Huh. How about that.

He takes a quick picture with his phone, on general principle. He double-checks the street names to be sure he hasn't mixed up which corner he's on. No, he was here last week on the way to that lovely park, and he remembers this bit because he was tempted to dally at the bookstore. The bookstore is still there, but now instead of nothing much being next to it, there's a couple of doors and then a strangely obtrusive little shop whose sign catches the eye all out of proportion to the number of recognizable letters that are on it.

Well. You only live once, as they say.

In he goes.

The door jingles. 

The shop is bigger on the inside than it looked to be on the outside. Part of its space seems to overlap with where, from looking at the storefronts, he would guess part of the bookshop to be. The space is packed with stacks and tables and piles of truly miscellaneous junk. 

An implausibly buxom woman emerges from a twisty corridor of stuffpiles. "Oh! Hello."

"...hi," he says, refocusing on her after an initial glance around. "What does the sign out front say? I couldn't read it."

"It says, 'Witch Awakening.'"

"Does it now."

"It does! Can you guess why?"

"Is it, perchance, because you are a witch?"

"That is part of it."

"I'm gonna need a hint or two, you're the first witch I've met. Probably. Definitely the first witch I've observed making a store appear that wasn't there last week."

She makes an abortive gesture as though suddenly remembering that some people don't like their faces touched and therefore booping strangers on the nose is not appropriate. 

"The other part is that you are a witch."

Well. In potentia."

"...go on," he says, eyebrows raised.

"What I do is I 'awaken' new witches--draw out that potential, and guide the new witch in making it real. There are choices to make, in every awakening--well, in every guided awakening--and it's up to fully neutral witches like me to find that potential among the mortal crowd."

"I see. And what should I know before I decide whether to accept this favour?"

"Well...there are dangers on the other side of the Veil. Monsters that want to hurt or kill you, Outsiders that could drive you mad, other witches with a bone to pick. But the average life expectancy for a witch is still much higher than that of a mortal human. Ah, the other thing is, turning into a witch tends to turn you into a girl. Although, with a guided awakening, that can be prevented! It would cost some portion of power, but that's still more power than you'd have if you didn't become a witch. And you have a particularly bright aura, so it probably wouldn't be too large a portion of your power."

"I can't say that I'd be all that upset to turn into a girl, actually. Well, I suppose it would be inconvenient to explain."

She waves a hand. "Oh, the Veil covers that." 

"...how so?"

She hops up to sit on a low table, barely avoiding dislodging anything, and crosses her ankles. 

"The Veil is a piece of magic that prevents the Masquerade from blowing wide open at the slightest provocation. Part of what it does is ensures that people don't notice magical things in their midst--for example, most non-human witches will be perceived as human by a random mortal; the mortal just won't notice their cat ears or duck head or antlers or what have you. And another part of it is that when a witch's human-compatible traits, such as gender, change on awakening, people tend to just fail to parse this as remarkable. They won't forget that you were a man before today, or fail to perceive you as female going forwards, it will just generally fail to occur to them to assign any particular significance to the combination of these facts."

"I suppose people do sometimes do that even without magic being involved. So tell me more about these monsters that don't manage to negatively affect my life expectancy."

"--Well, it's not that monsters couldn't possibly kill you, but most monsters are much less dangerous than a well-trained witch, and if you don't mismanage yourself entirely then you certainly oughtn't to die of disease or old age, and you can live somewhere where other people will reliably take care of any monsters that show up."

"Fair enough. All right then."

"Most witch species don't age at all, and even neutrals--essentially human witches--can generally find something before their clock runs out."

"'Find something'—meaning immortality?"

She waves a hand. "Well, unagingness, generally, immortality proper is a bit more difficult generally."

"Hmm. An improvement on the human situation regardless."

"By a long shot. Even a Neutral witch who hasn't obtained an arch-curative or anything of the sort has about twice the human lifespan."

"Improved indeed! In that case, I think I would like to try it."

"Excellent!" 

She bounces a little in excitement (the resulting boob-jiggle is genuinely incidental) and holds out her hands. 

He hesitates.

"—is there anything I should know more immediately before trying, any parts of the process where I could mess something up for myself permanently if I screwed up in some unlikely but possible way..."

"No part of the process is permanent until the process is finalized, which isn't going to happen by accident."

