Discovering some things about Karen by doing a one-minute interview. I’m hoping to discover where she met Malachi. Why she’s attracted to him, what she’s looking for in the world of magic, how she got into magic, what she was doing before, how old she is, etc…
Karen met Malachi in a bar somewhere. She was either a waitress or a bartender.
Let’s use real world places I’ve been to as the setting for each of their adventures within the real world: OKC, New Zealand, Colorado, New Mexico. Anywhere else I might be able to come up with?
Back to Karen, she was working int he bar to put herself through college. She was training to be an engineer but never could get into it despite her good grades. Somehow this is a link for her to the structure of magic.
She’s mainly trying to get certified as an apprentice magician. Her main tie tot he world is Malachi, but she’s met others in the cabal she recognizes may be able to help her more than he. So to some degree she’s staying with him out of habit.
Namely she’s met his mentor ‘the doc’ and and the corporate dude who turns out to be the bad guy. She’ gravitating to the corp guy because his methods seem cleaning and more precise than Malachi’s.
Magic’s ‘quality’ has something to do with it’s intentions. Each work has a ghost of the workers’ intention. So good magic with bad intentions will ultimately do bad things even if it does good things first.
The intention is not an overwhelming things just a characteristic. Int his way each workers’ personality and mood are imprinted into an action. Some people can read this signatures better than others.
That’s where Malachi is headed with the spider; to a reader.
So how old are you Karen? I think by now she’s got to be kinda far along to not make the thing with Malachi too icky. I don’t mind a little icky, but not too icky.
Speaking of icky, who’s going to illuminate that for me? Karen’s non-mage friends or other in the cabal or both. I suspect I may need a little of both. One group to give Malachi shit and the other to give it to Karen. Hmmm. Or maybe one group is decidedly cool with it.
Or doesn’t know.
Regarding the plot, what’s Karen want out of it? She insists the spider is good based on some very rudimentary principal she’s been taught. One a veteran mage might know but have neglected or modified over the years.
Essentially she’s trying to convince Malachi of the pure intention of the spider but he’s not seeing it. SO something must cloud his perception of it. Either actively or just through his own bias toward the spider.
I’ve already put some scope on what clouds him, but what convinces her? Just an instinct? Or an innocence? Or has she had some other knowledge that might inform her in some subtle way.
I like the idea of some other knowledge informing her. But I don’t know where she’d get that without it being too obvious. At least too coincidental to the reader. A book. Reading. The Doc. The Corp?