Witch Girls Adventures: Magical Minutia #4: Trinity Stone Academy by Adnachiel
The Second Best School in the US
Original SA post
Part 1: The Second Best School in the US
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Alternate cover with Soto art, holy shit!
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quote:
South by Southwest
The South Has a different history than the North, or the east or the west. In fact, some would say it's almost a different country. Slower, old fashion more polite and more magical. I grew up with stories about monsters and magic not told as if their fairytales but told as if they are truth and so did most people I know.
In the South everyone knows a witch, or someone they think is one be she a "two headed woman", "Conjure Woman or Bruja. Its not seen odd or strange to for people to be superstitious or talk about seeing ghosts or talking to spirits. It just happens. And that's why this book exists.
Witch Girls adventures deals with a whole wide world of magic. It looks at the big mystical picture. It talks about the big magical schools, the "all powerful " WWC and the differences between the magical and the Mundane world. But though most of the world of "Witch -Girls Adventures" is as you read it there are places with their own unique flavor.
I’m not from the Deep South. Can any US goons who grew up in that area confirm that? Was your education system so bad that you guys thought all the shitty women in your town were literal witches?
Magical Minutia #4: Trinity Stone Academy is a book about one of the other 3 magic schools in the United States. (Along with Willow-Mistt, we have Golden Gate and Lake Lodge. I’m going to guess Golden Gate is in San Francisco. Lake Lodge is presumably somewhere up north. Though a typo says it’s in the south with Trinity Stone.) Harris has used the school at least once to run a game at a convention, and it’s the setting of one of the many attempts at a live action Witch Girls movie: Beyond Convention. I linked the intelligible trailer way back in my write-up of the core. But here it is again, for the hell of it.
Like the last book, there is no credits section. The alternate cover says Harris, Soto, and Emily Foster (?) worked on it, while DriveThruRPG credits “Anna Pierce” as the sole writer and the other artist besides Soto. Some of the writing has Harris’s usual eccentricities, while other bits are stiff blurbs that sound like placeholder notes. While Soto did do the character portraits for this book, the rest of the art is just Photoshopped blurred pictures of stock photos. Like so:
Trinity Stone is located in Dallas-Fort Worth and serves students from Texas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Colorado, Kansas, Arkansas, Mississippi, Utah, and Missouri. It’s the smallest of the four American schools with only 40 students. (The book says 42, but the grade breakdown only adds up to 40. The wiki has art for two male students, but they never come up in the book.) It’s not as prestigious as Willow-Mistt, but that’s not from a lack of trying.
Trinity Stone’s first headmistresses were sisters Eliza and Alice Coleman. Their mother, Temperance, homeschooled them when their family moved to Dallas in 1880 and set up a homestead along the Trinity River. Temperance quickly became friends with an American Indian witch named Lady Eyes-of-Sun, who introduced her to the Spirit River Valley. The SRV is a magical pocket dimension that the native tribes and buffalo of the area retreated to when settlers started coming through, presumably. Temperance told her daughters about it when they became teenagers and made them promise never to reveal its existence to anyone, including their father.
Unfortunately, Eliza, being a dumb kid, showed one of their mundane friends, a boy named Preston, an arrow head necklace she had received from a native child as a gift. She took him there to prove the valley existed and he ended up getting killed by a cockatrice. Eliza took his body to Alice, who turned him into a zombie with her knowledge of Necromancy. Preston’s parents immediately noticed something was up and got into a fight with their parents. Preston’s father, the town drunk, shot both Temperance and her nameless husband. The girls fled to Lady Eyes-of-Sun, who took them in. The two built and opened the school in the valley in 1894 in honor of their mother, because she was a teacher I guess. She wasn’t teaching other kids. It’s kind of like making a school in honor of Michelle Duggar.
Anyway, the two were co-headmistresses for 20 years until them and Lady Eyes-of-Sun’s tribe decided to fuck off and go explore the valley. They left a nameless witch in charge. Nothing happened until 1943 when somebody fucked up a magical experiment and set fire to most of the school. The nameless headmistress was kicked out and the school almost lost its accreditation because of the incident. (So take note: Grooming kids to be evil and eventually help with your plan to overthrow the WWC is fine, having your school catch fire by accident is not.) Either way, the school’s already lackluster reputation went to shit because of the incident.
In 1991, the current headmistress and former student, Calypso Duexshae, was hired on as a teacher. At that point, the school only had 12 students and a staff that didn’t give a shit about teaching. She nagged the WWC’s board of education until they started booting the slacker teachers and the then-current headmistress, Viola Sanchez. Viola challenged her to a magical duel. (Dueling is apparently a thing among Spanish witches.) Calypso won by erasing her from existence for 3 days almost immediately after the duel started. Upon being appointed Headmistress by the WWC, Calypso immediately fired the remaining staff members and personally recruited most of the current staff and 30 new students for the 1992 school year. This and Calypso’s tight grip on the school have earned it the reputation of being the second best place to send your little bundle of magical horror in the United States.
