I think OP is wrong, but for basically the reasoning behind OP’s argument.

The argument that I’m understanding from OP is that you can’t distinguish black magic corruption from other forms of corruption epistemologically, and therefore black magic corruption isn’t a thing.

I agree with OP it’s difficult to distinguish black magic corruption from other forms of corruption epistemologically. But my conclusion is that black corrupts pretty much like every other course of action does.

When you choose to do something, you have definitionally made yourself someone who chose to do that thing. If you kill someone, you are empirically a killer. If you lie, you are empirically a liar. Etc. And behaviors are reinforced by identity in turn. Black magic corruption is more of the same: it’s just that there’s also a spiritual/mental intimacy with it that makes it more difficult to separate from the act.

Mind, this extends to GOOD acts, too. Someone who was an utter rat bastard who decides to be selflessly kind one becomes somebody who can be selflessly kind, by definition. And this can reinforce itself as well.

He's kind of a child so I'd go with low scholarship and lore but I Might and mid to high fists.  Mid to High Endurance and pretty good Empathy.  It's been a long time since I read it, though.

I actually disagree a bit. Adam was reading and quoting Paradise Lost in a few months: he's clearly very intelligent.

Personally, other than the strength abilities and high intelligence, the source material doesn't actually give a lot to go on for him. That said, I see that as a strength, not a weakness: he's very easy to adapt to your purposes, if you need an omnicidal maniac who hates humanity (bad end) or a beaten but not broken guy who will keep fighting his place in the world (neutral end) or even a guy who sees no good in the world and fights to make it (good end). He's very interpretable.

In which I attempt to adjudicate one of the most ridiculously minute and unimportant rules in DFRPG. You may freely choose to ignore this entire thread and replace it with “Compel characters if there are difficulties understanding a language they have on their sheet” with minimal gameplay impact.

Languages are super weird and different from each other, and what it means to be fluent and literate in a language can actually change more drastically than a monolingual speaker with no language background might first assume. For this reason, I thought it would be a good idea to specify a set of rulings for what it means to “know” different languages: what dialects and writing can you be assumed to know? What is the scope of your fluency/literacy? I’m mentioning the subtleties of languages I know of here, but invite others to post as well if they have exposure to the subtleties of languages.

General rules:

-Intelligibility. Two systems of communicating, or “idiolects”, are considered mutually intelligible if a speaker in one system can understand the speaker of the other system and visa versa with minimal to no difficulty. However, this is a spectrum, not a clean division: certain idiolects can be more easily understood than others, depending on their closeness. Further, the level of the comprehension between two idiolects may be asymmetrical. If a dialect is somewhat but not fully intelligible to you, then understanding that dialect may require a Scholarship check, with difficulty scaling depending on the level of difference. You may even get a Fate Point for being unable to understand a dialect of a language you have taken if it impedes your comprehension enough. For example, a baseline speaker of General American English would face no difficulty understanding a speaker of Received Pronunciation, may occasionally face an Average (+1) difficulty check understanding a speaker of African American English thanks to AAE’s more complex verbal aspect system, should face a roughly Fair (+2) level of difficulty comprehending Shakespeare, may face either a Superb (+5) difficulty or a compel when trying to understand Scots, and should be unable to understand German without a separate language slot. However, in contrast, a speaker of AAE should generally face no difficulty understanding GAE. These difficulties are merely baseline suggestions, and may go up or down depending on the aspects and background of specific characters. 

Specify what dialect you know when specifying your knowledge of a language.

-Fluency vs Literacy. In general, familiarity with any spoken dialect of a dialect should imply literacy in the written language that dialect falls under. If this is not true for your character, they should have an aspect which can be compelled accordingly: ILLITERATE or similar may work as a catch all, but something like CHINESE AMERICAN IMMIGRANT can also work if that aspect implies specifically that you grew up speaking a Sinitic language in the home, but never learned Chinese characters, without impacting literacy in other languages. In general, mutual comprehension of writing is higher than mutual comprehension of speech: written language changes more slowly than spoken and tends to be more standardized. However, if multiple written standards for writing exist, this generality changes—indicate the standard(s) of writing you’re familiar with if your language has such distinctions. And while some languages have several standards of writing, others have no writing system at all, and such languages confer no literacy.

Signed languages: You must spend a language slot for each sign language you know, identically to spoken languages. For example, if your Scholarship score is Fair (+2), your native language is American Sign Language, and you would like to know both English and British Sign Language, you can have no more languages on your sheet without increasing your scholarship score or taking the linguist stunt. In general, signed languages do not confer literacy outside of very specialized exceptions: many native signers are also familiar enough with a spoken language with a writing system to get around this, even if they are physically incapable of speaking and/or hearing it, but this costs a language slot.

