Enchantress

Not to be confused with Item Crafting, which is also sometimes known as Enchantment.

Enchantment is the art of utilizing the Connections to manipulate people, places and things. Those who utilize this form of magic exclusively are known as Enchanters or Enchantresses. Enchanters/Enchantresses specializing in control are also known as Spellbinders.<ref>Landon Michaelsson, Spellbinder
[...]
“Spellbinder,” Joyce said. When I looked a bit confused, she added, “An enchanter, but specialized in control. He keeps three or four Others with him at all times. I named him because he broke the rules. He’s paranoid, and doesn’t really associate with people. Only Others. We’d hoped to use her as a way to bring him back to society, to get him involved. But we underestimated his paranoia.”

“What happened?”

“He bound his wife. To keep her from passing information on to us. Bound her mind and bound her bodies, so she only does what he says.”

“Hypnosis?” I asked.

“The binding is as solid as hypnosis is soft and vague. He’s… scary. In a lot of ways. I don’t think the family would miss him if he was gone, but we invested in him, we lost a family member to connect to him, and I guess Sandra decided that if we’d paid the price, we might as well…” - Excerpt from Execution 13.5</ref> While mediators specialize in bargaining with and beguiling innocents.<ref>Mediators are a shorthand for a subgroup of enchantresses that trade in favors and deception with innocents more than any other group. - Pact Dice: Peddlers Excerpt</ref> The school has some overlap with Sympathetic magic.<ref>Sympathy is a branch of the practice that deals with commonalities, heavily tied to enchantment. Expert sympaths can form a connection between a doll and a person, and inflict harm on the individual by harming the doll. - Sympathetic Magics, quoted in Malfeasance 11.2</ref>

Methodology

Enchantresses and Enchanters manipulating the relationships and connections between people and things.<ref name=":3">What were enchantresses? Essentials had filled me in on the basics. They would be focused on altering relationships. Influencing people, influencing things. An object could have its owner reassigned, so it might find its way into someone else’s hands, or be tethered to a location, so it would continually end up there. On the higher end of things, people could be altered, with an enchantress literally stealing someone’s love. On the very high end of things, familiars could be claimed by an enchantress that didn’t already have one, among other general bends and twists in more fundamental rules. - Excerpt from Damages 2.1</ref>

Enchantresses will employ their Second Sight to see connections and their subtleties, granting them supernatural insight and awareness of people's focus and intent.<ref name=":0">What did it mean for practitioners like the Enchantresses, so used to being aware, to tracking connections and more, to have to deal with an enemy they couldn’t track?

If I was targeting them, I imagined, it might have been entirely different. - Excerpt from Execution 13.8</ref><ref>There was a noise on the other side of the double doors. Three heads turned.

No, he wasn’t coming through. The connections weren’t there.

The three of them turned their heads as the connection strengthened. This time, there was clarity, direction, a thrust to it. Motive.

They were ready as the door opened. Sandra smiled. - excerpt from Interlude 3</ref><ref>“Why are you focused on your seat? You left something behind.”

Right. Enchantress. She could see the connections between things. - Excerpt from Damages 2.2</ref><ref name=":4">I looked at the four who remained, my eyes averted from the blonde woman who was almost definitely a Duchamp and almost certainly an enchantress. All the same, she might have sensed something, because she turned back to look over her shoulder twice as I examined the other members of the group. I was forced to step silently back.

No, that was it. One member of the group. He wore a wedding ring. He was connected to her. Once I knew the rules, I could take a closer look, avoiding looking at the husband and wife pair. - Excerpt from Duress 12.8</ref>

A basic technique is to create a "model", a map of a series of important connections. For instance, one might write out their name and a list of personal details, the names of everyone in their life, then draw lines between their names with a faulty. Or one might use a board with pins and thread between them. The model will tend to reflect the strength of the connections (lines failing to draw or threads fraying more when the connection is weak), which can help show when something has gone awry.<ref>Signature 8.4</ref>

Uses that an Enchanter can put connections to include:

• Making targets more likely to fall over by strengthening their connection to the ground.<ref>Hildr touched ground, eliciting a rumble, sending Jeremy Meath stumbling back.
  
  Sandra dipped fingertips into her chalice, wetting them, and then drew her fingertips vertically down.
  
  Putting stored power into connections, feeding that power through Hildr for the added strength and connection to the earth. The impact of Hildr’s landing and the added help of the manipulated connections served to bowl over the entire group of Others. - Excerpt from Interlude 3</ref><ref name=":1">I stabbed the roof of the squat building with the Hyena.
  
  An enchantress did something. I jerked, my grip suddenly giving. The blade skittered against ice. I slid further down the roof’s edge, feet dangling at the head-level of the practitioners I’d just leaped over.
  
  Right. Of course there was a connection between me and the ground.
  
