veracity, all the while constructing a narrative that she wants. Rarely does she outright tell a falsehood, though she is comfortable blurring the edges on a matter to suit her perspective or agenda. This makes her a silver-tongued devil worthy of the name, and her usual fey charm puts her in a different bracket altogether.
Sensitive to the permutations of truth and lies, Morgan is very good at detecting when someone is misleading her or bending the facts. Takes one to know one.
Morgan is not an opponent anyone wants to meet on the battlefield, given her terrifying command of sorcery can improve any of her physical traits to superhuman levels and she simply won't die. An entity as powerful as the Sentry thought he could rip her apart and she violently reappeared moments later, no less belligerent, and proceeded to savage him. Her culture at birth was nasty, brutish, and rather short, prizing combat above all, and even women were expected to have a little skill. Being an independent, highborn woman — and queen of Gorre — Morgan learned to wield weapons herself.
Archery: With a bow, Morgan can strike with great accuracy in the short- to mid-range. With magic, she can hit with pinpoint accuracy out of phase with time, so she's nearly unhittable. She relied on her archery skills to fill her supper pot many times in the past. Putting arrows in a buck on a hunt or striking down a Frenchman trying to invade, they're both equally fair use of the skill.
Melee: Morgan is seasoned fighting with a short or longsword, and does much better with blades suited to her size or supernaturally enhanced for a light, quick balance. She is deadly fast the lighter they are, and her competency with scimitars or lighter sabres is considerable after centuries of practice. She strikes with finesse and precision, not harrowing strength, but her knowledge of weak points on the body or where to stab so it hurts someone enough they go away is generally part of her survival plan. She *can* use that shard of Excalibur. She may not be the equal to a knight, but she's no slouch and woe to any guy who tries to knife her in an alley.
The catch all for mystic and religious techniques, knowledge of the supernatural, and practical uses therein. If the subject involves the oddities that science hasn't explained (or has, but hasn't tied to a scientific principle satisfactorily), it falls well within Morgan's horrifying deep and wide bailiwick. She keeps extensive journals and notes in a vast library refined by her encounters with unknown phenomena and relentless research. If there are mysteries to be had, be they an ancient tradition or a hacker's ability to manipulate reality using spreadsheet equations, she makes it her business to know about it.
Her background has a definite bias towards western practices, though she has expanded her knowledge to Asian and Australasian culture, as well as indigenous Native American practices. She began as a priestess of Gaea (and almost druidic), so shamanic and naturalistic styles hold a particular affinity. She is least seasoned in the business of highly technological approaches; science is an area of particular skill where it involves alchemy, chemistry, botany, astronomical, or celestial elements. Corresponding cultural attributes from the various Nine Realms, especially Asgard, Vanaheim, Nornheim, *Alfheim(s), and such are well known to her due to their similarity to her own native Otherworld magic.
She has a vast background in the application of magical items, their functions and creation, as well as repair. There aren't many things she hasn't seen or heard of, giving her a rather broad flexibility when it comes to accurate extrapolations. Mythical creatures and myths are familiar topics. Basically, she's a rules lawyer for the occult.
Legend would have you believe that Morgan is a silver-tongued devil capable of seducing angels to fall and thwarting the most honourable, chivalrous mortal of his day (Arthur) from walking an honest path. If she could convince him to fall repeatedly into her bed, so producing Mordred, Morgan is not exactly a slouch when it comes to temptation of saints and certainly sinners. She has a dangerously deep read on what appeals to people, to the point it might seem telepathic. It isn't, but deciphering someone's preferences by observation and experience is quantifiably helpful in evolving a strategy to charm, seduce, and fascinate those around her.
Morgan's charm and magnetism are largely used to persuade someone to see things her way or cooperate with her, rather than entice someone to bed. That would be the Enchantress' skill, whereas Morgan has a much deeper interest in creating alliances and defusing situations through the proper application for a nice word.