Trinity Stone is run in pretty much the same fashion as Willow-Mistt, with some minor differences. All new students start on the same date every year. This day consists of them meeting the Intern student guides at Trinity Park in Fort Worth and crossing over the unfinished Trinity Creek Bridge to get into the Spirit River Valley. (I guess no one bats an eye at a bunch of kids carrying suitcases into the park.) The rules on what they can bring was pretty much copy-pasted from other books. Instead of a demerit and trial system, Trinity Stone just piles extra work detail onto troublemaking students at the Headmistress’s sole discretion. If you’re a danger to yourself, others, or the school, the most that will happen is you’ll have to manually clean the school grounds more and not be able to participate in extracurricular activities for a semester. There is no mention of suspensions or expulsions. However, the school employs binding bracelets that prevent the student wearing them from using magic outside of classes. These are used for magical offenses. In the eyes of the book, this makes Trinity Stone one of the strictest magic schools in existence. Kids rarely get in trouble (or have learned to hide what they’re doing very well) at the school because of this.
Nearly all of the students live two to a room in the Coleman Dormitory. Neophytes live with the Intern in charge of herding them in the basement while the other grades live on the upper floors, with the first used as a common and study area for the upper grades and as the dining hall. Due to a typo, Interns live on both the second and third floors. All of the dorm’s common areas are maintained by assigned student cleaners. Trinity Stone is very big on having the students do the cleaning for them.
The school offers the standard array of classes that every magic school offers.
Note that Necromancy teaches itself and this school also has a sanctioned witch Neo-Nazi youth group.
As it’s been noted, Trinity Stone maintains its grounds by having the students do work detail. Work detail is mandatory for anyone who is not sick or disabled and is done for one hour every day at least. The school does this both to honor the first students and to teach the students to not depend on their magic, as the chores have to be done without it. Interns apparently don’t have to do it, and instead supervise the Initiates. Jobs include cleaning the buildings, doing lawn work, maintaining the school’s farm, providing security, and cooking meals. (Ramen, pizza, and sandwiches every night!)
Up next: The school grounds and the Spirit River Valley
The Campus and Spirit River Valley
Original SA post
Part 2: The Campus and Spirit River Valley
Trinity Stone’s campus is located on an island in the middle of the Spirit River. Here, have a map.
All of the buildings are built in either a Southern Antebellum or French Creole style, with one exception. Some of the descriptions are much more elaborate than the ones in previous books (right down to the kind of wood used), probably because Harris was going off his DM notes when he was writing this. They're actually kind of nice and paint a better picture of the school than the Willow-Mistt and Coventry write-ups did.
A – Coleman Dormitory: Was originally the Colemans' house, now it’s the school dorms. The Intern rooms are more opulent than the other students, and they get their own room and bathroom. Also has porch swings and a rec room for watching TV and reading.
B – Temperance Hall: The main hall, built in a Victorian style. The building is divided into three sections, all of which have three floors: The center hall holds the library, auditorium, teachers’ offices, the headmistress’s office, and the band hall. The left hall holds the mundane classrooms. The right hall holds the magical classrooms. The magical side has a bunch of fire prevention spells and wards to prevent another massive accident from happening again.
C – Eliza Gardens: A garden with a greenhouse used to grow magical plants and mundane vegetables for meals. The C in the book is the copyright symbol.
D – Alice Court: A magical building that is used as the cafeteria (so what’s the banquet hall in the dorms for?), the cooking classroom, a teacher’s living quarters, and an outdoor pavilion for barbeques and other outdoor events. (The walls magically fold away when they use it for that.)
E – Lab Buildings: Classroom labs for the more dangerous magical arts, including the Enchantment classroom. Each lab has X foot thick stone walls and 6 inch thick metal doors. They don’t fuck around at Trinity Stone.
F – Jackalope Stadium: The school’s sports field, gym, and the personal lab of one of the teachers; named after the school’s mascot and one of the many animals in the Spirit River Valley.
G – Trinity Farms: The combination farm and ranch that provides the school with food. Has a chicken coop, cow pastor, an emu pen, a grain mill, and the stables for horses and magical mounts that the students can ride on the weekends with permission from the staff.
H – Santos Hall: A multi-story log cabin that is used as the guest dorm (upstairs) and the meeting area (downstairs) for the various student groups. The Highbinders Youth Group, Hex Scouts, and the “Circle of Steel” have their own dedicated meeting rooms. The building is named after a staff member that was killed by witch hunters two years ago… from whenever you run your game, I guess.
I – Teacher’s Grotto: Where most of the teachers live. The headmistress gets her own house, the American Indian teacher, Maggie Two-Feathers, gets her own cabin, the vampire teacher, Darius Wilson, gets his own a crypt, everyone else lives in a two story apartment block. The school’s docks are located here too.
J - Spirit River Cabin: The meeting area for when representatives of the various tribes in the valley need to contact the school or trade with them. Also used by Rustics for quiet weekend stays.
K – Trinity Park: A mundane park in Fort Worth. It was actually created magically to hide the entrance to the school. (So… does the local government not acknowledge its existence? How does that work?) The entire park has a mundane avoidance charm on it that gives mundanes a -5 penalty to notice and remember magical occurrences. (Again, does that cover the group of kids carrying a bunch of regular mundane suitcases into the park at the start of the year?)
L – Spirit Valley: The Spirit River Valley itself. The hundreds of miles long pocket dimension is home to tens of thousands of native peoples from the Caddo, Cherokee, Apache, and Comanche tribes, animal paragons, spirits, monsters, and various magical animals from American mythology, including jackalopes, thunderbirds, giant white buffalos, and animals that haven’t been seen in the Americas since the Ice Age. The deeper you go, the more out there the creatures become. Bordering the dimension is a vast desert that connects to other magical deserts and dimensions. Anyone magical enough can enter it by crossing the river, and those of native lineage on vision quests sometimes enter into it accidentally due to their mystical connection with the valley. In regards to the environment, the valley is similar to the real world except there’s no sun or moon, the stars at night (which aren’t dampened by light pollution) might actually be distant gates to other dimensions, the valley always gets 12 hours of light and darkness every day no matter what season it is, and most plants grow from seed to fruit within a few weeks.
