"Yes!"

[Sending is like this, you do not have to be a witch to get one though you do have to be a witch to reject one or block somebody.]

"Identify starts with just, what is that or who is that, very spare blurb, public information - gets you the king of Lunabella's name and occupation, does not get you the private citizen on the street unless he has introduced himself to you. At rank two, it gets you active magic - enchantments on items, curses on people, with enough practice you can tell whether a null result here means no magic or that they're protected from divination, but tricky. Rank three and you do not have to do this consciously every time, you can have a - what is it called - heads up display if you like, or some other means of reminder, whenever you see a thing, and it also lets you pick out friend or foe. Rank four and you get Mr. Private Citizen's name - and his address and his family members and his witch build if he's got one though not his complications, and suchlike. Rank five does True Names, those are useful for some magics. If you identify a magic you also identify who cast it. Complications become identifiable. Reveals what they think of you and your allies, whether they are friendly or not so much.

"Status at rank two lets you know if someone is, say, injured, sick, cursed. Not very specific. Might not include everything, if they have a lot wrong with them. Rank three, more specific - if they are sick, what with and for how long. If they are injured, what by and how long ago. Rank four, adds whodunnit, prognosis, and some hints on how to fix it with the powers you have. Rank five, combines with Map and can get mighty specific even on an enemy - what are they casting, what are they thinking about doing.

"Augury starts at thirty minutes at rank two and just good-bad-neutral. Goes up to twelve hours, then forty-eight hours plus you can get bad omens of big bad stuff a month out, and if you try you can get auguries about how things will be for other people - touch range, hard to do without them knowing. Rank five it's a week, omens for a year, catastrophes five years, apocalypse a hundred - everybody hops to when the bigshot diviners all say we are ninety-nine years from doom - and you can narrow down omens with more castings of Augury, and try to get good omens as well as bad, though that is back to yes-no-maybe granularities for things like 'will I find love' or 'will I beat up my witch hunter'.

"Map starting at three can passively rack up information about wherever you are. You can identify the stuff later. Look at it in lots of possible formats, like this -" She Sendings an aerial shot, an atlas-like simplified rendering, and a 3D view of the same Lunabella market square. "Does not automatically update with who is there when you are not there, but you can be like, that lady selling the gyros, what is her deal, and get back that she does not know you are alive and she sells gyros and is called Sosipatra because that's the name on the stall and it's so public. At four, it can work retroactively, even places you have been as a human, automatically identifies everything in it, no focusing to keep it going. Five, that picture of the square on Lunabella I have would be live-updated like a security camera! Also possible to astral project to anywhere you have mapped and go for a mapping jaunt from there in new directions you did not go last time.

"Archive is like photographic memory. Keep track of things you have looked at, or stuff you own, or things in your hat. At four, slurp up a whole book you can touch, search it like you are a grep. At five, works through maps, walk into an unwarded library once and it is all yours. Shareable full sensory experiences.

"Foresight starts with needing a ritual chant, not too time-consuming, starts at half-second of shadows of where things will be. At rank four, a second and a half; if you are really focused, so probably not in a fight, you can do a whole hour, but it does not account for anything you do not know about, if the Spanish Inquisition is about to show up this will not appear in your foresight, just some distortion you cannot place well. At five, three seconds, includes tactile, and the focused thing is a whole day and the distortions are a little more usable to figure out what's what. Also stick your foresight to an omen for more information about what the fuck. None of this is set in stone, you can use it to change things.

"Lock-on is basically what it sounds like, target stuff from map data. Doesn't make spells too maneuverable, think like a paper airplane if you could blow on it, but improves range a lot.

"Masking is the anti-Map spell. Only comes in at rank 5 but anything very sensitive has a fancy diviner to do it for them."

"Can I use Augury to cheat at gambling? How about Sending to make muggles think they're going crazy?"

"Yes, you can clear out a casino till somebody notices you must be cheating. Safer Veilwise than doing hex transmutations for saleable goods, everyone will figure you count cards or something."

"What about the second one?"

"Dicey. Could pull it off for years without getting in trouble if you were subtle but no legs to stand on if they started catching wise, comparing notes, and you had to account for yourself."

"I'll keep that in mind. Anyways, this one sounds really powerful, five points please."

"Cannot spend five points, three ranks is four and four ranks is six. Five ranks, if that is what you mean to say, is nine. Also you should start out with a sort of a stack - at least as many fours as fives, at least as many lower than that. So right now you have two fives one four one three and your better-than-free aethernautics and portals one each."

"Sorry, I'll try to keep my terminology straight in the future. Anyways, define 'should'."

"You are going to have a lot of new stuff going on all at once and if it is overbalanced this can give you problems. Only starting out, you can buy lots of things up to rank five next year no problem."

"How about I mark down all the ranks I want first, and then when I've gone through everything, I can bump some up and down so that they're stacked properly?"