Morgan is a highly observant individual, and her ability to detect changes in a pattern or something 'off' comes directly from years of long, hard practice as a hunter. In her suite of investigative abilities, her trained observation talents may be her strongest gift. She is the sort of person to notice someone has changed their tie between entering or leaving a building, the ticket someone holds to get into a theatrical performance is dated on the wrong day, or they are now wearing a trace of a suspicious almond perfume. The experiences of her life teach her to sweat the small details and pay attention for things that are off, out of character, or a little too perfect. That almost fanatical attention to detail is the reason her illusions are so terrifying.
Morgan doesn't live in the stone age and she's well acquainted with scientific principles, methods, and fairly recent theories right up into the 20th and 21st century. In particular she is gifted with earth sciences, no surprise given she's a priestess of Danu. She is particularly wise in the matters of geography, geology, botany, biology (for the living sciences), and astronomy. Any areas of overlap, like oceanography or meteorology. A good many of these practices are essential to her spellcasting, so she has made a point to continuously educate herself. While the most recent developments may be past her, she has functional and theoretical knowledge that would place her among a professional level.
She understands battlefield tactics current to roughly the atomic age, though she's at her finest dealing with actual units and landscapes. She can rapidly grasp movements of units, reinforcement of weakened flanks, and using the landscape to great advantage. In aerial terms, Morgan tends to think of being aloft or on dragon back, so bombing campaigns with planes are somewhat lost on her.
Morgan has skillfully taken over the entire city of London with an undead army, and gained mastery over the battlerealm of 'Weirdworld.' She has every bit of her half-brother's charisma and much longer in life than Arthur ever had to practice those skills. Among her favourite tacticians is Napoleon.
Morgan has the ability of foresight, that is, seeing into the future and the past. How is this a skill and not an ability? Simply being a seer helps no one. She's learned through painful trial and error how to interpret her visions, deciphering the intense symbolism, and focusing enough to perceive what she actually sees. She must be able to concentrate to bring on the vision and understand what she perceives. Her second sight is a skill that allows her to peer into fates and charms, and feel anything that would suggest a deviation from that fate. With her temporal manipulation and luck magic of the fae, Morgan is -very- good at warping things in her favour or averting an unwanted consequence.
Merlin, himself cursed by second sight, trained and refined her ability; and she's since had ample opportunity to learn how to better refine her view of matters.
Morgan can create magical objects, temporary and long-term ones. Short-term objects include things such as scrolls, philters and potions, charms, and effects bound into a physical form intended only to be used once or for a moment. If she blesses a blade in this way, it may prove more accurate and damaging for a single fight and then fall inert. A drugged wine could make someone more susceptible to the mundane charms of a woman. Another charm turns dark in the presence of lies, stinging the wearer's skin to warn him he is being deceived. Such enchantments usually don't last very long and involve minor magics. She most frequently binds illusions or protective spells in this fashion.
Her ability to make artifacts and longer term magical items is best personified in binding the Darkhold for the first time into a tome/book form, forging a replica of Excalibur, and creating magical suits of armour for her knightly champions. These take considerable power and preparation, including forging and shaping the necessary items, laying down spells, and using materials that are very difficult to freely obtain.
Who better to understand the nature of the human psyche than one who has readily meddled in it? The nature of what inspires people to act the way they do is very much in Morgan's bailiwick. This skill can also extend to identifying motives, underlying drives, emotional states, and derangements as much as identifying cultures or the best way to handle completely alien spirits representing a concept.
Morgan's expertise in this field really comes down to identifying the influences at play on a person, their general psychological state, and then extrapolating their behaviour. It makes her particularly talented at picking out weaknesses in a subject she might exploit (or not), like someone who has a habit of hero worshipping beautiful women even when it's obviously not good for them. In the past she completely took advantage of others, though she is less inclined to now.
This skill also definitely helps when it comes to determining when someone is hiding something or attempting to hoodwink her.
Celtic culture prizes the arts, especially performing arts, classified as oratory, storytelling, dance, harp, and song. Otherworld culture puts nearly as high a value on these, but add carousing and sardonic wit to their favourites. As an inheritor to these values, Morgan has become accomplished at certain performing arts after long, long years of practice. She definitely knows what constitutes excellent playing on an Irish harp and what looks outright terrible. In the past she sold her skill in distant holdings and Asgard on the strength of her ability to play (anonymously, of course). It helps to be very pretty and enchanting.