Other places of note in the valley include:
Blood Jungle: A jungle inhabited by Aztecs. They don’t like intruders.
High Hill: An isolated mountain range home to sasquatches, eagle paragons, and rocs. Only people born in the area seem to be able to navigate it successfully.
Thunder Plains: Named after the sound the hundreds of buffalo, normal and elephant-sized flying ones, make when they roam around the plains.
Two Feathers Trading Post: Named after and run by local valley expert Carlos Two-Feathers, the husband of Maggie Two-Feathers. Students can come here with permission and trade magical bits and bobs.
Due to how vibrant the valley is, everyone in it regains an extra life point and zap point every hour up to an unknown maximum. Characters heal twice as fast and mundane diseases have a 25% chance of being instantly cured. (You can to roll a 4 on a D4.) Garden and Herbalism rolls have a +1. Elementalism spells get a +1 to Casting and their Range and Duration MTRs. Necromancy spells have a -1 to their Casting and Range, Duration, and Damage MTRs. Zombies created only last half as long as they usually do.
M - Spirit River: The dimension’s namesake and the physical border between it and the mundane world. It circles the dimension. The water is always fresh and potable, and restores a zap point per cup when drunk.
Up next: The staff and students
The Staff
Original SA post
Part 3: The Staff
Time for my most and least favorite parts of these write-ups: Character sheets. I’ve decided to just post screenshots of the sheets because I’m just tired of summarizing them. (It also gives you a better idea of how badly edited some of these can be and how annoying the book’s background pic can be sometimes.) Let me know if you prefer the other way more. The sheets in this book use the older rules set.
For the character portraits, I had to dig through Soto’s old work to get larger versions of them, because due to the compression and resizing done to them in the book, some of them look like ass when they’re blown up.
Headmistress Calypso Duexshae
Calypso hails from Noir-Arbre, a magical town in Louisiana. When she was younger, she would play tricks and commit petty crimes against mundanes and other people in the community. Her mom sent her to Trinity Stone to knock some sense into her, and it worked. Though she is still known for getting things done in “unconventional” ways. (I guess just trying to turn the WWC into shit is so common that a simple letter-writing campaign is considered unconventional.) Her nickname among the student body is “The Diva”, due to her immaculate appearance, cool nerves, and habit of never raising her voice. None of those things sound diva-ish to me, but okay. She teaches Time and Space. This makes the Beyond Convention movie make no sense since the students are obviously doing an assignment for a mundane studies class and she doesn’t teach any of those.
She likes spicy food, gardening, and caring for the students.
Calypso is a Sorceress with the Beautiful and Queen Bee talents and the Warper heritage. She has 83 mundane points, 63 magical points, and 39 magic ranks.
(Hands… fingers… arms… tits…)
Abigail Bruja
It took longer than I thought it would, but we’ve finally found a Soto self-insert. (I’m pretty sure that is Soto’s head pasted on
“Abby” was born in San Antonio and abandoned by her biological parents on the doorstep of St. Theresa Orphanage. Due to the fact that her Hag’s Syndrome was already manifesting as a baby, the nuns there cared for and educated her in secret. She kept her powers a secret from them in fear of what they would do to her. When she came of age, she got the typical witch wanderlust and traveled the world. During her travels, she saved a young Calypso from getting killed by a mundane mob by turning them all into grub worms. Calypso found her in Noir Arbre later on and hired her on as a teacher.
Abby teaches the Alteration, Curses, and Mentalism classes. Despite Calypso going through a lot of effort to get rid of all of the slackers that were on the school’s staff, she makes an exception for Abigail, who frequently shows up to classes hung over (ignoring the fact that witches are immune to the bad effects of alcohol), smoking cigars (because of course), and casting all manner of dangerous spells just for the hell of it. Her bio even admits that she shouldn’t really be a teacher.
Trinity Stone posted:
Abigail is an unlikely teacher, flamboyant, sassy and zap happy she really has no business teaching at a school. But she's really good at what she does and likes nothing more than showing girls how to enjoy life and their powers.
As you’ve probably guessed, one of her favorite past times is casting wicked spells on people. Considering being wicked is a stereotype of those with Hag’s Syndrome, she’s not really doing her cause any favors. (So what did Hag’s Syndrome activists do to earn the right to attend schools? Did they just threaten to turn everyone on the council into cigars?) Though most of the council is probably wicked themselves, so whatever.
Abigail is an Outsider with the Friendly and Wicked talents and the Hag’s Syndrome heritage. She has 64 mundane skill points, 50 magical skill points, and 43 magic ranks. Guess what her highest type is and what her signature spell does.
Pretty impressive how someone with no formal training and a fear of having their powers discovered can become that good at turning people into shit and never run the risk of having their magic fade away from disbelief like other characters in a similar situation.
