• Power?
• Targeting freeloaders

• Failure
• Presumably TITAN

Supernatural power; limits unknown.

• Cats
• Mysteries
• Lo-fi music (to decompress)
• Coffee
• Sleeping
• Eavesdropping
• Cleanliness & looking nice
• Smores and smores-flavored things
• Helping others (subtle)
• Cooking (when he has the extra funds)

• Lying
• Organized religion
• Debt collectors
• Imbroglio
  
• Physically fighting
• Any form of teleportation (nausea)
• Being alone (especially with his Thoughts™)
• Deep ocean (thalassophobia)
• Fatalism
• Prejudices

• Health & Healing Items
  • Potions of healing, antidotes for toxins/poisons, elixirs of magic/power regen, powders of revival, medicines & herbs for most major ailments/status conditions, etc
    • Most popular items
    • 100% genuine and effective

• Luck Charms
  • Both good luck [bless] & bad luck [curse]
    • Efficacy uncertain, highly subjective

• Crystals & Gems
  • For focus, spellcasting, positive/negative vibes, aura control, decoration, etc
    • Authenticity and effectiveness are based on type and goal

• Buffing & Debuffing Items
  • Come in various forms, including but not limited to: rings, bracers, sigils/charms, jewelry, food/candy, clothing, powders, crystals/gems, etc
    • 75% reliability

• Books, Scrolls, & Tomes
  • Vast and varied selection, including but not limited to: countless types of spells, ancient & modern information on a wide variety of creatures/lore/myths/legends, various magic & magic-adjacent research, etc
    • Arguably all genuine, but vary wildly in accuracy or efficiency

• Trinkets & Curios
  • Wide selection of [presumably] non-magic items simply for enjoyment, such as novelties, knickknacks, souvenirs, ornaments, collectables, & curiosities
    • These sure are roadside attraction paraphernalia-esque

• Divination Tools
  • For fortune-telling purposes: tarot decks, non-tarot cards, dowsing rods, dice, runes, pendulums, spirit boards, crystal balls, scrying mirrors, etc
    • Effectiveness is said to depend entirely on divination skills and methods

• Ritual Tools
  • Altar dishes/bowls, chalices, pentacles, patens, swords & daggers, other blades, inks & quills, wax, wands, etc
    • Results may vary [wildly]

• Candles & Incense
  • Burning options for a wide array of intentions, including but not limited to: healing, love, fertility, protection, enlightenment, money, luck, etc
    • 100% real; ???% success rate

• Art & Statuary
  • Originating from countless different cultures and worlds, a vast selection of magical arts, statues, stained glass, décor, etc
    • Authenticity not guaranteed

• Summon & Familiar Accessories
  • Items for summoning specific entities from a large catalog of available choices
    • Results WILL vary; The Hourglass is not liable for any damage (collateral, property, physical, or psychic) caused by summons
  • Accessories for familiars, including but not limited to: clothes, armor, name tags, cute jewelry, etc
    • Any accessories destroyed by unsatisfied familiars will not be refunded

• SECRET ITEM: Information
  • Need specific information from around Thraelos? Want to know the current rumors surrounding something or someone? Desperate for intel on your next opponent? If you are aware this secret offer exists, you may be able to order it from Cain
  • If what you are wanting to discover is already available knowledge to Cain, it can be discreetly purchased off of him under the table
  • Cain can also be covertly hired to acquire the desired information, using his observational skills and social adroitness, then report back to you
    • Not all requests will be accepted; will depend heavily on many factors, including but not limited to: reason, importance, difficulty, and potential dangers involved for Cain himself

• Cartomancy (Tarot Reading)
  • The art of fortune-telling and divination through the use of cards
  • Probably the most popular psychic service he offers, cartomancy-- or more specifically: tarot reading-- is a means by which Cain may foretell a client's future by using a deck of cards. His preferred method is via tarot cards, but he is also able to utilize typical playing cards to the same degree. His tool of choice is a well-used tarot deck that seems very sentimental to him. Cain offers several different types of spreads based on what area of your life you might be aiming to focus on: love, success, spiritual, career, or any other manner of specific request
    • Available via appointment and walk-in

• Clairsentience
  • The power to perceive emotional or psychic energy that is imperceptible to the five standard senses
  • Similar to clairvoyance, Cain offers the ability to discern various types of information through use of his extrasensory perception-- the key difference being that he receives the information via psychic feelings rather than psychic visions. He can't always guarantee what exactly he will sense as this power can yield a vast array of results and depends heavily on many different variables, but he can attempt to hone in on specific subjects of interest. The psychic feelings can also manifest themselves in three completely different ways: precognition (pertaining to the future), retrocognition (pertaining to the past), and pericognition (pertaining to the current moment)
    • Available via appointment and walk-in

• Palmistry (Palm Reading)
  • The reading of character and divination by interpretation of lines and undulations on the palm of the hand
  • Another popular psychic service, through palmistry Cain can read a client's palm (or equivalent thereof) to glean attributes of their character, personality, and experiences. He can also read their future, which is the more common request, particularly with the focus on personal relationships
    • Available via appointment and walk-in