"Okay. Thank you, that's good to know."

He takes her hands.

There is a sort of tugging sensation, which he can sort of lean into or not. 

Well, in for a penny...

He leans into it.

It feels almost as if he's being pulled out of his body, except not in any direction that exists in conventional three-dimensional space. 

The place he finds himself is almost a starfield, except not as perceived through any kind of visual medium. The qualia he's receiving right now are in a completely novel sensory medium. There are structures between the points of "light;" three of them are currently the largest and closest to him, followed by a grouping of nine. And each of the three is a different "color" than the other two, and each of the nine has two "flavors," which overlap with each other substantially, and then of the more distant "stars," most of them have a color and a flavor, although much less strongly than the closer twelve. 

He investigates the nearest of the three.

The nearest one is synesthetically "red" and contains the information that it involves power growth through practice, that it allows for the learning of every kind of magic in that-one-star-cluster, and that one of those magics can be taken without any investiture of power potential if its affinities and his match. Also, his aura will increase in magnitude and integrate with the star cluster. 

...interesting. How about the other two in this triad?

The second one is "blue" and contains the information that it involves power growth through study, that he can take any two of a cluster of stars that's a superset of the red-associated cluster of stars without investing potential, and that any of a different subset are twice as effective if he takes it. 

The third one is "green" and contains the information that it involves power growth through economic transactions with any of this pomegranate-like star-cluster within the green star, and furthermore that each of the beings represented by these pomegranate-seed-stars will in addition offer him magic swag which he can glue to his soul. 

...is adhering objects to my soul as drastically irrevocable and transformative a process as it sounds?

Some of them are very useful objects!

That is not what I asked!

Well, I don't know how transformative it sounds to you. 

It sounds like - the sort of thing where I couldn't rule out that it might cause significant personality changes, or changes to how I perceive and interact with the world? And that doesn't seem worth risking for... most possible kinds of object, really, no matter how useful.

I have activated lots and lots of witches and kept in touch with many of them afterwards, and I haven't seen any patterns in personality change over time that make sense to attribute to soulbonding to relics. All it does is let you summon and dismiss them the same way you would mothergifts--that's this thing over here. She makes an Academic-aligned ranked-magic star light up. 

Hmm. I'll think about it.

He's much more drawn to the blue star, though. He hesitates, remembers Penelope's assurance that everything here is reversible until the final commitment, and tentatively selects it.

The next ring of stars is, once he touches it, races he can be. There are nine of them in total. 

Neutral - basically still human, but with some physical boosts. Recharges by sleeping.
Gnome - a four-inch-tall tinkerer of mad scientific proportions. Recharges by making stuff.
Gemini - imagine you fork, and then you and your fork are each other's HDM daemons, and also slightly Crystal Gems. Recharges by staying in sync with yourself.
Pixie - tiny little plant-related fae person with plant powers and leafy wings. Recharges from the blooming of associated flowers.
Lamia - Naga snakewoman. Recharges by vore. 
Aurai - so an Aurai has a normal speaking voice that steals lifespan from anyone who hears, and a scream that sends people back in time until and unless they find the magic escape butterfly. Recharges from the timeline not changing from people being sent back in time even though it really should. 
Wither - horrible constantly decomposing undead that repairs damage to themself via cannibalism and recharges via ambient decay.
Spider - magic sentient giant spider. Recharges through bondage.
Hollow - spirit bound to a suit of magic armor. Recharges by "eating" ore. 

...that is all... a lot. That is all just very. Okay, crossing everything that recharges by harming people off the list immediately, that leaves Neutral, Gnome, Gemini, Pixie, Spider, and Hollow. (You could make a case for Wither technically not recharging by harming people, but he would rather not make that case, actually.)

He attempts to investigate each of these in more depth, starting with Neutral.

Neutral witches age past maturity at about half the rate of mundane humans, and do so more gracefully, in general; their bodies also don't randomly trip over entropy and fuck up the way human bodies do that leads to cancer and dying of an air bubble in your brain and developing globs of fat in weird places and getting diabetes. 

(If he inspects it very carefully, there is a link to another star that mostly does not otherwise seem to exist.)

And can he follow that link and inspect what it refers to?