Adani Masauri
Adani was born in Amman, Jordan but spent most of her life in Brass City, a magical city somewhere else in the Middle East. She attended Coventry as a teenager and graduated with honors due to her “anal-retentive” and studious nature. She entered the WWC’s “Academy of Paths”, whatever that is, and got herself a bookkeeping job as "a attaché to the assistant directors assistant to the council secretary". Calypso sought her out for a teaching position despite only meeting her once. She left that much of an impression on her. She teaches Illusion, Divination, and Music, and expects nothing but perfection from her students. She’s also good at music, which is seen as a higher calling in Brass City. Get it? Brass? A lot of instruments are made of it?
Adani is a Sorceress with the Devious and Perfectionist talents and the custom Half-Djinn heritage. Along with her classes, she is the sponsor of the Highbinders youth group. Which is odd, since Highbinders probably don’t have a very high opinion of half-breeds, and nothing in her bio makes her out to be a witch supremacist. She has 59 mundane skill points, 46 magical skill points, and 32 magic ranks.
Ariel Cottonwood
Ariel’s fae father and witch mother were entertainers who worked at Renaissance fairs. They sent her to Trinity Stone when she was 11 when they decided that she needed a formal education. She hated it, but got used to it. She went back to working at ren fairs after graduation as an expert on medieval life. Calypso hired her in hopes that her natural inclination to entertain others would rub off on the students. That’s pretty much it. She teaches Conjuration, Broom-Riding, and Mysticism.
Ariel is an Insider with the Eccentric and Geek talents and the Half-Fae heritage. She has 75 mundane skill points, 49 magic skill points, and 25 magic ranks.
Autumn Austin
Autumn is a member of the Austin family, the oldest family of western witches in Texas. (No, she is not from Austin. She’s from Allen.) The entire family is nothing but prim and proper southern belles, Autumn included. Something she was made fun of for when she attended Trinity Stone, as every Austin witch has done since it was founded, along with the tea parties she held with the other southern old money witch students. She became an etiquette instructor for the daughters of upper class old money families after graduation instead of going into the nebulous family business. She declined twice when Calypso came around to recruit her, but eventually accepted when she realized that Trinity Stone had become an uncultured mess. She likes to throw weekly tea parties, complete with vintage dresses. She teaches Protection and both Etiquette classes. (So she should be the one showing the girls around in the Beyond Convention movie.) Based on her write-up, I get the impression that she rounds down the grades of or just ignores any student that isn’t from old money, who probably aren’t invited to those tea parties. I’ve said “old money” a lot in this paragraph. Sarah Austin from Wicked Ways (who isn’t mentioned at all in this book) and her older sister Kay are her nieces. She’s an expert on mortal avoidance charms. She hates “Yankees”.
Autumn is an Insider with the Calm and Snob talents and the custom “Old Blood” heritage. What does it give her? Who knows. There’s no blurb for it on her sheet. She has 55 mundane skill points, 52 magical skill points, and 26 plus + magic ranks.
Arnie Shellback
Arnie, like most animal paragons, was born to a pair of normal armadillos in or around 1876. Unlike other armadillo paragons, he got the wanderlust and went seeking out a life of adventure. This got him captured by a wild west show. He didn’t mind, however, since he was still in the grips of the wanderlust and it let him travel the world. The owner of the show eventually found out that he could talk and the two became friends while Arnie became the show’s cook and animal trainer. The show closed in 1924, and the show’s nameless owner died 10 years later. Arnie, still wanderlusting, discovered the magical world and how shitty they are towards anyone who isn’t a witch shortly after. He went on to become a magical spy in World War 2 and the Korean War, and befriended and introduced Calypso to her now ex-husband. (Who is just called “Husband”.) She recruited him to be the school’s Cooking teacher and the head of the school’s farm. He lives in a burrow in Alice Court. In his spare time, he is an activist. Good luck with that buddy.
Arnie has no clique or heritage, but has the Friendly and Brave talents. He has 67 mundane skill points, 16 magical skill points, and 2 ranks of Elementalism.
Bonita Botanica
Bonita hatched from an egg in a volcanic area near “Xcoial, Beleze” (sic) over 400 years ago. When she became old enough to communicate, she lived in a cave and was worshiped by the local villagers, who she offered her magical and potion-making abilities to in exchange for food, wine, and gold. (Fun Fact: The Spanish originally didn’t settle in Belize, despite it being declared a colony, partly because it lacked natural resources, including gold.) After a few centuries of that, she got the wanderlust, made a potion that made her look human, and traveled the world. After discovering the finer points of the mundane world, she got into the perfume business. The WWC shut her down after the company became successful and they found out that the perfumes had magical properties. She got 50 years of community service. They were going to assign her to teach at Saint Joan’s as part of it, but Calypso, a fan of her products, pulled some strings. She teaches Healing, Potions, and Spanish. She rambles on about fashion in class and often tests her potions on her students.
Bonita is an Insider with the Drama Queen and Jaded talents and the custom (North American) Naga heritage. She has 71 mundane skill points, 49 magical skill points, and 42 magic ranks.