• Psychometry
  • The ability to discern facts or impressions about an object (or its owner) through physical contact
  • With psychometry, a client can bring an object to Cain (or bring Cain to an object) that he can then touch and tap into images or visions that will appear in his mind corresponding to the life of the subject that the object is associated with. Cain will require time with the object to better solidify the visions as they typically appear slowly and with incomprehensible definition; over time (which varies), he is able to bring the visions into focus and make more sense of the information presented in them. Very rarely can he instantly glean clear visuals and information from the initial touch
    • Available via appointment and walk-in

• Mediumship (Séance)
  • The practice of mediating communication between familiar spirits or spirits of the dead and the living
  • Via what is commonly known as a séance, Cain offers clients the opportunity to communicate with the deceased through the use of himself as a medium. This psychic service costs the most and is often the most demanding of him-- but it is also the only service that tends to yield paranormal occurrences perceivable to the naked eye. Séances have very specific time, place, and ritualistic demands of Cain, and thus can ONLY be via appointment. Unlike any of his other psychic services, hiring Cain's mediumship requires scheduling ahead of time and the addition of at least one preliminary meeting with the client prior, in order to allow Cain to properly prepare for a connection with the correct spirit
    • Available via appointment ONLY

• Cartomancy (Tarot Reading) 
  • Utilizes: Cold Reading, Warm Reading, Deduction, Improv, Confirmation Bias 
  • Being without a doubt the trick that Cain has the most practice in, Tarot Reading is his personal favorite psychic service and one he can pull off with ease. It seems that Cartomancy might have been the first psychic skill he ever learned; he still uses a very old and clearly sentimental deck– perhaps his first? Having an extensive memory and understanding of both the major and minor arcana at his disposal, most of Cain's focus goes instead toward the personalization of the pulls, leaning hard into his deductions of his client through Cold and Warm Reads to improv on his working memory of the cards' various meanings. He likes to add dramatic flair for fun as well, of course. He can whip out a professional card reading at a moment's notice, seemingly always in a state of gauging those around him for information. Giving any divination reading typically depends entirely on expounding on his understanding of the client, their goals, their problems, and what he personally believes is the best way forward for them. As with any other situation in which Cain is "telling the future", he will word it all in such a way that can't be brought back on him later should his prediction be incorrect. 

• Clairsentience
  
  • Utilizes: Cold Reading, Deduction, Induction, Abduction, Improv, Confirmation Bias  
  • Relying almost entirely on his sense of empathy, the trick to Cain's Clairsentience "ability" is simply observation and reasoning; he isn't entirely lying when he claims he can intuit something through a feeling. Working with empathy as the primary tool is technically using feelings to get results, after all. Out of all of his advertised psychic powers, Clairsentience is the simplest, yet not at all the easiest: simplest in that it's merely a mix of logical reasoning (all three types typically) and empathy. However, it's quite difficult in that there are no guardrails or parameters to follow, unlike Cartomancy or Palmistry, for example; it leaves him the most subject to any manner of topic or situation that can be thrown his way, thus he must be on his game to handle the high chance of curve balls. To that end, Cain will always give the disclaimer that this service yields the lowest guarantee of accuracy due to "many variables at play" and how he "doesn't have control over what information he receives"-- aka deniability should he fail.

• Palmistry (Palm Reading)
  • Utilizes: Warm Reading, Induction, Abduction, Improv, Confirmation Bias 
  • Reading palms is the easiest trick for Cain to pull off as it doesn't require much heavy mental work outside of memory. For the most part, he simply has to memorize and recall all of the possible "meanings" for the details found on palms. Warm Reading techniques can really spice up the reading to make it feel more "personal", as well as through observation and cause-and-effect reasoning (Induction and Abduction respectively). The tricky part comes in with reading palms for divination, but much like with Tarot Readings, Cain can simply expound on what he's already read of the client and improvise generic or vague enough predictions for them. He always states the predictions in ways that give him an out later should they not come to pass, though.

• Psychometry
  • Utilizes: Hot Reading, Warm Reading, Mentalism, Improv, Confirmation Bias
  • Similar to séances, Cain's Psychometry service typically relies heavily on research conducted in secret prior to the actual "psychic event" (Hot Reading). Although the focus is primarily on the object presented to him (at least to the onlooker), Cain utilizes any subtle information he can glean from the client as well to help formulate his overall understanding of the "big picture" (aka his interpretation or made-up details to fill in the gaps). Generic questions (Warm Reading) can really help in this case, something he can explain away as requisite for helping him "better understand the object and its history" so that he can "hone his psychic ability on it". Cain then requires that the object be left in his care (or that he has continued access to the object, especially if it's huge or immovable) for a number of days so that he can "focus and discern the visions". The truth, of course, is that he's actually just using that time to do as much research as possible. Once he has enough info to formulate a plan, he'll bring in the client once more, physically touch the object, and play up receiving visions of the answers (Mentalism). On rare occasions, Cain may already be familiar with the object (or what is being asked in relation to it) so he doesn't need to take time for research, instead simply pretending to get clear visions instantly.