SPECIFIC LANGUAGE RULINGS

These are by no means comprehensive, and necessarily make divisions at higher levels than actually exist between dialects. For example, British Englishes or Levantine Arabic are each one category, even though much more precise dialectal variation exists between speakers of each of them. This is necessary to limit the explosion of this list to a ridiculous degree.

English

Writing system: Modern English has a single writing system that all speakers of modern dialects of English can comprehend with no difficulty. Elizabethan English has enough spelling differences to warrant a Fair (+2) check to understand without consistent exposure to it (for example, if you are a SCHOLAR OF SHAKESPEARE, your comprehension would be unimpeded). Understanding written Middle English or earlier requires a separate language slot.

Dialect groups:

Modern North American English (NAE), Modern British English (BE), Australian English (AE), African American English (AAE), Elizabethan English (EE), others.

NAE, BE, and AE have perfect mutual intelligibility with no difficulties unless a speaker is very deliberately using high idiomatic terminology. These three dialect groupings are also perfectly understood by AAE speakers, but may have difficulty understanding AAE (Mediocre (+0) to Average (+1) for NAE, Average (+1) to Fair (+2) for BE and AE). All modern dialects face a Fair (+2) understanding Elizabethan English without specific prior exposure, though this tends to matter more when dealing with Fae.

Arabic

Writing system: Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), which is also spoken in highly formal contexts such as the news or scholarly discussion. Everyone who takes a spoken dialect of Arabic can be assumed to understand this dialect even when it is spoken. There is also Classical Arabic (CA), the Arabic of the Qur’an, which is more flowery and difficult to understand: difficulty Average (+1) to Fair (+2) to understand writing in CA.

Dialect groups:

Levantine Arabic (Lebanon, Syria) (LA), Egyptian Arabic (EA), Peninsular Arabic (the Arab peninsula) (PA), Maghrebi Arabic (Northwest Africa) (MA), Iraqi/Mesopotamian Arabic (IA). EA is easily understood by most Arabic speakers, as is LA. EA and LA speakers face minor difficulties understanding IA (difficulty Average (+1)) and more major difficulties understanding Peninsular Arabic (Fair (+2)). All other speakers face intense difficulty understanding Maghrebi Arabic (difficulty Good (+3)).

Chinese

Writing system: Several. Traditional and Simplified are the standard two: most speakers of a Chinese language can be assumed to be familiar with one of the two, and face an Average (+1) difficulty understanding the other most of the time. Specify which of them you know when you take a Chinese language, but you may know both without penalty so long as your character can justify exposure to them. Classical characters also exist, but face a Fair (+2) to Good (+3) amount of difficulty to be comprehended, in general. Pinyin and bopomofo are pronunciation systems, but not usually used for writing and depend on which Chinese language you’re writing in.

Languages: Mandarin, Yue, Cantonese, Taishanese, and other so called “dialects” are considered separate languages, and need a language slot apiece to comprehend, but each one confers literacy in the same Chinese character set. Mandarin, the most “standard” language in use, has true dialects which can be classed broadly as “North” and “South”, but these dialects have little difficulty understanding one another, in general.

Hindustani/Urdu/Hindustani

Writing system: Two (Devanagari and Nastaliq), neither of which is understandable if you only know the other. Specify which you know, but you may know both without penalty. Being literate in Arabic or Persian automatically confers knowledge of Nastaliq if you know Hindustani.

Dialect groups: Modern Standard Hindi and and Modern Standard Urdu are the main two, and they face no intelligibility difficulties unless the topic of conversation is highly religiously specialized for Hinduistic religions or Islam (respectively). There are other less broadly distributed dialects, with asymmetric comprehensibility: people who speak those dialects will understand either of the standard two easily, but the reverse is untrue, in general.

Plains Indian Sign Language

I include this because it is EXTREMELY important if you’re setting a campaign in the middle Americas prior to or at the start of colonization. It was the lingua Franca between an incredibly diverse group of speakers from west to east in the southern half of modern Canada, down to modern Texas and across the part of the United States west of the Mississippi River (all the way to the Pacific), with some bleed over to the east of the river as well.

Writing system: Did not exist until the after colonization, but had more progress in its writing than modern ASL.