It's an upgrade of the Neutral witch type. Upgraded Neutrals can pick a second class's power-gain method (though not any of the other advantages of that class) and use that as well as their actual class's type, and get 20% spell resistance. 

Certainly interesting. He moves on to look at Gnome, keeping an eye out for another elusive extra link.

Gnomes are, despite being smaller than most adult humans' hands, about as strong as a normal-sized five year old, and also nearly immune to blunt force trauma. 

There is another elusive extra link! This one is much more expensive, but allows a gnome to invent devices to replicate forms of magic the gnome doesn't have. 

What a spectacular prize! He's definitely making a mental note to come back to this one. Though it would be very odd to be four inches tall. More odd than being a woman, though, or less? It's hard to say, having never tried either.

Now, the next was... Gemini?

Each half of a Gemini has an associated gemstone. 90% of your body mass is composed of your gemstone, including your hair, but not including your skin, although you can have arbitrary gemstone protrusions that act more like teeth or horns than like any human experience of non-tooth bone sticking out of your skin. Gemini all have an Earth affinity, but each half also has a second affinity linked to their gemstone. 

The Gemini bonus-star costs the same as the Neutral one, and it lets you swap places between your individual instances, either body-swapping or teleporting, and have a mental link, ranging from basic empathy up to full-blown telepathy. 

Hmmm. Interesting constraints, interesting possibilities. He's not sure he wants to go for it, but if he does, it definitely sounds like the bonus-star will be worthwhile.

How about Pixie?

Pixies are even tinier than Gnomes, at about an inch tall. They can have insectile wings, or wings shaped like any leaf that exists. Pixies can turn into any flower that they personally planted which has bloomed since, and can magically breed hybrids of any two flowering plants. When slain, they respawn within the bloom of one of their planted flowers. Pixies draw mana from the blooming of A) the same flowers-they-planted that they use for transforming and respawning, or B) any other flower that they have slept inside. 

The pixie bonus star, which is slightly cheaper than the Neutral or Gemini ones, allows a pixie to flap their wings to produce pixiedust, which can be used to boss animals around, make flowers bloom Right Now, or induce sleep in sapient beings. 

"I have... questions... about what it means to turn into a flower..."

"Well, you can turn into a flowering plant, more than just the flower itself."

"I'm not sure that quite addresses my question but thank you. I'll inquire further if Pixie makes the shortlist."

Moving on: Spider?

Spider witches are about hand-sized, produce up to a foot per minute of silk, which varies in thickness by spider from about a fortieth of an inch in diameter to about a quarter, but the median is about a twelfth. Spiders age at the same rate as humans but can rejuvenate themselves by spinning a cocoon and chilling in it for forty-eight hours (these are not spent conscious and bored). 

Spiders parthenogenically lay eggs that hatch non-sapient spiders, any of which the witch can body-jack if they die. 

The spider bonus star lets the spider: 

-Become very small

-Become very large, reaching a height of about four feet tall, in which form they get a bundle of goodies including:
--Extra-strength exoskeleton
--Go ZOOM 
--Can produce webbing as thick as steel cable and launch it about a hundred feet. 
--Can produce really thin webbing that is very difficult to see and will easily slice through flesh and bone

-Learn Arachnescence, which is not generally available. 

"Is there a reason why so many of my options are so small?? Is this normal? Are most witches tiny?"

"Most witches are not tiny, but also it's probably not a coincidence--you probably had a witch ancestor who was tiny and had recent ancestors who were lots of tiny things."

"I suppose that makes sense."

So, Hollow?

Hollows: Not tiny! Or, one could be tiny, but they aren't by default. 

Hollows are natively incorporeal beings who bond to suits of armor. The armor is totally non-biological, but the spirit does have some biological processes, having to eat spirit matter and having the ability to reproduce with other spirits. The Hollow bonus star allows them to actively replace the material of their armor with other metal, including special magic metals like Mythril. 

What an interesting way to live one's life.

But he should be thinking about the practicalities. The Gnome is certainly the most personally compelling option, and also has the most exciting prize; however, some of the others can cheat death, which sounds like in the long run it will turn out to be very important. The Pixie and Spider seem to have the best methods but the Gemini's would still help.

"I don't suppose there's any way to become more than one of these at once...?" he wonders. It definitely doesn't sound like, say, the Hollow could feasibly be combined with any of the rest, nor is he sure what it would look like to be simultaneously a spider and a plant, but he's torn enough that it seems worth asking, just in case.

