To Tom Magnus

[TennyoCeres84]

What do you think of your new teammates? What are your thoughts on each one?

[IamLEAM1983]

"The short answer would be that I find them all equally fascinating. Their strengths and weaknesses, their foibles and proclivities all stoke my own embers, and there isn't a day I spend within Holden Hall's walls in which I wouldn't want to manifest the depths of my infatuation with them in a variety of ways. I pine for them, just as I, regrettably enough, find myself pining for anything that even remotely catches my fancy. I would press their lips against mine until they'd bruise, I would play with their bodies, organic or mechanical, in order to reach their deepest and innermost aspirations...

I want them all, just as I want everything else this world has to offer. I just can't tell them, obviously, or allow myself to act on these impulses - professionalism being what it is. I've joined a workplace and found coworkers, not instituted a bordello.

I'll assume you'd appreciate specifics, however...

Aidan told me of Charles Jenkins and exposed to me just how diametrally opposed their views were. I can sense the core of tragedy around which he's built himself, and his own lost loves and hopes sometimes come to me. He hasn't let the pain define him and has done his best to accept it. While he still seeks answers, I can sense that the rest of the team provides him with stability. He feels welcome in Holden Hall. Appreciated. That seems to be something his previous postings hadn't allowed him to experience. All the same, he still sees his gifts as being monstrous in nature - an unwanted burden he was made to carry. Little by little, however, he seems to be coming to grips with the fact that the origin of his gifts isn't significant. What matters is what he chooses to do with them.

Aislinn, on the other hand, carries more willpower than many a man I've ever crossed paths with. She dominates her siblings not in coercion, but in the sheer force of her presence. Even as she does this, however, she maintains the sort of humility that fills me with quiet joy. Like Aidan, she does the best she can with the current parameters she has been given, but something is emerging across her work as a tattoo artist and as a growing hedge mage...

Pride has nestled itself deep inside her, and all she needs is one significant breakthrough, one personal victory, to realize that she is the worthy successor to her ancestors' tales of arcane potency. That power, that latent wisdom... If these concepts were people, I would cradle them in my arms and promise them safety until the world's very end. With Power and Responsibility combined comes pleasure. The pleasure of being trusted, the pleasure of sensing one's own importance to others, the pleasures of dabbling in further studies with like-minded people; as well as the pleasure of sensing the irresistible magnetism of power being safely wielded.

For these reasons, Aislinn has uniquely captured my imagination.

Archibald has experienced something of late, in comparison. He feels as though he'd been a seed planted in soil long, long ago; and something - or someone - came along and watered it. Oh, he likes to act the part of the stolid gentleman with no focus on anything but his immediate duties, but I can sense what the werewolf awakened in him. Because I cannot feel love at present, I've studied it intensely. I know how to recognize it when I see it, and I know how love doesn't simply touch the two parties involved. Love has an effect radius that spans time and immesurable distances - and grows to touch others.

Love is a transformative force, and it's brought Archibald all the emotional outlets and support he has ever needed. The adventurer he was has been awakened anew, and chances are he'll take this opportunity to go looking for trouble, instead of simply acting as the team commander. He might claim the opposite, but the fact is that Lord Holden is a thrill-seeker dressed in a dandy's garb. He claims to only need life's little pleasures in order to feel reassured as to his humanity, but the fact is he craves danger. The only things that succeed in holding him back are his attachment to Crystal and his growing, ever-increasing fondness for his charges.

The Deputy Chief, on the other hand, doesn't quite feel as though something was missing in her life. She had some stability prior to meeting the Lord and had her affairs in order. She had her everyday existence with her daughter, the needs of her job, and the expected tedium of domesticity to keep her occupied. Instead, it feels like her new relationship is a welcomed slice of supplemental material: it wasn't needed per se, but she's a far cry away from wanting her existence to remain unchanged. The human in her might have been pleasantly surprised by this break in her entropy, but the wolf seems to have been waiting for a decent pack mate for quite some time... One is not like the other, and one carried a bit more anxiety as the years went by.

Unless there is some kind of subconscious communication between Lowell the Deputy Chief and Lowell the Wolf, I doubt even her waking mind grasps how welcomed the new relationship seems to be. The same could be said of Neasa, seeing as I haven't felt her pining for greater amounts of awareness from her favored Clank. If anything, she handles her strength with all the grace you'd assume to be hers; as if selkies had always been born to lift semis off of pinned innocents in a highway accident with nothing but their bare hands.

If I move to Shamus, I find someone who also seems to bask in contentment. The man has no idea there are greater pleasures to be experienced and has the sort of endearing obliviousness of Neasa's attempts at deeper forms of involvement that seems typical of self-educated farmhands. As no, Bucky isn't the first of his kind that I've seen. I've met others before, people for whom the notion of wanting things feels superfluous.