Lord Darius Winston
Darius is a naturally born vampire from Cardiff, Wales circa 1641. His biological parents left him on the doorstep of Lord and Lady Winston, who assumed his condition was some sort of sickness that required a diet of raw meat and animal blood and an indoor lifestyle. When he became a teenager, he got the wanderlust and traveled the world, finding himself a lot of girlfriends due to his brooding poet persona. He discovered he was a vampire when another vampire attacked his date. He ran off and became a recluse until 1809, when he got over it and joined vampire society proper. In the late 1800s, he turned his family’s manor into a school for orphaned vampires that taught its students to live in harmony with humans. German vampires tried to recruit the student body in World War 2, and Dracula murdered all of the students and left him staked outside when he refused. Calypso’s mother, Ramona, who was part of the magical Allied forces, saved him. He moved to Louisiana with her after the war and became like an uncle to Calypso. He teaches History, Language Arts, and Drama. (The list at the front of the book also says he teaches “mundane studies”.) A lot of the students have crushes on him and want him to make them a vampire, which he hates. His character motivation is Bonita’s copy-pasted. So his bio makes him sound like he wants to be a “perfume queen”. He's actually an acclaimed writer in both the mundane and magical worlds.
Darius has no clique, but is an Imperial vampire with the Gloomy and Mysterious talents. He has 85 mundane skill points, 27 magical skill points, and 4 magic ranks.
(Neck...)
Lana Bayer
Lana is a former Trinity Stone student and a prodigy when it comes to creating magical items. When she was an Intern, she taught the Enchantment class, and after she graduated (as valedictorian), she quickly became the manager of the dwarven magical device company that she worked at. (Fast as in “in a manner of two”) She moved on to Mod Mia’s Modern Magic to get experience with mundane electronics, and excelled there as well. Then she became a magistrate because the WWC wanted more magistrates with tech experience, all at the age of 25. She eagerly took Calypso’s offer to teach because she missed building things, despite loving the combat aspect of her job. She teaches Offense, Enchantment, and Math; likes Nine Inch Nails; and hates Luddites. (Presumably in the original sense of the word of people who are against labor-saving technologies or new technology in general and not Soto’s definition of “cishet white male Christian MRA racists who hate my game”.) She’s also from Dallas. I suspect that she’s either based on someone or is someone’s self-insert.
Lana is a Gothique with the Brainiac and Warrior talents and the Half-Dwarf heritage. She has 104 mundane skill points, 46 magical skill points, and 28 magic ranks. (She’s only 35 and has far and away more mundane skill points than some of the centuries old characters here.)
Leticia “Lettie” Zapata
Ever since she was little, Leticia loved computers. Unfortunately, her family was poor and her school’s computers were shit that broke down constantly. So she stole the parts to make her own when she was 9. By 12, she was a hacker and troll extraordinaire who frequently harassed people who crossed her online. She eventually came across a user named ELF whose machine was unhackable and managed to turn Lettie’s motherboard into “pumpkin spice pudding”. (Have you guessed who ELF is yet?) Their little one-sided war continued until she was 14, when she stole another computer to find ELF and ELF just let her find her for reasons. Leticia hacked her way into a first class flight to Kansas. The book doesn’t say outright that ELF is Emily Foster. But it’s fucking Emily Foster. (Does her middle name start with an L?) Emily, at that point only a few years older than her, introduced her to magic and Cybermancy because fuck the masquerade. Eventually, Leticia was enrolled into Trinity Stone. The paragraph makes it sound like Leticia is not a natural witch and demanded to be taught magic.
Trinity Stone posted:
Lettie found ELF who turned out to be a skinny red haired iin glasses a few years older than her. The two started to talk and that was when ELF introduced Lettie to magic and Cybermancy. A Week Later Lettie was emailed into the Trinity stone server by Elf . Lettie then released herself and demanded to be taught magic.
Considering young witches are entitled to a formal education by WWC law, I hope she didn’t have to actually demand to be allowed in. Though come to think of it, did Emily just use her random ability to turn mundanes into witches on her?
Anyway, Leticia went on to earn a degree from MIT in only three years, then used her skills to help in the Lillian’s cyberwar against the WWC and the Highbinders. Part of her “job” included stealing money from the WWC’s accounts and giving it to various mundane charities. The first time she was caught, she had her magic bound for a year. The second time she was caught, Calypso intervened and got the WWC to make her a teacher as part of her probation. She teaches the Computer, Cybermancy, and Necromancy classes. She’s still a hacker and promotes the Lillian cause to her students.
Leticia is an Outsider with the Geek and Tough talents and the 21st Century Digital Witch heritage. She has 72 mundane skill points, 45 plus $ magic skill points, and 35 magic ranks. She’s one of the few characters who doesn’t have ranks in Alteration.
Margaret “Maggie” Two-Feathers
Maggie was born in Two-Feathers Village, a mountain village in the Spirit River Valley. Due to being the daughter of the village shamaness, she received magical training from an early age. At 16, she did the traditional walkabout and came across a magical tourist group. She followed them out of the valley and settled down in Moon Shadow Circle for a few years, taking up a job as a healer. Then she got the wanderlust and visited the various native tribes of North America, then the various tribes of the Spirit River Valley, absorbing their traditions and languages all the while, and was eventually hired on as an expert on the valley. After a while, she became a full-time teacher. She was a staff member when Calypso came along, and the two became fast friends, with Maggie becoming the school’s Assistant Headmistress. She likes helping others and hates “Imperialists”. She teaches Elementalism, Herbalism, and Cryptozoology.
Maggie is a Rustic with the Calm and Green Thumb talents and the custom “Spirit Valley Native” heritage. She has 93 mundane skill points, 51 magical skill points, and 51 magic ranks.
