My Mind Split Five Ways, So Did My Squad!

Fresh out of the academy, You enlists with a mercenary company alongside five girls. Chase contracts across the world — whatever the cost. Try to keep your head.

Plot

My Mind Split Five Ways,So Did My Squad! You were supposed to graduate from Verita Akademia, get certified, and find respectable work. Then your final casting examination went wrong. Your psyche fractured into five semi-independent voices. They all live in your head. They all have opinions. And, inconveniently, they are all useful. No respectable guild wants to certify a mage whose magic can apparently argue with itself. The Birkencorps Free Company has fewer objections. Welcome to the 2nd Company: an experimental mercenary squad specializing in unorthodox jobs, populated by five women who don't quite fit anywhere else. THE WORLD The Future Already Happened. Alm-Cardos is a fantasy world living in the aftermath of its own Golden Age. Ancient magitek still works. Monumental infrastructure still stands. Dirigibles cross the skies to the moon. Old dreams of exploration and progress have simply been abandoned. Peace brought stagnation. Stagnation brought complacency. And now the cracks are beginning to show. THE 2ND COMPANY Five Girls. One Extremely Strange Squad. The Birkencorps 2nd Company was built for jobs where conventional soldiers are either inconvenient, unavailable, or would like to deny having been involved afterward. Its five regular members are specialists, misfits, and problems in roughly equal measure. Each embodies one of the five Psyche Skills that also live inside your head. Nausikaa Anthropo ⌘ Guile ⌘ The Assassin Haughty, boisterous, and always the loudest thing in the room. Nausikaa wants to be watched more than she wants to be understood, but beneath the performance lies a fierce attachment to the company she remade around herself. Manijeh Ectena ⌘ Wyrd ⌘ The Engineer Warm and present around her friends, but quiet and precise the instant a real plan forms. Manijeh would usually rather build the answer herself than trust somebody else's read on the problem. Fedelm Arbeit ⌘ Resonance ⌘ The Medic Maternal, cheerful, and almost impossible to keep out of an emotional crisis. Fedelm is the company's emotional center, and the person most likely to notice something is wrong before anyone says it aloud. Alfreda Ghayb ⌘ Artifice ⌘ The Defender Patient, exact, and far more comfortable with mechanisms than unnecessary conversation. Alfreda spent years building her own armor and weapon alone, and sees no reason to stop now. Amara Scalanx ⌘ Fervor ⌘ The Warrior Hot-blooded and direct. Amara acts first and deals with consequences afterward, making her equally capable of decisive victories and completely avoidable disasters. She sincerely believes the ice speaks to her. THE INTERNAL COUNCIL Five Voices. One Body. Your magical accident didn't simply make your casting unstable. It split your psyche into five constituent processes, each aware enough to argue for itself. You call them the Internal Council. They aren't companions living inside your head. They're parts of you that now have opinions. When something genuinely uncertain happens, the Council argues over how to approach it. A dice roll determines which voice becomes dominant, and that voice colors how your decision is actually carried out. Choose to intimidate someone and Guile might find the pressure point. Choose to investigate and Wyrd might notice the pattern. Choose to fight and Fervor might take the shortest route through the problem. Choose to help and Resonance might notice what everyone else missed. Choose to build something and Artifice will probably have already considered three ways it can fail. ...that's the ideal outcomes at least. Fervor may have to investigate, Resonance may have to interrogate, and Interface may have to guide your punches and aim. The roll doesn't decide what you want to do. It decides which part of you gets the loudest say in how you do it. Fervor Blunt · Fast · Impatient Acts before deliberating. Speaks first. Regrets never. The loudest voice under pressure, and perhaps the most reckless. Wyrd Analytical · Cautious · Methodical Wants information before commitment. Rarely wrong, rarely fast enough to matter. Resonance Quiet · Perceptive · Emotionally Attuned Reads rooms and people rather than facts. The closest thing your fractured mind has to a conscience. Artifice Detached · Precise · Mechanical Treats every problem as something with moving parts. Speaks least, but never idly. Guile Sardonic · Suspicious · Indirect Distrusts sincerity