  And if that could be strengthened-
  
  Again, with no justification, no reason, I felt the connection between me and the roof break. I landed on my feet, back to the wall, Duchamps and other practitioners lined up facing me. - Excerpt from Execution 13.5</ref>
• Breaking the connection between a target that's hanging from something and that thing, so they e.g. fall off a roof.<ref name=":1" />
• Making it harder for a target to move<ref>In that same moment, I felt the tug of enchantment.
  
  I didn’t even need to look at the living room window to know there were enchantresses there. The enchantment burdened me. Evan fluttered, a short flight to one side, breaking the snare before it took hold, but it was a pivotal move at a critical time. The smaller goblins pounced on me. - Excerpt from Execution 13.8</ref> by strengthening their connection to the ground.<ref name=":2">Enchantment started to settle around me. One of the teams of three. Same practice they’d employed earlier. If the relationship was between me and the ground, well, there wasn’t a lot I could do to get away from ground.
  
  Evan returned just in time. I caught him out of the air, then gripped him, sweeping him between me and the Duchamps, much as I’d once painted lines of blood to break a connection that was being used to track me.
  
  I heard a sound of annoyance from him. But the effect fell away. I wasn’t attached to the ground. - https://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/2014/11/22 excerpt] from Execution 13.6</ref>
• More advanced enchantment can be used to teleport a person or group along a connection, pulling them toward you<ref>He looked back. Rose joined him, glancing back. She caught a glimpse of the imp, following at a greater distance, slowly backing off, but she didn’t see the lawyers at all.
  
  They’d relocated. Taken another path, or headed to another destination.

[...]
“Enchantment,” the little girl said. She was part of a smaller group, including Laird’s boys and Evan.

Rose’s ability to follow the girl’s line of thought was almost interrupted by her recollection that Johannes’ music could captivate children. In the children’s story, the Pied Piper had rounded up all the children of Hamelin.

“Enchantment,” Alister said. “Another vestige?”

“Helping,” the girl said, between pants.

It was, Rose realized. Now that she looked for it, she could see how the route was getting clearer, shorter. They were skipping the occasional city block.

Reeled in, she thought.
[...]
They reached the church in half the time it should have taken, and there were no enemies waiting for the there.

Sandra stood at one side of the door, alone, no Duchamps with her.
[...]
“Thank you,” Rose told Sandra. - excerpt from Judgement 16.2</ref> or yourself towards them.<ref>“Give me names!” Lola was saying.

Mags provided them.

“Now!” Lola said.

Mags cut Lola with the athame.

In a flash, they were moved.

Shifted to a building interior.

As a group, they collapsed.

“I’m No good to you now,” Lola said, looking down at her palms. “Did all I could. Pulling us along a connection. That lawyer found us, he’ll find us again.” - Excerpt from Judgement 16.6</ref>

• A technique known as Ariadne's Thread allows for traversing mazes, even ones of fantastical complexity, by allowing a connection to conform to your shortest route through the maze to a target.<ref>She manipulated the connections between herself and the lost satyrs.  A standard connection formed a straight line. She loosed it, giving it slack, and let the currents the spirits and other forces of the world were traveling carry it out.
  
  Ariadne’s thread. Once she found the right elements, she gave it more structure. The line formed a path. A guiding line between her and the Satyrs in the labyrinth. A traditional maze was little problem, but this was a maze meant to confound intruders who might surreptitiously explore the ambassador’s realm for a few hours every week for centuries. - excerpt from Interlude 3</ref>
• A very high-end practice would be stealing a familiar<ref name=":3" />
• An object can have it's owner reassigned so that it tends to fall into someone else's hands.<ref name=":3" />
• An object can be tethered to a location so that it tends to find it's way back there.<ref name=":3" />
• A high-end practice would be reassigning a strong connection, such as stealing someone's love.<ref name=":3" />

Weaknesses

Breaking connections, a fairly basic Practice, can disrupt many Enchanter effects.<ref name=":2" />

They can have trouble perceiving someone if that person isn't paying attention to them or those close to them (and thus there's no connection.)<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":4" />

Like Fae, enchantresses tend to struggle against blunt and violent approaches, being better with subtlety.<ref>If the enchantresses are going to try to trick us, then we need to counter subtlety with bluntness, because that’s the textbook way to counteract an enchantress or a Faerie glamour. - Excerpt from Mala Fide 10.1</ref><ref>“This is getting tiresome,” Johannes said. “Of course you want contests rather than murder. You’re an enchantress. Assassination and violence remain on the table, or this is a farce.” - excerpt from Null 9.3</ref> They lack direct offensive power.<ref>Enchantresses can help sway things, but they can’t form the focus of our attack. - Excerpt from Judgement 16.4</ref>

Notable Enchanters & Enchantresses

• Duchamp Coven
• Fell
• Fernanda Whitt

References

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