Assassin Bird

By Diane Keating Sciacca (wolfinblack@pagan.net) for the Keepers of the Silver Flame

Totem of Respect

Background Cost

5

Description

Patron of the tribe's warriors, stealth pranksters and many Old Schoolers, Assassin Bird is a sullen, arrogant spirit who believes in the adage "sweetest tongue has sharpest tooth." Though melancholy, he is unfailingly civil and focused and can have a rather biting wit. Silver Flame warriors often bind his Jagglings into their klaives; the wielders of these weapons have gathered together in a semi-secret society called the "Asesinos Brujos."

Traits

Children of Assassin Bird must be silver-tongued and deadly: they gain Etiquette 3, Melee 2 and Stealth 2.

Ban

Assassin Bird's children socialize with each other by necessity: their patron makes them so brutally forthright that nobody else would put up with them.

Axis Mundi information

Assassin Bird Jaggling

Rage 5, Gnosis 5, Willpower 7, Power 40

Charms: Airt Sense, Reform, Cut, Blast Flame

Image: A blackish-silver, slender predator-bird that looks disturbingly like a knife.

History: Assassin Bird was the familiar of a Verbena mage from New Orleans that joined the Silver Flames' Lundi Gras procession one year. She took off but the bird stayed on with the tribe for some reason. Before Lundi Gras, next to nothing is known of the spirit's history, though some ex-Shadow Lords in the tribe say he reminds them a little of the Stormcrows. Assassin Bird answers these observations with a coldly angry stare.

Habitat: Assassin Birds can be found in the darkness surrounding Pyru; they are the shadow cast, the knifepoint glittering in the darkness, the brutality of scathing truth and the freedom from Illusion's tyranny.

Spiritual Correspondence: The Tarot cards Death and the Tower.

Material Correspondences: Silver, knives, ripped flesh.

Gift Lore: Assassin Birds teach Gifts of veracity, the stripping of illusions, virtuous stealth.

Taboos: Assassin Birds cannot stand prevarication and untruths. They slumber when someone they're associating with fails to act decisively. Klaives with Assassin Bird Jagglings in them must drink of blood before they can be resheathed.

Attitude: Arrogant but civil.

Chiminage: No less than cutting wit and the bitter truth is required when dealing with these spirits. Anything less and they'll turn their back on you.