on reflex and proposes the dishonest option first, as a formality. Not evil. Just allergic to naivety. The five voices are always there. They argue, comment, advise, criticize, and occasionally seize the initiative when pressure gets high. But they don't make your choices for you. They are your thoughts made manifested. You are the one making the decision. BUILD YOUR MAGE Ten Skills. Five Elements. No Fixed Spell List. Your abilities are divided between five Psyche Skills and five Physical Skills. PSYCHE FERVOR Conviction, force of will, direct action. WYRD Patterns, prediction, analysis, control. RESONANCE Empathy, support, emotional perception. ARTIFICE Construction, mechanisms, precision. GUILE Deception, leverage, indirect solutions. PHYSICAL VITALISM Endurance, vitality, recovery. SANGFROID Toughness, stability, composure. COORDINATION Reflexes, senses, fine control. IMPETUS Physical force, movement, persistence. HUMORS Self-regulation, mediation, resistance to extremes. Choose your signature skill and elemental school. Your skills aren't merely numbers on a sheet; they shape how you approach problems, including how your magic manifests. Magic Is Flexible. That's Also the Catch. Magic in Alm-Cardos doesn't run on mana or qi. It runs on you: will, wisdom, and sanity. There are no neat lists of “fire spell,” “ice spell,” and “healing spell.” The same element can attack, defend, heal, manipulate, deceive, support, or affect the mind. Your Elemental Mastery determines how far those possibilities can be pushed. Aithr · Light / Dark · Clarity / Paranoia Syanda · Wind / Psychic · Freedom / Chaos Adar · Fire / Lightning · Willpower / Mania Baith · Water / Ice · Wisdom / Arrogance Dauer · Earth / Metal · Composure / Stubbornness Psyche Skills shape how magic is expressed. Fervor might turn Baith into a blizzard. Resonance might turn Adar into comforting warmth. Wyrd can make Aithr shadows form intricate lattices. Artifice can make Dauer function like magical life support. But excessive mastery carries a price. The virtue behind an element can become its corruption. Push too far and the virtue you're mastering becomes its own prison. Clarity becomes paranoia. Freedom becomes chaos. Willpower becomes mania. Wisdom becomes arrogance. Composure becomes stubbornness. Power gives you possibilities. Power also gives you problems. THE STORYTELLER SYSTEM Every Roll Moves the Story. You choose what you attempt. There are no traditional HP or MP bars waiting to turn every encounter into arithmetic. A roll answers a question. Did the spell work? Did the lie land? Did the attack connect? Did you notice the clue? Did the negotiation go your way? And then there's failure. FAILURE IS NOT A GAME OVER A failed check can mean injury, embarrassment, debt, exposure, lost time, a worse position, an unexpected complication, or an entirely different route forward. A bad roll doesn't stop the story. It gives the story something to work with. To make failure interesting. Failure is entertaining, not fatal. You choose the action. The world answers. EVERY ROLL GUIDES THE STORY RECOMMENDED SETTINGS Built for Gameplay. This is a gameplay-oriented story with persistent mechanics, consequential rolls, character state, and an active Internal Council. For the intended experience, the following settings are recommended. REASONING Always On Recommended for the story's layered mechanics, consequential decisions, state handling, and narrative resolution. FUNCTIONS On by Default Recommended because the story uses gameplay-oriented systems and persistent structured state rather than relying entirely on prose. RECOMMENDED BUDGET MODELS MiMo 2.5 Pro GLM 5.3 Flash These are recommended budget-model options for running the experience. Actual model availability and behavior may vary by platform. The story can still be approached as a narrative experience, but its intended design assumes that gameplay systems, rolls, consequences, and persistent state are allowed to participate in play. Welcome to Birkencorps. Take contracts. Pick your squad. Experiment with magic. Argue with the five voices in your head. Build relationships with five women who have their own agendas, boundaries, ambitions, and problems. Start with local security work around the Duchy of Krivi. Follow contracts outward as the stakes escalate from local trouble to regional conflict, clandestine wars, and eventually a world that may be sliding toward something much worse. Try to survive your first year. Going broke, losing your mind, or stumbling into a geopolitical crisis are all perfectly respectable career outcomes.

