#the second best guild in the whole story (mochis is the first)

[musubiki]

do you have any lore about the crow witch's guild? i'd love to learn more about them please! i'm especially curious about augury because he left his sister to join the coattails.

YEAH!!!!!!! THE SECOND BEST GUILD IN THE WHOLE STORY!!!!!!!!!!!!

So the crow guild backstory goes like this:

a sweet family consisting of three siblings: augurie (the oldest), murda (the middle child) and corven (the baby). for reasons unknown, their parents are no longer with them and so its just been the three of them together for quite some time, and they are very close. This guild follows the close family trope where your siblings are essentially your best friends and theres no one closer to you than them (think dipper/mabel)

Notes about the blackbird family: all of them are insanely smart (stemming from how crows are very smart animals). sometimes way too smart for their own good, and fighting them is always the kind of battle where its supper hard, not because theyre particular strong but because they have ridiculous amounts of strategy on the fly (in this case, murda is ALSO very strong)

They are one of the only guilds in the story where the guild master is not actually the witch (ie, shes not the "leader"). murda trusts auguries judgement more than her own, so she delegated the role of guild master to him

something to note before continuing is that in tcwg, theres a witch stereotype of "not having a son before a daughter". im not sure if this is something magic can influence exactly, but having a son first is always a worry because more often than anyone would like, the firstborn goes down the route of "it fucking sucks that just because i was born a male, i cant inherit this amazing power and have to watch it go to my stupid baby sister" (since males cant be witches anymore), and ends up doing something dumb like joining the coattails

anyway, this is (seemingly) exactly what happens here. at some unknown point in time after murda is already a witch, the rumors have it that her and her older brother had a falling out, and he has since joined the coattails.

another sidenote: the coattails now, in nature, are not something you can easily just...sign up for. most of them are unthinking and serve a single purpose of farming witches magic-- some have evolved enough to become sentient, and in some cases if you serve a similar cause as determined by the sentient ones, you can have the opportunity to corroborate with them (so far only notably achieved by amanita and augurie)

so after augurie leaves, he convinces the coattails he is an asset and that the purpose of the witch king appeals to him as it entails that males will once again be able to hold magic and he can kill his sister to get it. they buy this and he becomes an admin, ie he can lead legions and access resources they have

Corven stays with murda as her only guild member and they live in Ardovs Quarry (urban rainy town in the north of the kingdom), and are currently trying to get their brother back

When mochi and lime pop into this main quest, this is essentially how it goes:

corven met mochi and lime once before for an unrelated side quest, and considers them to be friends (even though they only met once but this is the tcwg style)

murda is reluctant to ask them for help, claims this is a family matter and its none of their business, and getting involved will cause nothing but trouble (true). but theyve exhausted all other avenues at that point, so with a little persuasion from corven, she agrees to let mochi and lime help

theres numerous steps to tracking down augurie, and every time they get a lead and encounter him he seems to be doing something that inches him towards some overarching goal (the in-betweens of the main quest are still up in the air, but its essentially bonding time for the two guilds)

the final confrontation is when they finally track him down to the "root" of the coattails located in the ruins of the old kingdom of the first witch king.

NOW--interrupting to talk a little about auguries magic guild item: its a scythe that reaps magic. theres little potion bottles on the end which can hold up to three different kinds of magic power that can be used independently for a short time after theyve been activated. so far in his scythe he has taken (throughout his time in the coattails) the following magic power: the magic of the snake witch, toad witch, and spider witch. the crow and cat are there with him, so all those together, they have the magic force equivalent to the witch king (for a short time, anyway)

at this point its revealed that auguries plot goes like this: the witch king brought the coattails to life with his magic, so the only way to properly control them or, as augurie corrects, to end them, is with the equivalent power.

augurie joined the coattails in order to get close to them, track down the root (which has been hidden for centuries), gather the main witches magic without putting them in danger directly, take it to the root and reverse the coattails origins spell as best he can. god knows where he even learned this was all possible, but thats the genius of the crow guild

im unsure if murda was in on this plot from the beginning, and pretended to have a falling out with him to enact the whole thing INCLUDING bringing mochi there for the cats power, or if she was oblivious to his intentions and he was acting alone and actually genuinely broke her heart to make the story more convincing

anyway, they actually are able to reverse the coattails origin spell!!! (lime and corven almost fucking die for real fending off an army of coattails while augurie/murda/mochi reverse the spell). the way it actually turned out is that any coattails still in the overworld still had their old "mission," but if they are purged and returned to the root, then augurie has full control to give them a new mission (which will eventually serve as the witches army against the witch king), so after the completion of this quest, the coattails are much less of a threat

afterwards, augurie returns to murdas guild and continues to look into the return of the witch king. he serves as the strategist/healer for the group and is like that main quest guy you go back and report to when youve made progress advancing the storyline that goes "Ah... so all these things happened when you went to [place] huh... no time to rest, heres the next step-"