✨WRITTEN REQUIREMENTS✨

(X) Background (5)
🌟Name of your Show: Of Daises and DDT
🌟Aesthetic: A combination of the charm and whimsy of solarpunk and the sleek surfaces and pristine edges of a modern, high-tech world. Lush, verdant greenery meet gleaming solar panels, busy shopping malls, and quiet suburban streets. Picture spotless greenhouses filled with plants growing from beakers and nursed to life with artificial lighting that mimics the sun, crystalline pools surrounded by artificial forests, roof gardens illuminated by soft golden sunlight and exploding with trellises and potted plants, and highways lined with perfectly trimmed trees and colorful flower bushes.

🌟Premise in 140 characters: In a world of industrial toxins and Instagram captions, an ancient enemy has re-emerged. The deities of the old enlist three high school girls to defend life on Earth against dark magic and deadly pollutants alike.

(X) Character info (10)
🌟Name: Anjali Tripuramallu
🌟FC: Neelam Gill
🌟Age: 17
🌟Role on team: Ringleader
🌟Personality (at least 5+ and 5-): Anjali is practical and pragmatic and gets things /done/. She values efficiency and a good work ethic, and she is quite the perfectionist when it comes to many aspects in her life. Anjali is a veritable battle-axe of a girl-she /will/ get what she wants, even if she has to constantly harangue an unfortunate soul to do so. Anjali never takes no for an answer, and she can be very, very pretentious. She's nigh-on indomitable and ever the realist, with no dreamy delusions or fantastical expectations. Anjali is unstoppable, unforgettable, and undeniably destructive...unless she gets the results that she wants.

Anjali is absurdly blunt-she has absolutely no regard for one's "finer feelings" and "sensitivities", and she says what she means, head-on, without any subtlety whatsoever (much to Steph's exasperation). She has a reputation for being an "ice queen" because she can be rather cold; Anjali holds no qualms about walking straight up to somebody and telling them that their outfit is /atrocious/. That is, if they're even worth the effort that it takes (spoiler alert: 99% of the time, they're not). She is rational and logical and /will/ argue with you about the merits of drilling for oil in the Arctic Circle if you bring it up (another spoiler alert: there are none).

Still, behind Anjali's icy demeanor, she can actually be...nice. Perhaps the most prominent example of this is her relationship with Steph-if anyone else talked as much as Steph did, Anjali would have ruined their social standing by now. However, Steph is Anjali's closest friend, and she would go through hell and back to protect her. So before you tell Steph that she needs to shut up, make sure you think twice; do you /really/ want Anjali glaring daggers at you as she tears apart your self-esteem?

Another exception she makes is for people who genuinely care about the environment. No matter how tacky, irritating, hideous, or irksome you are, if Anjali thinks that you really, truly want what is best for the Earth, she will leap to your defense if anyone even /tries/ to make fun of you.

Proud to the point of being arrogant, Anjali's face is perpetually arranged in an expression of impassive disdain. She's not very good at comforting people-she can scare them, yes, and make them do what she wants, but she's not great at making them /like/ her. Which suits her just fine. And though she maintains this facade of icy disinterest, on the inside, Anjali is just as insecure as everybody else. She hates her flabby arms and huge thighs and fleshy stomach. She hates the number she sees on the scale when she weighs herself. So she's going to /do/ something about it. Failure is not an option.

With her snooty attitude and generally stuck-up nature, just whispering her name sends tremors down the underclassmen's spines. Anjali is most definitely /not/ a likeable person.

No matter, though. Why should she give a sh.t about your opinion?

+Strategic, intelligent, confident in her own abilities, dedicated, hard-working
-/+Blunt, straightforward, assertive, outspoken
-Downright mean, snarky, cold, insecure about her weight, confrontational, judgmental

🌟Likes: the color white, the color silver, pantsuits, elegant, classy dresses with minimal frills and/or decoration, black pumps, sharp pencils, being organized, all shades of dark blue, coffee without any added milk, cream, or sugar, girls who kick a$s, kicking a$s herself, people who get straight to the point (she has no patience for people who uselessly skirt around a topic), punctuality, people who have a keen eye for small, specific details, being bossy, doing what needs to be done, organizing/planning events, practicality and productivity, being obeyed, helping others, fighting for what she believes in, studyblr accounts, dance (especially ballet), biology, medicine, economics and math, environmental science and sustainable development plans, the environment in general, minimalistic elegance

🌟Dislikes: trashy pop music (basically, anything that Steph enjoys listening to), dirty clothes, rumpled clothes, stains on her clothing, messiness and sloppiness, people who are disorganized, people who are unprepared, people who are late, incompetence, sugary drinks (soda? Ew. Frappuccinos from Starbucks? Even more /ew/.), stupid rap music with lyrics that make no sense or lyrics that are sexist, "frat" boys and preppy white boys, sexist people, homophobic people, the color cherry pink (it's so garishly bright that it hurts her eyes), cheap knock-offs, people who have no regard whatsoever for others, people who are constantly being careless, chocolate cake with too much frosting, "fake" people, people who don't care about the environment, history classes (all the books are just /so/ biased), overly extravagant/gaudy decorations, idiots who don't realize that the environment is a huge issue

(X) 🌟Character bio: (10)

Right from the start, Anjali knew she had to be perfect.

Perfect grades. Perfect hair. Perfect posture. Perfect /everything/.

Her parents signed her up for a wide variety of lessons as soon as she could walk. Painting. Swimming. Violin. Ballet. Supplemental classes in math, reading, and writing as soon as she entered first grade.

Her parents didn't see anything wrong with putting so much pressure on Anjali at such a young age. After all, they went through the same thing-Anjali's parents may have grown up in America, but her grandparents immigrated to the US from India. And they expected /more/ out of Anjali's parents than her parents do of her, or so her mother likes to say.

Anjali excelled at her supplemental classes. And though she was a clumsy ballerina, as all six-year-olds tend to be, she would eventually blossom into a talented dancer. She wasn't great at painting, though, and she was only average at swimming.

As for the violin? Please. Anjali is probably the most tone-deaf person on the planet. She did it until seventh grade, when she /finally/ convinced her parents that a) she sucked at the violin, and just /practicing/ more wouldn't help and b) they were wasting their time and money on expensive private lessons.

Painting was gone by third grade, because her parents signed her up for additional math classes. And swimming was gone by fifth grade, because Anjali hated how the chlorine ruined her hair. Besides, dance, with all its precise steps and elegant grace, was more her style.

Anjali has lived in the town of Canary Canal for practically her entire life. Her parents originally moved to Canary Canal because they had secured research positions at a government-run laboratory on the outskirts of the town. Anjali's mother is a statistician and data analyst, while her father is a chemist, with a particular focus on industrial substances. They were hired to work on an ongoing project-D.A.I.S.E, or Detailed Assessment of Industrial Enigmas. The objective of the operation? To assess and analyze the state of the soil and groundwater in the town of Canary Canal and its surrounding regions, decades after the Love Canal disaster.

Perhaps it is worth mentioning that Canary Canal is only about ten miles from where Love Canal once stood. When Lois Gibbs and the Love Canal Homeowners' Association brought the toxic chemicals in their backyards and play grounds to the attention to the general public, the former suburban neighborhood became a veritable ghost town as families moved away and the government closed the area off, inciting a costly Superfund clean-up.

But that was practically fifty years ago.

When Anjali first moved to Canary Canal, it was a tiny little town populated mostly by researchers and scientists, the people needed to maintain the government laboratories and facilities (janitors, truck drivers, etc), and their families. However, a real estate company decided to buy the land and develop suburban communities in the area, causing Canary Canal's population to explode. Advertised as the first "environmentally-sound" community in America, the developers promised home buyers that all their electricity would come from renewable sources of energy, that there would be charging stations for electric cars at every conventional gas station, and that their water would come from "sustainable sources" (the original plan was to openly tell home buyers that it was purified sewer water, which is just as safe to drink as filtered tap water, but the marketing and advertising department changed the language a little bit-for obvious reasons).

Whether or not Canary Canal is /actually/ an "environmentally-sound" community is up for debate. It is, after all, very much like any typical burgeoning suburban area in America. There are department stores and shopping plazas and swimming pools and malls and schools-but they're /just/ out of walking distance for the majority of the people living in Canary Canal. The recent surge in population has led to more land being cleared for houses and stores and parking lots; in ten years, people say, the town will be completely unrecognizable.

But Anjali had never really been aware of many environmental issues until she became a magical girl.

The Sisterhood-that's what They call it, anyway-was created to protect life on Earth. Anjali still isn't /totally/ sure why she was chosen, but she supposes that will come in time. She hopes it's sooner, rather than later-she's getting pretty damn impatient.

Anjali discovered she had been selected for the Sisterhood during eighth grade. Stephanie Wang and Kaela Jones, her two closest friends at the time, would be fighting alongside her. It was a new, exciting experience...until Kaela was killed.

They, the ones who controlled at least /this/ aspect of Anjali's life, wrote it off as a car accident to Kaela's family and the rest of the world. And Anjali hates Them for it, even though she knows that They cannot let the truth get out. Kaela was more than a flimsy /car accident/.

Anjali vowed to herself that after she and Steph defeated Dr. Zombyss, she was going to /kill/ Them unless they answered for their actions.

Life went on. Anjali and Steph entered their sophomore year of high school. Anjali was as cold as usual, Steph was as chirpy as usual, and everyone else was as annoying as usual. Nobody besides Steph suspected what was going on in Anjali's head, what /had/ been going on since middle school, when puberty hit and Anjali's skinny frame started to fill up. Anjali doesn't have the healthiest relationship with food, so to speak. To her, hunger is strength. It is power; it is one step closer to perfection.

And right from the start, Anjali knew that she had to be perfect.

(X) 🌟Skills (5):
-Getting other people to do what she wants through sheer intimidation
-Dancing (Anjali likes ballet the best, but she's not /horrible/ at modern/contemporary dance either)
-Enduring pain (a strange skill, perhaps, but one must learn to appreciate pain if they're going to be flexible enough to do the splits with their front foot propped on a chair. Or if they're going to be fighting an insane maniac who's hell-bent on destroying life on Earth as we know it, though Anjali finds that there's less to /appreciate/ about being stabbed in the gut than there is in stretching until everything is sore)
-Anjali has always excelled in math and science
-Making others feel like they're worthless...oh wait, that's a /skill/?
-Absolutely deadly in a fight, especially with a scythe in her hand and a blade tied to the end of her braid
-Can control ice and snow and communicate with rocks and mountains; also has elevated endurance levels/stamina

(X) 🌟Weaknesses (5):
-Hip-hop. Anjali has never been good at it
-Being..../nice/. Yeah, this is /definitely/ something that she needs to work on
-Insecure regarding her own body
-Seeing things from other people's point of view
-Heart-to-heart talks (Anjali tends to be /very/ awkward about things like that)
-Anjali's fighting style is much better for defending a stronghold than conducting an invasion. By herself, Anjali would be able to keep the enemy from /reaching/ whatever she's trying to defend, but she wouldn't be able to eradicate them altogether

(X) 🌟Greatest wish and greatest fear: (5)
Greatest wish-getting skinny and defeating Dr. Zombyss

Greatest fear-being viewed as weak or vulnerable, gaining weight, being defeated by Dr. Zombyss

✨BONUS WRITING REQUIREMENTS✨
(X) 🌟Write at least 4 sentences for the character bio (5)
(X) 🌟Include a link to a gif of your FC or that is evocative of their aesthetic: (5)
68.media.tumblr.com/86c54c3b70582d691…

em.wattpad.com/51478719ef06f31eeb8452…

(X) 🌟 How do (or will) they feel about being a magical kid? (3)

She finds it annoying, sometimes (/especially/ when zombie-bird blood gets all over her outfit or car, or when fighting those damn things makes her late for an event that she cares about), but Anjali secretly enjoys it. She enjoys the rush of adrenaline, and the pure /satisfaction/ she gets from hacking a zombie-bird to bits with her scythe. Some may find the exhilaration she gets from killing Dr. Zombyss's creations to be rather morbid, but Anjali begs to differ. Have /you/ ever been attacked by an undead bird who's trying to claw your face off? No? Then stop talking.

(X) 🌟 What's their biggest challenge faced by everyday life (3)
Trying to eat 1,000 calories a day (or less) without feeling like she's going to faint, especially when she has dance.

(X) 🌟 What would be your OC's catchphrase, or what phrase do they use constantly? (2)
"Fvck off."

"I hesitate to articulate for the fear of deviating from the highest degree of accuracy." (It's an inside joke...don't ask)

✨WRITTEN REQUIREMENTS✨

(X) Background (5)
🌟Name of your Show: Of Daises and DDT
🌟Aesthetic: A combination of the charm and whimsy of solarpunk and the sleek surfaces and pristine edges of a modern, high-tech world. Lush, verdant greenery meets gleaming solar panels, busy shopping malls, and quiet suburban streets. Picture spotless greenhouses filled with plants growing from beakers and nursed to life with artificial lighting that mimics the sun, crystalline pools surrounded by artificial forests, roof gardens illuminated by soft golden sunlight and exploding with trellises and potted plants, and highways lined with perfectly trimmed trees and colorful flower bushes.

🌟Premise in 140 characters: In a world of industrial toxins and Instagram captions, an ancient enemy has re-emerged. The deities of the old enlist three high school girls to defend life on Earth against dark magic and deadly pollutants alike.

(X) Character info (10)
🌟Name: Elodie Emmeline Schmidt
🌟FC: Sara Grace Wallerstedt
🌟Age: 16
🌟Role on team: Initiate
🌟Personality (at least 5+ and 5-): Before the accident, Elodie was cheerful and bubbly, if a bit shallow, with a love of laughter and life. Before the accident, she was impulsive and outgoing and energetic-a ball of pure enthusiasm.

Before the accident.

Now, though? Elodie is distant and withdrawn, lost in her own head more often than not. She can stare off into space for hours at a time, only half-aware of what's going on around her. Creative and whimsical, Elodie has walked through her school wearing a heavy wool jacket paired with a miniskirt and cowboy boots on more than one occasion. Her strange mannerisms and quirky ways make her seem more than just /slightly/ off-her-rocker. Flitting through the world like a bird, full of dreamy nonsense and endearing eccentricities. Elodie is very gentle-she would never hurt a fly.

Elodie is startlingly perceptive, despite her faraway eyes. She rarely says anything, but she sees /everything/. Elodie doesn't know how to explain it; it's like she can just /feel/ what's wrong, why somebody is angry or upset. Elodie can go through her entire day in a dream-like haze without tripping over something or crashing into the wall. She tends to be hyper-aware of other people's emotions, even if she can't place her /own/ emotions.

Mostly, however, Elodie feels empty and alone. After developing amnesia, she became distant and introverted, and she feels like nobody understands her. How could they, when her boyfriend came up to her and told her that he loved her, and all Elodie could do was stare at him and wonder who the hell he was? How could they, when they remember their first day of high school and what movie they saw last week and what a^2 plus b^2 equals, and Elodie /can't/?

All Elodie wants is to feel whole again. To feel like she is fully /here/, on Earth, living her life, surrounded by the people she loves. Yet she doesn't even love her boyfriend (ex-boyfriend?) anymore, not after the accident.

She used to love mint chocolate-chip ice cream and frappuccinos from Starbucks, everybody says. But now ice cream makes her feel like throwing up, and frappuccinos give her a headache.

She used to love singing and acting, everybody says. She played the lead role in over half of their school's productions. But now, the very thought of simply standing on a stage makes Elodie dizzy with anxiety. And she doesn't remember how to read music. Well, she can still read a /little/ bit. But what use is that?

The only part of pre-accident Elodie that Elodie feels like she has retained is her love of art. Elodie still loves the feeling of a pencil in her hand, the sight of an empty canvas spread out in front of her-however, instead of emulating the pop art styles of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein like she used to, Elodie is now drawn to abstract expressionism and contemporary surrealism.

Elodie just wants to be happy with who she is. But how can she do that if she always feels like she is simply a shadow of her former self?

+Creative, gentle, perceptive, observant, soft-spoken
-Overly shy, anxious, distant, withdrawn, absentminded

🌟Likes: sunrises, bananas (and banana bread, banana-nut muffins, banana milkshakes...), lemonade and honey-lemon tea, whales, mountains, nature in general, the Alaskan wilderness, art, drawing and painting (preferred mediums include colored pencil, water color, and acrylics), playing the flute, cool, cloudy days with the smell of rain in the air, the smell of wildflowers, listening to classical music/songs without words (think Lindsey Stirling or the Vitamin String Quartet), the band Twenty One Pilots, indie music in general, black ballpoint pens (a /must/ for anyone who likes doodling in class), newsboy caps and faux leather jackets, animal/environmental justice campaigns/documentaries/organizations, pumpernickel bread, mismatched socks, her older siblings, "The Perks of Being a Wallflower", "The Joy Luck Club", "In the Time of the Butterflies" (both the books and the movies, for all three), breezy, sunny days with not a cloud in sight, John Muir quotes, the color yellow

🌟Dislikes: history (Elodie can never /remember/ anything), mint chocolate-chip ice cream, frappuccinos from Starbucks, loud and noisy people, people who won't give Elodie her personal space, people who pry too much/nosy people, when her father gets drunk and passes out on the couch, hearing about accidents caused by drunk drivers, dumb rap songs, Alaskan winters (she /hates/ only having three or four hours of daylight), people who don't realize how big of an issue the environment is, people who don't appreciate the natural world, cheesy rom-coms (she used to love them, apparently), not being able to remember something/someone, going to class (she would much rather stare off in space and doodle, thank you very much), the color black, high heels, parties, social gatherings of any kind, being the center of attention

(X) 🌟Character bio: (10)

It's the first day of junior year at Elodie's new school.

The last time she had been in a school building was in Alaska, before the accident. Elodie remembers that day vividly-she walked through the doors hand-in-hand with Lucas, her boyfriend at the time. They stopped at his locker. Lucas gave her a quick kiss on the cheek before he slipped inside the chemistry classroom. Elodie made her way to English class with a gaggle of girlfriends, chattering animatedly about the movie they saw together over the weekend.

Elodie can hardly remember anything from before the accident. She can't even remember the name of the movie. So why does she remember that one, mundane moment-walking to class while talking to her friends-so clearly?

The accident itself remains fuzzy in her head as well. She's been told that the other car swerved and hit her family's car in the side one day as they were driving home around five o'clock in the evening, after it had already gotten dark. She'd been told that she was in a coma for two weeks.

Well, Elodie doesn't remember any of it. She does, however, remember her first thought when she woke up from the coma-

"Oh, fvck, wasn't that English essay due today?"

She can't remember what the English essay was supposed to be /about/.

Elodie doesn't know how she gets through it all. By lunchtime, Elodie just wants to go to sleep. Classes here are much harder than they were in Alaska, and besides, she can't /remember/ anything. Which President was responsible for the Trail of Tears, Mr. Bernard asks in history class. Elodie doesn't know. She tries to remember, she tries to remember her old history classroom and her old history teacher, and all she comes up with is the fact that her history teacher in Alaska had the prettiest red hair.

What's the Pythagorean Theorem, Mrs. Setty asks in math class. Elodie remembers that a^2+b^2=c^2, but she can't remember the name of her old math teacher, the one who she had for six years straight. She can't even remember her face, or the sound of her voice. Why is that?

Does anyone know who wrote "The Crucible", Miss Lelo asks in English class. Elodie doesn't know. All she knows was that, once upon a time, she was supposed to turn in an essay.

Once upon a time, she lived in Alaska, and her mother was alive, and her father could use his legs. Once upon a time, her oldest brother didn't have to give up his job at a prestigious accounting firm to take care of their paralyzed dad.

Once upon a time, Elodie had a boyfriend. And, apparently, once upon a time, she had s.x with the aforementioned boyfriend.

Elodie feels so, /so/ guilty whenever she remembers Lucas, and how hurt and helpless he'd been when she told him that she didn't remember him. She didn't remember loving him, she didn't remember /making/ love with him-she just didn't /remember/ him.

After lunch, the rest of the day flies by. And Elodie trudges home to her paralyzed father and her brother, who's working from his cramped home office, ready for anything. The Schmidts are a big family-Elodie has three older brothers and two older sisters. All of them are full-grown men and women, now, and she misses the days when their house in Alaska was filled with warmth and laughter.

