>>6140200The voice doesn’t enter through your ear-holes, but through your chest, through the base of your skull, through your groin, through your gut. It fills your body and crawls across your skin, seeping in through your pores. It feels kind of nice, but also deeply violating; you’re not sure what it says about you that those two sensations and reactions can so easily coexist.
“Uh, h-hey!” you greet the ghoulie. “Are you like, the ‘Master of the Inner Eyes’? or, uh… Somethin’ like that?”
<span class="mu-i">“I am but a humble servant, sent to welcome you, and guide you, along the Dark path which my Master has long ago laid out,”</span> comes the answer, from everywhere and nowhere and from deep inside yourself, as that expressionless eye remains fixed upon your face. <span class="mu-i">“You may call me ‘The Nothic’, for it is what my creator called me.”</span>
“Oh, cool!” you say, forcing some cheer. “I’m called—”
<span class="mu-i">“A demon should shield its name,”</span> the Nothic interrupts, <span class="mu-i">“until it outgrows it.”</span>
“That’s good ta know.” You frown. “I’ve been tellin’ everyone mine, though, so…”
<span class="mu-i">“Carazzi is not your name, nor Cara-Zi, nor CZ.”</span>
(H-huh?)
“Then, like… What is it?”
You see no smile, and the tone of the voice reverberating through your being does not change in tenor, yet you sense something almost—ALMOST—like a smile.
<span class="mu-i">“That remains to be seen,”</span> says the Nothic. <span class="mu-i">“Let us begin your growth, and learn it together.”</span>
And so, in the twilight of the Earth and in those dark places that exist just outside it, between Heavens and hells, Beyond the material and in the dark between the stars, you learn your first lesson on the Path of Darkness.
<span class="mu-b"><span class="mu-s">NEW SPELL</span>: Disguise Self
You cannot change your size category or height, but you can hide your horns and tusks, reduce your claws to long nails, and change your skin, hair, and eye-colour, and texture. This requires you to have some MP remaining to maintain, and each change in form costs 1 MP and adds 1 point of <WANT>. You cannot remove your ‘hooves’, but you can shift their shape enough to fit into shoes.</span>
<span class="mu-g">…</span>