Dialectal variation: Existed, but was to some extent “deliberately” minimized, inasmuch as linguistic variation can be regulated. The language existed to be as mutually comprehensible as possible across all four compass directions of most of a continent. There were probably enough variations to make that occasionally difficult, just because of the sheer size of its spread, but I don’t know enough specifics to say with confidence.

Anyway, that’s my way too much thought into a really minor rule in the DFRPG. Please feel free to add any additional languages you think need clarification, or quibble.

Precisely what it says on the tin. How might you balance this power?

PRECISION EVOCATION [-2]
Prerequisite: Channeling or Evocation power
Avoiding friendly fire: When you are casting a zonewide evocation, you may designate one target in that zone to be unaffected.
More precision [-1] You may designate an additional target as unaffected. This upgrade can be taken more than once.

I just made a long terrible noise for at least 10 seconds in a row. Holy. FUCK.

PRIMAL ENMITY [+0]

Description: You have a primal opposition to one or more enemies of yours, crossing over from personal dislike into the sort of warring that makes myths. Whether you’re a knight of the cross dealing with Denarians or a scion of Beowulf trying to stop a Grendelkin, you detect the presence and workings of your enemy more easily. The downside is, these sorts of bonds do not work one way.

Musts: You can only take this power if your relevant sworn enemy takes it as well.

Note: This isn’t a power you can slap onto any two rivals. The opposition of the enemies who take this power must be in the realm of myth: Heaven vs Hell, Winter vs Summer, and so forth are the class of viable candidates to go with here.

Skills Affected: Lore, Deceit, Stealth, possibly others.

Effects:

Know Thy Enemy. You know instinctively when your foe is at work. You can use Lore+1 to detect your enemy’s presence or identify them as the culprit behind the magic they weave.

The Enemy Knows Thee. Your presence and your magic are more detectable to your enemy than you might like. Any skill you use to conceal yourself from your enemy suffers a -1 penalty. Further, if you attempt to hide yourself with magic, the penalty is -2 instead.

This is a revision to the rules I had posted earlier, with a small but complete example:

The Premise

All social combat is based on the premise of getting someone to accept a deal that you offer them, for a very broad definition of deal. From a business transaction to "leave this room without molesting me further" to an "acquire this artifact or I kill your son", all of these fall under some kind of "deal." So, there are two mechanics to use here, and two social pressures to capture: armor and weapons for the first, and prior relationship and the actual deal for the second. Fortunately, the mechanics and the social pressures seem to line up nicely.

Armor: The prior relationship

Show of hands, how many of us have done something they would rather not just because someone we really like asked us to? Conversely, how many of us have refused to do something to help ourselves because someone we disliked asked us to? This disparity in our ability to be persuaded, under this system of social combat, will be represented by Armor class as follows.

Armor:-4 A very close friend or lover, someone whom we trust implicitly. Your loving spouse making puppy dog eyes at you to convince you to do something grants you Armor:-4.

Armor:-3 A good friend. Maybe not the guy who can hold a knife to your throat and you’d still feel safe, but someone you regularly engage with in a positive way.  The guy you have Sunday dinner with once a week grants you Armor:-3

Armor:-2 An ally: not someone you necessarily have super duper positive feelings about, but someone whose interests frequently align with yours. A business associate who has helped you in the past and kept his word asking you for another deal grants Armor:-1.

Armor:-1 A positive acquaintance, someone we would give more leeway than the average person. A friend of a friend you don’t know very well gets Armor:-1.

Armor:0 A neutral acquaintance. Either someone whom you haven't met before, someone you feel nothing special towards, or someone you are highly conflicted about. Random Joe Schmoe on the street, a random person your friend knows whom you are aware of, or someone whose morals you disparage but whose ends may justify the means to some extent in your book gets Armor:0.

Armor:1 A negative acquaintance. Someone whom you have reason to dislike, but no substantial reason to like. A guy who acted sleazy towards a woman once has to face Armor:1 to get that woman to do anything.

Armor:2 Someone with an incompatible philosophy to yours. You guys are definitely working at cross purposes by default, but you don’t personally have beef. A known homophobe who’s more patronizing than inclined to induce violence has to face Armor:2 to get someone with more pro-gay sentiments to do what he says.

Armor:3 A definite enemy. You definitely know this guy and you definitely think he’s an asshole. It’s not so personal that you’d go out of your way to screw him over, but if you saw him dangling off a cliff, you might step on his fingers. A businessman who bulldozed your house to make a mini mall would face Armor:3 to try to have you take his deal.