She misses her friends from Alaska, too. Apparently, before the accident, before the amnesia, Elodie was quite the social butterfly. But not anymore. Elodie's former friends dissipated like smoke into the air, until she was left with two /real/ friends, and she loves them with all her heart, but she sees the pity in their eyes-and she doesn't want it. Nobody from her hometown seems to understand that she's /not/ pre-accident Elodie anymore. She doesn't like to sing and act, she hates frappuccinos, and she would rather look at art by Salvador Dali and Vladimir Kush than art by Andy Warhol. Why doesn't anyone /get/ it?

All she wants to do is feel whole, to feel /complete/. But /how/?

When Elodie met Steph and Anjali on her first day at Rachel Carson High School, she had no idea what would happen. No idea that, a couple weeks later, she would find Anjali hacking off the heads of zombie-birds and Steph muttering the f-word on repeat (/Steph/! Who /never/ cussed!) as she tried to staunch the blood gushing from a wound Anjali had sustained during the battle. No idea that silver sparks would come shooting out of her fingers and literally knit the skin back together.

Elodie had no idea what the two other girls would tell her afterwards; that they had been charged with protecting all life on Earth from Dr. Zombyss and his diabolical schemes. No idea that she would spend most of her time fighting birds revived with ancient sorcery, no idea that she would actually have /friends/.

No idea that she would maybe, quite possibly, start to feel /happy/.

(X) 🌟Skills (5):
-Drawing and painting. She is best at watercolor, though she likes to think of herself as not /bad/ with colored pencil or acrylics
-"Reading" people; for all her distant stares, Elodie is quite perceptive. Her faraway blue-green eyes really don't miss much.
-Playing the flute. She started it after one of her older sisters decided to quit, and she's pretty good at it.
-Is very artistic in general
-Capable of communicating with plants and manipulating them (to some extent), enhanced resilience, can heal other people/animals/plants by shooting magical sparks from her fingertips

(X) 🌟Weaknesses (5):
-Elodie has had trouble remembering even the simplest of things after the accident. Nobody's quite sure why, at this point.
-This means that she doesn't do great in school
-Elodie can't remember most things from her life before the accident. She knows her family, she knows her closest friends, and she knows Alaska-but if you ask her for the chemical formula for ammonia or the name of John F. Kennedy's wife, she'll stare at you blankly for a solid minute before telling you that she doesn't know.
-Elodie tends to be rather passive and non-confrontational. This leads to her being a silent bystander when she sees concerning situations.
-This also means that she is not the most useful person in a physical fight-it's something Anjali and Steph are working on with her, yes, but still. Elodie isn't brave enough to launch herself head-on into an attack like Steph, and she isn't stubborn enough to defend a position till her dying breath like Anjali, either.

(X) 🌟Greatest wish and greatest fear: (5)
Greatest wish: defeating Dr. Zombyss in order to preserve the environment and learning how to feel whole again

Greatest fear: that she'll always feel like she's only half of a person and that Dr. Zombyss will hurt the people she cares about

✨BONUS WRITING REQUIREMENTS✨
(X) 🌟Write at least 4 sentences for the character bio (5)
(X) 🌟Include a link to a gif of your FC or that is evocative of their aesthetic: (5)
media.giphy.com/media/z6qwawb65SL6M/g…

(X) 🌟 How do (or will) they feel about being a magical kid? (3)
Elodie is rather ambivalent about this whole magic-powers-saving-the-world thing, though she /does/ recognize that something needs to be done about the degradation of the environment. It's exhausting, though-as if Elodie needed /more/ on her plate besides the whole unable-to-remember-simple-facts thing!

(X) 🌟 What's their biggest challenge faced by everyday life (3)
Remembering things that she learned before the accident, mostly for schoolwork

(X) 🌟 What would be your OC's catchphrase, or what phrase do they use constantly? (2)
"Uh, could you please repeat that?"

"Earth laughs in flowers, to see her boastful boys
Earth-proud, proud of the earth which is not theirs;
Who steer the plough, but cannot steer their feet
Clear of the grave."

-"Hamatreya", by Ralph Waldo Emerson

❂Name: Alicia
❂Username: @ayzrules
❂Top 3 role choices: (can write up to 5 if you chose popular roles)
1. The Homeless Dryad
2. The Eternal Fire
3.

❂Role being Auditioned for:
-----The Homeless Dryad:
*Powers: Feeds off of plant energy, and can induce plant growth at unnatural speeds. Vinelike hair can be manipulated. Can release poisons (both temporarily paralytic and deadly). Can communicate with plants, though these communications are more like emotional reactions. Is at the peak of their powers during the day.

*Lost their forest due to human expansion, and while they are usually calm and peaceful, they can become quite spiteful and vicious towards people who show disrespect for nature.

❂Faction: Fae
❂FC: Blanca Padilla
❂Name: Verdínqa
❂Any other titles, nicknames, or epithets: La que Pertenece a la Selva, or or The One that Belongs to the Rainforest. Alternatively, she is La Madre de la Selva or La Madre de la Tierra; the Mother of the Rainforest and the Mother of the Earth, respectively. Those titles commonly get shortened to La Madre Verde (the green mother) or simply La Madre. In English-speaking countries, she is sometimes referred to as Mother Nature or Mother Earth (this is a /very/ flattering title, since Verdínqa only has domain over the Amazon Rainforest. But still). She was Pachamama to the Incans.

❂Age: As old as the Amazon Rainforest itself-which would be around 50 million years. Verdínqa only clearly remembers a couple thousand or so of those years, though, starting from when the first human civilizations began developing in the region

❂Personality (+ and -): Verdínqa, more commonly known as La Madre de la Tierra or La Madre Verde, comes off as a quirky, whimsical woman who may be just /slightly/ off her rocker. She is full of sweet smiles and melancholy eyes and flowing satin skirts, and she abhors violence and destruction. Verdínqa likes to wear flowers in her hair and dance to invisible music, and she flits about the world like a bird, full of dreamy nonsense and endearing eccentricities. Gentle and free-spirited, Verdínqa has a profound appreciation for the natural world (she is, after all, a being of the natural world) and all it has to offer. She is rather emotional, thinking with her heart more than with her head (so to speak), and can be prone to irrational flights of fancy as a result of her age and general personality. Verdínqa is perceptive and keenly aware of other people's emotions, despite her tendency to stare off into space with a dreamy expression on her face.

Underneath her flower crowns and tangled hair, however, Verdínqa is distant and fragile. She misses her rainforest; she misses the cawing birds and swishing leaves and chirping insects. She misses the vibrant flowers and dark soil and towering trees. She misses the very /air/ of her rainforest; the lush smell of life and the sweet smell of fruit and flowers. She misses the lazy sloths and bright frogs and mischievous monkeys; the tireless ants and proud parrots and graceful jaguars. She misses them all, and sometimes, all she can do is stare out at the twisting skyscrapers and grey streets of Morrow and wonder what the city would look like swallowed up by verdant greenery.

Verdínqa may be physically present in Morrow, but in her head, she is far, far away, thousands of years in the past, before the humans began poisoning her beloved rainforest. Verdínqa herself is very gentle and kind; she would never hurt a fly. But sometimes, she gets so /angry/ at the way that humans have treated the Earth-and it's all she can do to keep herself from replacing the steel jungle that is her new home with vines and trees; from reaching deep down below the ground to every little root and every little sapling that has somehow survived in this world of car exhaust and industrial toxins, and telling them to /grow/. Grow, she wants to say, and take back the land that is yours. Grow, and reclaim the world as your own, she longs to tell them. You belong with the sun and sky and sea, she wants to say, not buried under asphalt roads and twisting metal. But Verdínqa is frightened-she does not want to take any human lives, for only a small percentage of humans are responsible for the blatant destruction and degradation of the Earth and the wonders that it has to offer. So she retreats within herself, and tries to remember a time when humans lived in harmony with the land.

It gets harder and harder with each passing day.

Verdínqa, La que Pertenece a la Selva, La Madre de la Selva, was supposed to protect her rainforest. Was that not why she was created-to safeguard her home? But how can she do that if the humans fill her veins with lead and mercury from their paints and pipes, if they fill her lungs with carbon monoxide and sulfur dioxide from their cars and coal? It's poison to her, just as it's poison to the air and water and trees. Verdínqa wants to be violent and destructive-she wants to burn their homes to the ground and let trees and flowers grow from the ruins; she wants to level cities and factories and highways and give her precious plants the clean air and fresh water they need to flourish. But how could she be so cruel? How could she be so cruel to those families who only cut down her trees so that they can have a fire to cook their food with? How could she be so heartless as to reduce their shacks and hovels to ash?

So Verdínqa does nothing. She sits back and watches tides of destruction wash over the world in the form of slash-and-burn agriculture, in the form of bulldozing forests for farmland, in the form of blowing up mountains to mine coal that supply impoverished families with electricity. What /can/ she do, without hurting the innocent? She does her best to protect her plants, but she is weak without her rainforest, surrounded by smoke and smog.

All she wants is to go back to a time when humans and nature lived in harmony. Is that /really/ so much to ask?

+Kind
+Gentle
+Peaceful
+Caring
+Diplomatic
+Calm
+Nurturing
+Slow to anger
+Empathetic

-/+Non-confrontational
-/+Emotional
-/+Whimsical
-/+Dreamy
-/+Sees all humans as inherently good
-/+Wistful
-/+Melancholy

-Vicious and vengeful, when provoked
-Passive
-Eccentric
-Slightly (okay, maybe more than /slightly/) off her rocker
-Absentminded
-Reclusive

❂Powers, weapons, and skills:

*Verdínqa draws strength from plants. This is both a strength and a weakness, in the sense that before nations began industrializing, the ecosystem was (relatively) healthy, so Verdínqa was more easily able to feed off of the plants' energy. Nowadays, though, it's hard to find plants that haven't been touched by pollutants added to the environment by humans.

*Verdínqa is more resilient than one might think. The Earth will endure-it /has/ endured-and so will she.

*Can cause plants to grow at greatly increased speeds; is capable of transforming mere saplings into towering trees within seconds, for example.

*Can "manipulate" plants in the sense that she can communicate with them, more so through feelings and instincts than coherent thoughts.

*Can transform her hair into vine-like tendrils at will. These vines are surprisingly nimble and dexterous, acting as a cross between a lasso or a whip and an extra set of hands or arms.

*Fluent in English (as a necessity), Spanish (again, as a necessity), and various indigenous languages that have been all but lost to time (Quechua, the language of the Incan Empire, among them). Knows a smattering of various European and Asian languages as well, mostly from observing immigrants to the nations of South America.

*Decent at embroidery, if you're interested in the kind from Europe during the Age of Exploration.

*Pretty good with floral arrangements and gardening, as well. Has a soft spot for botany.

❂Weaknesses:

*Exposure to iron and silver leaves her dizzy and fatigued. In addition, direct contact with either substance burns her.

*Verdínqa's powers are weaker after sunset. They are also weaker when she is isolated from plant life or around iron or silver.

*Anything that has a detrimental effect on plants will affect Verdínqa as well. Even indirect factors take their toll; greenhouse gases that cause the warming of the Earth's climate don't /directly/ harm plant life, but the changes brought about by this phenomenon have already greatly decreased biodiversity and the overall well-being of many ecosystems, which has weakned Verdínqa.

*Comes off as a bit batty, and unknowingly switches languages quite often. These traits, as you can imagine, are not exactly great for making first impressions.

*Verdínqa's aversion to violence makes her quite passive and indecisive when she sees people ruining the Earth. It also makes her more likely to run away from a fight than to face it head-on, though if she gets angry enough-

-well. Let's just leave it at that.

❂Likes and dislikes:

Likes-flora and fauna of any kind (though she is especially partial to those species native to the Amazon Rainforest), the Amazon Rainforest, guavas, coconuts, pineapple, tropical fruit in general, the indigenous peoples of South America (though some of them had very /questionable/ practices), flower crowns, lace (especially of the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Spanish variety), long, flowing dresses and skirts, cotton sundresses and gauzy wraps, rural areas with picturesque farms and gently rolling hills, the sights and smells of a tropical rainforest, the emerging concern for the environment in certain human circles (though she fears that it is too little, too late), sunny meadows, snowy mountaintops, windswept plains, dry savannas, arid deserts, dense forests, environmental documentaries, books that raise awareness about the environment, the ideas of nineteenth-century "transcendentalists" regarding nature (though she couldn't care less about what they thought of "God"), rain, hail, sunshine, fog, thunderstorms, blizzards, calm spring days with not a cloud in sight, sunrises and sunsets, geologists and environmental scientists/activists, rainbows, stiff white blouses, the phenomenon of life, "La Vorágine" by José Eustasio Rivera, folk music (of any sort)

Dislikes-wanton destruction and/or degradation of the environment, the conquistadors of Spain's colonial period, the Spanish colonial period in general, pollutants of any sort that cannot be naturally filtered out of the Earth's living systems at a reasonable rate, seeing all the areas of the world that humans have already destroyed, being reminded of how she allowed humans to exploit the Amazon Rainforest's resources, bullsh.t like sharkfin soup and modern-day meat packaging plants, powerful corporations who show no respect for the environment or their workers, sweatshops that are harmful to both humans and the environment, large-scale mining projects, nuclear power plants (despite their relatively low amounts of carbon emitted to the atmosphere), CFCs, DDT and other harmful pesticides, climate-change deniers, people who show no regard for the environment as a whole, Witches who compel her to go against her morals for their own gain, trashy rap music

❂Short bio: In a time before human beings-in a time before love and desire and wealth and sadness, in a time ruled by the basic, primal instinct to survive-Verdínqa was created.

The Eocene Epoch: the second epoch of the Paleogene Period in the Cenozoic Era. It began over fifty million years ago. It ended over /thirty/ million years ago.

That was when Verdínqa was created.

Born, created, put on this earth, whatever you want to call it; as far as anybody knows, Verdínqa, La Madre Verde, La que Pertenece a la Selva, Mother Nature-she came to be millions and millions of years ago.

Verdínqa doesn't recall much from her early days. Sometimes, hazy, half-remembered memories float through her dreams; she sees rushing rivers and sun-speckled tree trunks and animals both strange and beautiful that went extinct thousands upon thousands of years ago. She sees chaos and harmony; turmoil and peace.

According to modern-day scientists, the Amazon Rainforest formed after tropical temperatures dropped when the Atlantic Ocean had expanded enough to bring a warm, moist climate to the Amazon basin. And with the extinction of animals that people now call the pterodactyl and the T-rex, Verdínqa's domain expanded even further. In the subsequent millennia, Verdínqa's home underwent innumerable changes, yet it was always /hers/. Verdínqa was one with the rainforest and the rainforest was one with her.

Then the humans came.

Homo sapiens, as they are now known. They now dominate the Earth. They create and destroy; they build and burn. They love and cry and laugh and scream, and Verdínqa does not know if she will ever understand them. Even now, at over fifty million years old, she cannot decide what she truly thinks of humans.

At first, though, it was much simpler. The humans were only another animal living both with and against nature, just like the parrot or the boa constrictor or the poison-dart frog. If a snake killed mice and ate it, did that mean that the snake was evil? No; it was only trying to survive. So when the humans began developing weapons and taking Verdínqa's trees to cook their food, Verdínqa did nothing. All they were doing was surviving.

When they began killing other animals, Verdínqa did nothing. When they began killing /each other/, again, she did nothing. That was not Verdínqa's domain; her domain was the flowers and soil and water of the rainforest. Nothing more, nothing less.

Then the humans began to write. They began to speak, to communicate, to think. They began to see life as more than simply surviving. And Verdínqa did nothing, because in the end, they were animals, and all animals deserved her respect and protection. Animals and plants were two cogs of the same well-oiled machine. Animals could not survive without plants, and plants could not survive without animals. And humans, at their core, were still just /animals/.

They call themselves mammals now, Verdínqa knows. Yet, they view themselves as somehow "above" other animals. It is pure hypocrisy, if you ask her. But nobody has ever bothered, so Verdínqa has never offered her opinion.

She learned their languages, their arts, their way of life. Though some spread to parts of her rainforest, Verdínqa did nothing. The heart of her rainforest remained untouched, unsullied by the wholly human concept of "greed".

Fast forward a couple thousand years. It is sometime in the fifteenth-century; the Incan Empire, which has some territory within or on the edges of Verdínqa's domain, is at the height of its power. Meanwhile, the Icamiaba dominate the banks of the Amazon River. And then comes a plague that has spread from Hispaniola and modern-day Mexico to South America, decimating the Incan population. Dead bodies are strewn in the soil and rivers of the Andes, some with sores oozing pus and blood.

As if that wasn't enough, Francisco Pizarro lands on the coasts of what is now called Peru, and he wreaks havoc on Incan society. Verdínqa almost /does/ do something, this time; she senses his greed and lust for power from hundreds of miles away.

But she doesn't. Pizarro, too, is human, and therefore an animal, and therefore a being that deserved Verdínqa's respect and protection. Not long after PIzarro's arrival (a mere blink of an eye, to Verdínqa), Francisco de Orellana embarked on an expedition to explore the entire length of the Amazon River, cutting straight across the South American continent. And again, Verdínqa does nothing, even as smallpox follows in his footsteps, devastating the Icamiaba like it devastated the Incas.

That was right around (or perhaps it was a little bit after? Verdínqa's memory gets a little fuzzy sometimes) when Verdínqa was summoned for the first time. Someone on de Orellana's expedition recognized her for what she was, apparently. A Spanish witch, his mind clouded by dreams of god and gold and glory, summons her. She appears to him in the form of a woman, with caramel skin and chocolate-colored hair and deep brown eyes. He dresses her in expensive silver shackles that burn like ice and fine lace that conceals her true identity and enlists her help in stealing the treasures of the Earth for the Spanish Crown. And Verdínqa has no choice but to obey.

Potosí, the silver capital of the colonial world. Huancavelica, where poisonous mercury was mined to refine the silver ore of Potosí. These are only two of the mines that Verdínqa has found. And these are only two of the mines where Verdínqa has seen indigenous laborers being driven to exhaustion, dying in droves from starvation, cave-ins, or both.

She hated the Spanish. She hated the Spanish witch, the one who forced her to find these mines through her connection with plants, the one who only cared about his precious gold and his deluded glory and his pretender god. This time, Verdínqa only does nothing for a decade. And then she retaliates, choking the Spanish witch to death with her vine-like hair, plant roots and tree trunks exploding from the ground as Verdínqa is blinded by her white-hot rage.

She keeps the lace he was so fond of, though. She doesn't know why-she doesn't know if it's a reminder of her guilt or of her power. Perhaps it is both.

The next few centuries would have been nothing more than a blur, if not for the humans. Verdínqa watched as they built contraptions and machines powered by steam and coal; she watched as they cut down her trees and contaminated her river. She watched bloody revolutions bring more dead bodies to her soil, she watched rubber plantations and banana plantations and even acaí berry plantations begin to develop. She tried to stop it, sometimes, but the rubber plantations provided people with the money they needed to survive and the people were cutting down her trees for farmland so that they, too, could have a soft bed and a full belly. Who was she to deny that to them?

Sometimes, Verdínqa regrets her inaction. Because she was too gentle (or was she too cowardly?), the humans have now destroyed a considerable part of her home, wiping out dozens of critical species in a single blow. Because she was too indecisive, her river and her water and her soil has been poisoned with toxic industrial products that, by all rights, should never have existed. DDT is killing her birds. Excess phosphorus is killing her fish. And /everything/ is killing her plants.

Verdínqa fled for Morrow, because the human poisons were causing her power to wane. She fled for Morrow to escape the wanton destruction of everything that she held dear. She thought that, maybe, in this magical crossroads, she would find an answer to her dilemma. None have presented themselves to her yet.

In a time before human beings-in a time before love and desire and wealth and sadness, in a time ruled by the basic, primal instinct to survive-Verdínqa was created.

But this is a vastly different time. This is the time /of/ human beings, of love and desire and wealth and sadness, of greed and avarice and lust and gluttony.

It will not always be the time of the man, though. Verdínqa has seen millions of species flourish. She has seen millions of species die. Perhaps the better question is-

-will the humans leave anything behind besides a barren, lifeless Earth?

Well. Not if Verdínqa has anything to say about it.

❂Life in Morrow: Verdínqa lives in a tiny shack near Morrow's outskirts. She has no electricity or running water, and the inside of her "home" is overgrown with vines and branches. She lives near the water, and she hates leaving the vicinity of it. She hates the steel jungle that humans call a "city".