Not that Shamus has no lust of his own to stimulate; it'd be more correct to say that Shamus lusts after already-obtained or easily-renewable events and concepts. Things like inner peace, restful sleep, casual companionship. Food and drink and birdsong in Archie's English garden. I'd be interested in acting the part of Cupid's more lascivous counterpart, honestly, and tweaking that by just a smidge...

All I'd need would be a moment alone with Bucky and the knowledge of Neasa's interest. I could do it, honestly, but the fact is that Gorobei Iwata's etheric scars are a concern the entire team shares. If I stoke the Okie farmboy's Id with suggestions of Neasa's shapely curves and powerful limbs, what'll emerge to try and claim her? Shamus Wallace's own quickened desires, or the ghost of an old samurai who used to bed women without thought or concern for their safety? Like everyone else, I'd hope for the first...

Considering, some research will be needed before I can attempt anything. Plus - maybe time is all the lugnut needs, honestly. By the time I figure out how to stir his ghostly loins for Neasa's benefit, chances are the problem will have resolved itself. If that happens, I'll simply step aside and let nature take its course.

I know Sophia isn't a member of the team, strictly speaking, but she hovers around the gang often enough for her to be significant, I think. I mentioned wisdom and power being coiled within Aislinn, and I think the dryad stands as a prime example of what she could become. Maturity and level-headedness aren't necessarily givens in the world of nature spirits, and the fact that even Sophia's wintry self remains approachable is rather commendable.

She is alone, however, and has been for quite some time. She matters to the whole of the city, but hasn't truly captured anyone's heart yet. Ciaran's sent inquisitive glances at her in the past, and I'm given to think that I could also administer a few subconscious prods to our dear dockhand... It wouldn't necessarily be advisable, however, seeing as I've never fathered anything except lust - not honest love and care. In any case, he needs to realize that generating fog is more than a simple cosmetic allowance. Playing with the air's humidity levels could snuff out fires, or it might be an indication of some deeper level of control waiting to be grasped. Que sera, sera.

Oh, Francis - poor old Amazo... The last thing he needs is more lust, and he certainly could do with a resized bank account, as well... At least he isn't rubbing our faces in his accrued wealth or fame. As strange as it may seem, I happen to think he needs a few personal setbacks, something to remind him of the reasons that allowed him to teach to Aislinn. Zebediah needs the exact opposite - but in minute degrees. Drown our local doom-stricken lich in too much felicity and chances are he'll respond with cynicism, rather than gratitude. He already responds to the team's good cheer with suspicion and already sees me as being some sort of sign of evil portents to come... None of my ministrations could help, however, seeing as he's had Evangeline on the brain for two centuries. He's tried strippers and pub-crawling, he's sampled the Commission's provided escort services, but the hole in his heart isn't something that any old bout of supernatural tumescence could fill. Lust isn't a problem for him - he wants plenty.

What he needs, however, is for his own mistakes to be fixed.

Finally, we come to the help... Bagley is a stout fellow, both physically and mentally, and he seems a bit more healthy in his rapports towards others than Gubbin, to be honest. In true Victorian fashion, he stays in a subdued registry precisely because he cares about our little motley crew, and knows that his tasks would require of him that he take all of our potential griefs or concerns. With the Lord sometimes being too whimsical to think clearly and everyone else having their own quirks and concerns, it falls to him to act as a sort of reflecting pond. He does feel, however, and seems more the type to dress his phlegm in the colors of his overall mood. I've seen him act both stately and wry, distinguished and humorous - personal and professional concerns being meshed together, rather than kept apart. The end result is the kind of level-headnedness we would all benefit from having access to, if and when needed.

Gubbin is another matter entirely, however. His geas being inescapable, he physically and psychologically cannot address us without deference. Familiarity is a biological impossibility for someone whose family has been comprised of generations of manservants or standard-holders and squires all held under Oaths. He embodies his own affectations as a butler and also carries the Malks' penchant for cloak-and-dagger proceedings - but I can sense that he cares. In his own stolid, frigid and somewhat unappealing fashion, he has invested himself with Holden Hall's new purpose.

Being Wyldfae, however, his time spent amongst us will color his personality over time. The Warmth of the Hearth already pushed the brunt of his feline ruthlessness away, and like all Wyldfae who spend time within the mortal plane, he will eventually come to be a little bit more like us. Us, in this case, standing as the sum of the Hall's offered mindsets. Archie's nobility and Aidan's flexibility, Aislinn's honesty and her siblings' commitment... You could say he'll come to be our common project, essentially, and that he won't realize the ways in which he's changed until we take notice."