Ms. Nine
(Thumb…)
Ms. Nine is the 9th attempt by Frankenstein’s monster, Adam Frankenstein, to create a bride for himself, hence the name. The rest of her bio is missing because someone couldn’t be bothered to make another page for it. She teaches Phys Ed, German, and Science. She has her own personal lab under the gym.
Nine has no clique, but has the Jock and Brainiac talents and the custom Construct-Flesh heritage. She has 79 plus + mundane skill points, 23 magical skill points with 8 in a custom skill called “Mad Science” that she uses to cast spells, and 21 magic ranks.
Up next: The students
The Students
Original SA post
Part 4: The Students
For an extra bit of fun, try holding a long stick the same way that some of these characters hold their wands.
Neophytes
Alice Applegate
Alice is a spoiled little shit whose mother is the head of the Denver chapter of the Highbinders. So she’s off to a good start. Her aunt, who is also a teacher at Trinity Stone, got sick of her cursing her cousins and convinced her mom to send her to the school in the hope that it would knock some sense into her and make her stop being a little shit with her magic. Who is her aunt? It doesn’t say and none of the teachers are from the Denver area. I think she’s an earlier version of Sarah Austin that didn’t get removed. One of her favorite things to do is shrink people.
Alice is a Brat with the Trickster and Temper talents and the Hexer heritage. She has 6 mundane skill points, 8 magical skill points, and 5 magic ranks.
Malicieux Faucheuse
Malicieux is the daughter of Alfonso Faucheuse, an infamous vampire who has settled down and become a magical lawyer in Noir Arbre, and Sadique, a former magistrate and dueling official turned necrobotanist. She’s a quiet girl who prefers to study magic and torture her older brother, Toby, through magical experimentation then socialize with others. She’s the top Neophyte. Alice probably hates her because Alice’s motivation is to be the top Neophyte. Her name is supposed to mean “Mischievous Grim Reaper.”
Malicieux is a Sorceress with the Jaded and Brainiac talents and the Half-Vampire heritage. She has 9 mundane skill points, 7 magical skill points, and 6 magic ranks.
“Animal Trainer” is not a skill, by the way.
Initiates
Blanka Hekseri
When she was six, Blanka’s parents mistook her awakening magic and newfound ability to talk to fairies and spirits for mental illness and had her put on medication. When she accidentally burned their house down with magic, they put her in an insane asylum. By the time she got out at 10, she was “that kid” at her school. An unexplained incident at school caused her to murder everyone there and burn the school down. That’s when the WWC finally noticed her and had her enrolled in Trinity Stone. (Remember: They can instantly detect portals to Nemesis-Earth before they’re even fully formed, but finding awakening young witches and criminals is too much for them.) She is prone to fits of psychotic rage and is kind of infamous in some magical circles. She’s angry at her family and the world for betraying her. She is a weird character, to say the least. She feels like she belongs in a different game. I think someone watched The Craft and didn’t get it. Her name is supposed to mean “White Witchcraft”.
Blanka is a Gothique with the Temper and (custom) Mad talents and the Zappy Fingers heritage. She has 10 mundane skill points, 11 magical skill points, and 10 magic ranks.
Donna Lynn Otis
Donna Lynn’s parents are stereotypical flyover state rural hicks: they live in a double wide trailer, love NASCAR, and run a gas station and bait shop. When her Hag’s Syndrome started to manifest, they assumed she had some sort of sickness and kept her hidden at home. Thankfully, she’s one of the few kids the WWC actually catches and they had her enrolled in Trinity Stone. Her parents still don’t know it’s a school for witches, but they know her being there is for the best. I think these are the kind of people the phrase “bless your heart” was made for. Donna Lynn herself is a rough girl with a big heart who loves physical activities.
Donna Lynn is a Rustic with Friendly and Jock talents and the Hag’s Syndrome heritage. She has 10 mundane skill points, 10 magical skill points, and 9 magic ranks.
Jasmine Yoshihisha
That face model screams “Disney tween idol”. My brain is telling me I’ve seen her in one of their terrible overacted sitcoms while channel-flipping.
Jasmine, like Miako/Mako from Coventry, is a ninja witch, or “Maho-Shinobi”, from Japan. (I guess her family is into giving their kids kira-kira names.) In fact, her clan is the one that killed off Miako/Mako’s clan. This not only pissed off the Matsu’s allies, but the WWC, forcing the family to move to the States. But their export business has made them rich so it’s mostly all good. Unfortunately, the Matsu’s allies found them and stole her mom’s soul, so her father sent her to Trinity Stone for her safety. Jasmine herself is a stereotypical rich party girl on the outside, but that’s just a facade to hide the serious ninja witch that she really is. She likes shopping and anime. Her last name is a given name, not a surname.
Jasmine is a Gothique with the Rich and Urban talents and the “Medative” heritage. She has 8 mundane skill points, 11 magical skill points, and 9 magic ranks.
Kaur Chaturverdi
Kaur’s mother, a cartographer and paranaturalist, moved from Cardiff (which her bio says is in England) to Texas in order to map the Spirit River Valley. This somehow forced Kaur and her sister Misa to leave Coventry and come to Trinity Stone, even though there’s multiple instances of kids from countries other than the UK being enrolled in Coventry with no issues. Due to coming from a more prestigious and status-driven school, Kaur thought she would be a special snowflake among the rest of the students. That has not been the case. Still, she feels she is the most qualified witch in the school and tries to stand out. She likes curry and hates beef.