Verdínqa is not formally employed, but she frequently speaks with environmental science majors from the nearby university about her knowledge. She doesn't know if any of them take her seriously, but it's good to have someone who is at least /pretending/ to listen to her. The Winter King, she finds, has no time for her eccentricities, and she avoids witches like the plague.

❂Why do they want the Stone?

Verdínqa isn't exactly sure how she would go about doing this, but she wants the Stone in order to somehow fix the mess that humans have made of the planet. And she would not be opposed to freeing herself of the Witches, too, as some of them have forced her to go against her beliefs and morals in the past.

❂Greatest wish? For humans to finally get their sh.t together and realize that they are destroying their planet. Alternatively, to return to her true home-the Amazon Rainforest.

❂Greatest fear? That it's too late to stop anthropogenic environmental changes from completely destroying nature.

❂What 5 items would you put in a pentagram to summon them?

*A bouquet of flowers, of any variety naturally found in the Amazon Rainforest. Preferably the entire flower, roots and all, though picked flowers and flower petals can work as well. Varieties not found in the Amazon but found in other tropical rainforests can be used too, to a lesser extent.

*A handful of soil from the Amazon Rainforest (or, again, any other rainforest, to a lesser extent)-thin and poor in nutrients, yes, but this soil is Verdínqa's life blood.

*Fresh, uncontaminated water from any natural source, untouched by society and civilization and all the pollutants that come with it. Harder to find than you would think.

*A fresh pineapple, the freshest that you can find. There's no profound reason for this, really. Verdínqa just happens to love pineapple.

*Copies of two of Ralph Waldo Emerson's poems ("Hamatreya" and "Earth-Song"). These poems are, Verdínqa feels, some of the wisest things that humans have ever written in their (relatively brief) history. Alternatively, a piece of fine Spanish lace, dating back to their colonial period, will serve as well.

❂Why did you choose this FC?
Because Blanca Padilla has some really awesome photoshoots that give off the ~vibe~ that I'm going for

❂Backup FC if you have one
Luiza Scandelari

The Homeless Dryad

Powers: Feeds off of plant energy, and can induce plant growth at unnatural speeds. Vinelike hair can be manipulated. Can release poisons (both temporarily paralytic and deadly). Can communicate with plants, though these communications are more like emotional reactions. Is at the peak of their powers during the day.

Lost their forest due to human expansion, and while they are usually calm and peaceful, they can become quite spiteful and vicious towards people who show disrespect for nature.
Faction: Fae
FC: Blanca Padilla
Name: Verdínqa
Any other titles, nicknames, or epithets: La que Pertenece a la Selva, or or The One that Belongs to the Rainforest. Alternatively, she is La Madre de la Selva or La Madre de la Tierra; the Mother of the Rainforest and the Mother of the Earth, respectively. Those titles commonly get shortened to La Madre Verde (the green mother) or simply La Madre. In English-speaking countries, she is sometimes referred to as Mother Nature or Mother Earth (this is a /very/ flattering title, since Verdínqa only has domain over the Amazon Rainforest. But still). She was Pachamama to the Incans. Goes by Vera, nowadays.
Age: As old as the Amazon Rainforest itself-which would be around 50 million years. Verdínqa only clearly remembers a couple thousand or so of those years, though, starting from when the first human civilizations began developing in the region
Personality: Verdínqa, more commonly known as La Madre de la Tierra or La Madre Verde, comes off as a quirky, whimsical woman who may be just /slightly/ off her rocker. She is full of sweet smiles and melancholy eyes and flowing satin skirts, and she abhors violence and destruction. Verdínqa likes to wear flowers in her hair and dance to invisible music, and she flits about the world like a bird, full of dreamy nonsense and endearing eccentricities. Gentle and free-spirited, Verdínqa has a profound appreciation for the natural world (she is, after all, a being of the natural world) and all it has to offer. She is rather emotional, thinking with her heart more than with her head (so to speak), and can be prone to irrational flights of fancy as a result of her age and general personality. Verdínqa is perceptive and keenly aware of other people's emotions, despite her tendency to stare off into space with a dreamy expression on her face.

Underneath her flower crowns and tangled hair, however, Verdínqa is distant and fragile. She misses her rainforest; she misses the cawing birds and swishing leaves and chirping insects. She misses the vibrant flowers and dark soil and towering trees. She misses the very /air/ of her rainforest; the lush smell of life and the sweet smell of fruit and flowers. She misses the lazy sloths and bright frogs and mischievous monkeys; the tireless ants and proud parrots and graceful jaguars. She misses them all, and sometimes, all she can do is stare out at the twisting skyscrapers and grey streets of Morrow and wonder what the city would look like swallowed up by verdant greenery.

Verdínqa may be physically present in Morrow, but in her head, she is far, far away, thousands of years in the past, before the humans began poisoning her beloved rainforest. Verdínqa herself is very gentle and kind; she would never hurt a fly. But sometimes, she gets so /angry/ at the way that humans have treated the Earth-and it's all she can do to keep herself from replacing the steel jungle that is her new home with vines and trees; from reaching deep down below the ground to every little root and every little sapling that has somehow survived in this world of car exhaust and industrial toxins, and telling them to /grow/. Grow, she wants to say, and take back the land that is yours. Grow, and reclaim the world as your own, she longs to tell them. You belong with the sun and sky and sea, she wants to say, not buried under asphalt roads and twisting metal. But Verdínqa is frightened-she does not want to take any human lives, for only a small percentage of humans are responsible for the blatant destruction and degradation of the Earth and the wonders that it has to offer. So she retreats within herself, and tries to remember a time when humans lived in harmony with the land.

It gets harder and harder with each passing day.

Verdínqa, La que Pertenece a la Selva, La Madre de la Selva, was supposed to protect her rainforest. Was that not why she was created-to safeguard her home? But how can she do that if the humans fill her veins with lead and mercury from their paints and pipes, if they fill her lungs with carbon monoxide and sulfur dioxide from their cars and coal? It's poison to her, just as it's poison to the air and water and trees. Verdínqa wants to be violent and destructive-she wants to burn their homes to the ground and let trees and flowers grow from the ruins; she wants to level cities and factories and highways and give her precious plants the clean air and fresh water they need to flourish. But how could she be so cruel? How could she be so cruel to those families who only cut down her trees so that they can have a fire to cook their food with? How could she be so heartless as to reduce their shacks and hovels to ash?

So Verdínqa does nothing. She sits back and watches tides of destruction wash over the world in the form of slash-and-burn agriculture, in the form of bulldozing forests for farmland, in the form of blowing up mountains to mine coal that supply impoverished families with electricity. What /can/ she do, without hurting the innocent? She does her best to protect her plants, but she is weak without her rainforest, surrounded by smoke and smog.

All she wants is to go back to a time when humans and nature lived in harmony. Is that /really/ so much to ask?

+Kind
+Gentle
+Peaceful
+Caring
+Diplomatic
+Calm
+Nurturing
+Slow to anger
+Empathetic

-/+Non-confrontational
-/+Emotional
-/+Whimsical
-/+Dreamy
-/+Sees all humans as inherently good
-/+Wistful
-/+Melancholy

-Vicious and vengeful, when provoked
-Passive
-Eccentric
-Slightly (okay, maybe more than /slightly/) off her rocker
-Absentminded
-Reclusive

Powers, weapons, and skills:

*Verdínqa draws strength from plants. This is both a strength and a weakness, in the sense that before nations began industrializing, the ecosystem was (relatively) healthy, so Verdínqa was more easily able to feed off of the plants' energy. Nowadays, though, it's hard to find plants that haven't been touched by pollutants added to the environment by humans.

*Verdínqa is more resilient than one might think. The Earth will endure-it /has/ endured-and so will she.

*Can cause plants to grow at greatly increased speeds; is capable of transforming mere saplings into towering trees within seconds, for example.

*Can "manipulate" plants in the sense that she can communicate with them, more so through feelings and instincts than coherent thoughts.

*Can transform her hair into vine-like tendrils at will. These vines are surprisingly nimble and dexterous, acting as a cross between a lasso or a whip and an extra set of hands or arms.

*Fluent in English (as a necessity), Spanish (again, as a necessity), and various indigenous languages that have been all but lost to time (Quechua, the language of the Incan Empire, among them). Knows a smattering of various European and Asian languages as well, mostly from observing immigrants to the nations of South America.

*Decent at embroidery, if you're interested in the kind from Europe during the Age of Exploration.

*Pretty good with floral arrangements and gardening, as well. Has a soft spot for botany.

Weaknesses:

*Exposure to iron and silver leaves her dizzy and fatigued. In addition, direct contact with either substance burns her.

*Verdínqa's powers are weaker after sunset. They are also weaker when she is isolated from plant life or around iron or silver.

*Anything that has a detrimental effect on plants will affect Verdínqa as well. Even indirect factors take their toll; greenhouse gases that cause the warming of the Earth's climate don't /directly/ harm plant life, but the changes brought about by this phenomenon have already greatly decreased biodiversity and the overall well-being of many ecosystems, which has weakned Verdínqa.

*Comes off as a bit batty, and unknowingly switches languages quite often. These traits, as you can imagine, are not exactly great for making first impressions.

*Verdínqa's aversion to violence makes her quite passive and indecisive when she sees people ruining the Earth. It also makes her more likely to run away from a fight than to face it head-on, though if she gets angry enough-

-well. Let's just leave it at that.

Likes: flora and fauna of any kind (though she is especially partial to those species native to the Amazon Rainforest), the Amazon Rainforest, guavas, coconuts, pineapple, tropical fruit in general, the indigenous peoples of South America (though some of them had very /questionable/ practices), flower crowns, lace (especially of the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Spanish variety), long, flowing dresses and skirts, cotton sundresses and gauzy wraps, rural areas with picturesque farms and gently rolling hills, the sights and smells of a tropical rainforest, the emerging concern for the environment in certain human circles (though she fears that it is too little, too late), sunny meadows, snowy mountaintops, windswept plains, dry savannas, arid deserts, dense forests, environmental documentaries, books that raise awareness about the environment, the ideas of nineteenth-century "transcendentalists" regarding nature (though she couldn't care less about what they thought of "God"), rain, hail, sunshine, fog, thunderstorms, blizzards, calm spring days with not a cloud in sight, sunrises and sunsets, geologists and environmental scientists/activists, rainbows, stiff white blouses, the phenomenon of life, "La Vorágine" by José Eustasio Rivera, folk music (of any sort)

Dislikes: wanton destruction and/or degradation of the environment, the conquistadors of Spain's colonial period, the Spanish colonial period in general, pollutants of any sort that cannot be naturally filtered out of the Earth's living systems at a reasonable rate, seeing all the areas of the world that humans have already destroyed, being reminded of how she allowed humans to exploit the Amazon Rainforest's resources, bullsh.t like sharkfin soup and modern-day meat packaging plants, powerful corporations who show no respect for the environment or their workers, sweatshops that are harmful to both humans and the environment, large-scale mining projects, nuclear power plants (despite their relatively low amounts of carbon emitted to the atmosphere), CFCs, DDT and other harmful pesticides, climate-change deniers, people who show no regard for the environment as a whole, Witches who compel her to go against her morals for their own gain, trashy rap music

Short bio:
In a time before human beings-in a time before love and desire and wealth and sadness, in a time ruled by the basic, primal instinct to survive-Verdínqa was created.

The Eocene Epoch: the second epoch of the Paleogene Period in the Cenozoic Era. It began over fifty million years ago. It ended over /thirty/ million years ago.

That was when Verdínqa was created.

Born, created, put on this earth, whatever you want to call it; as far as anybody knows, Verdínqa, La Madre Verde, La que Pertenece a la Selva, Mother Nature-she came to be millions and millions of years ago.

Verdínqa doesn't recall much from her early days. Sometimes, hazy, half-remembered memories float through her dreams; she sees rushing rivers and sun-speckled tree trunks and animals both strange and beautiful that went extinct thousands upon thousands of years ago. She sees chaos and harmony; turmoil and peace.

According to modern-day scientists, the Amazon Rainforest formed after tropical temperatures dropped when the Atlantic Ocean had expanded enough to bring a warm, moist climate to the Amazon basin. And with the extinction of animals that people now call the pterodactyl and the T-rex, Verdínqa's domain expanded even further. In the subsequent millennia, Verdínqa's home underwent innumerable changes, yet it was always /hers/. Verdínqa was one with the rainforest and the rainforest was one with her.

Then the humans came.

Homo sapiens, as they are now known. They now dominate the Earth. They create and destroy; they build and burn. They love and cry and laugh and scream, and Verdínqa does not know if she will ever understand them. Even now, at over fifty million years old, she cannot decide what she truly thinks of humans.

At first, though, it was much simpler. The humans were only another animal living both with and against nature, just like the parrot or the boa constrictor or the poison-dart frog. If a snake killed mice and ate it, did that mean that the snake was evil? No; it was only trying to survive. So when the humans began developing weapons and taking Verdínqa's trees to cook their food, Verdínqa did nothing. All they were doing was surviving.

When they began killing other animals, Verdínqa did nothing. When they began killing /each other/, again, she did nothing. That was not Verdínqa's domain; her domain was the flowers and soil and water of the rainforest. Nothing more, nothing less.

Then the humans began to write. They began to speak, to communicate, to think. They began to see life as more than simply surviving. And Verdínqa did nothing, because in the end, they were animals, and all animals deserved her respect and protection. Animals and plants were two cogs of the same well-oiled machine. Animals could not survive without plants, and plants could not survive without animals. And humans, at their core, were still just /animals/.

They call themselves mammals now, Verdínqa knows. Yet, they view themselves as somehow "above" other animals. It is pure hypocrisy, if you ask her. But nobody has ever bothered, so Verdínqa has never offered her opinion.

She learned their languages, their arts, their way of life. Though some spread to parts of her rainforest, Verdínqa did nothing. The heart of her rainforest remained untouched, unsullied by the wholly human concept of "greed".

Fast forward a couple thousand years. It is sometime in the fifteenth-century; the Incan Empire, which has some territory within or on the edges of Verdínqa's domain, is at the height of its power. Meanwhile, the Icamiaba dominate the banks of the Amazon River. And then comes a plague that has spread from Hispaniola and modern-day Mexico to South America, decimating the Incan population. Dead bodies are strewn in the soil and rivers of the Andes, some with sores oozing pus and blood.

As if that wasn't enough, Francisco Pizarro lands on the coasts of what is now called Peru, and he wreaks havoc on Incan society. Verdínqa almost /does/ do something, this time; she senses his greed and lust for power from hundreds of miles away.

But she doesn't. Pizarro, too, is human, and therefore an animal, and therefore a being that deserved Verdínqa's respect and protection. Not long after PIzarro's arrival (a mere blink of an eye, to Verdínqa), Francisco de Orellana embarked on an expedition to explore the entire length of the Amazon River, cutting straight across the South American continent. And again, Verdínqa does nothing, even as smallpox follows in his footsteps, devastating the Icamiaba like it devastated the Incas.

That was right around (or perhaps it was a little bit after? Verdínqa's memory gets a little fuzzy sometimes) when Verdínqa was summoned for the first time. Someone on de Orellana's expedition recognized her for what she was, apparently. A Spanish witch, his mind clouded by dreams of god and gold and glory, summons her. She appears to him in the form of a woman, with caramel skin and chocolate-colored hair and deep brown eyes. He dresses her in expensive silver shackles that burn like ice and fine lace that conceals her true identity and enlists her help in stealing the treasures of the Earth for the Spanish Crown. And Verdínqa has no choice but to obey.

Potosí, the silver capital of the colonial world. Huancavelica, where poisonous mercury was mined to refine the silver ore of Potosí. These are only two of the mines that Verdínqa has found. And these are only two of the mines where Verdínqa has seen indigenous laborers being driven to exhaustion, dying in droves from starvation, cave-ins, or both.

She hated the Spanish. She hated the Spanish witch, the one who forced her to find these mines through her connection with plants, the one who only cared about his precious gold and his deluded glory and his pretender god. This time, Verdínqa only does nothing for a decade. And then she retaliates, choking the Spanish witch to death with her vine-like hair, plant roots and tree trunks exploding from the ground as Verdínqa is blinded by her white-hot rage.

She keeps the lace he was so fond of, though. She doesn't know why-she doesn't know if it's a reminder of her guilt or of her power. Perhaps it is both.

The next few centuries would have been nothing more than a blur, if not for the humans. Verdínqa watched as they built contraptions and machines powered by steam and coal; she watched as they cut down her trees and contaminated her river. She watched bloody revolutions bring more dead bodies to her soil, she watched rubber plantations and banana plantations and even acaí berry plantations begin to develop. She tried to stop it, sometimes, but the rubber plantations provided people with the money they needed to survive and the people were cutting down her trees for farmland so that they, too, could have a soft bed and a full belly. Who was she to deny that to them?

Sometimes, Verdínqa regrets her inaction. Because she was too gentle (or was she too cowardly?), the humans have now destroyed a considerable part of her home, wiping out dozens of critical species in a single blow. Because she was too indecisive, her river and her water and her soil has been poisoned with toxic industrial products that, by all rights, should never have existed. DDT is killing her birds. Excess phosphorus is killing her fish. And /everything/ is killing her plants.

Verdínqa fled for Morrow, because the human poisons were causing her power to wane. She fled for Morrow to escape the wanton destruction of everything that she held dear. She thought that, maybe, in this magical crossroads, she would find an answer to her dilemma. None have presented themselves to her yet.

In a time before human beings-in a time before love and desire and wealth and sadness, in a time ruled by the basic, primal instinct to survive-Verdínqa was created.

But this is a vastly different time. This is the time /of/ human beings, of love and desire and wealth and sadness, of greed and avarice and lust and gluttony.

It will not always be the time of the man, though. Verdínqa has seen millions of species flourish. She has seen millions of species die. Perhaps the better question is-

-will the humans leave anything behind besides a barren, lifeless Earth?

Well. Not if Verdínqa has anything to say about it.

Life in Morrow:
Verdínqa lives in a tiny shack near Morrow's outskirts. She has no electricity or running water, and the inside of her "home" is overgrown with vines and branches. She lives near the water, and she hates leaving the vicinity of it. She hates the steel jungle that humans call a "city".

Verdínqa is not formally employed, but she frequently speaks with environmental science majors from the nearby university about her knowledge. She doesn't know if any of them take her seriously, but it's good to have someone who is at least /pretending/ to listen to her. The Winter King, she finds, has no time for her eccentricities, and she avoids witches like the plague.

Why do they want the Stone?
Verdínqa isn't exactly sure how she would go about doing this, but she wants the Stone in order to somehow fix the mess that humans have made of the planet. And she would not be opposed to freeing herself of the Witches, too, as some of them have forced her to go against her beliefs and morals in the past.
Greatest wish?
For humans to finally get their sh.t together and realize that they are destroying their planet. Alternatively, to return to her true home-the Amazon Rainforest.
Greatest fear?
That it's too late to stop anthropogenic environmental changes from completely destroying nature.
What 5 items would you put in a pentagram to summon them?
*A bouquet of flowers, of any variety naturally found in the Amazon Rainforest. Preferably the entire flower, roots and all, though picked flowers and flower petals can work as well. Varieties not found in the Amazon but found in other tropical rainforests can be used too, to a lesser extent.

*A handful of soil from the Amazon Rainforest (or, again, any other rainforest, to a lesser extent)-thin and poor in nutrients, yes, but this soil is Verdínqa's life blood.

*Fresh, uncontaminated water from any natural source, untouched by society and civilization and all the pollutants that come with it. Harder to find than you would think.

*A fresh pineapple, the freshest that you can find. There's no profound reason for this, really. Verdínqa just happens to love pineapple.

*A piece of fine Spanish lace, dating back to their colonial period. Alternatively, any sort of critter from the Amazon Rainforest that you can get your hands on, be it a sloth or a panther or a frog.

NPC Name: Vivian Chen
Special Role: The Redeemer
Weapons:Staff stamped with a sigil on its blunt end for paralysis and tipped in iron (which is poisonous to fae and shifters).

Believes magical creatures are a necessary evil, and may even be positive for maintaining balance in the city. They are worried the Pretender King is going to lead the city into a needless war.

FC: Liu Wen
Age: 35
Occupation: Knight

Personality:
+Very loyal, especially to the Knights and those she cares about
+Very, very patient....except for when it comes to people that she deems "hopelessly incompetent"
+Hard-working and diligent; has never been afraid of putting in effort
+Confident in her own abilities as a Knight
+Calm and collected, no matter the situation. Good in a crisis.
+A good listener, and surprisingly good at explaining things and teaching other people, given her reserved demeanor
+Analytical and observant. Doesn't miss much
+Doesn't get stressed or distracted easily. Doesn't get too excited about anything that easily, either
+Accepting and non-judgmental. Good at remaining objective in all situations; very diplomatic
+Level-headed; keeps her wits about her under pressure and in emergency situations.
+Dutiful, which makes her "brave". Though she doesn't know how courageous she would be if she didn't have the Knights to fight for.