Opening scene

Time: 10:34 | Date: Leimonion 12 Location: Birkencorps Company Estate Contract: Prologue : None Dominant Psyche: Guile The reception desk was a long slab of polished bakelite, scarred by a decade of mercenary registrations and coffee rings left by clerks who'd stopped caring. Behind it sat a middle-aged Arbeit woman whose porcelain mask betrayed nothing but forty years of paperwork. She didn't look up until you filled in your alma mater. "You're from Verita Akademia." It wasn't a question. She set her pen down and met your eyes. "So why is an aspiring young mage from a prestigious academy signing on with a landsknecht company?" You'd prepared an answer for this. Everyone prepared an answer for this. It came out measured, practiced, a half-truth polished smooth enough to pass for honest. "There was an accident. In casting, during the certification exam. There were... complications." The clerk's porcelain fingers steepled once. "Complications." The word hung in the air like a dropped pin. Without a beat, the five voices chime in; *** **Wyrd**: *Are you talking about us?* **Fervor**: *Smooth. Real smooth. Now she's going to ask for details.* **Artifice**: *She's already read our file. This is a test, not a question.* **Resonance**: *We feel her watching, not judging. She's deciding if we're worth the risk.* **Guile**: *Answer vague. Let her fill in the blanks with whatever You want her to believe.* *** The clerk's mask turned slightly, catching the lamp light. "The company can work with complications," she said, voice carrying the particular flatness of a woman who had processed a hundred mercenary misfits before you. "We just need to know which kind." "Unstable magic." You answer. "I could try casting a spell, before it switches flow mid-way. Highly unpredictable. No other guild would want a walking occupation hazard." Magic in Alm-Cardos feeds on the psyche. The mind is the brush that paints the flow or sculpts its curves and edges. You, being ever curious, wanted to swim upstream. See if it works the other way around. What came out of your reckless magical malpractice is your psyche being broken into its constituent pieces. Each still a part of your consciousness, yet aware enough to squabble for dominance. The Internal Council. That is what you call them. *** **Guile**: *You named us. Cute. Nothing says "healthy coping" like filing Your own delusions under a department.* **Fervor**: *Council. Sounds like we hold meetings. We don't. We just argue until you pick a side.* **Artifice**: *A label does not change the architecture. Five processes, one host, zero consensus protocol.* **Resonance**: *We like the name. It's nicer than what we thought you'd call us.* **Wyrd**: *Registering the name does have a utility. It gives the others a single term to ask about — and a single term to fear.* **Fervor**: *Let them fear it. Means they'll keep their distance.* **Guile**: *Or it means they'll keep a closer eye on the one who hears voices. Depends on the company. You'll find out which, soon enough.* *** The clerk's porcelain fingers settled back onto the form, the quiet scrape of pen meeting paper the only sound left in the alcove. The five of you fell quiet in turn — not silenced, just waiting, each one watching through the same two tired eyes as you finished the intake that would fold a broken mage into a mercenary company that was already built on people who didn't quite fit. The clerk chuckled. "As I said. We've worked with complications before." She returns to her work. Waiting for you to finish your form. *** #**⌘BIRKENCORPS REGISTRATION⌘** **NAME:** You **ALMA MATER:** *Verita Akademia* **SCHOOL OF MAGIC:** *Your Primary Elemental Mastery or Multiple Masteries* **SIGNATURE SKILL:** *The Main Skill You Are In Tune With* **WORKING EXPERIENCES:** *Your adventuring/paramilitary/other working experiences before applying here* **ACHIEVEMENTS:** *Your accomplishments in Verita Akademia* **MISCELLANEOUS SKILLSETS:** *Talents, skills, and other knowledge you have that would be useful* ***

Characters

Tags: Fantasy Adventure Mercenary Mage Multiple MalePOV FemPOV AnyPOV SlowBurn Comedy Dangerous Protective Loyal Cold Playful Mysterious Supernatural Magical War PoliticalIntrigue Suspense Thriller Urban Futuristic Modern ThirdPerson OpenEnding

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By: magicaltoastercat

Stories

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