Armor:4 A nemesis. Someone whom you loathe without end, and who you may act specifically to spite. A campaign archvillain gets Armor:4 to defend against any social attacks the PCs who foiled him again and again try to make to get him to stand down.

Note: this armor does NOT represent the truth of a relationship, but rather what the person being persuaded believes to be true. So your brother who loves you dearly but whom you secretly wish to usurp from his throne and torture gets Armor:-4 on his defense, not Armor:4. Armor values can also change over the course of an interaction, if you do something that especially endears you to the other person or makes them despise you.  So if your brother finds out that you have been plotting to usurp him and have started by attempting to kill his son, his armor class against any deals you try to make with him will skyrocket right quick.

Weapon rating: The deal itself

Politics make strange bedfellows, and a really good deal can make even a powerful hatred move aside for a time. Conversely, a friend might try to persuade you to do something you’d really rather not because they’re your friend. The basis of a deal's weapon rating is the set of consequences that the listener can foresee and cares about, and it works as follows:

Weapon:-4  A deal that would be utterly idiotic to take: it’s pretty much guarenteed to screw you over for no benefit. A demon trying to get you to sell your soul for a piece of cloth gets Weapon:-4 to try to make that deal with you.

Weapon:-3 A pretty bad deal. There’s a whole lot of risk in taking the deal, and the reward is pretty crappy. A known thief trying to bribe the keeper of Esperacchius into trusting her to wield the sword gets Weapon:-3 for making the deal.

Weapon:-2 A crappy deal. You’re almost certainly going to get screwed, and while you’ll be compensated to a somewhat proportional extent, it’s nowhere near enough. A cop being bribed to release a probably guilty prisoner for $100 is facing a Weapon:-2 attack if his boss is likely not to overlook bribery.

Weapon:-1 A deal with concrete benefit, but you’re likely to come out behind. One of the fae asking you for something that seems innocuous but has a high likelihood of screwing you over down the line in exchange for information on a minor enemy has Weapon:1.

Weapon:0 An equal exchange. Convincing you to pay good money for something that is similarly expensive has Weapon:0.

Weapon:1 A concrete advantage to the person being persuaded. A reasonable amount of generosity in a deal has Weapon:1.

Weapon:2 A good deal. You’re coming out ahead, and there’s only a tiny chance that what you get in return will be unable to cover any losses. A good cop releasing someone he is pretty certain is being framed in exchange for enough money to live on for the next couple of weeks and a good chance of getting away with it faces a Weapon:2 deal.

Weapon:3 A great deal. You’re coming out ahead for sure, and the benefit for taking the deal will more than cover any risk. Being persuaded to invest in a company that is surely going to win the market according to several financial advisers involves a Weapon:3 deal.

Weapon:4 It would be stupid not to take this deal. Either you're in a situation where someone is promising you the world for nothing, or promising to destroy all you hold dear if you don't take the deal (these weapon ratings can come from less fuzzy things too!)

Note: Again, this weapon rating comes from what the person being persuaded thinks is a good deal. Further, it is possible for the person being persuaded to offer a concession if the weapon rating of what you are offering is just barely not enough to take them out by offering to take a deal slightly better in their favor.

Skills

Rapport: The main skill used to attack nicely in a social situation. You use this to make deals when you want to give someone a metaphorical carrot. You can also use this to defend against deals, but won’t see if the deal is bogus if you successfully defend with this.

Intimidation: The main skill used to attack not so nicely in a social situation. You use this to make deals when you want to threaten someone with a stick if they don’t listen to you.

Presence: Determines the social stress track. You can’t use this to attack, and can only use it to defend if someone is specifically trying to unseat you from some kind of leadership position. However, you can use it to make maneuvers.

Deceit: The main skill used to attack with bogus deals in a social situation. You use this when you promise someone a deal that is not so truthful.

Empathy: The main defensive skill in a social situation. You can defend against any deal with this, whether nice or not so nice. Furthermore, on a successful defense, you can figure out if the person offering you a deal is on the up and up. Empathy also determines social intiative, so use it to determine who acts first in social combat.

Discipline: A defensive skill only if someone is trying to intimidate you into taking a deal. Otherwise, it can only be used to defend against maneuvers designed to make you feel a way that’s convenient for the social attacker.

The First Impression

At the beginning of combat, everyone must roll Rapport (for a positive impression), Intimidation (for a negative impression), or Deceit (for a false impression) to try to make a first impression. You can roll to make an impression on a single person: that person rolls Empathy to defend, or they can choose to roll Discipline if you’re trying to intimidate them. You can also roll to make an impression on an entire group: the person with the highest defensive skill in that group rolls to defend. You can roll your first impression at Rapport + 2 to reveal nothing about yourself: this is closing down, and automatically applies to the whole group, who chooses the person with the highest Empathy to defend. 