Morgan is fairly captivating as a performer, since a majority of her activities as queen, priestess, and magician have so often involved captivating a subject.
Morgan was born to a duke and an Avalonian princess, raised to be a queen, half-sister to the High King, and a high priestess in the most revered religion in the land. (Well, after Christianity) From the hour of her birth she was raised to wield soft power among mankind, and hard, real power among womankind. Romano-British society increasingly rejected women as leaders <thanks, Boudicca> due to a paranoid Roman fear of female monarchs, but she received all the lessons due her station. That meant making hard decisions, learning laws and taboos or cultural norms, her lineage, the lineage of everyone else around her, and a host of hero stories that were maintained didactically. These skills have never really been lost, even if her understanding of command more often follows the hierarchical organization of a coven or a corporation rather than an actual kingdom.
Leadership means decisive choices, bold actions, and the power to get people oriented and moving. Morgan is the sort to lead by example and then terrorize everyone else into following her by sheer success. See also, favourites in history including Napoleon. She has no issues with delegation and using very capable people to achieve what she herself can't. This woman doesn't believe in getting something done only by doing it herself.
Morgan has highly developed memorization skills, given she was born in a time when few were literate. Druidic and magical training both relied on memorization and rote skill rather than writing things down. She didn't start actually recording much of her work outside of journals until much, much later. You can't trust books. Books can be burnt and taken away. Memory cannot be ripped out of someone's head so easily though, nor can it be carried off all that well. Therefore she is pretty damn good memorizer, using a variety of mnemonic devices to crowd yet more information into her pretty little head.
Morgan has a variety of resistances built up as the result of magic, experience, and age.
PSYCHE: Morgan's psyche is unnaturally resistant to external influences, particularly insidious attempts to corrupt or subvert her. In part she has a 'wild mind' as the result of her faerie heritage that makes mortal magics and psionics greatly reduced in efficiency. Her thoughts don't react the same way as others would think, proving especially fluid and porous when it comes to psychic entrapment. Attempting to control her is difficult and unpredictable at best, causing her to throw off effects much faster if they hit at all.
AGING: Morgan does not age.
AILMENTS: Morgan is fundamentally immune to all diseases, toxins, poisons, viruses, bacteria, and the like. She cannot be killed by them or contract them
MAGIC: Inherent faerie abilities plus long, long use with magic mean that Morgan has an innate level of magic resistance. She sloughs off minor effects or their potency is somewhat reduced. When tapping the Darkhold, her magic resistance becomes increased by magnitudes.
ENCHANTMENT: As half-fae and an Otherworlder, she is rather good at deflecting enchantments and /especially/ illusions. (See Pierce Illusions) These abilities that would normally bend someone's mind or instill a specific emotional reaction tend to be less effective upon her.
Morgan is a deft hand with a sailboat, and most small craft up to the size of a yacht. She was born, after all, to the wild coast of Cornwall and lived for years in the drowned lands of Somerset and the West Country. Currents and waves hold few riddles to someone used to weaving through treacherous shoals, and she finds a peace on water that few might truly imagine of her. The business of knots and sails, anchorage and safe sailing practices she is skilled by, and with this also goes a general familiarity for reading depth charts, sailing maps, and the like. She has good experience with most of Britain and Ireland.
When you conduct secret wars against the very kingdom you dwell within, you had /better/ be good at concealing your presence. Morgan knows how to gather information without drawing attention to herself and the fundamentals of espionage as they have changed over the years. Her tradecraft has been forged in the stews of Glasgow, London's backstreets and the gangs of Belfast. She knows the tricks of a nasty trade that require subtlety, light fingers, and hard instincts.
SAMPLES
- Casing: With a proper amount of time, she can identify most entrances and exits, security measures, likely weak points, and the nature of the people in her location.
- Danger Sense: Morgan knows when things read wrong, and how to follow her gut instincts. Her instincts being what they are usually pretty darned reliable.
- Investigation: On the ground research the old fashioned way, done by wearing out shoe leather, asking questions, and riffling through records is something she has far too much experience doing.
- Stealth: She knows how to stay out of sight or conceal herself, particularly when it comes to natural environments. Most of the time she just uses invisibility.