• Mediumship (Séance) 
  • Utilizes: Hot Reading, Warm Reading, Cold Reading, Deduction, Induction, Abduction, Sleight of Hand, Mentalism, Misdirection, Improv, Confirmation Bias 
  • It's not a lie when Cain states that utilizing his "Medium skill" takes the biggest toll on him out of all of his psychic services-- it's simply not in the way he presents it as. Rather than due to honing his psychic abilities to reach and channel specific spirits, séances require use of all of his tricks and techniques to pull them off effectively, and then some. This is also the reason why this service is the only one REQUIRING an appointment in advance; Cain begins the service by doing as much research on the client and the client's deceased target as possible, which includes an initial "interview" appointment in which Cain gathers as much information as he possibly can (including the subtle info garnered through Cold Reading) under the guise of "making sure he hones in on and channels the correct spirit". Once he feels he has a sufficient portfolio of info to pretend convincingly, he'll rig the room in his shop that he'll use ahead of time with hidden theatrical tricks to secretly set off during the performance in order to make it seem as though paranormal activity is actually happening. Conducting the séance itself is an intensive one-man show that requires exhaustive effort from Cain and utilizes every type of logical reasoning, reading style, and a considerable amount of improvisation-- plus the Mentalism, Misdirection, and Sleight of Hand skills in order to pull off the theatrical parts at the same time.

 Meta role: Host NPC

✦ BTOCT Prologue

With a sharp thwip, the nature of the last tarot card was revealed.

“Hm, The Tower…” A beat followed by a long inhale, “There's no gentle way for me to infer this, so please forgive my bluntness: The current path of your financial future is careening towards complete and utter ruin.”
 
The client sitting across from him gasped softly, shaking their head in resignation. Their downtrodden expression told him that they had silently expected that answer all along.
 
“But,” Cain started again, gloved finger sliding over to tap The Chariot card pulled earlier, “You have the chance, the choice, right now to change that. After all, it’s called the ‘sunk-cost fallacy’ for a reason– you can choose to take your losses of the past, stop gambling, and bet instead on yourself, your worth, your potential, on a better financial future. The cards depict two paths for you: one in which you reap what you sow in the present and continue to instantly gratify your way to devastation– or one in which you break the addiction, weather the pain of the immediate, and walk out of the tunnel into a brighter future for yourself. So…” The psychic sat up, his gold eyes locked unwavering with the client’s rapt gaze. “You stand at a crossroads, my friend; in which direction will your chariot race?”
 
...
 
With a soft smile, Cain bid the client farewell, closing the door to The Hourglass behind him with a click of the lock and twist of the 'OPEN' sign. Once hidden by the thick wood of the door, he shook his head with a sigh. Sometimes these readings were making him less a “psychic” and more a “life coach”.
 
They’d been the last customer of the day, a sad fellow. With everything Cain could read on the poor lad, stricken by incessant poverty of their own well-intentioned doing, he couldn’t in his right conscience charge them for the tarot reading. After all, he saw in them a mirror of himself, one hitting far closer to home than he was willing to admit.
 
That would have been the fifth psychic service he’d decided to work pro-bono that week already– and it was only Wednesday. Maybe he was growing soft, his hidden bleeding heart starting to claw its way into his rationale more and more. Regardless of the why, the bills– his debt– didn’t have the same bleeding heart for him. They’d need to be paid somehow and–
 
Tp tp tp.

The faux psychic perked up, his thought interrupted by the sound of a knuckle tapping rhythmically against the window of his locked shop door. Who…? A man in a sharp suit stood on the other side, patiently waiting to be let in. 
 
Above the breast pocket sat the recognizable logo of TITAN.

"Present day" Thraelos; A small but well-known psychic. Resides in the city of Marrow where he keeps a small shop of magic wares, The Hourglass. Touts having a number of psychic skills and offers several psychic services (though it's all a ruse).

Contacted by the megacorporation TITAN for a hush-hush job offer: rid the century-abandoned Bifrost Terminal of its haunting; absurdly high payment. Needing the money, Cain accepts the job and travels via flight on the back of hired dragon, Kazuya, to the Bifrost Terminal to complete it, expecting it to be a case for a typical exorcism.

He discovers he is very very wrong. This is not a type of haunting he has ever seen before.

Well out of his league, he retreats back to Marrow, thanks to Kazuya retrieving him, and decides to subcontract additional help: anyone who feels equipped to assist, be it priests, psychics, paranormal investigators, mediums, ghost hunters, etc.

When he returns to the Bifrost Terminal and meets up with those that answered his call, they all become suddenly trapped within the facility by the most powerful ghost there, challenged now to free all of the spirits haunting the Bifrost Terminal in exchange for their freedom. 

✦ Within The Winning BTOCT Canon

 [TBD]

✦ BTOCT Epilogue

[TBD]

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