The Pushes
My mom — she says I have the pushes. That's what we call it. It's the pushes.
Overview
The Pushes is what Sable and her mother Maret call her uncontrollable wild magic. The term is theirs alone — a mother's softening for a child's terrifying gift. In any wizard's classification it would be called wild magic sorcery, untrained, surge-prone, dangerous primarily to its user.
It is not a unique condition. Children born with innate magic appear with some regularity in Caligo, and most of them do not survive to adulthood — not because the magic kills them, but because the Inquisition does.
Observed Manifestations
The party watched Sable's surges escalate through Session 01:
| Trigger | Effect |
|---|---|
| Joy (high-five with Vivienne) | A nearby ale mug flung from a table, shattered against the wall. |
| Wonder (watching Disguise Self) | The nearest street lamp's flame doubled in brightness for a beat. |
| Fear (sparks, escalating) | Small bursts of light visible at the back of her irises. Skin-borne sparks beginning to lift off. |
| Peak panic (combat, second Ash Walker advancing) | Wild Fireball detonated downward into the road. |
What It Looks Like to Others
- To the trained eye: unmistakable. Vivienne identified what was coming the moment Sable's eye-light started leaking, and named the spell as it formed.
- To the untrained eye: a child with sparks coming off her skin and a flare growing in the air in front of her. From a window across a canton — a flare in the night sky. From the Inquisition's vantage — a signal.
What Sable Knows
- She has the pushes.
- When she gets excited, things happen.
- She must hide it.
- She is sorry.
She does not know that what came out of her at the road was a Fireball. She does not know what a Fireball is. She knows that the lizard is dead and the road has a hole in it now and her mother held her very tightly afterward, and she has decided — without being told — that what happened was probably her fault.
Implications for the Campaign
- The Inquisition. A flare-fireball at the edge of two cantons is, in any reasonable scrying methodology, a detectable event. The arrival of the Inquisition columns in Heron the same night may or may not be coincidence.
- Sable's training. Orvin's safehouse is built to suppress magical signatures, not to teach control. Sable needs a teacher. There are not many available.
- Vivienne. Self-taught, more advanced than Sable in every dimension, and present at the moment the surge reached its peak. Whether Vivienne chooses to take this on as a project is a choice the campaign is now offering her.