"Oh, sure! It costs points, but there's a bit of wild magic," something in the farther echelons lights up, "that lets you combine two things. You can take it twice to be a chimera. You can only have one set of racial affinities, though."

You can take it twice, presumably for three total components though there's an off chance it might add up to four? Colour him intrigued. Best to be cautious about the implications, though.

"How does being multiple things at once work out in practice? Is it likely to weaken any of the advantages of the individual components?"

"No, it's just the affinities. And I suppose it depends on what things one is a hybrid of--siren and aurai both have magic voices such that having both would be less convenient than having one or the other. Generally you end up with a combination of the physical attributes of each type, so I suppose that might be considered a 'weakening of advantage' if you found one or another body type especially appealing...it's possible to guide how that shakes out to some extent, when you're starting out human, but not indefinitely."

"...do you know of any examples of what Hollow or Spider hybrids end up looking like? Those are the ones where the question of resulting body type most concerns me."

“Hollow hybrids have both flesh bodies and bonded armor; they can take the armor off, but it tends to be extremely uncomfortable. Spider hybrids… it varies drastically, but opting into one you’d most likely end up with a less awkward configuration even just naively, and it can be nudged.”

"So, speaking hypothetically, if I wanted to be a hollow spider gnome, I could be a gnome with spider legs wearing gnome with spider legs armor and this would work and I would be healthy and functional?"

“Yep, that’s work! There isn’t any combination of things you could be that wouldn’t be… at least as healthy and functional as its worst component, I can’t say anyone who’s any amount Wither is healthy.”

Okay then, it's time to consider his options.

Gnome comes with shiny prizes. Spider comes with a unique type of magic, though he should probably ask what it does before he gets too excited. Hollow and Gemini come with interesting new ways of seeing the world. Pixie comes with wings, which seem both fun and useful.

The best way to cheat death is probably Pixie but Spider also seems like it would work, and Gemini isn't bad either.

For charge methods, Gnome seems fantastic, Pixie seems good, Hollow seems solidly workable, Gemini seems inconvenient, Spider seems awkward.

All together this tentatively adds up to... Gnome Pixie Spider? Though he also feels a certain level of longing for Gnome Hollow Gemini. Maybe he should ask about Arachnescence.

"That special Spider magic, what's it like?"

Penelope points him towards the spider magic star that appears when he focuses on the spider bonus star. 

"The first rank lets you turn into any mundane spider, and apply a single not-you-spider trait to yourself when not transformed. The second rank gives you a second keep-a-trait slot, and gives you a bonus pair of eyes that are capable of seeing in complete darkness and paying attention to things separately from you, giving you a greater ability to notice things like danger while, say, in a gnome tinker fugue. The third rank gives you the ability to turn into low-powered magic spiders, a third trait slot, and a second pair of extra eyes with thermal vision. Rank four gives you a fourth slot--of course--plus you can gain extra limbs by adding spider body parts to yourself. Rank five gives you even more ability to add body parts to yourself, the requisite fifth slot, and each eye functions as a backup brain, plus some other goodies."

"...is it just me, or are those largely things obviated by already being a spider? Not entirely, but substantially?"

"Enh, magic spiders don't natively have venom as potent as a black widow, let alone the leap of, I can't remember a jumping spider off the top of my head, and they can't do kiting. Plus the eye stuff! Personally I think the eye stuff is neat. But just because I think it's neat doesn't mean it floats your boat."

"The eye stuff is interesting... how expensive would it be to collect all the ranks, though, on top of my excessive amount of heritage?"

"Either nine points or six, depending on if Spider was your primary race or not."

"What other effects does primary race have?"

"It can tiebreak in cases where one race's physical attributes would be more or less dominant over another's, and it determines your affinities. You only have the affinities of your primary race and not your other races. Also, if you have biological children, it can effect what admixtures they grow up with--in general, a chimera counts for hereditary purposes as about half your primary race and a quarter each of the others, arranged in such a way that you get approximately a full dose of each one, but if you have children with someone who's a fourth thing, one eighth has less influence compared to a quarter than a quarter does compared to a half."

In that case... consider the implications of your choices, Liam.