- Attraction: She likewise knows how to keep attention on her face and not so much what she's doing.
- Sleight of…: Nothing like slipping something onto a target without them being aware. Morgan can pickpocket and bury evidence, pinch whatever she needs.
Morgan is faerie, and faerie (including dark and light elves of Svartalfheim and Alfheim) can be injured by the cold iron weapons.
First, cold iron is not an average vein of iron ore, steel or wrought iron. Cold iron is raw iron ore of a particular purity level (minimum 80%) handforged by hammer and anvil, absolutely no fire or magic or mutant abilities. In short, the object must be shaped by pure physical strength alone, altering its magnetic properties and structure in a way known to hurt the fae and their kin. Cold iron cannot and will never take an enchantment of any kind, and if exposed to fire, it loses its properties permanently. Cold iron is soft and brittle, poor to make weapons out of, and often subject to impurities.
Morgan finds cold iron uncomfortable to be in contact with, much like an allergy sufferer experiences a mild to moderate reaction around whatever they are allergic to. When used to wound her, a cold iron weapon does normal damage she cannot heal easily or at an accelerated rate. She treats these wounds like a mortal would treat a normal attack from a weapon. Her magic /can/ accelerate the healing process or herself normally; however, cold iron will bypass protective spells it touches. Contact is essential; cold iron doesn't drop a spell, it simply goes right through it. A mundane defense like a shield will halt a cold iron bullet.
Cold iron cannot affect Morgan if she is intangible, or otherwise not reachable. Her Astral form is not harmed by a cold iron dagger pressed to her arm, though her arm certainly may be.
The vast body of mythological lore suggests Morgan le Fay is a highly complex individual. Some stories proclaim her a heroine defending traditional values from eradication by a patriarchal society determined to control access to women's bodies and rights. Others portray her as a murderous, scheming bitch out for her own designs on the throne. Certainly tales throughout history cast her in the villainous role, and encounters with mutants and superteams, particularly the British side of Shield, the Avengers, Excalibur, and Spider-Man have reason to absolutely loathe Morgan's actions. She has performed heinous crimes, but then again, name an ancient sorcerer who hasn't. Even Merlyn murdered his own daughter, Roma, and pursued unfathomable plans involving questionable entities and highly suspect goals.
It may be said in Morgan's defense, she has never directly acted to harm Britannia, the land of her birth and greatest love. She defends the country the best way she knows how and acts in what she believes are its best interests, though this is a morally grey area. The ends, in her mind, usually justify the means and if the means include barring immigrants at Calais, then she'll raise a defensive ward around the island or blackmail and mind control politicians in Whitehall to do it. Questionable, yes, effectively, surely. She can point out her perspective is much, much longer than the current people sitting in Parliament, and forever has been. There's a reason the UK has never been successfully invaded since 1066, she'll have you know.
Morgan has a very complicated worldview and strong opinions tempered by an outright alien mindset that matured when the Roman Empire roughly still existed, though in heavy decline. She has witnessed atrocities on a scale that others can't even begin to imagine. She knows more about human nature than humanity itself sometimes, and that definitively colours her actions. She is not evil for evil's sake - a demon can tell that right off. Neither is she pure at heart, as innocence and driven snow go. However, she is fully willing to sacrifice herself for an ideal and fulfill a vision of a greater, united Britannia. Unfortunately nearly no one (except Gaea and great powers) can possibly see it that way. They see merely a twisted, dark queen full of power.
Morgan gets envious when she is discounted and disregarded by those she dares to cultivate as a friend or companion. She simply does not take very well to being neglected without reason, and her behaviour becomes troubling through cruel, ill-conceived methods when she's at her worst. Neglect reopens old wounds like King Arthur and Merlyn's maltreatment of her, and direct parallels awaken nasty tendencies. She isn't an inherently jealous person, but she guards her privileges and secrets with all the fury of an ancient woman.