-/+Places value in "doing the right thing". Perhaps too much value.
-/+Quiet and reserved; doesn't say much.
-/+Rather stern, most of the time. She doesn't laugh all that often.
-/+Doesn't trust easily
-/+But once you gain her trust, she'll follow you to the edge of the world and back
-/+A bit of the strong, silent type
-/+Uses her stoic demeanor as a way of masking her true feelings
-/+Unsure and uncertain about where she stands regarding magical beings and the Knights; she doesn't want to betray the Knights and everything that she has stood for and fought for all these years, but at the same time, she can't help but be convinced that the Knights are going down the wrong path

-Not very good at talking about her feelings
-Not very good at talking about feelings in general
-Will drive herself to exhaustion if not stopped
-Hates being viewed as weak or vulnerable
-Tends to play by the rules, no matter what
-Kinda indecisive, because she doesn't know how to do the "right thing" or what the right thing really is, at this point
-A bit on the blunt side; has never been one for manners and wordplay when a straight-forward answer will do. But at the same time, she knows how to word her criticisms and advice without offending anyone
-As mentioned before, Vivian really isn't very good at talking about feelings/emotions; she tends to bottle everything up because it's "not important" (at least, in her eyes), and she can already feel herself cracking
-Plagued by nightmares involving a certain incident in Peru, though she refuses to talk about it. But people who know Vivian well can see it in the bags under her eyes and her pale, drawn face
-Has no idea what the hell she's doing, only that she must do what's right for the world. But what's "right" is only becoming more and more ambiguous as time goes on

Short bio: The entirety of Vivian's immediate family was composed of Knights, and the entirety of Vivian's immediate family was killed by Powered beings (well, besides her mother, who is a half-lucid paraplegic. But still). Vivian grew up with her parents always away, chasing down some Shifter or witch or Fae or the other. Vivian's father was killed by a Fae when she was five. Her mother was permanently paralyzed from waist-down by a Shifter when Vivian was twelve. Her younger brother, who was part of a team sent to track down a rogue witch, is missing and presumed dead. That was ten years ago.

Vivian was always dutiful and hard-working, and although she was no prodigy, her quiet diligence and unwavering loyalty in her earlier years caught the attention of the other Knights and the Pretender King. She slowly but surely rose up the ranks, and she didn't question anything. She didn't question the fact that her family was ripped apart by this lifestyle. She didn't question the fact that some of the Powered beings the Knights hunted were perfectly innocent. The thought that what the Knights were doing wasn't /right/ never even crossed her mind.

However, as Vivian learned of the Pretender King's true intentions, she began to question the path that the Knights were on. If all Powered beings just disappeared from this world, what would happen to the Knights? What would happen to everything they'd built and created and looked after? Vivian began to realize that a certain /balance/ was needed, and she wondered if there was a better way-one that didn't involve so much bloodshed, one that didn't involve families being ripped apart and innocents being murdered.

Of course, Vivian kept these thoughts to herself. They were practically /traitorous/, and for someone like Vivian, who had always followed the rules to the T, it was, well...frightening.

It wasn't until Peru that Vivian began seriously considering these thoughts.

When a Shifter who could turn into a jaguar stole several important magical artifacts that the Knights were keeping locked away in Morrow, Vivian and a couple of other Knights were sent to get them back. They found the Shifter in Peru, on the edge of the jungle. Thinking that he was alone, the Knights decided to attack-only to be ambushed by a couple of the Shifter's allies.

Vivian doesn't remember much besides the pain and the confusion and snapping jaws closing around her shoulder and arm and leg, and the pain and the darkness and the /red/ and the pain and the pain and the pain, and every time she /tries/ to remember more her head hurts and her body gets all tense, so she just doesn't try anymore. Sometimes, she thinks that she's just imagining things, but the scars-the scars, two running down her face from her left eye to her chin and the scars all over her back and her limbs-they are proof that it was /real/.

The other Knights left her for dead, and truly, Vivian doesn't blame them. She herself thought that she was going to die, too, but instead she woke up in the deep depths of the rain forest, and although her memory is quite hazy, Vivian remembers the faint smell of guavas and the sound of someone murmuring in a strange, foreign language, and the gentlest hands that she'd ever encountered. And the pain, the blood, the jaguar-all gone.

Next thing she knew, Vivian was being shaken awake in a hospital, and then she left for Morrow, as bewildered as her fellow Knights about her miraculous survival. She brushed off the memory of the jungle as a fever dream-or she would have, if her clothes didn't smell like sticky-sweet guavas and if there weren't dried flower petals caught in her pockets and zippers.

Vivian suspects that it was a Witch Proper that healed her in that jungle, but she cannot say why. All she knows is that now, more than ever, the Knights are on the wrong path. The Pretender King will destroy all of Morrow, if he must, in the name of "justice"-and Vivian knows that it's just plain /wrong/.

Connection to the magical side of Morrow or to your character: Being a Knight, Vivian is very well-versed on all the Powered beings and is quite knowledgeable on how magic works. She has encountered all sorts of Powered beings in her lifetime, and has been actively hunting them down for years and years now. Recently, she has been frequenting spots that are known to be popular amongst the magical folk and trying to learn as much as she can about them-for "research purposes", of course.

Vivian would probably feel some sort of recognition if she ever crossed paths with Verdínqa-she felt her presence back in the jungle, after all-but she also probably wouldn't know /why/ she recognized her. Vivian thinks that it was a Witch Proper who fixed her up (and indeed, it was, though that witch only helped Vivian because Verdínqa asked her to). Of course, Vivian is aware of Verdínqa's existence, thanks to the Researcher's book, and she does have a slight suspicion that Verdínqa had something to do with her miraculous survival, but she isn't really sure /how/.

How much do they know about the magical aspects of Morrow? Do they favor a faction?
Vivian knows quite a lot about the magical aspects of Morrow, and she's always trying to learn more. Obviously, Vivian favors the Knights, though she wishes for balance and peace in between Knights and magical beings. She doesn't favor a specific magical faction, really, though she isn't too fond of Shifters due to...personal experience.

Greatest wish? To figure out what she should do-right now, all she knows is that what the Pretender King wants to do is wrong, and that she needs to find a way to stop him and maintain the balance. But she doesn't know /how/.

Greatest fear? That the Pretender King will have his way and destroy Morrow in his delusional quest to eradicate all magical creatures from this world.

NPC Name: Elena Pavaloska

FC: Vlada Roslyakova

Special Role: N/A (shopkeeper)

Age: 32

Occupation: Florist, environmental activist, tutor, co-chair of the Morrow Environmental Awareness Association, and kickss stay-at-home-mom (wants to return to her previous position in a research facility after her kids have gone to college)

Personality:

+Kind, caring, and friendly-Elena is, overall, just a nice person. She’s very friendly and always down for striking up conversations with strangers. She genuinely cares about the wellbeing of others, and she will 100% be willing to listen to your problems and offer her advice if she can.

+Reliable-If Elena says that she will do something, then she’ll get it done. Period. She is also as constant and as bright as the sun-always there with a bright smile on her face, no matter what.

+Organized-Elena is a total neat freak, something that her husband and children don’t always appreciate. With Elena, everything has its proper place-and as a result, she can find even the most obscure of objects in a cluttered (but organized!) closet with only a moment’s hesitation.

+Practical-Elena is a very grounded, down-to-earth person. She always has an elegant solution to everyday problems to the everyday problems that pop up, be they as trivial as a bad hair day (there’s nothing that a snazzy hat and a bit of hair-spray can’t fix!) or as colossal as anthropogenic climate change (a bit harder to fix, admittedly, but Elena firmly believes that everything starts at an individual level-carpool and ride those bikes, people!)

+Sympathetic and empathetic-Elena will always “feel” for people, and she’s very understanding and nonjudgmental. She firmly believes that everyone has their own story, and that everyone deserves a chance.

+Cheerful, optimistic, and welcoming-Elena is the type of person to always look on the bright side. She will always welcome others with open arms, and she takes joy in the simple things in life.

-/+Very forgiving-Elena tends to view all people as inherently good, and she is extremely quick to forgive and forget.

-/+Generous-Elena is always willing to give to others, and she is full of generosity. Her husband, for one, doesn’t like that she always gives people stuff for free.

-Gullible-Elena will believe any sob story she hears. She can be a bit naive and more trusting of others than she should be. So far, this hasn’t landed her in much trouble (she lives in one of the wealthier areas), but in a city like Morrow, being too trusting could have serious consequences.

-A worrywart-Elena worries about /everything/. As such, she is always ten minutes early to everything, and her handbag is filled with everything from Kleenex to a collapsible umbrella.

-Bossy-Elena is a bit of a control freak, and this can make her come off as bossy sometimes. Of course, she is always exceedingly nice about bossing people around, but the fact remains that she can be quite controlling. She’s not a perfectionist-she’s much too laid back to be one-but she’s getting pretty dam.n close.

-Constantly busy-Elena tends to overextend herself and overestimate her own capabilities. It’s perfectly reasonable to tutor elementary schoolers in science, volunteer at the animal shelter, give a presentation at a Morrow Environmental Awareness Association meeting, run her flower shop and cafe, tend to her garden, ferry her kids to and from school, and have dinner on the table by the time her husband comes home all in one day, right?

(tl;dr she’s basically /that/ girl in school who’s involved in every club and is the president of half a dozen organizations who’s annoyingly cheerful and peppy all the time)

Short Bio: Originally from Russia, Elena attended Morrow University and majored in botany and environmental science. Her husband, Alexei Pavaloska, went to college in Spain, though he was born and raised in Morrow. Elena met Alexei while he was visiting his friends at Morrow University during one of his breaks.

The two eventually got married and settled down after both of them had completed grad school. Alexei became a Spanish professor at Morrow University, and Elena found a research position at the university, though she decided to quit that job after she had her second child.

Speaking of children-Elena and Alexei have two daughters and a son. Their oldest daughter, Natalia (usually referred to as “Nat”), is ten years old. Their son, Nicolas (usually referred to as “Nick”), is seven, and their youngest daughter, Natasha (usually referred to as “Tasha”, so as to avoid confusion with Natalia), is five. All three of them attend an elementary school only a couple blocks away from their home (though Elena /insists/ that either she or Alexei walk them there and back every day, much to her entire family’s chagrin).

After Elena had Nick, she decided that she wanted to open a flower shop (with a cute little cafe inside of it as well, of course), just to give her something to do besides waiting for her children to get out of school. Elena has always had a green thumb of sorts, and she supplemented her supply of flowers (which she always ascertained were grown without fertilizers and pesticides that would harm the environment and the exploitation of workers in places like Colombia) with flowers that she’d cared for herself in the small garden behind the building. Elena currently lives with her husband and children in an apartment above the shop.

Elena is also very active as an environmental activist and spokesperson in her community. She is the co-chair of the Morrow Environmental Awareness Association (a friend of her husband’s is co-chair alongside her) and frequently organizes presentations, events, and volunteer operations. Finally, she volunteers as a tutor at the public library, tutoring students in Russian and the life sciences.

Connection to the magical side of Morrow or to your character:

Elena met Verdínqa for the first time when she found her reverently stroking the petals of a peony. Upon further inspection, Elena realized that those specific peonies were the ones she’d noticed were wilting a couple days ago-yet they were now colorful and vibrant and more alive than they had ever been before.

Fishing the story out of Verdínqa was a bit awkward, at first-what Elena managed to piece together was that Verdínqa had noticed the flowers were wilting and had cared for them while Elena was away. Elena was still puzzled, but she accepted the vague explanation (which was half in Spanish and some other unintelligible languages; Verdínqa unknowingly switches tongues quite frequently, Elena has found) and invited Verdínqa in for coffee.

(More cautious people would have wondered why this woman with tangled hair and bare feet and a dirt-streaked face was even in that part of Morrow. Elena didn’t question it.)

Elena and Alexei have managed to decipher that Verdínqa is not homeless (even though she looks like she could be)-she lives near the docks-that she is originally from “the Amazon Rainforest” (Elena and Alexei believe that she has indigenous ancestry and was born in Peru), and that she is /very/ good with plants. Natalia, the oldest child, was the first to discover that Verdínqa isn’t fully, well, /human/ after she made a sapling grow into a mature tree in less than ten seconds. Natalia has tried to hide this fact from her parents-she believes that they, being adults, would immediately try to report this to the police, thereby causing Verdínqa to be taken away or locked up (Natalia’s in a comic-book-superhero-phase right now). Although the secret has been shared with Nicolas and Natasha, Elena and Alexei do not know…yet.

Verdínqa frequently visits the Pavaloska’s flower shop and apartment. She’s stayed over for meals before, and although Elena and Alexei always offer her a place in their home (and a shower, and new clothes, and money, and perhaps a job), Verdínqa always shrugs her shoulders noncommittally with a faraway look in her eyes and drifts off before they can ask again.

How much do they know about the magical aspects of Morrow? Do they favor a faction?

Elena and her family remain blissfully unaware of the magical aspects of Morrow, mostly because Verdínqa isn’t the best at expressing herself clearly (and she doesn’t really keep up with the going-ons of other magical beings, either). Only the children know that Verdínqa is more than human, but being the children they are, they don’t really question it.

Greatest wish?

To somehow, with all the might of middle-aged stay-at-home moms, stop (or at least /slow/) anthropogenic changes to the environment. Also for her kids to grow up into happy, healthy, and successful adults who don’t have to worry about BS like contaminated water and polluted air. Oh, and add on finding a good vegan substitute for honey.

Greatest fear?

That something will happen to her husband or kids (or Verdínqa, who is basically a kid, anyway)

☪ MEI HUA, (25)

"If you pick up a male rabbit, he kicks and struggles,
but a female rabbit is bleary-eyed and still;
Set them both on the ground and let them run-who can tell if I am female or male?"

-From "The Ballad of Mulan" (木兰辞, or mù lán cí)

n i c k n a m e (s) || Ming Yun (the name she took when she disguised herself as a boy; translates to "destiny"), Little Flower (Zhao's name for her; derived from the fact that Mei's full name literally means "beautiful [Mei] flower [Hua]"; Mei hated it when she was a little girl)
b i r t h p l a c e || Xiong
s t a t u s || Nobility
s p e c i e s || Elf
g e n d e r || Female
h u n t e r || Demon

c h a r a c t e r + o r i g i n . s t o r y || Hua Mulan+Mulan
s u p p o r t i n g . c a s t || polyvore.com/friends_enemies_other_as…

l i k e s || swords of all shapes and sizes, bladed fans and armored parasols (and armored fans and bladed parasols), her favorite pair of needle-like daggers that can be conveniently disguised as chopsticks used to hold together a bun, her favorite crossbow, the exhilaration of fighting a battle, Zhao Li (her friend/betrothed/possible love interest??? Who knows-it's all very complicated), Jinmei Wang, exploring new places, when she is alone and doesn't have to pretend that she is a boy, her respective homes in Xiong and Petram, sunrises and sunsets, practicing her drills underneath the glow of the pale moon, sparring, feeling the sun on her face and the dewy grass beneath her bare feet, snowy mountains and dense forests and sunny meadows, her longbow and her trusty quiver of arrows,lightweight armor that's easy to move around in, tall flowers-though she's particularly partial towards tough, resilient (but not traditionally pretty) flowers, gauzy silk gowns (surprisingly-it should also be noted that Mei doesn't mind ruining them on an almost daily basis, either), foggy crags that jut out into the ocean with a harsh, austere beauty, fields of colorful wildflowers and forests of bamboo stalks, tea (black, green, oolong...it doesn't matter what kind, because Mei probably likes it), steamed buns/man tou, mooncakes/yue bing, bokchoy and leek and luffa/si gua (all vegetables from Xiong), dogs of all shapes and sizes, playing around with her new short hairdo

d i s l i k e s || Yueying Li (her friend/betrothed/possible love interest's mother), Anzhou Cao, Mei-ying, the Unseelie fae (especially Oberon), dark creatures/monsters/demons/whatever in general, how her parents would be most proud of her for being a good wife to Zhao (at least, that's what she believes), disappointing her family, mucking up the esteemed Hua name, her beauty (it's brought her nothing but shame and unwanted attention), how her parents/family in general view women as somehow "lesser" than men, how her family won't accept her for who she is, bitter melon (it's gross), traditional Xiong medicine (also gross), tight clothing, heavy steel armor (though she'll put up with it, if she must), mosquitoes (let's face it-who /likes/ mosquitoes?), boring classical poetry, painting (she's not very good at it), singing (she's not very good at singing either), extreme humidity/mugginess (the one aspect of nature that Mei can't /stand/), people who underestimate/look down upon women (and being underestimated/looked down upon due to her gender), Daizeron, loud gongs (they're so /annoying/), being forced to wear her hair in a tight bun

s k i l l s ||
*Mei is proficient with a wide variety of weaponry, ranging from her bare fists to explosives, but her true talent lies with the bow and arrow and the crossbow

*Though she isn't bad with swords, either

*And she has a particular fondness for weapons that are pretty but deadly, from her childhood days...Mei's mother may have been a willing to indulge in her daughter a /little/ bit. Just a little.

*Quick and nimble; lithe

*Enhanced strength, speed, and senses (especially hearing and sight); very agile (due to the fact that she is an elf)

*Just running around and generally causing havoc, when she was younger

*Now, Mei is much less assertive, but she is quite a good listener (even if she's not very good at giving advice) and very diligent

f l a w s ||
*Feels the need to hide her true identity because she is afraid of bringing shame and dishonor to her family (more so than she already has), and that people will view her as more vulnerable or weak because she is the girl that Oberon wants for a lover

*Secretly, she's terrified that Oberon will come back for her someday, and that she will be too weak to fight him off (another reason to hide who she really is)

*She can and will drive herself in exhaustion

*As a child, Mei was more than just a bit reckless and blatantly disregarded the rules

*Now, though, she perhaps follows the rules a little too closely, even as she is breaking all of them at once by disguising herself as a boy

*Though she still retains a streak of mischievousness that is only really brought out by her friend Jinmei

*Especially susceptible to heat and fire

p e r s o n a l i t y || Mei was never the quiet and dutiful daughter that her parents would have wanted. Sure, her mother accepted Mei for all her stubborn love of adventure, but Mei knew that she would have /preferred/ a more.../manageable/ daughter, to say the least (more on that later; it's complicated). And her father? Well. He'd wanted a son.

So Mei tried to be that son. She tried to wrestle with the other boys, the way a son would have. She tried to learn how to wield a sword and shoot a bow and arrow and ride a horse, just as a son would have. Above all, she'd wanted to make her parents and ancestors proud. She'd wanted to bring honor to her family, to the esteemed Hua name.

She'd /wanted/ to. Mei has no idea what she wants /now/, though.

Mei grew up a cheerful and mischievous girl. She was always looking for another adventure, and she was recklessly brave, with a certain brazen disregard for her own safety that only children could possibly possess. Mei was constantly scrambling over rocks and climbing up trees and rolling down hills and splashing through streams, soiling her new clothes and ruining her hair in the process. Her mother would scold her, her father would frown, but Mei was a headstrong child, and she would do as she pleased, thank you /very/ much.

Nowadays, though, Mei is afraid to do just that-she's afraid to do as she pleases. She tip-toes around others, terrified that they'll realize the secret she's been guarding for years: that she's not Ming Yun, but Mei Hua. That she's not quiet, diligent Ming, but a mischievous child who can't stay out of trouble.

Mei is not so cheerful anymore, now, and nowhere near as impulsive. She'd rather watch and wait than dive head-first into the action. She is dutiful and hardworking; a good soldier. Mei is extremely driven when it comes to advancing her skills, whether it be with a crossbow or a sword or one of those newfangled shotguns. She lives for the clang of steel on steel, for the moment that she lets a bolt fly towards an advancing demon. She lives for the adrenaline of a battle, for the thump, thump, thump of her heartbeat thrumming in her ears as the world is reduced to nothing but bloody instinct and the roaring in her veins. She lives for those few, precious moments where she doesn't pretend that she is Ming, even though she is wearing a man's armor and wielding a man's weapons. She is Mei on the battlefield, in all of Mei's stubborn, beautiful glory.

