Collector

Collectors are unique to other schools in that they are the least focused on personally practicing magic. Instead their power comes from the size and quality of their collection of magical artifacts.<ref name=":0">Collectors either don’t practice or practice less than the traditional practitioner. Their primary focus is in collecting things of a particular type; such as strictly keys, things relating to water, or say, ghosts. The greater the unification of the collection, the greater the collector, with larger & more coherent collections opening up the ability of each item in the collection; their abilities as a ‘practitioner’ tend to involve being a toolbox, with items for various purposes. Their focus is often in establishing deals or conquering Others to establish a steady supply of new items. - Pact Dice: The Practices - Wbow Version</ref> In some cases they may not even be Awakened, just Aware.<ref name=":1">Matias never awoke as a practitioner, but became a Collector nonetheless.  He’s not innocent, and he’s Aware, but he’s not bound to keep from lying.  As a kid, he glimpsed a group of creepy, eerily tall men and women, some with wide toothy smiles and all with long fingers, gathering for a wordless meeting in an abandoned building.  One woman found him, stooped down to eye level, held a long finger with an even longer painted nail on the end to her mouth to indicate silence, and gave Matias three random, uncursed items, wrapping his hands around them.  He’s kept the silence and they’ve kept their end of the deal as pseudo-patrons.  Once a season, so long as he’s hunting down items, they’ll either save him from a dire fate, or they’ll give him an item if he ended up not needing the rescue.  He’s in the mix now, with a knack for finding items and stealing from Collectors. - Pact Dice: Collectors</ref>

Methodology

Since the bulk of most magic items' cost is paid in their creation/aquisition, they can often use their powers without much cost in the moment. The biggest risk is losing their collected items.<ref>Collectors gather and maintain a list of trinkets or items of power that they can use on the fly.  While not necessarily without their risks, the prices paid for these powers is in the item’s finding and acquisition, not typically their use.  As such, a collector with a partially or fully complete collection is versatile and can use their available powers relatively freely.  At the same time, their power can be taken from them or lost. - Pact Dice: Collectors</ref>

They generally focus on a specific type of item.<ref name=":0">Collectors either don’t practice or practice less than the traditional practitioner. Their primary focus is in collecting things of a particular type; such as strictly keys, things relating to water, or say, ghosts. The greater the unification of the collection, the greater the collector, with larger & more coherent collections opening up the ability of each item in the collection; their abilities as a ‘practitioner’ tend to involve being a toolbox, with items for various purposes. Their focus is often in establishing deals or conquering Others to establish a steady supply of new items. - Pact Dice: The Practices - Wbow Version</ref> Collectors will often combine their items into a diagram, multiplying their power as their collection grows more complete.<ref>Items are typically placed in vaults, treasure rooms, or are worn in specific places, where they form a kind of diagram; bigger, more powerful, and more accurate diagrams instill a greater overall power and improve the collection as a whole.  The items may then be taken with, though always with the knowledge they are safer in the vault than in the field.

The chase for items may bring one collector into conflict with another, or into conflict with practitioners of other types, who may be able to use their items for their own practice.  As individuals get closer to a complete collection, other forces may start taking an interest.  And should they complete a collection, some say a Collector may be akin to a deity. - Pact Dice: Collectors</ref><ref>Initial practices will let the practitioner start to hunt down more, similar items.  How a practitioner hunts may differ wildly…
[...]
The initial goal is likely to be the creation of a triad - arguably the most basic set a Collector could make.  They need to get the items and then they’ll draw a diagram and place the items within when the items aren’t on the practitioner’s person.  This creates a ‘Collection’ - a grouping of items, and gives the practitioner greater ownership and connection to the items.  If they then make a ‘set’ within that collection, a streak, straight, flush, four of a kind, or whatever else, the set items improve and the entire collection gets a benefit.
Once a collection is formed, even a minor triad, the practitioner gains increased affinity for the collection and the items in that collection - a better ability to find the items, use them, and unlock their potential. - Pact Dice: Collectors </ref><ref>The goal of practitioners trying to complete a true collection is typically to collect a large set of grails, where they are collecting ‘the’ items under a category.  One couldn’t have a sword collection without Excalibur, for example.  These could be Lost items, or Swords, Cups, or Aztec Treasures, to suggest categories.  An example of what one might strive for: items of a suitable category, of power level 1 through 13, with all seven colors represented, as well as treasures representing the off-set colors white, black, gold, silver, colorless, and multicolor, all grails.
The more grail items one has, the more they’ll find themselves wrapped up with Keepers and rival collectors, but they also gain a lot of power, and more overall claim to the rest of the set. - Pact Dice: Collectors</ref> These will usually be contained in dedicated rooms but more mobile arrangements are possible.<ref>4Jerry: Ah
So do all collectors need a "room" for their collection, or is it just continuing the example?