Morgan and Merlyn have vied since the twilight days of the Roman Empire for influence over Britain. More often at odds than allied, their stories are so intertwined that one surely cannot exist without the other. In ancient times, Morgan was Merlyn's finest pupil and successor; his lover; his partner; his darkest enemy; the thorn in his side. Time has not healed all things, though the injustices and grievous wrongs done against Morgan, her family, and the worship of Gaea have all receded somewhat through countless other trials. Defending the country against Nazis together soothed some very old grievances between them. To be clear, Morgan is passionate about Merlyn in a way she is no one else. He is /hers/. Anyone else trying to strike him will have her as an enemy, whereas she reserves the right to bitch slap that poncy arse across the face to herself alone, and maybe their children, Mordred, and Arthur. Their affinity and troubled relationship has withstood myriad tests. Merlyn probably stands at the front of the line for upbraiding Morgan, and these two ancients do not share.
Several parties from this dimension and other universes may have a very good memory about that one time Morgan completely changed reality, throwing everyone and everything back to the twelfth century. That Morgan is this Morgan, more or less, and she might have some very nasty surprises ahead of her if someone was particularly put out. They might be unwilling to hear she's somewhat reformed of her ways since turning back to Gaea and the Skymothers.
Family is her blind spot, particularly where it involves her son Mordred. Brothers and half-siblings get almost the same pass, since she rescued Arthur and carried him off to the Otherworld at the moment before his death. Morgan loves her family in a way that only someone who has lost everything will understand. Like the earth mother to all her children, Morgan cannot see only Mordred's faults. She bore him. She raised him. She knows his hurts are reflections of hers, and she /loves/ him regardless, though she has tried to nudge him towards a path that doesn't lash out strictly based on rage, but acts instead on what's best for their country and the Otherworld. Anyone wanting to exploit her could do it through her kindred, though be warned. She views her relations the way a mother bear or a lioness does, and will absolutely savage anyone who threatens their harmony and welfare without a second thought. And /that/ should be frightening given just how far she'll go to secure what she wants. There are no half-measures with Morgan le Fay.
Morgan is more pro-Alba/pro-Britannia than anyone alive, except possibly Merlyn. She puts the interest of her home isles ahead of everywhere and everyone else. Britain - in whatever idealised form she prefers - has preeminence and she steers her plots and energy to assuring it remains independent, prosperous, and at the forefront. As its roundabout protector in a way that various super-groups and politicians aren't, though, Morgan doesn't mind meddling in others' plans. They may not always see eye to eye with her goals, and she takes to their meddling with a suitably unimpressed, offended lese majeste. Her role unfortunately can put her at odds with a great many active powers. And guess what. She doesn't care!
It's worth noting that the Faerie of the Otherworld can be corresponded to a great many extradimenwsional entities. The Asgardians know her as either a ljosalfar (light elf) of Alfheim or a svartalf (dark elf) of Svartalfheim, most notably, and she gets the benefit of all their prejudices and assumptions regardless. The Olympian pantheon regards her as a renegade nymph or possibly Medea, a wholly terrifying figure from mythology. Almost every European culture has spawned expectations, to say nothing of what regular mutants and superhuman factions generally think of fae/aliens. They may come predisposed to treat her as an inhuman or second class citizen because they can.
Morgan is always going to be more comfortable in the pre-industrial era. She came into her own between the collapse of the Roman province of Britannia and the rise of the courts of love (where she spent some time, and thinks fondly of Aquitaine still). Her manners and perspectives are a product of her very, very long times. Though thoroughly modern in her jaded perspective, she still has a disadvantage when it comes to dealing and adopting modern mores. She owns a smartphone, yes, but she wasn't in line for an iPhone version 1, day of release. She forces herself to pick up new trends and stay current as a reflexive habit, but there are going to be moments of deep abiding melancholy, or her staring at some superadvanced technological device that she doesn't equate to magic (similar to the Asgardians), which is bound to drive her to irritation. Or her answer will be simply blast the goddamn thing to pieces and return reality to 1255.
Morgan, in all this time, /still/ hasn't tapped into her full set of abilities. She has a tremendous and formidable mystical library, but there are whole swathes of her potential waiting to be shaped and manifested. Telling someone 1,600+ years old she still has magical development ahead of her is a somewhat galling situation, especially because the most likely candidates to explain how this is done are not easily found and possibly not even alive. Merlyn isn't readily roaming around. Agamotto is busy. Doctor Strange and various sorcerers supreme could have negative relationships or view her as a risk. In short, she has to figure it out the old fashioned way, by doing a lot of research, soul searching, investigation, and question-asking.
