Who you are

I look at Alta and sneer. “You are nobody’s professor. An impostor. You make pacts with the kingdoms to preserve your little comfort. I will bring down your little assembly — your little world of luxury and idleness.”

Alta looks me over, then answers:

“I was waiting for that tirade, the one you have accustomed us to, Regiord. It seems to me that you are no longer part of this school. Leave this room, and let me finish my class. I am not saying goodbye.”

The door swings ajar. I throw her one last black look and go through it. Outside, I take out my rod, I cast a formula all my own, and it takes first time: the door slams behind me with a crash of thunder.

A character exists by two things: what he is, and what he does. A personality — who he is, what he wants — and a way of acting on the world.

You are already playing, with an I sketched before you began and sharpened by everything you have put him through. This chapter sets him down for good: where he comes from, how the elements live in him, and what he wants underneath.

◆ The first line

A name, and a sentence. Who is he, in one line: a trade, a bearing, a reputation. Not a file: a way in.

Nera. Skyglider pilot, a skyfarer struck off from her sisterhood, accused of wrongs she denies.

◆ The draw for the past

Draw one card: it says your past, what made you, the wound or the impulse your desire is born from. One card only, read plainly — and there you are with a starting point.

One card only, for the past.

The Five of Swords: a bitter victory, a conflict won at the cost of her own people.

This is where I come from: I was right, alone, and it cost me everyone close to me.

◆ Relations to the suits

Say how each element lives in you: not what you know how to do, but what it does to you. A relation, never a meaning — and two or three only, never four: the elements left blank you will discover in play.

• Fire: when something rises in you, does it come out, or does it stay inside? Does your desire carry others along, or make them step back?
• Water: do you know how to love at a normal volume? Whom do you trust for no reason?
• Air: when you understand something, do you say it? Do you cut to see clearly, or to have done with it?
• Earth: what will you not let go of, even if it crushes you? What do you need to feel safe — and do you have it?

Fire launches me, and I trust it — charging has never frightened me; Earth escapes me — anchoring myself, staying put, I always leave again.

◆ Your character’s portrait

The day you want to set him down for real, write his portrait on a page of its own: his history, his look, his thoughts, his bondsBondwhat an actor seems to expect of you, written in his portrait and never crossed out: you stack, you do not correct.part 7…

A portrait is not corrected: the day Fire no longer launches you as it used to, you are not going to cross out the line from six chapters ago; you write a fresh portrait, further on.

That is how you see someone become other — not by a box altered, but by two portraits you read one after the other.

◆ Setting it down to wager it

Note as well what he carries: a skyfarer’s case, a pendant that comes from someone, a radio you do not replace.

Nothing that is consumed, nothing you buy again on the corner. The test is in the page itself: if you hesitate to write it into the sentence that says who you are, it does not belong there.

That is what makes those things wagerable under fateFatewhat comes in when you keep a major at the opening, and by no other door: the moment stops being ordinary. It resolves with the coin, never with cards, and what it closes, only it can open.part 6.

◆ What he wants — playing a desire

Your character wants something. A place to reach, a truth to tear loose, a mastery, a revenge, someone to find again — or next to nothing, a tune he is trying to recover.

If you do not know what he wants, draw a card outside the sceneScenethe unit of play: you open it, you play it, you close it.part 3: it will tell you his desire, or the shape it takes. That draw is only a help. A desire belongs to no card, and waitsWaitan open question that nobody else is looking into: it belongs to you, it ripens, it has the right never to close.part 8 for no card to move forward.

To write a desire is to make it losable. Noted in the notebook, beside your waits and your stakesStakean open question on which somebody else is making progress: it does not forget itself, and it does not ripen on its own.parts 8, 10, it becomes a thing the world can close on you.

◆ Set down your character — in five minutes

• A name, and a sentence.
• A desire, in one sentence.
• One card — where you come from.
• Two or three relations to the suitsSuits (the four)Wands/Fire, what cannot wait · Cups/Water, what comes back · Swords/Air, the line that separates · Pentacles/Earth, what remains. They say a card’s matter, and how you acted.part 4.

That is all — your character will draw himself by acting.