"What are the affinities of Gnome, Pixie, and Spider, and what implications do those affinities have?"

She highlights the two "flavors" attached to each star--beast and metal for Spider, metal and nature for Gnome, and nature and wind for Pixie. 

She also highlights how many of the further out stars have one "flavor" affinity each. 

"An affinity you have makes buying powers related to that affinity cheaper; about half price, rounded down."

"Perhaps I'll decide for now to be Gnome first and Pixie and Spider second, and see if anything related to beast or wind catches my eye later on."

"Sure." 

He can sort of feel how to tug on the different stars to bring the three race ones sort of tentatively clicked into place, with two iterations of "Hybridize" gluing them together, Gnome directly adjacent to him and Pixie and Spider attached to it. 

He arranges this. Pulling all the stars around and setting them into place is sort of soothing. Like playing cat's-cradle.

"What's next, then?"

"Traditionally the next step is dealing with complications, but there isn't a strict ordering."

"I can't think of a particular reason to turn somewhere else first. Let's see about complications."

"Complications," she highlights a ring of stars that connect to class but have no racial affinity, "are a class of magical traits which give points instead of costing them, which tend to be neutral to negative, although there are of course niche ways to turn anything positive."

Time to investigate them all methodically in detail? Time to investigate them all methodically in detail.

Complications he has access to include: 

(2 points) How do you feel about a random supernumerary nipple.

(4 points) Do you not give a crap about nature? Well, nature doesn't give a crap about you, unless you take this complication, in which case nature actively dislikes you!

(12 points) Do you want to not do magic after all? Have a crippling magical disability! This one makes you not able to take any ranks of magic above zero, or any perks that cost more than four points (except racial perks)

(2 points) Being extra attention-getting! Might be useful if you're tiny

(3 points) Do you want to be a permanent child? 
-(+1 point) And have nobody take you seriously?

(4 points) The veil doesn't cover you, if you go out in all your tiny winged spidery glory you're going to cause an automatic masquerade breach unless you, like, build a human-passing mecha to pilot around or something. 

Certainly a... varied selection. (He instinctively wishes there was some kind of trash pile into which he could put the 'suck at magic forever' star, just to make extra sure he never accidentally touches it.)

"Dare I ask how the, er, nipple option, would come across if I were a Hollow or a Spider?" he says, mostly out of morbid curiosity.

“A Hollow would end up with a nipple-shaped crinkle in the metal somewhere. A spider would wind up with a fleshy nipple growth somewhere on the outside of their exoskeleton.”

"Neither of those sounds especially appealing but I suppose a lot of things can be worthwhile as a trade for power. What else is there for Complications, or is that all?"

"--Oh, as a gnome hybrid you'd probably end up with a basically normal witch mark on ordinary skin."

Additional complications include: 

(4 points) One of your senses is dulled. Can be taken up to three times. 

(2 points) One of your senses is enhanced, to the point of over-sensitivity. Can be taken up to three times.

(2 points) You are permanently addicted to some substance or stimulus. Can be taken up to three times. 

(4 points) You are permanently missing a limb (healing and shapeshifting can't put it back; prosthetics do work). Can be taken up to four times.

"...is there anything preventing me from deleting four of my eight legs and then replacing them with prosthetics?"

"There is not!"

(8 points) At some point, an enemy will have you at their mercy for some unspecified amount of time before killing you.

(power variable) You have a personal kryptonite. 

(2 points) Your magical power is directly tied to your physical fitness; if you don't exercise, your magical effectiveness will dwindle to about half
(+2 points) will dwindle to nothing

"...part of me wants to know more about this hypothetical enemy and part of me would rather skip it. What else is there?"

"The hypothetical enemy isn't pre-determined, or anything; most people don't have any enemies when they first awaken, unless their family has a blood feud with someone or something."

(1-8 points) You feel an internal compulsion to do something under some circumstances. 

(6 points) You require an external implement in order to do magic.

"...is the compulsion something I can specify - is the enemy something I can specify—?"

The compulsion is absolutely something you can specify. The enemy is not something you can specify; it doesn't mind-control someone into falling in enmity with you, it just guarantees that you will, at some point, cross paths with someone who will do so without any mind control. 

"I'd rather not guarantee myself an enemy without knowing more about the circumstances, so I'll have to pass on that one. The compulsion could work."