But after the battle is over, after the clang of steel on steel has faded into despairing moans and the taste of death has settled heavily onto her tongue, Mei is Ming again, and she is guarded and wary once more, because nobody can know that she is a girl. Nobody.

Loyal and dutiful, Mei seems like the perfect soldier. She uses the blankness of her expression to mask her vulnerability, but on the inside, she's falling apart, one piece at a time. Look, there goes one piece, she thinks, as she forgets the name of the older boy she used to wrestle with. And then another goes when she forgets the little village boy she used to race through the sun-lit forests and streams. And yet another piece slowly slips away as Mei struggles to recall the face of her closest friend before she left Xiong for Petram, for that gentle little girl who would rather hang back and make flower crowns than roll around in the mud.

Mei ignores it, though. Who she is, what her name is-this is not important. What's important is the fact that Mezda wants to engulf the entire world in her chaos. What's important is the fact that Daizeron is amassing an army to invade Xiong.

What's not important is her name, her gender, her family. What's not important is that her name is Mei Hua, that she is a girl, that her parents wanted a son.

It's not important at all.

+Used to be very impulsive, but ever since her experience with Oberon, she's become more cautious and careful about things
+Loyal
+Confident in her own abilities as a soldier
+Calm
+A good listener
+Level-headed
+Dutiful
-/+Reserved
-/+Doesn't trust easily
-/+But once you gain her trust, she'll follow you to the edge of the world and back
-/+A bit of the strong, silent type
-/+Uses her stoic demeanor as a way of masking her true feelings
-/+Insecure and uncertain about where she stands with her family; doesn't want to dishonor them, but knows that she can't go on with the plan her father originally had for her
-/+Both hates and loves feeling like her "old" self
-Not very good at talking about her feelings
-Not very good at talking about feelings in general
-Will drive herself to exhaustion if not stopped
-Hates being viewed as weak or vulnerable
-A bit on the blunt side; has never been one for manners and wordplay when a straight-forward answer will do

b i o g r a p h y || Mei, her name was. Mei Hua-beautiful flower.

And Mei indeed was beautiful. With her bright, inquisitive eyes and gleaming black hair and her red, red lips, no one could deny that Mei was as pretty as a picture, when she bothered to comb her hair and wipe the mud off her face. And sometimes she was even lovelier with her hair a tangled mess and her face streaked with dirt, when her wind-wild eyes were shining with exhilaration and her grimy cheeks were flushed with excitement.

Mei was beautiful, yes. But was she a flower? That was a more ambiguous question. The Hua family, an elven clan elevated to nobility due to Mei's forefathers' instrumental role in negotiations in between the nations of Xiong and Petram, was an old, prestigious family. To bring dishonor to the esteemed Hua name would be a sin worse than fratricide, in the eyes of Mei's parents. The men of the Hua family were strong and proud and honest, and the women of the Hua family were delicate and dainty and, most importantly, silent. They were shy pink roses and exquisite white magnolias; decorations. And that was how it had been for generations upon generations.

But Mei would never be a demure rose or a pristine magnolia. Right from the start, she was curious and energetic, always looking for a new adventure. Mei was the happiest when she was out with the sun and sky and trees, when her eyes were wind-wild with exhilaration and her cheeks were dirt-streaked with excitement. Mei loved to run through the fields like she was a galloping stallion. She loved to swim through the streams like she was a quicksilver goldfish; to leap from tree branch to tree branch like she was a soaring hawk. No, Mei was not a typical flower. She was tough and resilient-a woody orchid or a thorny thistle or a stubborn dandelion, not a pale pink rose or a snow-white magnolia.

Mei was born in Xiong, and though she grew up in Petram since her father was always working with the leaders of the nation, she will always remember the water lilies and pagodas and moon doors of her birthplace, just as she will always remember the rolling hills and meadows of Petram. Mei had two homes-one was with chirping cicadas and towering bamboo stalks and vivid red orchids, while the other was with serene mountainsides and cool forests and gurgling streams, but both Xiong and Petram would always be a part of Mei.

Mei had friends when she was little, she knows; the other boys were always happy to have her wrestle and spar with them, and the other girls were always happy to indulge in Mei's obsession with playing the knight saving the damsel in distress, but she only had one friend-Zhao-who she knew would be at her side no matter what.

Zhao Li was the son of a family older and more powerful than the Huas themselves. Zhao's father had died early on, and his uncle had stepped in to take his father's government position. Meanwhile, his mother, Yueying, was almost as powerful as the empress herself (in fact, the two were rumored to be close friends). Mei had known since she was old enough to walk that she and Zhao would be married-the two were betrothed when she was born, before Zhao's father passed away-and for some reason, she didn't mind a single bit. She and Zhao were best friends; two peas in a pod. Whenever Mei went back to visit in Xiong, she and Zhao would race each other up steep hills and fight their pretend wars with sticks and rocks, and Mei's eyes would get that wind-wild gleam in them that Zhao loved so much...

...though his mother found it unseemly. Yueying was a harsh woman who had used her cunning and sheer political prowess to secure herself a rich and powerful husband, who she'd promptly disposed of once she'd given birth to a son. From the moment that Mei had first laid eyes on Zhao's mother, she'd known that she hated her. And, indeed, Yueying seemed hell-bent on taming Mei's fierce stubbornness.

"A good wife does not speak unless spoken to," she would say, punctuating her words with sharp, stinging slaps. "A good wife never behaves improperly. A good wife never has dirt on her face or clothing. A good wife listens, but does not interrupt."

Mei seethes with anger every time she thinks of Yueyin, now. And Yueyin's hard eyes flash through Mei's vision every time she loads her crossbow, every time she picks up a sword.

Though, it should be noted that there's another set of hard eyes that also flashes through Mei's vision every time she lifts a weapon. Mei was no more than fifteen or sixteen when she accidentally stumbled across the entrance to the fae world-Avalon. She was exploring the woods and hills of Petram when suddenly, she found herself in a strange and dangerous world of eternal night.

When Mei remembers the Unseelie Court and its ruler, Oberon, she burns with a mixture of shame and rage. When she remembers how the fae captured her and left her in a cage for-for days? Weeks? Months? Mei can't remember-she feels a scream clawing its way up her throat, begging for release the way that Mei had begged to go home, even though she'd been convinced that she would die in Avalon at the hands of the ruthless Unseelie king. And, when she was finally brought before Oberon himself, she remembers his eyes glittering with a terrifying combination of lust and malice, she remembers his hands on her skin and his breath hot against her neck, she remembers how weak and helpless she was-

-and the fear and fury are almost too much for her, and Mei sees read and black spots as she tries to shove the memories back down, deep down inside her where nobody can see them.

But when Mei was finally brought back home, she mostly remembers a numb emptiness inside her, because Oberon would not let her go. She'd rejected him once, but Mei knew that when their paths next crossed, he would not let her slip away so easily. So she would be ready for him; she would face him with her head held high, a sword grasped firmly in her hands.

But Mei needed time. She needed to leave her home in Petram; she needed to find a place to hide before Oberon came for her. When her father decided to go down to the city, Mei pleaded for him to take her with him, and he refused her, again and again and again. Mei would spend her sleepless nights weeping because she could hear Oberon telling her that she would be his and her father telling her that she would stay at home and marry Zhao and be the silent wife that she was meant to be, until one day, she'd had enough.

Mei impulsively cut all her hair off-the hair that had once cascaded down her back like an inky-black waterfall, reduced to nothing-and changed her name to Ming Yun; "destiny". She disguised herself as the apprentice that her father had wanted, the stranger who was apparently already more worthy of her father's instruction than Mei, and left for the city. Once there, however, it was not much longer before Mei found herself in a fight for her life against demons that had begun to attack Petram towns.

Battling the demons was perhaps the second-most frightening thing that Mei had ever experienced, and her father's refusal to let her learn how to wield a sword and shoot a crossbow and ride a horse made it even worse. But Mei learned quickly, and she frequently was out until the moon had risen, practicing the drills, over and over and over again. It was easy to forget about Oberon, Mei found, when she was hungry and exhausted from training so hard, when she was too distracted by the ache in her bones and the blisters on her hands to think about Zhao and his cruel, cruel mother.

Eventually, Mei's diligence and dedication were noticed by her commanding officers, and eventually, she found herself given the opportunity to join the Dark Knights. With Daizeron a growing threat and Mezda becoming more powerful each day, Mei decided to become an initiate. And although there are women in the Dark Knights, Mei will remain Ming, because admitting that she is Mei means admitting that she was weak and brought dishonor to her family; her family, who believes that she is gone forever, who wishes that she were a boy.

But it will all work out in the end. Mei will help the Dark Knights and the Bastion Alliance defeat Mezda and the monsters, and she will go home to her parents and tell them what she'd done, and everything will be alright because she /has/ brought honor to the Hua family, even if she didn't marry Zhao and become his silent, obedient flower of a wife.

(Or that's what she tells herself, anyway).

s u r v e y || polyvore.com/two_fans_are_always_bett…

m o d e l || Liu Wen

t o p . t h r e e
o1. Mei Hua
o2. Tallulah Blakuin
o3. Jacqueline Porter

w r i t i n g . s a m p l e ||
polyvore.com/luck-lovely_lethal/set?i…
polyvore.com/even_most_beautiful_rose…

t a k e n || @ayzrules

[ optional extras ]
s t o r y ||
m o o d b o a r d || polyvore.com/wolves_like_girls_have_s…
s t o r y b o a r d || polyvore.com/cgi/set?id=229934572
c o l l e c t i o n ||
w a r d r o b e ||
h e a d c a n o n s ||
p l a y l i s t ||

𝑽𝑬𝑹𝑳𝑨𝒀𝑨 "𝑽𝑬𝑹𝑨" 𝑻𝑰𝑬𝑹𝑨 𝑫𝑬𝑳 𝑺𝑶𝑳

𝑵𝑰𝑪𝑲𝑵𝑨𝑴𝑬(𝑺): Vera
𝑴𝑰𝑫𝑫𝑳𝑬 𝑵𝑨𝑴𝑬 𝑶𝑹𝑰𝑮𝑰𝑵: Tiera is a reference to the land, as Vera is capable of developing an affinity with all the animals of Delselva
𝑨𝑮𝑬: 27
𝑺𝑷𝑰𝑹𝑰𝑻 𝑨𝑵𝑰𝑴𝑨𝑳: Vera is capable of developing an affinity with all animals, if she puts enough time and effort into it. Right now, she seems to be on good terms with a variety of birds, monkeys, and frogs, and she's even made friends with a couple dolphins and jaguars. She's skin-walked into a water boa and a black caiman before, but she wouldn't necessarily say that they're her 𝘧𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘴.

𝑲𝑵𝑶𝑾𝑵 𝑨𝑩𝑰𝑳𝑰𝑻𝑰𝑬𝑺: Vera's only discernible ability is the ability to "skinwalk"; basically, animals "lend" her a "copy" of their body, and when she shifts into a different animal, she gets part of their mind-not the individual memories, but rather the basic instincts of the species. It can be quite overwhelming, sometimes. She's also capable of communicating with any animal she's encountered before.

𝑳𝑰𝑽𝑬𝑺 𝑰𝑵: Selva
𝑶𝑪𝑪𝑼𝑷𝑨𝑻𝑰𝑶𝑵: Vera's been an apprentice shaman for as long as she can remember. Her family wants her to become an animal spirit guide, because of her unique ability to develop an affinity with all animals, but okay look....plants are cool and all, but Vera definitely doesn't have the patience and peaceful state of mind that shamans/medicinewomen need in order to extend their studies to plants. Vera wants to be something akin to a fighter, someone who can protect Selva from harm...but that's not what people from House del Sol 𝘥𝘰. Blegh.

𝑩𝑰𝑶𝑮𝑹𝑨𝑷𝑯𝒀:
𝒄𝒉𝒊𝒍𝒅𝒉𝒐𝒐𝒅
Before she had even known her own name, Vera had known the jungle.

And what a beautiful jungle it was! There were vivid fuschia flowers and woody lianas and funny-looking monkeys that swayed from tall tree branches, and there were eye-poppingly bright frogs (which her father said to never, ever touch) and huuuuuuge butterflies and bitter coca and all the cassava plants they grew, half-hidden by the foliage. It was alive, all around her-chirping insects and singing birds and prowling jaguars; towering trees and twisting vines and blossoming flowers. What was there not to fall in love with?

The fact that Vera has an affinity with all animals was discovered when she was just beginning her studies within the spiritual arts, by one of the animal spirit guides who served House del Sol. Atahul ("Ata", as Vera calls him) took her on as his apprentice, and from the start, Vera just didn't have the goddamned 𝘱𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 to sit there and memorize plant names, or whatever. Okay so it wasn't like she flunked out or whatever, but she wasn't some kind of prodigy, either, which frustrated Ata and her family, who had all been expecting Vera to become a very skilled animal spirit guide, on account of her unique affinity with all animals.

(Vera thought that they were kind of dumb to think that, by the way. Just 'cause she has an innate connection with animals doesn't mean that she's good with plants, too!)

𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒈 𝒂𝒅𝒖𝒍𝒕
Vera started developing her ability to "skinwalk" when she was around ten years old, after hearing about her mother's abilities. Liana Nygria del Sol died when Vera was only two, so she had no memories of her, but those who knew her when she was alive said that she was 1) a fierce warrior, and 2) capable of "borrowing" a black caiman's mind and abilities. Vera liked the idea of being able to immerse herself fully into the animals that she loved so much, and her affinity with 𝘢𝘭𝘭 animals meant that she was able to teach herself (with the guidance of Ata, of course) to quite literally transform into them.

That ability changed her life. As per Ata's instructions, she started with macaws and monkeys and river dolphins, whose minds weren't all that different from a human mind. When she transformed herself into them, she felt the macaw's quest for food and the monkey's curiosity and the dolphin's playful glee. And although she loved to skinwalk, sometimes it was better just to be 𝘩𝘶𝘮𝘢𝘯, bursting through the underbrush with a capybara by her side and a macaw in her arms or scrambling up a tree alongside a spider monkey or swimming through a river with a dolphin right beneath her.

Vera was curious and energetic, always looking for a new adventure; she was the happiest when she was out with the trees and flowers and woody liana vines, when her eyes were wind-wild with exhilaration and her cheeks were dirt-streaked with excitement. She would return home with her hair a tangled mess and her grimy cheeks flushed with excitement, and her father would scold her and her stepfather, Kutari (who was just as wild as she was), would wink knowingly at her. And Marza would frown and Silva would arch his eyebrows, but Solina would just laugh and tell her to get cleaned up for dinner.

After a couple of years, Vera had mastered her ability, though she was nowhere near proficient enough in botany to officially become a shaman (Sky above and earth below, 𝘩𝘰𝘸 many times would she have to tell her father that she didn't freaking 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵 to be a shaman before he would listen?!). Ata was, quite frankly, tired of all her bullshit, and he's pretty much given up on teaching her stuff about plants. Instead, he began going with Vera on "expeditions" to "study new plants", where he would instruct Vera on how to form a deeper connection with the animals. It was there, in the heart of the jungle and amidst the screams of howler monkeys and the squawks of red macaws echoing from dense stands of bamboo, that Vera learned what it really meant to be in perfect harmony with the spirits around her.

𝒄𝒖𝒓𝒓𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒍𝒚
At twenty-seven years of age, Vera has been dozens of animals, and she has all the minds of those animals within her, from the terrifying soullessness of the bullet ant to the mischievous curiosity of the monkey. She adores her home with all her heart, and she thinks she would gladly die amongst the wild papaya and mahogany trees and bananas and palms. Although she's still "technically" Ata's apprentice, there is no way in hell she's going to ever become a shaman. Instead, Vera spends her time exploring little-known parts of the jungle and serving as an adviser in all things animal.

Recently, however, Vera has discovered that poachers have been coming into the jungle and killing animals. They are subtle about it, of course; no mere human would have been able to detect them. But the jaguar sees and smells everything, and the pit viper knows where blood has been spilled. Vera tried to intercept them multiple times, to no avail...until one night, when she was prowling through the trees as a jaguar, she finally encountered them. Before she even knew what she was doing, she'd coiled her muscles and leapt from the trees and killed them, quick as a snake. A bit shell-shocked from the experience, Vera fled the scene, leaving the bodies for the other animals.

Truth be told, Vera was frightened by what she'd done; frightened by how easy it was to give into the predatory instincts of the jaguar. However, she kept this to herself, because she knew her father and older sister would throw a fit if they knew. Under the pretense of "exploring the southern coast", Vera continued to watch, and wait, mostly staying in her jaguar form...until the poachers were back.

This time, there were more of them, in broad daylight, and their leader-at least, Vera assumed that she was their leader-was faster and stronger than any normal human had a right to be. Blinded by her rage-they were 𝘬𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘮𝘢𝘭𝘴 for 𝘯𝘰 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘰𝘯-Vera unconsciously set the entire southern portion of the jungle against the poachers.

It was a sight to behold; bullet ants came swarming up out of the ground, mosquitoes attacked, black caimans and green anacondas filled the water, and jaguars leapt through the air. A veritable army of deadly and poisonous animals came to heed Vera's call.

Vera doesn't remember much of that day. All she knows is that the poachers immediately fled, getting back on their boats and hauling their asses out of there, while their leader stayed to fight. Vera remembers the jaguar's growl coming out of its-out of 𝘩𝘦𝘳-throat. She remembers that the fight was over in seconds, because even if their leader was strong and fast, the jungle was stronger and faster.

Vera remembers losing herself to the jaguar, to the calm fearlessness of the jaguar's mind. She remembers smelling the woman's blood, her jaws snapping and her claws slashing at her flesh. She remembers leaping forward, towards her throat-

-and something makes her...stop. Was it the human part of her? Vera doesn't know.

In any case, she stopped, horrified by what she'd done, and immediately set about trying to save the woman. She called for Ata with a howler monkey, using a the agreed upon code for "come immediately with medical supplies", and when her mentor appeared, he was able to help her save the woman.

When she awoke, it was two days later. Ata had wanted to report this incident to her father, of course, but Vera begged him not to, using the excuse that she hadn't meant to attack the woman, that it was an accident, et cetera. Ata was wary-the woman was obviously a foreigner-but he agreed to keep quiet, for now.

Ata went back to civilization. Vera stayed to talk to the woman, who regained eventually regained consciousness. Vera learned that she was a priestess of Sanzol, the goddess of sun and war in Nahuan culture. She learned that her name was Malzi.

Vera knew that she 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 have immediately turned Malzi in for questioning. She knew that she 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 have told someone about her, about the fact that she was a priestess from Nahuatyl. But when Malzi said that all of Sanzol's priests and priestesses were taught how to 𝘧𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵, Vera's interest was immediately piqued.

And so they came to an agreement. Vera would hide Malzi, for now, and Malzi would teach her how to fight-as a human, not as a jaguar or a caiman or a snake. Vera knows that the priestess is only biding her time, waiting for an opening to get away, but she just can't help herself. Why can't Selvans know how to fight 𝘢𝘯𝘥 be expert farmers? Why did they have to be mutually exclusive?

In any case, Vera was forced to go back home to participate in some annual celebration or whatever. Fine. But when she got back, she learned that a Nahuan princess had been taken prisoner...more reason to keep Malzi a secret than ever.

Vera doesn't really know what she's doing. She doesn't know what she's becoming, either. But she figures that everything will work out in the end. Right?

𝑷𝑬𝑹𝑺𝑶𝑵𝑨𝑳𝑰𝑻𝒀: Vera grew up a cheerful and mischievous girl. She was always looking for another adventure, and she was recklessly brave, with a certain brazen disregard for her own safety that only children could possibly possess. Vera was constantly scrambling over rocks and climbing up trees and rolling down hills and splashing through streams, soiling her new clothes and ruining her hair in the process. Her father would scold her, her older sister would frown, but Vera was a headstrong child, and she would do as she pleased, thank you 𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 much.

As an adult, Vera is not much different. Okay, so she's calmed down a little, but she's always running off on some hare-brained scheme or the other, with a complete inability to sit down for a minute and, uh, think things through. She's quite impulsive, and everyone agrees that she's inherited her grandmother's bluntness. Fiery and determined, Vera lacks any sort of subtlety whatsoever, and says what she thinks, straight-up, which doesn't always work for her, but you know. Such is life.