Wildbow:Rooms make sense. I can think of vague examples in media (a Japanese horror anime with a name that escapes me) of someone having a case they carry with them. - Chat archived from IRC</ref>

One notable ritual employed by more powerful Collectors (and some related Practitioners, such as some Technomancers) is the "Alcazar"; which turns an item into an expansive realm which can be entered, explored & examined.

Associated Others

• Keepers

Notable Collectors

• Canfield Family<ref>“Your colleagues talk about it as if it were a charming quirk. Your enemies talk about it like it is. An ugly thing. Your family… it hoards. You collect and make trinkets, you decorate yourself with them, and you’ve twisted that, turned it backward. You’re hoarding her.” - Excerpt from Interlude 5</ref>
• Eric & Stan Ritchie (Dabblers working towards becoming Collectors of texts)
• The Eliands (Anti-Collector Witch Hunters)<ref>
• The Eilands have been dealing with others, practitioners, and cursed items for several generations. At this point they consist of three teenagers/young adults, as well as their father and uncle, with the father & uncle being retired after bad injuries and trauma. Each of the kids roams, looking for Others, while carrying a device or tool.
  • Eula drives around with a camper at the back of her truck, filled up with the electric engine created by an Alchemist practitioner, made to create a gateway to the dead. When she flips it on, power goes haywire all across whatever town or area of the city she's in, and the immaterial becomes material, practices and power transfers go buggy, many Others are slowed, crippled, and agitated, and she uses a tesla cannon in combination with a very amped-up cattle prod to subdue Others. Once they're weak enough, she drinks them up with her device (if immaterial) or cages them in specialized electric fields (if physical), and drags them back home. They get added to the 'vault'.
  • Lester works with a giant 7.5 foot Other with a smiling cartoon face painted on his helmet and baggy clothes that hide everything from the neck down. Lester likes to use a shotgun, explosives tuned to the Other (salt grenades, silver nailbombs), and similar methods to get an Other weak enough for his Other friend to grab and hold onto. Then they get dragged to the Abyss, where the Other gets to play with them until Lester gets back home. When he gets back, the Other, according to the terms of the deal, brings the target back, bound in a small child-like doll with a painted face. The doll goes to the vault. Lester doesn't tell his family that the deal also says that if he can't supply an Other every two weeks at a minimum, he has to supply a human child. Those three dolls (so far) are at the bottom of the lake, a two hour drive from home. A small price to pay.
  • Ruth is the black sheep of the Eiland family. She was reluctant with the 'family job' and nearly died a few times as a younger teen, getting captured and kept by goblins for a week before her family rescued her. Ever since, she's been wild, promiscuous, neurotic, alcoholic, and addicted. Hard to blame her, when even seven years later, she's finding things beneath her skin, or vomiting and having her stomach lining tear as things come free. She almost spiraled into total self destruction before she went on a job to stop a(nother) alchemist who was trying to unravel immortality, but those rinsed in the elixir would become indestructible statues with consciousnesses trapped inside them. She kept the formula and uses it as a weapon, now. She doesn't get everyone she goes after, but those who have even chance meetings with her end up partially petrified, or with their skin dotted with scars from where droplets touched and turned the flesh to stone. When she does get a victim, however, she turns them into statues, which then gets shown and sold as high art. Her family hates that she's doing this, because of the higher profile, but it drives her forward when she feels she has pretty much nothing else. Whatever doesn't sell (or solidifies into a shape that won't sell) goes to the vault.
    
    The vault gets stronger as stuff gets added to it. Trapped others, items, devices. Their father and uncle mostly deal with the 'soft' stuff, like cursed items, which also get added. They aren't really building a conventional 'collection', though. Rather, the more that gets added to it, the easier it is to subdue Others and practitioners to get them to the point where they can be added to the collection (getting stunned by the electricity, grabbed by the Other, brought low by the petrifaction) - Witch Hunter Examples

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• Mr Bristow (Collector of Aware)<ref>Cutting Class 6.3</ref>
• Matias (Aware Collector)<ref name=":1">Matias never awoke as a practitioner, but became a Collector nonetheless.  He’s not innocent, and he’s Aware, but he’s not bound to keep from lying.  As a kid, he glimpsed a group of creepy, eerily tall men and women, some with wide toothy smiles and all with long fingers, gathering for a wordless meeting in an abandoned building.  One woman found him, stooped down to eye level, held a long finger with an even longer painted nail on the end to her mouth to indicate silence, and gave Matias three random, uncursed items, wrapping his hands around them.  He’s kept the silence and they’ve kept their end of the deal as pseudo-patrons.  Once a season, so long as he’s hunting down items, they’ll either save him from a dire fate, or they’ll give him an item if he ended up not needing the rescue.  He’s in the mix now, with a knack for finding items and stealing from Collectors. - Pact Dice: Collectors</ref>

References

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