"That works fine."

"Have we gone over Curses already?"

"Not yet, those next? You have no discounts for them so five ranks would be fifteen points but a little is not so pricey. The basic curses are sickness, pariah, madness, and disaster; curses also covers spellbinding, which is attaching another spell to a curse so it comes about condition-wise the way curses can. Conditions can be all kinds of things. If they say a bad word, if it is the full moon, if they violate their restraining order, if you tell them 'kiwi', whatever, trigger once or every time till you use up the cumulative oomph. Gotta chant for a couple sentences, and point, unless you have a way around this. Sickness starts at a bad cold for a day and goes up to instant fever and vomiting that'll kill people without a medic. Pariah starts at bugbites and goes up to plants and animals having it out for somebody. Madness starts at making them real angry and goes up to turning them into a berserker who can't tell who's who. Disaster starts at making them trip and ends at seizures and microsleeps that can cause fatal accidents, or sinkholes or lightning strikes. You can start casting mass curses at rank three, which is also when you get voodoo dolls. Rank five has the curse of immortality - you can do it backwards, to, to un-immortalize folks. Mass curses can wreck a whole city with a plague of locusts or earthquakes or epidemics. Rank five curses require ingredients, like a potion, though, or you can sacrifice a limb and only be able to heal it back under a full moon."

"These sound fun too. I need another rank four, right? Let's do this one at rank four."

"Ten points. What next?"

"Well, we've already done necromancy, so tell me more about consortation."

"Summoning demons want a summoning circle and candles or some other fire situation. You get telepathic comms with them, they can't block you. You pay up front or concurrently depending on the demon.

"At rank one you can only get imps. They are six inches high - more useful for tiny types of witch like fairies - and your choice of wrath, greed, sloth, gluttony, or lust. Paying them is pretty easy. Get the lust ones some internet porn, maybe flash them, the sloth ones just want some downtime, you can have wrath imps kill bugs for you and it doubles as the service and the payment, etcetera. You can generally get 24 hours of work out of one. Gluttony ones can cook, lust ones can give massages - again they are six inches high though.

"Rank two, add foliots. Envy demon, good at stealing, want to either steal an extra thing from whoever for themselves or take something important of yours. They are on the smallish end of human-sized and can turn themselves and stuff they touch invisible.

"Rank three, succubi and incubi, and also nabasus. The 'cubi want sex, and like having wrath imps kill bugs this can be both payment and service, though you can also send them to do infiltrations, they're okay at that anywhere seduction would work. Nabasus are gluttony demons, they can cook a lot better than imps and just want to watch you eat till you're bloated, maybe poke you in the middle after. You have to provide ingredients, or grocery money, and it will eat like half of what it makes.

"Rank four, balors. Wrath guys. You can't control them, you can just drop them somewhere and the deal is they fuck shit up and you get the shit in that location fucked up. Ideal to not stand there too long. Also, astarothi, sloth folks. Do all your chores for you, won't communicate at all, want to be paid in you not doing anything - nothing productive at all, not even reading a book or having lunch, they will sometimes tolerate listening to music and usually approve of naps.

"Rank five, unique greater desire demons. They want fealty and souls and will make you more demony. Also, one time only, a wish. 33 power points, or become best in the world at some field and popular and famous, or wealth, applied directly in your bank or dragon hoard or whatever nightly, plus a hundred million Kisses one-time. Only works as long as you're supplying souls, or if you kill your demon, or if you pay yourself off forever with a thousand years' worth of probably-souls all at once. Can also just turn outright into a vassal demon to your demon, your choice of succubus nabasu or astarothi, ten years later you can upgrade to being a dahlilah, ninety years later you are free, or at least so I hear, I was probably told right but if I were you I would not be sure. Also supposably possible to earn an extra wish this way, or early freedom. Dahlihiahs are known for breeding weird fusion demons."

"The wish thing sounds powerful but like an advanced move for experienced witches, rank four doesn't sound the most appealing, but rank three sounds very relevant to my interests, and I need more rank threes anyway, so let's go for rank three."

"Three in consortation four points. What next?"

"Well, we've already done all the academic and warlock-aligned ones, so does sorceress have any besides familiarity and the elemental ones?"

"There is also turning into a kaiju but you have to be a beasty species for that."

"Guess it's time for me to pick an element, then. Can you list them all again, I'm not sure I remember them all."

"Earth air fire water metal nature psionics. You do not have any affinities for any of them, but you can hack together a functional affinity out of two affinities for each. Which you also don't have now. Neutrals get Soul and Body. Nature and Body gets Earthmoving, Nature and Soul gets Windkeeping. And of course Nature affinity gets you Nature all by itself. So you can get those three for only pasting one new affinity on, and therefore might like to not buy any of the three now when you do not have this."

"How good is psionics for combat?"