However, there is more to Vera than what most people see. Despite the fact that she comes off as curious and carefree, Vera truly loves her home with all her heart. There are more wonders in the jungle than anybody could hope to discover in one lifetime, and Vera thanks the sun and stars and the earth itself for her power of skinwalking. She can't imagine a life without the ability to fly through the foliage as a spider monkey, or the pure thrill of leaping and diving as a river dolphin, or the exhilaration of the jaguar's predatory calmness as it prowls through the jungle on a pitch-black night.

Vera's stepfather, Kutari del Sol, has said that she's so brave that she's almost reckless. He isn't wrong-Vera tends to always dive head-first into something, without really thinking through the consequences of her actions. Stubborn, mischievous, and never one to simply play by the rules, Vera's gotten into her fair share of trouble over the years...though it's not like that's 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘱𝘱𝘦𝘥 her before. What's life without a bit of adventure, yeah?

It may be worthwhile to note that while Vera holds no qualms towards resorting to violence (ya girl will literally shift into a jaguar or a caiman every time she loses her temper. It's...a bit of a problem), there's part of her that's 𝘴𝘤𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘥 of what she can do. She's felt the cool confidence of the jaguar, the wary hunger of the black caiman, the cold thirst for blood of a pit viper. She's felt the predator's utter lack of fear and the prey's constant alertness, the screaming 𝘳𝘶𝘯! 𝘳𝘶𝘯! 𝘳𝘶𝘯! of an agouti's mind and the ruthless hunger of a bull shark. And worst of all, she's felt the utter soullessness of the bullet ant, the complete lack of 𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘧.

Vera's no warrior in her own right; as a human, she has very little going on for her in terms of fighting ability. But she's shared the souls of all the animals of the jungle, from the poison dart frog to the river dolphin, and perhaps what scares her the most is how easy it is to lose herself in the cool fearlessness of the jaguar or the cold hunger of the shark...and how she is starting to like the predatory minds of the jaguar or the shark more than the attitudes of her own people.

𝑪𝑶𝑴𝑴𝑼𝑵𝑰𝑻𝒀 𝑹𝑶𝑳𝑬: Vera is widely known as the go-to expert on animals, and she's happy to skinwalk into a different animal in order to help the community. She's also their resident "explorer", surveying uncharted sections of the jungle and reporting back with her findings.

𝑺𝑬𝑪𝑹𝑬𝑻𝑺/𝑭𝑼𝑻𝑼𝑹𝑬 𝑫𝑰𝑳𝑬𝑴𝑴𝑨(𝑺): Vera's increasing disillusionment with her own house/people as she struggles to suppress the fighter inside her, the fact that she has killed people (and what scares her the most is not the fact that she like, took away multiple human lives, but that maybe part of her-and not just the part that's been a jaguar and a black caiman and a water boa and a bull shark and a harpy eagle, no; the 𝘩𝘶𝘮𝘢𝘯 part of her-might have actually...enjoyed it?), the whole drama with hiding and sheltering a Nahautyl sun priestess?!

𝑮𝑶𝑨𝑳𝑺: Somehow keep the entire island from finding out about Malzi, figuring out how to justify her new fighting skills once she is forced to return to society, and uh, figuring out what the hell she's going to do with Malzi in the future

𝑳𝑰𝑲𝑬𝑺: flora and fauna of any kind, the jungle, guavas, coconuts, pineapple, tropical fruit in general, cassava/manioc, sunrises and sunsets, rainbows, literally any animal ever, the exhilaration of riding thermals as a harpy eagle, the jaguar's complete lack of fear and excellent senses, the playfulness of Delselvan river dolphins, the pure 𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘨𝘵𝘩 of black caimans and water boas/green anacondas, the lightning-fast reflexes of the pit viper and the spider monkey, headdresses made from brightly-colored feathers, flower crowns, likes the feeling of tracking down 'prey' and the thrill of a fight more than what's considered strictly proper for a member of House del Sol, exploring new places, thinks her grandma has the best sense of humor, very close with her stepfather (Kutari), when people are impressed with what she can do (okay, so she's a bit of a show-off), skinwalking and hanging out with animals, turning into some kind of animal and playing pranks on her stuck-up younger brother, her family (despite all their difficulties and disagreements)

𝑫𝑰𝑺𝑳𝑰𝑲𝑬𝑺: wanton destruction and/or degradation of the jungle, the fact that some 𝘧𝘶𝘤𝘬𝘦𝘳𝘴 from the Nahuatyl Empire have been killing animals on Selva, being told that she shouldn't be "violent" or "aggressive" or "confrontational" just because she was born to House del Sol instead of the Salvaje House, being forced to study to become a shaman even! Though! She feels like she's wasting her abilities on simply becoming an animal spirit guide!, being told what to do in general, the fruit wines that Selva exports (you're a pussy ass bitch if you can't handle cassova beer, in Vera's opinion), abiding by Selvan social norms, sitting still, being forced to be patient (Vera is the single most impatient person on the entire island, probably), when people from Delas underestimate her abilities because she's from Selva

𝑭𝑨𝑪𝑬𝑪𝑳𝑨𝑰𝑴: Malaika Firth

𝑬𝑿𝑻𝑹𝑨𝑺 (𝒐𝒑𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏𝒂𝒍)
𝒇𝒂𝒎𝒊𝒍𝒚
Reina Solina del Sol (grandmother), Liana del Sol (mother, deceased), Kamainja del Sol (father), Kutari del Sol (stepfather), Marza del Sol (older sister), Silva del Sol (younger brother)

𝒇𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒏𝒅𝒔
Alejandro "Dro" Salvaje
Atahul ("Ata")

𝒄𝒐𝒏𝒏𝒆𝒄𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏𝒔
Malzi, of the Nahuatyl Empire (link here once I have a set up yikes)

𝒎𝒐𝒐𝒅𝒃𝒐𝒂𝒓𝒅

𝒑𝒍𝒂𝒚𝒍𝒊𝒔𝒕
𝒉𝒐𝒎𝒆 & 𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒌 𝒍𝒊𝒇𝒆

"𝐼'𝒹 𝓇𝒶𝓉𝒽𝑒𝓇 𝒷𝑒 𝒶 𝒻𝑜𝓇𝑒𝓈𝓉 𝓉𝒽𝒶𝓃 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝓈𝓉𝓇𝑒𝑒𝓉...
𝐼'𝒹 𝓇𝒶𝓉𝒽𝑒𝓇 𝒻𝑒𝑒𝓁 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝑒𝒶𝓇𝓉𝒽 𝒷𝑒𝓃𝑒𝒶𝓉𝒽 𝓂𝓎 𝒻𝑒𝑒𝓉" -Simon and Garfunkel

“𝒯𝒽𝑒 𝓅𝓁𝒶𝓃 𝓌𝒶𝓈 𝑜𝓊𝓉𝓇𝒶𝑔𝑒𝑜𝓊𝓈, 𝒾𝓃𝓈𝒶𝓃𝑒, 𝑜𝓊𝓉 𝑜𝒻 𝒸𝑜𝓃𝓉𝓇𝑜𝓁, 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝓋𝒾𝑜𝓁𝑒𝓃𝓉.
𝒜𝓃𝒹 𝒽𝑒𝒶𝓋𝑒𝓃 𝒽𝑒𝓁𝓅 𝓂𝑒, 𝐼 𝓁𝒾𝓀𝑒𝒹 𝒾𝓉.” -Rachel Berenson (K.A. Applegate)

*****

CCC: 丅ᕼᗴ Ꭵᔕᒪᗩᑎᗪ ᗝᖴ ᗪᗴᒪᔕᗴᒪᐯᗩ
urstyle.com/topic/2133681/03-tᕼe-iᔕᒪᗩ…

STUDENT INFORMATION FORM

NAME: Genevieve "Jenny" Schmidt
HERO OR VILLAIN: Hero
SPECIES: Zombie (formerly a faerie)
AGE: 17
GRADE: 12th/Senior
GENDER: Female
SEXUALITY: Heterosexual
FACE CLAIM+DESCRIPTION: Snejana Onopoka; Jenny used to be your typical b.tchy popular beauty queen faerie-hair like spun gold, eyes like the summer sky, and an expression of cold disdain lodged permanently on her face. She had a pair of slender, delicate wings that she was especially vain about-like butterfly wings, but impossibly thin and dainty, with a very ethereal quality to them.

Nowadays, she's gotten a lot paler (as pale as death, some might say) and she's lost her wings (comes from being a zombie. Can't be avoided). Her eyes are ringed with black-perhaps it is rotting flesh (inevitable for all zombies, especially if they aren't being sustained by regular blood sacrifices)?-though her expression is just as perpetually disdainful as always.

LIKES: the wings she used to have (she was /so/ vain about them), Cass Valentine (in the way that a wealthy heiress likes a butler who brings her tea), social media (she's the B.tchy Rich Popular Girl (TM). Of /course/ she likes social media), strong absinthe (helps take the pain away, these days. Though she's got to watch the calories), whites and pinks and pastels, designer gowns, designer shoes, designer handbags, designer /anything/ (barring stupid things like designer pencils, of course. Wait, no-she likes designer pencils too!), she sorta liked her loyal minions but they could be annoying (AKA the underclassmen who basically worshiped her in hopes of increasing their own popularity), used to be obsessed with being popular (nowadays, she doesn't care much), her Spot on the senior patio (even Wilhelmina is too chicken to sit there without her approval), make-up, high heels, glitz and glamour, anything that's unreasonably fancy or expensive for little to no reason, being in charge or in control, feeling lighter-than-air (from hunger or from undeath-it makes no difference), successfully completing a fast, modeling (she likes both print and runway work, though she'll always prefer the runway. Walking for ashow is quite...exhilarating), people who get straight to the point (she has no patience for people who uselessly skirt around a topic), punctuality, people who have a keen eye for small, specific details, being bossy, doing what needs to be done, practicality and productivity, being obeyed without question, power and having power over others, being wanted, losing weight and going down clothing sizes, being the center of attention, being photographed

DISLIKES: being a zombie, most of her family (meaning her mother, father, sister, a good deal of her cousins, and most of her aunts/uncles), drab/dull colors (they're so /boring/), Wilhelmina (that fvcking /b.tch/), people who can't take a fvcking /hint/ (no, you random disgusting werewolf football player-you may /not/ have her number), gaining weight (she's deathly-afraid of it, actually), being viewed as insignificant, being "lesser" to other people, people who can't just straight-up tell her what they're trying to say (they're just...annoying), crybabies, small children (Jenny is /so/ not the person you'd want babysitting your three-year-old), when somebody/something ruins her hair/dress/make-up/shoes/anything, really, anything she considers "cheap" (AKA anything that's not 5-star hotel quality), cheap knock-offs (she can /always/ tell), sloppiness and messiness, the Hero High cafeteria food (the dorms are...nice. The food? Not so much), brains (she knows that she's a zombie and that she's supposed to like them, but they're /gross/. So much fat. Can you imagine how many calories are in one serving of human brains when they're 60% fat???), not being able to fly/not having her wings, the fact that she can't model anymore, the fact that she always has to be wearing sunscreen/large hats in order to go outside in the sunlight

PERSONALITY: Jenny Schmidt is vain, vain, /vain/-that much is obvious. She's drop-dead gorgeous (quite literally, hehe...oops. Too soon?) and she knows it. She is quite notorious for her cold-as-ice stares; they're enough to send even the toughest of werewolves running. She has always quite firmly believed that it is better to be feared than loved (though she's been reconsidering this belief, nowadays), and she has always been rather haughty and aloof. Jenny is perpetually annoyed at /something/, though she rarely makes rash decisions because those take so much...effort. She's rather apathetic to most things, holding herself above others with a cool indifference, though there are certain subjects-such as her weight, or her family-that you do /not/ want to bring up in front of Jenny (unless you're saying that she's lost weight. Then, you /might/ just get a genuine smile out of her. /Maybe/). Jenny is impossibly snooty, and really, /really/ mean, when she wants to be (she's just generally not a very nice person), to the point of being absolutely vicious (trust me on this-werewolf claws have nothing on the metaphorical claws of teenage queen bees. /Nothing/).

Beneath the sheets and sheets of ice and glass that make up Jenny Schmidt, however, lies a certain deep-seated need for acceptance and validation, especially that of her mother and her older sister. Jenny idolizes Lavinia and Lucretia, and although she can't say that she truly /loves/ them, she feels the need to at least make them recognize her talent. Jenny is constantly seeking their approval, and when she doesn't get it, she often resorts to rather self-destructive habits (such as water fasting for a week /while/ going to cheer practice every single day, and consciously knowing that she will probably pass out yet going ahead with it anyway). Jenny is also very insecure about her looks, and absolutely terrified of gaining weight. Her relationship with food is extremely disordered, and before she died, she'd gotten to the point where she wasn't even eating to /live/-she was eating to keep from blacking out in the middle of class.

Jenny has vowed to /never/ show anybody that side of her, however. She hates being seen as weak or vulnerable-she hates being seen as anything other than the perfect ice queen she's presented herself as. After she was Raised from the dead, though, it's been getting harder and harder to keep her composure.

But she will try, and she will succeed. Because there's simply no other option.

SKILLS AND ABILITIES: Can literally go days on nothing but water and tea and a handful of berries (a skill if she's ever stranded in the wild, she supposes), tearing apart your self-esteem, sauntering down the hall in a floor-length designer gown and 7" platform heels that are two sizes too small, running in impossibly high heels, applying make-up while operating a motor vehicle, detecting even the most impeccable of knock-offs from miles away, estimating the calories in a meal by just glancing at the food, she has the "disdainful dead-eyed stare" look down pat, using lighting and angles to her advantage when modeling, using lighting and angles to make herself look skinnier when posing for pictures, getting others to do what she wants them to do through sheer intimidation alone, unbeatable in staring contests, hiding how much her health (both mental and physical) has suffered throughout the years, was once capable of flying and manipulating light/air to create illusions like other faeries

WEAKNESSES: Sucks at making actual friends, being nice to others, being compassionate, putting herself in other peoples' shoes, always goes to the extremes, a total perfectionist, really, really snobby, also extremely vain, has a hard time accepting opinions that aren't hers, doesn't know when to admit defeat, refuses to apologize or admit that she's wrong, deep down extremely insecure and has many deep-seated body image issues, but hides all of this with her ice queen facade (okay, it's more than a mere /facade/; Jenny truly is very vain and very snobby), proud and haughty to the point of being arrogant, always seeking validation and approval from her older sister and her mother, refuses to quit even after she's lost, will hold a grudge for centuries if she has to, has a /really/ hard time admitting defeat-even to herself, also has a really hard time apologizing to others, very hard to get along with (she's not great at teamwork), very reliant on Cassius for the continuation of her undeath, weakened by the sunlight, always tired due to her general state of existence

BIOGRAPHY:
"You'll need to shave two inches off your waist if you ever want to walk in a big-name show. I'm not just going to sign you on just because you're my daughter, Genevieve."

Jenny turned around, startled. She was standing in front of her floor-length mirror, topless, a measuring tape wrapped around her midsection. Her mother had somehow come in behind her without her knowledge.

Lavinia Schmidt, a world-famous supermodel (amongst the right circles, that is. Usually the non-human ones) and founder and owner of Lavinia Models, Inc. strode into the room, her icy blue eyes running critically over her daughter's slender frame.

"Stand up straight," she ordered, pressing a hand against Jenny's upper back and tilting her chin up. She examined her daughter the way that a art collector would examine a painting that they were considering adding to their collection.

Jenny waited with a bated breath.

"You've grown," her mother said, finally. "An inch? An inch and a half? What does that put you at, five-eight?"

Jenny nodded, trying not to let the eagerness show. "Five eight and a half."

Lavinia appraised her daughter, again. "You have my genes," she said. "You have the right legs and the right height. And you have my wings." She put her hands around Jenny's waist, and frowned. "But you're not thin enough. Don't let my good genes go to waste."

And with that, Jenny's mother-Lavinia Schmidt, world-famous supermodel and ice queen extraordinaire-spun on her heel and walked out of Jenny's room.

Jenny glanced at her reflection, glumly. Her mother was right. She needed to deal with her disgusting thighs and her shapeless waste. 'Two inches, she said?' Jenny thought, checking the measuring tape. 'I can do that.'

She furrowed her brow, deep in thought. She hadn't gained weight after her first year at Hero High-she'd made sure of it-but what was she eating? Too many carbs? Too much sugar? Too much booze?

Jenny slipped her gauzy shirt back on, her gossamer wings sliding easily through the openings in the back. Had her mother ever told her /sister/ the same thing?

Lucretia-Lucy, to friends and family-was a model, too. She was over ten years older than Jenny, and everybody said that she would be as successful as her mother. She was also starting her own clothing line, and dating one of /the/ biggest names in non-human and undead fashion: Victor Blanc, a famous faerie fashion designer.

Jenny sighed, a tad morosely. Would she ever live up to the expectations of her mother, after everything that Lucy had done?

Jenny wrinkled her nose. She didn't really /like/ Lucy. She was too much like their mother.

Lucy Schmidt had been the most popular girl in school, when she was at Hero High. Captain of the cheer team, student council president, homecoming and prom queen...you name it, Lucy was it. Her mother decided to add Lucy to her agency's roster before she was even done with junior year, and while her peers were stressing out about exams, Lucy was flying to Paris and L.A. and Milan and Shanghai for castings and shoots. And she'd walked her first Fashion Month during high school, as well.

Jenny wrinkled her nose, again. It was so /unfair/. Why did Lucy get to be so perfect?

Jenny wanted to be a model. She wanted to be a /supermodel/, like her mom and her sister, with all her heart. And if that meant eating less chocolate, then so be it. Jenny would do it. She would do whatever it took to make sure that she didn't let her mother down.

"You know, Jenny," one of her "friends" (Jenny preferred to think of them as her obedient subordinates) at school had said, earlier that year-"have you ever considered something besides modeling?"

Jenny had thrown the other faerie her infamous ice-cold glare. "Like what?" she'd retorted, incensed. "Something lame like pottery? Isn't that what /you're/ doing?"

The girl had turned bright, bright red, and a satisfied smirk had slipped onto Jenny's face as she strode away, gossamer wings sparkling in the sunlight.

Really, though. What was that girl even talking about? Her whole family was in the industry (save for her father-/he/ was a plastic surgeon for all non-human species. Which was /still/ sort of the "industry", to be frank). Her mother was a retired model and the owner of a modeling agency. Her older sister was basically a supermodel, and she was getting into fashion design, too. Her uncle was a photographer for Undead Vogue, her aunt a booker and creative director with Victor Blanc (she'd introduced Lucy and Victor, actually), her cousins reporters and writers directly involved with non-human fashion, and her great-uncle had been a successful designer himself. She had no choice beyond becoming a wildly-successful model, just like her mother and sister and cousins. And then maybe also becoming a wildly-successful designer, or actress, or dancer, or something like that.

And so Jenny cut chocolate and calories and carbs. And she was kind of miserable-who wouldn't be, if your stomach literally hurt so much that just /breathing/ sends stabs of pain through your entire body?-but she told herself that it would be worth it. It would all be worth it when her mother signed her on to her agency, when she walked her first show, when she became a star.

Just like her mom. Just like Lucy.

And in time, those two inches came off Jenny's waist. And another ten pounds dropped off her frame.

Her hair began to thin and she was always /cold/-it was a cold that reached all the way deep down into her bones. And she would feel hunger ricochet through her empty stomach during class, but it didn't matter. Nothing mattered except getting signed, then walking her first shows and becoming wildly successful like her sister and her mother and the rest of her entire goddam.n family.

Meanwhile, Jenny's "popularity"-if you could truly call it that-soared. As she got older, she got skinnier. And it seemed like as she got skinnier, she was more popular. Never mind the fact that she couldn't even tell the girl who was supposed to be her best friend (/friend/??? More like /frenemy/) what she was going through her head. Never mind the fact that she felt like passing out after cheer practice and that sometimes she felt /dizzy/ with hunger.

Never mind the fact that she almost blacked out in class, multiple times. None of that was /important/, not compared to what her future held if she could just be /perfect/.

And then...junior year. Her mother /finally/ signed her on.

That was only the first step, though. After that, Jenny was off to a casting call or a fitting or a shoot every weekend. And through it all, she /still/ managed to make it to the hottest parties of the school year-even if she was gone ten minutes later. Her family's connections helped her land jobs that even seasoned pros would have a hard time getting-she posed for multiple Undead Vogue editorials, because her uncle was one of their lead photographers. Her cousins wrote news articles about her and had her come in for interviews. And her sister-her sister, now married to Victor Blanc and one of the newest and hottest designers on the scene-secured her a spot in her Paris fashion show.

