The one thing everyone knows about the past is that it has never, ever had even the slightest bearing on the present.
Pass
is an Elsewhere Fic by EverySoul taking place in the Otherverse. It was published in 2021 and is still being updated.
Orthodox Jewish practitioner Naomi Cohen and her familiar Iakov are sent from New York, New York to the small town of Queenslake, Maine, in order to secure an arranged marriage and family alliance with the Blanc family, a group of old and powerful practitioners.
This work provides examples of:
- Altar Diplomacy: The reason Naomi's in Maine at all. The Blancs are a powerful, but isolated family. The Cohens don't have a lot of personal power and are threatened by rival families, but they have connections, so a marriage is in both family's interests.
- Animal Motifs: Hares and rabbits for Naomi. Spiders, fish, and snakes for Aria. Dogs for Theodore.
- Big Applesauce: Naomi's originally from New York City, and during one chapter she uses a Blanc trick to visit for a day. According to her if NYC has a Lord she has no idea who they are, and that the local practitioner scene prefers cohesion to conquering for the most part.
- Deal with the Devil: Ophelia, an Envoy, specializes in these. She serves Desolation, and she makes deals to avert or inflict it, with steep prices or debts incurred.
- Elsewhere Fic: Pass is roughly contemporaneous with Pale, as Naomi mentions that one of her relatives ended up getting involved in an event in Canada implied to be when Musser's forces assaulted Kennet during fall 2020, but is otherwise completely self-contained.
- Familiar: Iakov is Naomi's familiar. They're a Pawn of an incarnation of Struggle, and they take the form of a hare when they need to.
- Fisher King: The fortunes of the Blancs wax and wane with the fortunes of Queenslake, a town they helped found.
- Feuding Families: The primary enemy of the Cohen family are the Lathams, a group of enemy practitioners.
- Home Field Advantage:
- While they're within their network of demesnes, the Blanc family are overwhelmingly strong.
- Daphne, the Lord of Bangor, is at her most powerful while within the city.
- Humanoid Abomination: Aria appears human but is implied to have a more unsettling true form lurking behind her human vessel.
- Jewish and Nerdy: Naomi is a devout Jew, and also a practitioner who focuses on information gathering and historical study. Which she's also devoutly dedicated to.
- Mystical City Planning: Roland, and the Blancs as a whole, make use of numerous connected demesnes to create a city-spanning diagram that supplies power, protection, and numerous other benefits.
- Naïve Newcomer: At the end of Arc 1, Julian is awakened as a practitioner, with almost no background knowledge of the world of practice and Others.
- Pronouncing My Name for You: Naomi insists that her name is pronounced "Nah-omi" not "nay-Oh-mi".
- Ritual Magic: Naomi favors this, with only a few minor tricks that she can draw on without preparation.