This is definitely an area of RP growth, good.
This is definitely something that stings her pride and puts her on a lesser footing at times, bad.
What side of the Arthurian divide are you on? Do you believe Morgan to be a powerful force, a priestess of the Old Ways preserving Britain's Celtic heritage? Do you think she's a pagan in an emerging Christian society that set back the nation a few centuries? Or is that whole Mordred issue a bit troubling?
====================[ +sheet for Morgan (Morgan Le Fay) ]=====================
Real Name: Morgan ferch Igraine Age: 1,600+
Codename: Morgan Le Fay Gender: Female
Sessions: Approved On: Tue Sep 06 11:18:50 2016
F: Typical (6) Health: 52/52
A: Good (10) Karma: 120
S: Typical (6) Resources: (0)
E: Remarkable (30) Popularity:
R: Incredible (40) Experience:
I: Excellent (20) Initiative: +1
P: Fantastic (60) Movement: 3
==================================< POWERS >==================================
Earth Magic………………………………………. Monstrous (80)
Chlorokinesis…………………………………… Spectacular (70)
Healing………………………………………… Spectacular (70)
Shape Shifting………………………………….. Monstrous (80)
Terrakinesis……………………………………. Spectacular (70)
Fae Magic………………………………………… Wondrous (90)
Immortality………………………………………. ShiftZ (500)
Mental Arts………………………………………. Amazing (50)
Astral Projection……………………………….. Amazing (50)
Body Possession…………………………………. Amazing (50)
Look Past Me……………………………………. Amazing (50)
Mind Control……………………………………. Amazing (50)
Necromancy……………………………………….. Spectacular (70)
Death Sense…………………………………….. Spectacular (70)
Death Shield……………………………………. Spectacular (70)
Entropy………………………………………… Spectacular (70)
Raise Dead……………………………………… Spectacular (70)
Sorcery………………………………………….. Monstrous (80)
Bindings……………………………………….. Monstrous (80)
Energy Bolts……………………………………. Monstrous (80)
Flight…………………………………………. Monstrous (80)
Scrying………………………………………… Monstrous (80)
Spell Shaping…………………………………… Spectacular (70)
Teleportation…………………………………… Monstrous (80)
Wards………………………………………….. Monstrous (80)
Summoning………………………………………… Fantastic (60)
Banishment……………………………………… Fantastic (60)
Evocation………………………………………. Fantastic (60)
Invocation……………………………………… Fantastic (60)
Temporal Manipulation……………………………… Monstrous (80)
Delayed Spells………………………………….. Monstrous (80)
=================================< TALENTS >==================================
Academics………………………………………… Excellent (20)
Astronomy………………………………………… Incredible (40)
Combat…………………………………………… Remarkable (30)
Cosmology………………………………………… Incredible (40)
Divination……………………………………….. Amazing (50)
Eldritch Combat…………………………………… Incredible (40)
Falconry…………………………………………. Remarkable (30)
Herbalism………………………………………… Incredible (40)
History………………………………………….. Amazing (50)
Languages………………………………………… Remarkable (30)
Lies…………………………………………….. Amazing (50)
Observation………………………………………. Incredible (40)
Occultism………………………………………… Fantastic (60)
Pierce Illusions………………………………….. Spectacular (70)
Resist Domination…………………………………. Spectacular (70)
Riding…………………………………………… Remarkable (30)
Science………………………………………….. Excellent (20)
Seduction………………………………………… Amazing (50)
Tactics………………………………………….. Fantastic (60)
Wild Lore………………………………………… Amazing (50)
==================================< FLAWS >===================================
Cold Iron Enemies
Fae Jealousy
Morals
=================================< CONTACTS >=================================
Chthon Darkhold Cult Members
Modred
ARMOR RATINGS: Energy: 0 Mental: 0 Physical: 0
IC Events
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08 Sep 2016 23:32 (2016-09-08) Advice from Morgan Le Fay
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