The agents and journalists and photographers all raved about the third Schmidt girl, and her /impossible/ wings. They said she had all the austere, ice-cold beauty that her mother and sister had. But Jenny wanted /more/. She wasn't her mother, or her sister; she was Genevieve Schmidt. And she was /different/.

In February of her junior year, Jenny walked her first Fashion Month. New York, London, Paris, Milan-she missed more classes in a month than most of her peers did in a year (though the headmistress was surprisingly forgiving about it). There was talk of Jenny taking classes online as she launched her modeling career. Everybody said that Spring/Summer 17.18 was her break-out season; that her career would go nowhere but up from there on out. And Jenny was exhilarated-there was nothing more addicting than the thrill of pounding down the catwalk in mile-high heels and a designer gown. Nothing more addicting than posing in front of a camera for a shoot. Nothing she loved more than being the sole object of attention-nothing she loved more than the /power/ she held in that moment, the power to shape thoughts and feelings and even ideas.

And then...

...and then, she died.

Whenever Jenny thinks about /how/ she died-by the hands of Wilhelmina Wistmore, that presumptuous /bvtch/-white-hot anger and scorching black rage burn inside her, clawing up her throat and choking the air out of her lungs. She wants to scream, to yell, to /screech/-

-but she's too...tired.

Wilhelmina had her eyes on Jenny's throne, she knows. Jenny isn't /stupid/. But as Jenny spent less and less time within the hallways of Hero High, people talked more and more about her-about what she was doing in Paris, or in London, or in New York or L.A. And Jenny knew that Wilhelmina /burned/ with jealousy...but Jenny didn't much /care/, because /she/ was the most popular girl in school, not Wilhelmina.

But then Wilhelmina killed her. And what happened after she died is really kind of fuzzy, but when she next opened her eyes, she was lying on a hospital bed, wearing a thin gown in a gross shade of vomit-green, and her wings were /gone/.

Jenny knows how Cassius Valentine keeps her alive. She knows what he can do. She wonders /why/ he does it, sometimes. It's not like she was ever nice to him. It's not like she ever even /noticed/ him. And yet, there he is, helping her stumble back to her dorm as the energy leaves her limbs, injecting some sort of life-sustaining drug into her bloodstream every evening, pouring water down her throat as she sits there with a glazed expression and lifeless eyes.

Everything is different, now. Nobody wants a /zombie/ model-they're much too...unreliable, and the investment doesn't pay off. And she's nothing, without her wings. In the world of non-human modeling, a pretty face and a killer body and a good walk doesn't do it. Not when other models have pearly fangs and spider-silk wings.

Jenny doesn't know what she's going to do. Life without modeling is, at least to her, meaningless. She has no interest in the sciences, or mathematics, or languages. Her entire existence, up until now, was modeling. And the gods know that Lavinia Schmidt won't /ever/ take on a model who's a zombie-even if that zombie model happens to be her daughter.

Besides-her family is no true family. They know plenty of powerful and influential necromancers, after all, seeing as they're quite powerful and influential themselves.

So the question remains: why didn't they have somebody Raise her after she died?

CLASS SCHEDULE:

-Practical Skills for zombies IV (PRACTICAL SKILLS)
-Physical Education IV
-Fashion Design (ART)
-Zombie Biology/ "Zombology" (BIOLOGY)
-French (WORLD LANGUAGES)
-Food Chemistry (CHEMISTRY)
-Poetry (ENGLISH)
-Human & Non-human Histories of Fashion (HISTORY)

SUPERLATIVE(S): Most Likely to be Raised From the Dead, Most Fashionable Zombie, B.tchiest (probably)

TOP THREE CHARACTERS: Genevieve "Jenny" Schmidt, Mehira Tripuramallu, Estrella Zhang

[OPTIONAL]
EXTRACURRICULARS: used to be the captain of the cheer team and the president of many, many clubs. Nowadays, she doesn't do much outside of go to class. Though she might consider the photography club, as they've been pestering her to model for them and she isn't going to be getting any castings or shoots anytime soon.

MOODBOARD: polyvore.com/little_bit_tch-jennys_ae…
polyvore.com/dead_dazzling-jennys_aes…
COLLECTION:
STORY: polyvore.com/corpse-chic_mug/set?id=2…
SOCIAL MEDIA: polyvore.com/cgi/set?id=233243545
PLAYLIST: polyvore.com/nothing_more_than_human-…

TAG MODS WHEN COMPLETE: @.ayzrules @.flannels-wine-and-cigarettes

**STUDENT INFORMATION FORM**

**Title/Role:** THE QUEEN BEE V1
**Name:** Genevieve Schmidt
**Aliases:** Jenny
**Age+Grade:** 17+Senior
**Hero or Villain?** Hero
**Species:** Faerie
**Faceclaim:** Snejana Onopka

**Appearance:** Jenny used to be your typical bitchy, popular, beauty queen faerie-hair like spun gold, eyes like the summer sky, and an expression of cold disdain lodged permanently on her delicate, elfin features. She had a pair of slender, gossamer-like wings that she was especially vain about-like butterfly wings, but impossibly thin and dainty, with a very ethereal quality to them. She was red Bentleys and smoky shades covering tired eyes with a pair of perfectly-glossed lips and designer shoes to match.

Nowadays, she's gotten a lot paler (*deathly* pale, some might say) and she's lost her wings (comes from being a zombie. Can't be avoided). Her eyes are ringed with black-perhaps it is rotting flesh (inevitable for all zombies, especially if they aren't being sustained by regular blood sacrifices)?-though her expression is just as perpetually disdainful as before. There are discolored blotches dotting her skin and bags under her eyes, which she tries to cover up with layers and layers of make-up, and something about her just seems...distant. Like she's not totally *there*.

Jenny's aesthetic is definitely very typical for a faerie-anything expensive and anything way too high-end for a high schooler to own is basically all she wears. Her closet is nothing but designer gowns and suicidally-high heels and pricey make-up (though it's quite frustrating how her perfume can't *completely* cover up how dead she smells. And her foundation and concealer never last long enough to hide the spots of rotting flesh on her face).

**Likes:** the wings she used to have (she was *so* vain about them), Cass Valentine (in the way that a wealthy heiress likes a butler who brings her tea), social media (she's the Bitchy Rich Popular Girl TM. Of *course* she likes social media), strong absinthe (helps take the pain away, these days. Though she's got to watch the calories), whites and pinks and pastels, designer gowns, designer shoes, designer handbags, designer *anything* (barring stupid things like designer pencils, of course. Wait, no-she likes designer pencils too!), she sorta liked her loyal minions but they could be annoying (AKA the underclassmen who basically worshiped her in hopes of increasing their own popularity), used to be obsessed with being popular (nowadays, she doesn't care much), her Spot on the senior patio (even Wilhelmina is too chicken to sit there without her approval), make-up, high heels, glitz and glamour, anything that's unreasonably fancy or expensive for little to no reason, being in charge or in control, feeling lighter-than-air (from hunger or from undeath-it makes no difference), successfully completing a fast, modeling (or the thought of becoming a model, anyway), people who get straight to the point (she has no patience for people who uselessly skirt around a topic), punctuality, people who have a keen eye for small, specific details, being bossy, doing what needs to be done, practicality and productivity, being obeyed without question, power and having power over others, being wanted, losing weight and going down clothing sizes, being the center of attention, being photographed

**Dislikes:** being a zombie, her immediate family (meaning her step-mother, father, and older sister), drab/dull colors (they're so *boring*), Wilhelmina Wistmore (that fucking *bitch*), people who can't take a fucking hint (no, you random disgusting werewolf football player-you may *not* have her number), gaining weight (she's deathly-afraid of it, actually), being viewed as insignificant, being "lesser" to other people, people who can't just straight-up tell her what they're trying to say (they're just...annoying), crybabies, small children (Jenny is *so* not the person you'd want babysitting your three-year-old), when somebody/something ruins her hair/dress/make-up/shoes/anything, really, anything she considers "cheap" (AKA anything that's not 5-star hotel quality), cheap knock-offs (she can *always* tell), sloppiness and messiness, the Hero High cafeteria food (the dorms are...nice. The food? Not so much), brains (she knows that she's a zombie and that she's supposed to like them, but they're *gross*. So much fat. Can you imagine how many calories are in one serving of human brains when they're, like, 60% fat???), not being able to fly/not having her wings, the fact that she can't model anymore, the fact that she always has to be wearing sunscreen/large hats in order to go outside in the sunlight

**Personality:** Jenny Schmidt is vain, vain, *vain*-that much is obvious. She's drop-dead gorgeous (quite literally, hehe...oops. Too soon?) and she knows it. She is quite notorious for her cold-as-ice stares; they're enough to send even the toughest of werewolves running. She has always quite firmly believed that it is better to be feared than loved (though she's been reconsidering this belief, nowadays), and she has always been rather haughty and aloof. Jenny is perpetually annoyed at *something*, though she rarely makes rash decisions because those take so much...effort. She's rather apathetic to most things, holding herself above others with a cool indifference, though there are certain subjects-such as her family-that you do *not* want to bring up in front of Jenny. Jenny is impossibly snooty, and really, *really* mean, when she wants to be (she's just generally not a very nice person), to the point of being absolutely vicious (trust me on this-werewolf claws have nothing on the metaphorical claws of teenage queen bees. *Nothing*).

Beneath the sheets and sheets of ice and glass that make up Jenny Schmidt, however, lies a certain deep-seated need for acceptance and validation, especially that of her step-mother and her older sister. Jenny idolizes Lavinia and Lucretia, and although she can't say that she truly loves them, she feels the need to at least make them recognize her talent. Jenny is constantly seeking their approval, and when she doesn't get it, she often resorts to rather self-destructive habits (such as water fasting for a week *while* going to cheer practice every single day, and consciously knowing that she will probably pass out yet going ahead with it anyway). Jenny is also very insecure about her looks, and absolutely terrified of gaining weight. Her relationship with food is definitely not healthy, to say the least.

Jenny has vowed to *never* show anybody that side of her, however. She hates being seen as weak or vulnerable-she hates being seen as anything other than the perfect ice queen she's presented herself as. After she was Raised from the dead, though, it's been getting harder and harder to keep her composure.

But she will try, and she will succeed. Because there's simply no other option.

**Biography:** "You'll need to shave two inches off your waist if you ever want to walk in a big-name show. I'm not just going to sign you on just because you're my daughter, Genevieve."

Jenny turned around, startled. She was standing in front of her floor-length mirror, topless, a measuring tape wrapped around her midsection. Her mother had somehow come in behind her without her knowledge.

Lavinia Schmidt, a world-famous supermodel (amongst the right circles, that is. Usually the non-human ones) and founder and owner of Lavinia Models, Inc. strode into the room, her icy blue eyes running critically over her daughter's slender frame.

"Stand up straight," she ordered, pressing a hand against Jenny's upper back and tilting her chin up. She examined her daughter the way that a art collector would examine a painting that they were considering adding to their collection.

Jenny waited with a bated breath.

"You've grown," her mother said, finally. "An inch? An inch and a half? What does that put you at, five-eight?"

Jenny nodded, trying not to let the eagerness show. "Five eight and a half."

Lavinia appraised her daughter, again. "You have my genes," she said. "You have the right legs and the right height. And you have my wings." She put her hands around Jenny's waist, and frowned. "But you're not thin enough. Don't let my good genes go to waste."

And with that, Jenny's mother-Lavinia Schmidt, world-famous supermodel and ice queen extraordinaire-spun on her heel and walked out of Jenny's room.

Jenny glanced at her reflection, glumly. Her mother was right. She needed to deal with her disgusting thighs and her shapeless waste. 'Two inches, she said?' Jenny thought, checking the measuring tape. 'I can do that.'

She furrowed her brow, deep in thought. She hadn't gained weight after her first year at Hero High-she'd made sure of it-but what was she eating? Too many carbs? Too much sugar? Too much booze?

Jenny slipped her gauzy shirt back on, her gossamer wings sliding easily through the openings in the back. Had her mother ever told her *sister* the same thing?

Lucretia-Lucy, to friends and family-was a model, too. She was over ten years older than Jenny, and everybody said that she would be as successful as her mother. She was also starting her own clothing line, and dating one of *the* biggest names in non-human and undead fashion: Victor Blanc, a famous faerie fashion designer.

Jenny sighed, a tad morosely. Would she ever live up to the expectations of her mother, after everything that Lucy had done?

Jenny wrinkled her nose. She didn't really *like* Lucy. She was too much like their mother.

Lucy Schmidt had been the most popular girl in school, when she was at Hero High. Captain of the cheer team, student council president, homecoming and prom queen...you name it, Lucy was it. Her mother decided to add Lucy to her agency's roster before she was even done with junior year, and while her peers were stressing out about exams, Lucy was flying to Paris and L.A. and Milan and Shanghai for castings and shoots. And she'd walked her first Fashion Month during high school, as well.

Jenny wrinkled her nose, again. It was so *unfair*. Why did Lucy get to be so perfect?

Jenny wanted to be a model. She wanted to be a *supermodel*, like her mom and her sister, with all her heart. And if that meant eating less chocolate, then so be it. And while most 14-year-old girls eventually give up on that aspiration, 14-year-old Jenny refused to. She would do it. She would do whatever it took to make sure that she didn't let her mother down.

"You know, Jenny," one of her "friends" at school had said, earlier that year-"have you ever considered something besides modeling?"

Jenny had thrown the other faerie her infamous ice-cold glare. "Like what?" she'd retorted, incensed. "Something lame like pottery? Isn't that what *you're* doing?"

The girl had turned bright, bright red, and a satisfied smirk had slipped onto Jenny's face as she strode away, gossamer wings sparkling in the sunlight.

Really, though. What was that girl even talking about? Her whole family was in the industry (save for her father-*he* was a plastic surgeon for all non-human species. Which was *still* sort of the "industry", to be frank). Her mother was a retired model and the owner of a modeling agency. Her older sister was basically a supermodel, and she was getting into fashion design, too. Her uncle was a photographer for Vogue (the human version), her aunt a booker and creative director with Victor Blanc (she'd introduced Lucy and Victor, actually), her cousins reporters and writers directly involved with both human and non-human fashion, and her great-uncle had been a successful designer himself. She had no choice beyond becoming a wildly-successful model, just like her mother and sister and cousins. And then maybe also becoming a wildly-successful designer, or actress, or dancer, or something like that.

And so Jenny cut calories and carbs. And she was kind of miserable-who wouldn't be, if your stomach literally hurt so much that just *breathing* sends stabs of pain through your entire body?-but she told herself that it would be worth it. It would all be worth it when her mother signed her on to her agency, when she walked her first show, when she became a star.

Just like her mom. Just like Lucy.

And in time, those two inches came off Jenny's waist. And another ten pounds dropped off her frame.

Her hair began to thin and she was always *cold*-it was a cold that reached all the way deep down into her bones. And she would feel hunger ricochet through her empty stomach during class, but it didn't matter. Nothing mattered except getting signed, then walking her first shows and becoming wildly successful like her sister and her mother and the rest of her entire goddamn family.

Meanwhile, Jenny's "popularity"-if you could truly call it that-soared. As she got older, she got skinnier. And it seemed like as she got skinnier, she was more popular. Never mind the fact that she couldn't even tell the girl who was supposed to be her best friend (*friend*??? More like *frenemy*) what she was going through her head. Never mind the fact that she felt like passing out after cheer practice and that sometimes she felt *dizzy* with hunger when she woke up. None of that was *important*, not compared to what her future held if she could just be *perfect*.

And then...sophomore year. Tensions between her mother and father had been escalating since, well, the day they got married, but after almost twenty drama-ridden years, the two of them had a very messy (and *highly* publicized) divorce. And her father got custody of her, and her mother basically told her to never contact her again. And there went Jenny's every hope of being signed at her mother's agency.

Fortunately, her uncle-the one who worked for Vogue UK, in the human world-was sympathetic to her plight. He made a few phone calls and encouraged Jenny to go to an open call with various modelling agencies around the human world during her junior year. Jenny took his advice, and she was on the verge of getting signed with a well-known agency when she, well, died.

Whenever Jenny thinks about *how* she died-by the hands of Wilhelmina Wistmore, that (literally) back-stabbing bitch-white-hot anger and scorching black rage burn inside her, clawing up her throat and choking the air out of her lungs. She wants to scream, to yell, to *screech*-

-but she's too...tired.

Wilhelmina had her eyes on Jenny's throne, she knows. Jenny isn't *stupid*. And Jenny knew that Wilhelmina *burned* with jealousy...but Jenny didn't much *care*, because *she* was the most popular girl in school, not Wilhelmina.

But then Wilhelmina killed her. Stabbed her in the back with a knife from who-knows-where. And what happened after she died is really kind of fuzzy, but when she next opened her eyes, she was lying on a hospital bed, wearing a thin gown in a gross shade of vomit-green, and her wings-her lovely, beautiful wings-were gone.

Jenny knows how Cassius Valentine keeps her alive. She knows what he can do. She wonders *why* he does it, sometimes. It's not like she was ever nice to him. It's not like she ever even *noticed* him. And yet, there he is, helping her stumble back to her dorm as the energy leaves her limbs, injecting some sort of life-sustaining drug into her bloodstream every evening, pouring water down her throat as she sits there with a glazed expression and lifeless eyes.

Everything is different, now. After she got out of that human hospital, Jenny went into her agency's building to take digis, but her left leg-from the knee down-straight up *fell off* as she was recording her walk. Now *that* was a messy affair; Headmistress Eirisse ended up coming in and wiping everyone's memories, before scolding her for exposing herself to the human world and taking her back to her dad's house (where Jenny subsequently found that her father had married a woman maybe 5-6 years older than her while she'd been blacked out in a human hospital).

Jenny doesn't know what she's going to do. Life without modeling is, at least to her, meaningless. She has no interest in the sciences, or mathematics, or languages. Her entire existence, up until now, was modeling. And the gods know that Lavinia Schmidt won't *ever* take on a model who's a zombie-even if that zombie model happens to be her daughter (who she doesn't want anything to do with, anyway).

Besides-her family is no true family. Both her father and mother know plenty of powerful and influential necromancers, after all, seeing as they're quite powerful and influential themselves.

So the question remains: why didn't they have somebody Raise her after she died?

*OPTIONAL EXTRAS*
**Rumors/Romantic Interests:** Before she died, Jenny knew she was basically asexual, though she dated quite a few upperclassmen when she was in 9th and 10th grade. Nowadays, Jenny has no interest in dating at all.

There are definitely a *ton* of rumors surrounding her re-appearance, and although many students suspect Wilhelmina was the one who killed her in the first place, most people just assumed that her parents got a necromancer to Raise her. People speculate whether she and Cass are *involved* or not, though Jenny hasn't said anything and Cass vehemently denies it every time.

**Extracurriculars:** used to be the captain of the cheer team and the president of many, many clubs. Nowadays, she doesn't do much outside of go to class and accompany Cassius Valentine to whatever nerdy clubs he's in.

**Favorite and Least Favorite Class:** Jenny's favorite class is probably just her Drawing and Painting class, on the account of it being zero work at all. She also likes study hall, because normally she can just ditch (and if not, well, all she has to do is stare into space until the bell rights, right?). Her least favorite class is....everything else, but especially zombology (it's like bio, but for zombies. Yuck).

**Class Schedule:**
-Practical Skills for Zombies IV (PRACTICAL SKILLS)
-Controlling the Urge to Devour Brains (PRACTICAL SKILLS)
-Remaining Physiologically Intact 101 (PRACTICAL SKILLS)
-Drawing and Painting (ART)
-Zombology (BIOLOGY/PRACTICAL SKILLS)
-Physical Education IV
-Study Hall

♔ PRINCESS CONSORT RAERINNE
[The Puppetmaster]

»"Of course I'm a threat. Why? Did you think for a moment that I wasn't?"«
"Light of the Seven" (Ramin Djawadi) | youtube.com/watch?v=w9PXLTLuuSE ;

—Nicknames | Just call her Princess Consort Raerinne, please and thank you. Call her Rae-Rae or something equally as stupid, and she'll have you poisoned in your sleep.