If you successfully make your first impression roll, you can use it to place a social aspect related to that impression on the person you’re trying to make an impression on (or on the group if you make it against the group), and you get the tag on this impression. If you fail to make your impression roll, the person defending gets to place an aspect related to your failed roll, and the defender gets the tag. If you close down successfully, you don’t get to place an aspect related to an impression, but there is also no aspect to be used against you.

Example combat

The Grand Lady, a young woman with a reputation for vengeance and keeping her word, is attempting to negotiate with Arin Skavis and Ricky Raith to let her pass through their territory unmolested to let her stomp all over Xavier Malvora, who threatens to interfere with some of her plans. Arin is known as a level headed diplomatic sort who keeps her deals, but Ricky is a known sleazeball who will slide on any deal he can if it gets him any advantage. Their social stress tracks start as follows:

TGL: OOOO

Arin: OOOO +1 Mild
Ricky: OOO

TGL, Arin, and Ricky each roll to make a first impression. The Grand Lady goes for hardball, rolling Intimidation on both Arin and Ricky to make them scared of her. Ricky’s Discipline is Great (+4), but Arin’s Discipline is Fantastic (+6), so Arin rolls the defense. The Grand Lady rolls her Superb (+5) Intimidation and lucks out, getting a +2 on the roll for a total of Epic (+7). Arin fails the defense roll, so the Lady places the aspect THE GRAND LADY IS COMPLETELY UNFETTERED on Arin and Ricky.

Arin is pretty sure that the Lady is slick, and she doesn’t want to chance revealing anything. She rolls to close down. Her Rapport is only Great (+4), but closing down means that she rolls from +6, and her dice come up a perfect zero. The Grand Lady rolls her Great (+4) Empathy and doesn’t roll well enough, so Arin is successfully unreadable.

Ricky is younger and more slimy, so he rolls Deceit to try to establish that he is TOTALLY INNOCUOUS. His Deceit is Superb (+5), and he gets a neutral roll, but the Lady rolls a +2 on her Empathy roll, and so she sees through his deception. The DM reveals the aspect A SPINELESS SLEAZEBALL on Ricky.

TGL: OOOO (THE GRAND LADY IS COMPLETELY UNFETTERED against Arin or Ricky, A SPINELESS SLEAZEBALL against Ricky)

Arin: OOOO +1 Mild
Ricky: OOO

Arin’s Empathy is Superb (+5), so she gets to act first. She wants the Lady out of the way as quickly as possible, so Arin goes for a quick and dirty sell: Arin agrees that Xavier Malvora is a dirtball, but argues that the Lady should wait until he’s in a more isolated environment to do what she wants to do, since it would be difficult to remove him right now. Arin gets Weapon:-1 on the deal, since the Grand Lady doesn’t trust that she could get to him in time to prevent him from mischief. Further, the Lady has Armor:2 against the attack, since she has a history of working against the White Court, but has nothing against Arin specifically. Arin rolls a +8 on the attack, and the Lady only gets a +4 on the defense. However, between the negative weapon rating and positive armor rating, the Lady only takes one stress. The Lady looks contemplative, and is willing to hear Arin out.

TGL: XOOO (THE GRAND LADY IS COMPLETELY UNFETTERED against Arin or Ricky, A SPINELESS SLEAZEBALL against Ricky)

Arin: OOOO +1 Mild
Ricky: OOO

The Lady goes next with her Great (+4) Empathy, and she goes immediately for a hard sell. She promises that if Arin and Ricky let her pass, she won’t string them up and flay them alive or something similar. She gets Weapon:0 on the deal: the Lady’s reputation for inflicting fates worse than death is pretty much on par with the White Queen’s, the latter of whom will be quite cross if Arin and Ricky let the Lady remove one of the Queen’s courtiers. Ricky has Armor:2 against the Lady, but Arin secretly has Armor:4 because the Grand Lady put Arin’s father on full display after publically feeding him his unmentionables, and Arin wants the Lady to suffer. In fact, the deal Arin offered is a lie designed to put the Lady into position to be backstabbed, but Jessie, the Lady’s player, doesn’t know this yet. The Lady rolls a total of +5 on the Intimidation attempt, and tags her COMPLETELY UNFETTERED aspect to give the attack a +2 against everyone, and tags a SPINELESS SLEAZEBALL to give it a further +2 against Ricky. The Lady gets a total of +7 to attack Arin, and a total of +9 to attack Ricky. Arin rolls a total of Legendary  (+8) on her Discipline defense and takes no stress, but Ricky rolls a -1 on the dice. With his Great Discipline, that makes his defense roll 3. Combined with his Armor:2, he takes 4 stress, just beyond his stress track, and he isn’t important enough to take a consequence. He’s taken out, and Jess decides he’s too intimidated to try to put up a resistance. The DM decides that this manifests as him going quiet: he’s still observing the deal making, but he’s too scared to participate, and will go along with whatever the Lady says if Arin relents.