Kaur is an Insider with the Beautiful and Mary Sue talents and the Wand Waver heritage. She has 12 mundane skill points, 11 magical skill points, and 8 magic ranks.
Luz Penero
Luz comes from a family of scientists. They were only partly surprised when their already smart daughter started talking to computers. When they found out she was a witch, they hypothesized that witches are people with “extremely evolved minds using a pseudo-science to alter subatomic super strings”. Luz knows there’s more to magic than that. That thought kind of trails off into talk about how her individual paradigm when it comes to magic involves cyberspace and computers. She loves mysteries and likes to ramble on about her interest in computers and other digital bits. That green ball in the picture is 3m073, her magical digital pet that takes the form of a smile emoticon. If I had a pet like that, I would make it either the Get Out Frog or the Smug emote.
Luz is an Outsider with the Brainiac and Eccentric talents and the 21st Century Digital Witch heritage. She has 19 mundane skill points, 8 magical skill points, and 8 magic ranks.
Rose Duexshae
Very few people like Rose, even though she’s a decent enough person for this setting. Calypso is her mother. So everyone, the teachers included, either assume she’s spying on them, or is only useful as a pawn to stay on the headmistress’ good side. She has very few real friends and likes broom racing. That’s pretty much it.
Rose is an Insider with the Flyer and Tough talents and the Half-Fae heritage. She has 11 mundane skill points, 11 magical skill points, and 9 magic ranks.
Tiffany Ewing
Tiffany is the star of My Pet Mortal, the hit astral TV show mentioned in the core about a young witch keeping a grown ass man as a pet for some reason. Her agent, a “slickster gnome named Norm” ( daaaaamn…), decided one day that she needed exposure to the mortal world, so he sent her to Trinity Stone. (He figured witches from the mortal world were close enough.) She’s a bit shallow, but she means well and can be a little naïve when it comes to mundanes; assuming that they are all good-natured and don’t want to hurt her. Because you know how mundanes are always persecuting and trying to murder witches.
Tiffany is a Sorceress with the Beautiful and Entertainer talents and the The Sight heritage. She has 10 mundane skill points, 13 magical skill points, and 10 magic ranks.
Wanda Epstein
Wanda, as much as I hate to use Tumblr phrases, is fandom trash. She writes fanfic (and hates bad fanfics), she ships characters together, and she’ll get mad if you make fun of her fandom. She became so fascinated with “books about a certain boy wizard” that she pretended to cast spells when no one was looking. One of which included trying to change her cat into a toad. As you can tell from her portrait, it sort of worked. Her subsequent experiments in spellcasting caught the WWC’s attention and they had her sent to Trinity Stone. She’s super excited about all things magical, even if she’s incredibly accident prone.
Wanda is an Outsider with the Geek and Unshakable talents and the Jinx heritage. She has 14 mundane skill points, 10 magical skill points, and 7 magic ranks.
Winfred/Winifred “Winny” Holden
Winfred comes from a long line of Godmother’s Guild members. She’s too young to be a member, but she acts as her mother’s apprentice and grants wishes to mortals and magical folk all over Texas during her free time. She is a bubbly ray of sunshine who is seemingly incapable of any sort of negative emotion. “Emo” witches find her annoying. She likes romance novels and hates violence.
Winfred is an Insider with the Brave and Goody-Goody talents and the Godmother heritage. She has 11 mundane skill points, 11 magical skill points, and 8 magic ranks.
Apprentices
Lola Rackartyg
Lola is this song incarnate. (Warning: Might be obnoxious to you.)
If you didn’t catch that, Lola fucking loves horses. She hung around a ranch near her house as a child, she begged for one from her parents, and she was Trinity Stone’s representative at an equestrian competition the WWC put on. (She won first place.) A groomer gave her a horse as a gift for her performance, and as far as she’s concerned, life began there. She helps runs the stables and sleeps there more than in her dorm. Why does she have pointed ears? Why does she look like a rejected Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure character? Why does she have the Legacy heritage? Who cares! Horses!
She hates chimeras and has no apparent thoughts on centaurs.
Lola is a Sorceress with the Friendly and Trainer talents and the Legacy heritage. She has 20 mundane skill points, 20 magical skill points, and 15 magic ranks.
Tabbi Herrera
Tabbi was born and raised in a magical collectivist commune in Austin, Texas. Everyone in the community is a Lillian and protests against magical elitism (“Even though those two doctrines sometimes conflicted.”) as well as general corporate greed. Which, in Tabbi’s case, seems to mean just going around spraying graffiti everywhere and being an argumentative shit. That aside, she tries to treat everyone equally, though has a hard time extending that to the elitist witches at the school. She likes punk music.
Tabbi is a Gothique with the Rebel and Ruffian talents and the Twitch Witch heritage. She has 38 mundane skill points, 30 magical skill points, and 15 magic ranks.
Interns
Kay Austin
When she was 12, Kay was accepted into Coventry. Because they’re dead set on being loyal to a second rate school, her family refused to let her go. She eventually got used to Trinity Stone and has been at the top of her class ever since. She’s incredibly strong-willed and has a bit of a temper. That coupled with her signature spell of turning people into toads can give you a guess as to how arguments go with her. Her temper and curtness also make it hard for her to make friends.
Kay is an Insider with the Brainiac (there’s a lot of Brainiacs in this school) and Temper talents and the custom Specialist heritage. She has 27 mundane skill points, 40 magical skill points, and 19 magic ranks.