"The nice thing about defeat is that once it happens it's over and you don't have to deal with it, whereas many compulsions continue to be relevant indefinitely." 

"Granted, but this enemy doesn't just defeat me, they kill me. How can I possibly arrange a guarantee that I will end up only partly and not completely dead?"

"Well, partly dead is a lot easier than completely dead, if you don't swap out pixie."

"That is not a guarantee, it is a likelihood!"

"I mean, fair, but it also isn't guaranteed that nobody will try to kill you if you don't take defeat. What kind of compulsion were you thinking of? The more often it comes up, the more power it'll give you."

"Does it have to be triggered rather than time-based? Is there an approximate range of things it's possible to specify? Is it possible to deliberately arrange my life to manage when and how often I encounter the trigger, and does my intention to do that matter when calculating how often it'll come up?"

"It has to be triggered, but it can be triggered by something in your mind, such as a sense of time, instead of by something external. It has to be an actual action you could theoretically take, you can't take a compulsion to, being a Jovian moon, crash into another Jovian moon. Yes and no respectively; things that are more common in general require more arranging to manage." 

"The direction I'm thinking along is that it would be convenient to find something that happens naturally a reasonable fraction of the time but isn't that hard to avoid when it's a bad time to be compelled to do something. Actually, though, that's a good question: how is rarity calculated if the trigger is an action I take, like brushing my teeth every day, where I could avoid it but historically haven't and have good reasons not to?"

"That would probably count as a once-a-day kind of thing, for four points. Eight points if you were in the habit of brushing in the mornings, too."

"That sounds lucrative. But I can only do it for things that I am already in the habit of, I can't plan to construct a habit going forward and have that count?"

"You might be able to, if you can precommit reliably enough, but I won't be able to tell for sure without checking, and it's less likely to work if your precommitment is conditional on it working." 

"That tracks... hmm, let me see..."

He thinks about it for a minute, letting go of all other inputs and processes to focus on fitting his mind into the right shape. It should be something that's pretty trivial to do, but easy to distinguish from other activities. It should be something that's not burdensome but also not inherently a bad idea to omit—hence brushing teeth being a bad candidate. It should—actually, he has another question before he proceeds.

"If while I'm forming the habit I fit in an intention to make up for missed occasions on later days, do you expect that to help?"

"It's not likely to be the tipping point between it working and not--unless making up for things helps you form habits, personally--but it might be the tipping point between four points or eight, if it's a twice-a-day kind of thing." 

"Sensible. All right."

He goes back to his state of quiet contemplation. It shouldn't depend terribly much on body plan since he has still not finalized his decision of body plan. It should be something that he won't accidentally do without intending to trigger the effect...

All right. Twice a day, morning and evening, he will spend a minute meditating on his ongoing projects and then tell himself that it's time to pay his dues, with the intent that that then triggers a compulsion to spend the next half hour working on some kind of physical build. If he misses a session he'll plan to make it up within the next week or so; if he has a slow start building the habit, he'll keep track of the approximate number of misses while he's working on it and then spread them out over a longer period of time once he's got it solid.

"Now, how exactly do I test this...?"

"Try reaching for the compulsion," she suggests, "I'll try to guide it as much as I can." 

He makes an attempt to link the compulsion to his newly formed pre-habit.

It wibbles a little, like a top that's about to lose stability, and then it clicks. 

"Oh good!"

"Eeee!" 

Vague impression of excited hand clapping. 

"I'm decently good at intending things, apparently. So, hmm, where were we...?"

"You hadn't commented on how you felt about Crutch." 

"Crutch? Oh, the external implement? Hmm - how hard to come by are these implements? Could it be possible to recreate one myself if I found myself without it somehow?"

"Not very, and yes--you'd have to learn how, but I know of a case where a witch in captivity managed to carve an implement into her own skin." 

"In that case I think I'll take it. Hmm, where does that leave me..."

"If you take Crutch, that'll bring you up to fourteen points total."

"All right... so, unless you'd rather take the time to pitch me on having a nemesis again, what's next?"

"No, no, Nemesis is a totally different one! You don't seem to have that one on offer." 

"I apologize for my imprecision. Unless you'd rather take the time to pitch me on deadly defeat again, what's next?"