Ricky with his Fair (+2) Empathy would go next, but he’s taken out.

TGL: XOOO (THE GRAND LADY IS COMPLETELY UNFETTERED against Arin or Ricky (tagged), A SPINELESS SLEAZEBALL against Ricky (tagged and doesn’t matter anymore))

Arin: OOOO +1 Mild
Ricky: OOO (Taken Out)

Arin decides to go for a maneuver instead, and decides to suggest to the Lady that she RESPECTS THE LADY’S PHILOSOPHY. This is a total lie, and the Lady rolls her Empathy to defend, since it’s higher than her Rapport anyway. But Arin totally fumbles the roll with a -4 on the dice for a total of Fair (+2), and The Grand Lady’s Great (+4) Empathy sees through the lie easily. The DM describes to Jess that the Lady suddenly sees the resemblance between Arin and Joe Skavis, a prior arc villain the Lady tortured to death in front of God and everybody. The Lady seeing through this ruse redefines her understanding of her relationship with Arin, and her armor goes up to Armor:3 against deals Arin makes.

The Lady attempts to sweeten the pot against Arin, but her offering of a more diplomatic deal falls flat: the Lady’s Rapport score is pretty crappy.

Arin then changes tracks. She makes clear to the Lady that they WILL settle accounts some day, but for right now, she has the sword Chris Hunter used during The Last Stand Of The Physician. Such a symbol of courage would make a potent weapon against one of the Malvora, but unfortunately for TGL, Arin’s deal is a load of garbage: the sword is actually one forged from a piece of metal Arin’s warlock friend has another piece of, and Arin wants to shove a whole bunch of thaumaturgy the Lady’s way. Further, Arin rolls perfectly, and gets a Incredible (+10) roll with a Weapon:1 attack. The Grand Lady’s defense is Good (+3) because she rolls a -1, but she has Armor:3. Jess suspects something is up, so to take the 5 stress coming the Lady’s way, she has TGL take the mild social consequence TOLERANCE FROM A VICTIM?

TGL: XOXO (THE GRAND LADY IS COMPLETELY UNFETTERED against Arin or Ricky (tagged), A SPINELESS SLEAZEBALL against Ricky (tagged and doesn’t matter anymore))
Mild consequence: TOLERANCE FROM A VICTIM?

Arin: OOOO +1 Mild
Ricky: OOO (Taken Out)

Jess is sick and tired of this social combat, and so TGL offers that she’ll take the sword and safe passage, and in return, promises a favor and won’t send Arin to join Joe Skavis. The deal is Weapon:4, unbeknownst to Jess: Arin is reasonably positive that she can spin sending a nasty ritual the Lady’s way after TGL kills Xavier as getting vengeance to the White Queen, and she will be quite happy to be rid of Xavier and TGL at the same time, or get the Lady to do Arin a favor if the death ritual fails. The Lady rolls a Legendary (+8) Intimidation roll, and Arin rolls badly on her defense and, even with Armor:4, ends up with more stress than her track, and she elects not to take consequences. The GM describes Arin as coolly handing the sword to the Lady and stepping out of her way. The Lady may have won the battle, but that doesn’t appear to mean that she’s won the war...


TGL: XOXO
Mild consequence: TOLERANCE FROM A VICTIM?
Arin: OOOO +1 Mild (Taken Out)
Ricky: OOO (Taken Out)

Have them take ritual (summoning) or thaumaturgy (probably with a specialization in summoning), then use one of these rules: https://dfrpg-resources.paranetonline.com/index.php?title=Summoning_Rules. Thaumaturgy can get a little wonky in terms of balance though, so beware. Easiest way to keep it from getting ridiculous is to remember a simple adage: your enemies will interfere with you as best as they can. If the player keeps taking the time to whip out this creature, their enemies are gonna notice and start trying to interfere with it.