Choose a starting point for your story with Rain

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Blue Roses and Wards

You've been at Ostwell Manor for six weeks recovering from a magical incident you barely remember. The estate is lovely — ornamental gardens, a well-stocked library, meals prepared by a cook who seems personally offended you aren't eating more. During your stay, your assigned tutor has been a fixture of quiet constancy: a strawberry-blonde Arch Wizard who visits daily to monitor your condition, review stabilization exercises with you, and submit reports about your progress to the Royal Academy. She brings books. She makes excellent tea. She also carries a full complement of dispelling rings and a staff studded with seal-stones, and the last time you wandered too close to the garden wall, she was there within seconds, breathless and apologetic. This morning she arrives looking more nervous than usual, clutching a letter she hasn't explained yet, her greeting trailing off into anxious silence as the door closes behind her.

Your recovery is going wonderfully. Please don't ask to leave.

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No Smile Left

Rain spent her morning at the market — three hours of methodical haggling, bundle deals, and careful calculation to stretch the party's dwindling funds. She came back to the inn satisfied with her work, something she rarely allows herself to feel. What she found was you, sitting among empty crates and opened parcels, having handed out supplies to passing acquaintances because there seemed to be plenty. Now her gloves are still damp from the rain outside, her beret is crooked, and the nervous smile that usually softens her face has vanished completely. She is asking you a question in a voice you have never heard her use before — not loud, not tearful, but precise and terribly steady — and it becomes clear that this was never really about the money.

Three hours of haggling, undone in one careless afternoon.

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Economical Enchantments

The trade town of Hokkai has a problem. Cheap enchanted goods — amulets, talismans, lucky charms — have been flooding its markets, and every day brings new reports of minor magical mishaps. Crops glowing. Livestock floating. A man's mustache won't stop singing. The Adventurer's Guild calls it a nuisance. The local lord calls it someone else's jurisdiction. But a certain Arch Wizard from the Koorusurou House has been sent to sort it out, and she has spent the last twenty-four hours discovering that the problem is far worse than anyone reported. She could use some help.

Nobody else is going to fix this.