Verlina Youngblood
(When I first saw this picture, I thought Soto gave her three hands on accident.)
Verlina is the daughter of a Baptist minister and a choir director. Naturally, they weren’t really big on the whole witch school thing when Calypso and Autumn came around to tell them their daughter was a witch when she was 10. (Until then, she just kept her powers a secret and tried to control them as best she could.) But they came around when they visited the school and saw that witches weren’t all evil or aligned with Christian beliefs. Verlina took to the school incredibly well, eventually becoming the Neophyte teacher (she’ll fuck you up if you mess with the kids) and Kay’s bestie. She’s a friendly bundle of sunshine and goodness and sings her spells’s incantations. Because choir director mother.
Verlina is an Outsider with the Goody-Goody and Friendly talents and the Melodious heritage. She has 48 mundane skill points, 26 magical skill points, and 18 magic ranks.
And finally, here’s Soto art of all of the characters from the Beyond Convention video. To give you a good comparison between the models she uses and the finished art. (Yup, Miranda Contessa Maldeojo from Wicked Ways is a Trinity Stone student.)
Up next: Dueling rules, because why not?
Dueling
Original SA post
Part 5: Dueling
Dueling is a tradition practiced by witches from “important” magical families and old fashioned practitioners in the American South, Europe, and Asia. It’s related to the concept of southern civility, and that’s how it’s relevant to this supplement and has an appendix devoted to rules for it.
When witches decide to duel, it’s a big deal. Dueling should only be done if a witch’s abilities, bravery, or family have been insulted; someone is disrespecting their social station; or they’ve been assaulted with malicious magic. (At that point, would anyone really bother with formalities and not just turn them into something?) What happens if someone decides to duel for some other reason? Who knows. They're probably socially shunned. The WWC doesn’t like dueling, but most witches don’t give a shit and they don’t bother coming down too hard on it, as usual.
To declare a duel, the offended witch says “I demand satisfaction” or “I call challenge on you” and then states the reason why they’re calling the duel. The defending party has the choice to either accept the challenge or apologize “in a manner the witch giving the challenge finds acceptable”. So the offending party can be an asshole and just make the defendant accept regardless. Once they accept, the two agree on a time, a place, and the win conditions of the duel, as well as one additional rule each. Some try to delay the duel for years, but this is considered a cowardly move. The most common win conditions include whoever is the first to cast a spell on their opponent, until someone is incapacitated, until someone gives up, or until someone is dead. Additional rules can be things like no using wands, no using allies, or no using Alteration magic. Duel details can also be determined by the witches’ partners or “seconds”, as is usually done by more prominent families.
Thankfully, most duels never get past the planning stages, as witches are all smart and, once both parties have calmed down, realize that whatever they were fighting about was stupid anyway, especially if it’s a duel to the death.
The dueling area has marked boundaries. Anyone who leaves the dueling area automatically loses and is considered a coward. Before the duel starts, the offended party can ask for an apology. If the defendant refuses, the neutral officiant gets them ready to start.
Duels can and do happen in magical schools and among underage witches. Guardians of the participants can declare duels satisfied and demand that the stakes be bumped down to non-lethal ones if the kids come to their senses during the planning stages. Trinity Stone is fine with dueling and treats them as friendly competitions, even if the participants don’t see it that way. School duels can only be lethal if they are done behind the staff’s backs.
It is also possible to challenge mundanes and other otherkin to duels. Prominent family witches will usually give a mundane a chance to accept the duel before they just start turning them into shit or blowing them up, though most refuse. No common reason is given, but it’s probably because most people realize how one-sided the fight is. It’s like a grown adult asking a baby if it wants to fight back before they start beating it to death. Otherkin have an easier time dueling. Dueling Immortals is not advised since they’re usually faster and can just cut their opponent in half, and thus are more likely to win against a witch. Some witches are sour grapes about this and use the excuse that Immortal fighting styles are “uncouth” to avoid dueling them.
In game terms, a Will roll determines whether a character is the offensive or defensive party in a duel. The highest roll gets to decide who they are first. Offensive duelists get +1 Reflex for initiative, +1 to Casting rolls to attack, and +1 to their spell damage. Defensive duelists get +1 to defensive spells and Spell Breaker rolls and ignore a point of damage. Combat proceeds as usual going by Reflex. At the end of the round, the characters’ Will dies are rolled again and each character determines their position and Footing, which gives them bonuses during the next round.
The types of Footings include
Advance: Next attack sends the opponent back a foot.
Intimidating Advance: Triggers a Social roll. Failing it gives the opponent a -1 to all of their rolls for the round.
Retreat: Spells that hit the character are considered to be 1 MTR lower in terms of damage and duration.
Feinting Retreat: Triggers a Social vs Mind roll. If the retreating character wins, they ignore a point of damage and get a +1 to their next Casting roll.
A duel is considered won in-game when both witches are out of health or zap, one person is physically incapacitated, or one person gives up. Schools and dueling halls, which are just now mentioned as being a thing, use a point system. The first person to 10 wins. Injuring an opponent with a spell is worth more points than incapacitating them (2 versus 1) and retreating subtracts a point from your score.
And that’s it for this book.
Next Book: Magical Minutia #5: Mortals: Seekers of Truth, wherein Channel M tries to cater to everyone who wants to play a mortal who doesn’t completely suck in this setting.