(Was formerly Lady Raerinne Sadelyn of Rose Point, and sometimes Rinne, but those days are long gone)
She is sometimes called the Princess of Roses, owing to her penchant for red and the seat of her family’s house, but she has also been called the Queen of Thorns (never to her face, of course)

—Title | Princess Consort
—Age | 28

✦ 𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐘 ✦
—Positive Traits | Extremely perceptive, observant, analytical, calm and collected under even the most trying of circumstances, logical and rational, constantly aware of her surroundings, cunning, sly, shrewd, possesses a sharp sort of intelligence that allows her to pick up on even the slightest of cues, holds herself with a refined grace and dignity no matter what the situation, able to be charismatic (albeit in a vaguely terrifying way) if she chooses to do so, has a great taste in fashion (or so she thinks, anyway), very good at "playing her cards" right, notices /everything/, good at remembering names and faces, picks up on small, specific details, meticulous and thorough in everything that she does (whether it's plotting an assassination or planning a feast), loved her daughter more than she loved herself at one point (does that count as positive???), knows the ins and outs of court etiquette like the back of her hand, exceedingly polite (in an almost frightening manner), tends to think things through before she acts and rarely allows her temper to get the best of her (though it’s definitely happened before), very determined to get what she wants

—Negative Traits | Can be quite ruthless and amoral, rather haughty/aloof, can be shortsightedly disparaging, cold and callous, quite cruel, unfeeling, overly ambitious, will stop at nothing to get what she wants (Raerinne's not above the occasional poisoning or two, as a multitude of dead men can attest to), frighteningly manipulative, has very few "true" friends that she knows she can count on no matter what, more likely to inspire fear than love in the people she encounters, not above playing dirty but also hates getting her hands dirty (both literally and figuratively), really high-maintenance, bitter as fu.ck, a total snake, kind of pretentious, super power-hungry, the embodiment of a backstabbing-bi.tch, kind of all-or-nothing in the matters she feels strongly about, blinded by her emotions when well and truly angry, perfectly poisonous

—Likes | The color red, roses (especially /red/ roses, though she's quite fond of white roses as well), pearls, diamonds, rubies, emeralds, sapphires, and other precious jewels, cherries, blackberries, being in charge/in control, when people scurry to obey her orders, being feared (or so she tells herself, anyway), the colors black and gold, telling people what to do/ordering others around, the position of influence that her husband's status has afforded her, delicacies such as swan or peacock, heady, cloying red wine (though she /hates/ getting drunk-she doesn't like feeling that she isn't in /control/), elegant, expensive gowns that show off her impeccable taste as well as how wealthy her family is in a refined, understated manner, accessories that are both beautiful and deadly (bladed fans, armored/bladed parasols, dagger-like hairpins and the like), daring rouges and lip tints, poison, power, people who are loyal to her, toying with and manipulating others (especially men), vengeance against those who have wronged her in the past, blades and daggers with ornate jeweled hilts, crimson silk, a good poisoning or a perfectly executed murder, subtlety (when it is needed), knowing everyone's secrets

—Dislikes | Her ex-husband, incompetence, when something/someone unnecessarily ruins her hair or clothing, silly stories about true love and chivalry, relying on others, men who are only powerful because they're men, being sweaty, messy hair, dirty clothing, crude manners, her ex-husband, being underestimated because she's a woman by people she actually trusts (who are few and far in between), sloppiness and messiness in general, drunkards, useless and meaningless violence and destruction (could you /get/ any more rude??? All of the violence and destruction that Raerinne partakes in is plenty meaningful, thank you very much), physical altercations (they're just so /messy/), large dogs (they slobber too much), her ex-husband, ale, most meat dishes, sweltering summer days, being a pawn in some dumb /man/'s game of politics, feeling powerless or helpless, being forced to marry people for stupid reasons (like, if she's going to be forced to marry someone in the first place, it better be for a damn good reason), being viewed as "property" just because she's a woman, gender roles and stereotypes (even though she frequently uses them to her advantage), the smell of smoke, people who feel the need to question her motives/her commands, the color orange, oh, and did we mention her /ex-husband/?

—Goals/Objectives | Becoming queen, becoming queen, becoming queen, somehow disposing of the current queen in order to become queen, helping her husband become king (so that she will be the queen), finding and torturing and killing all the people involved with the murder of her daughter beyond her husband and that sorcerer (which she will do once she's queen), eliminating her enemies in the most discreet way possible, finding the perfect gown for her future coronation, and becoming queen. That is all.

—Fears | Never becoming queen, dying alone and forgotten, harm coming to her surviving immediate family due to her actions (though Raerinne's quite certain that both her mother and her older brother are more than capable of defending themselves), being betrayed by the few people that she actually trusts

—Strengths | Raerinne is very practical and has both feet planted firmly on the ground. She is capable of saying exactly what she means without saying anything at all, as well as flattering and insulting someone in the same breath. In a physical altercation (not that she would ever seek one of these out-they're so terribly /uncouth/), Raerinne would be capable of holding her own with her viciously practical stiletto blades (which she dips in lethal poisons of her own creation). Where Raerinne truly excels, however, is with words and outward appearances. Raerinne is more than capable of bandying words about all day long, and she is extremely perceptive when it comes to what others are thinking or feeling. She has almost the entire kingdom afraid of her-and the ones who are /not/ afraid of her will learn to fear her, or they will die.

If information is the game, then Raerinne is a merchant of great renown. Capable of lying, manipulating, seducing, or blackmailing her way to someone's secrets, Raerinne will have what she wants out of someone before they even realize she has her sights set on them. Raerinne is a coolly charismatic seductress who will play with her victim like a cat plays with a mouse, torturing them with frostily polite words and coy looks-all the while teasingly wrapping her arms around her husband.

Raerinne fights with words just as well as she fights with her poison and her daggers. She's very discreet about it all, and if she wants to draw blood, you won't know it until the crimson liquid is oozing out of the wound. Raerinne hates it when things get messy, though, so she mostly fights with icy looks and coy smiles and threats cleverly disguised as compliments. Raerinne would /never/ be engaged in an all-out fight (that's what guards and knights and the like are for, thank you very much), though she is quite skilled with her hairpin-daggers (and more so with her words and her poisons; her "words like poison". But shh. Nobody's supposed to know about that!)

—Weaknesses | Raerinne has a lack of brute physical strength (it's not /proper/ for young noblewomen to be strong like that, apparently), and an inability to trust others that could very much cost her her life one day. Raerinne has a rather cynical and bitter view of the world (she doesn't believe in true love, for example), and she has a tendency to be very judgmental of others. She burns with a need for vengeance against her first husband for what he did to her and what he did to her /daughter/, even though he's already dead and gone by Raerinne's own hand (but she will destroy his entire /house/ one day, just you wait). She believes that people are not inherently good nor evil, but that it is easier to be evil in difficult situations, so people tend to be selfish and greedy-Raerinne herself included.

Raerinne is ruthless and amoral. She can be extremely cold and callous, especially if she does not view somebody as "important". Raerinne will literally do /anything/-lie, cheat, steal, murder, blackmail, manipulate, whatever-to get what she wants. She is the literal embodiment of a backstabbing-bi.tch.

On the inside, Raerinne is a mess of sorrow and fury and ambition that have combined to create the woman she is now. Raerinne is obsessively chasing after a crown, in the hopes that it will help fill the hole left inside her after what her first husband /did/.

(She knows that it won't).

✦ 𝐀𝐏𝐏𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐀𝐍𝐂𝐄 ✦
—Gender | Female
—Hair | Raerinne has brown hair so dark that it's almost black. It is thick and wavy and falls to somewhere around halfway down her back. Raerinne prefers to either arrange her hair in elaborate formations, adorned with jewels and tiaras and hairpins, or let it hang loose and free.

—Eyes | Raerinne's eyes are a dark brown color, and most people who have met her say that there's something undeniably alluring yet utterly terrifying about those eyes. Raerinne has mastered the art of staring someone down while fluttering her eyelashes in a scandalously flirtatious way; her eyes change to fit whatever expression she needs at the moment. The one constant, however, is the sharp, piercing edge to them that hasn't gone away ever since her first husband did what he did.

—Height | Five feet and nine inches

—Remarkable Features | Her piercing eyes (they miss /nothing/ and they're kinda freaky but you know what's a girl gonna do), her high cheekbones and the shape of her jaw (her face literally screams "rich snooty aristocrat!!!"), her height (she's rather tall) and the way she's built in general (Raerinne is all sharp edges and long, lean lines; there is nothing "womanly" at all about her figure-which is remarkable in that it's rather unusual since she's, you know, a woman)

—Style/Aesthetic | Raerinne favors gowns of crimson and black and gold with plunging necklines and bold accents; coquettish and domineering all at once. Raerinne likes sleek, streamlined silhouettes and ensembles dripping with jewels that scream "I'm more important than you are!!!" in the most discreet way possible.

Raerinne is scandalously dark lip tints and rubies glittering at her throat; she is a set of razor-sharp hairpins with ornate onyx hilts shimmering in the dim candlelight. She is heady wine and sickly-sweet poison; she is the blood speckled across a diamond-studded dagger.

(And the gods know that she won't let /anyone/ forget it)

—Model | Gizele Oliveira

✦ 𝐁𝐀𝐂𝐊𝐆𝐑𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐃 ✦
—Biography | Princess Consort Raerinne, the Princess of Roses-

Beautiful. Brutal.

Nobody can dispute the fact that Raerinne is as lovely as any rose. With her high cheekbones and slender frame and elegant features, Raerinne is classically beautiful in the most aristocratic sense of the word.

But all roses have thorns, they say, and what makes you think that Raerinne is any different?

Raerinne wants the throne. And why not? Her ancestors were kings and queens, once upon a time. And House Sadelyn has always been close to the royal family. Rumors whisper that her grandfather was a dead queen's lover, aye, and they say that her great-great-great-aunt was a queen in her own right.

The second and youngest child of Lord Tomas and Lady Cerise Sadelyn of Rose Point, Raerinne was destined for a betrothal from the moment that she was born. She was, after all, a girl, and in this world, all girls are good for is marriage.

Or so they would have you think, anyway.

Raerinne learned from an early age that marrying a man that she'd never met would not be the end of the world. "You may not love your husband, but you will love your children," her mother used to tell her as she brushed out her hair and deftly braided it into an appropriately elaborate arrangement for whatever banquet or ball that they were about to attend. Raerinne was confused by these words, at first, until she saw the same truth in her mother-

-her mother, who felt nothing for Raerinne's father, but would have burned the world for her children.

Ever since Raerinne was officially considered fit to be wedded and bedded by some lord or the other, Lord Tomas had been looking for a suitable husband. One suitor after another came and went, and Raerinne was paraded before them like a horse at an auction, albeit a very /valuable/ horse. Her brother, Gabriel, was the heir to Rose Point, while Raerinne was to be sold to some stranger like the aforementioned horse, to be ridden whenever her new owner liked, beaten whenever he liked, and cast aside in time for a younger filly. Gabriel's future was glory and wealth and power, while Raerinne's was childbirth and moonblood and obedience.

Or so she thought, anyway.

Raerinne's mother taught her of petticoats and propriety-the only things that a woman ought to know, they said.

But when Lord Tomas was gone, off to some corner of the kingdom or another in service of the king, and when Gabriel and the servants were all in bed...

...Lady Cerise would show Raerinne her /poisons/.

Nobody is entirely sure of Lady Cerise's ancestry; some whisper that comes from a line of high priestesses that can raise the dead, some whisper that she hails from a kingdom beyond the sea, and still others whisper that she is an impostor-that she killed the true Lady Cerise and took on her guise in order to become a lady of Rose Point.

None of this was true, Raerinne knew. Lady Cerise was no sorceress or witch; she was a normal woman of flesh and bone who just happened to be good with everything that a normal woman wasn't supposed to be good with.

Lady Cerise showed her daughter her poisons, just like her mother had done for her and her grandmother had done for Raerinne's grandmother. Poisons that could stun; poisons that could kill. Poisons that could cause the victim to break out into warts; poisons that could cause the victim to suffocate to death. Lady Cerise showed Raerinne everything she knew, and Raerinne knows it all by heart, for one day, she would pass this knowledge on to /her/ daughter.

Lady Cerise knew more than poison, though. She knew how to flatter and flirt; how to manipulate. How to say exactly what she meant without saying anything at all. How to say nothing yet everything all at once.

How to decapitate a foe with nothing but an excessively ornate hairpin.

And now, Raerinne knows too.

Lord Tomas Sadelyn died from a mysterious illness that left his tongue too swollen for speech and his body too feeble to even stand when Raerinne was fourteen. There was no doubt in her mind that this was the work of her mother; it was not a terribly exotic poison, really, made from a plant with leaves shaped like stars.

Star-shaped leaves. Did you know that star-shaped leaves even existed? Raerinne didn't.

With Lord Tomas gone, Lady Cerise could take control. And she did exactly that, dismissing all of her father's old advisers all at once. She quickly replaced them with her own men and women, who hailed from strange lands that Raerinne had never heard of. The servants called them witches and sorcerers, but Raerinne could see their power. Their wisdom.

When Raerinne was sixteen, she married Lord Devran of House Vaele. The two had been betrothed for three years, and yet their wedding was the first time that they had ever even laid eyes on each other.

Lord Devran was tall and sinewy, with cold, sharp eyes. At twenty-five years of age, the common folk were already whispering of his strength, of his cruelty. Of his ambition.

Oh, the irony of it all! Raerinne and Devran were more alike than anyone knew.

When Raerinne was seventeen, she gave birth to her daughter-her precious, beloved daughter. She named her Cecile, after her mother (much to the chagrin of Lady Phillipa, her mother-in-law).

After Cecile, it didn't matter so much that Devran came to bed every night drunk on some strange concoction from faraway lands. It didn't matter so much that Raerinne missed her mother and her brother; it didn't matter so much that the snowy domain of House Vaele was a far cry from the lush, manicured gardens of Rose Point. Raerinne would go through the motions with her lord husband at night, and in the morning, she would have Cecile.

Raerinne was happy, when she was with Cecile. She would forget all her ploys and plots and schemes, and allow herself to just...exist, with her daughter. And for those all-too-brief years, Raerinne was /happy/.

That all came crashing down when Cecile was murdered.

The servants had been whispering of Lord Devran's increasingly erratic habits for some time. Raerinne herself was also aware that he was dabbling in dangerous things. He would come back to their bedchamber, runes and sigils carved into his flesh, or maybe he wouldn't come back at all, and Raerinne wouldn't see him until supper the next day. Lord Devran grew increasingly irritable and short-tempered, and although Raerinne tried to keep calm...

...one time, the ba.stard /slapped/ her, as if she were nothing more than a servant, and it was all Raerinne could do from ripping his throat out right then and there.

Raerinne saw what her husband was doing. He was playing with black magic; he always had a small crowd of pet sorcerers and wizards and mages following his every move. Lord Devran wanted immortality. Why, Raerinne could not say. She didn't really care, because the more distracted her husband was, the more power /she/ had-

-at least, she didn't care until he had Cecile sacrificed for the ritual that was to grant him immortality.

Raerinne doesn't know the specifics. She doesn't /care/. All she knows is that it felt /so/ good to stab out her husband's eyes after he gave her daughter to one of his pet sorcerers, who presumed to think that he would be able to escape from everything unscathed.

He was a fool. Raerinne killed him, too, and she /laughed/ when she felt his blood running through her fingers.

Raerinne left for Rose Point, after that. She wanted nothing to do with House Vaele /ever/ again. When she got back, she met a witch from some distant and exotic land who told her of spells and incantations that corresponded to the poisons Raerinne knew so well. The witch said that she could teach her how to literally make her words like poison, if Raerinne gave her the souls of all her unborn children.

Raerinne accepted. She didn't want anymore children. Not after Cecile.

A year after returning to Rose Point, Raerinne set her eyes on the crown. When she was queen, she reasoned, she would be able to bring her daughter the justice she deserved, for Raerinne was not so much of a fool as to think that House Vaele and allies of that /filthy/ sorcerer would not be back for vengeance. When she was queen, she would have the armies of the entire kingdom to hunt down the cursed fool who created that damned immortality ritual.

When she was queen, nobody would /dare/ to cross her ever again. Not even dearest, deadest Devran's annoying mother.

Raerinne traveled to the royal palace, where she married [big bad wolf]. She doesn't love him, not really, but the two of them have similar aspirations. And they /do/ make a wonderfully diabolical team.

And so Raerinne plots and schemes and plans, hoping that a throne and a crown of her own will help fill the hole that used to be Cecile.

(She knows that it won't).

No matter, though. She is Princess Consort Raerinne, the Queen of Thorns-

-and she is deadly. She is /dangerous/.

✦ 𝐑𝐄𝐋𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐇𝐈𝐏𝐒 ✦
—Family | (Note: I only included Raerinne's immediate family, since I know that most of her other family members are actual characters!)

*Father (deceased): Raerinne had always liked her father. Lord Tomas of House Sadelyn was kind and amicable and cheerful; more suited to being a court musician or an actor than the lord of a noble house. Indeed, although he ruled to the best of his ability, Raerinne could tell that his heart wasn't in it. He was simply doing it out of a duty that he owned to his family, to his house. Raerinne's father loved her and her older brother with all his heart, she knew. She also knew that he knew what she wanted-to /rule/ in her own right, even if she was a woman. She knew that he saw the steel in her; she knew that he saw in her brother what he saw in himself. And yet, he did nothing.

Raerinne used to be angry about the fact that her father didn't do a single thing, but now that he's dead and gone, she supposes that she can't blame him. He was only doing his duty.

*Mother (Zoe Saldana-I wanted somebody older, and HF models are mostly <30, so I hope an actress is okay!): Lady Cerise of House Sadelyn is a force to be reckoned with.

Twenty years younger than her dead husband, people whispered that when Lord Tomas died, Lady Cerise came to life. Before Tomas passed away, Cerise was seemingly timid and as quiet as a mouse and almost invisible, but after his untimely demise-

-Cerise has had his brothers exiled, his captains and generals dismissed, and his armies disbanded.

Raerinne was not surprised, if she was being perfectly honest with herself. Ever since she was a young child, she'd known of her mother's domineering nature-she'd known that the quiet and meek facade was just that: a facade.

And Raerinne is fairly certain that it was her mother who killed her father.

Raerinne doesn't know what to think. She knows that their marriage was a loveless one; Lady Cerise was never /happy/. She was restless and anxious, and Raerinne now knows why-she wanted to rule. She wanted /power/. And to do that, she poisoned Raerinne's father, who Raerinne had loved with all her heart and whose presence she knows she still misses, no matter how many times she tells herself that he's dead, that he's /gone/.

But at the same time, Lady Cerise was the one who taught her how to use her beloved stiletto daggers. Lady Cerise was the one who taught her everything she knows about poisons. Lady Cerise was the one who taught her how to flatter and insult in the same breath; how to say everything and nothing all at once. Lady Cerise has been through more pain than Raerinne could ever imagine, if the rumors surrounding her are true.

Lady Cerise loves Raerinne, even if she didn't love her husband.

And, despite it all...

...Lady Cerise is her /mother/.

*Brother (Reece King): Lord Gabriel of House Sadelyn was destined to rule from the moment that he was born.

The oldest son of Lord Tomas and Lady Cerise Sadelyn, it was understood that Gabriel would be the one inheriting Rose Point and all the surrounding lands. And, indeed, Gabriel is a good ruler-he was barely a man when Lord Tomas died, but in the couple of years that he has ruled, he has matured greatly.

Raerinne has always loved her older brother, and she knows that he is a brilliant ruler.

But still-even now, she can't help but to be jealous.

Why did /he/ get to inherit Rose Point, just because he is a son and she is a daughter?

*Daughter (deceased): Lady Cecile of House Vaele was only six when she was murdered.

Raerinne adored her daughter, the way that her mother said she would. With her daughter, she forgot about her grand schemes for power and her goals and ambitions; all that mattered was Cecile. Cecile was always a lady-she was kind and soft-spoken, but there was an undeniable charm about her that Raerinne knew would serve her well, once she was old enough to understand what Raerinne understood.

That, of course, never came to be. Raerinne is /furious/ about what her husband did to her daughter, and every time she thinks about Cecile, a volatile mixture of sorrow and rage threatens to claw its way up her throat and spill out of her mouth all at once.

So Raerinne tries not to think about her. Instead, she thinks about the crown, and not how much she misses her dead daughter.

That's totally healthy, right?

*Husbands (Big Bad Wolf, Lord Devran Vaele-deceased): see "foes" for Devran; BBW to be determined during plotting

—Friends | Friends? What are friends? Raerinne has many, but she also has none.
(Oh okay, this part is /required/? Well, I suppose she's got a few that she would consider /real/ friends...ish...)

*LADY SERENEI of House Farwynd (Ming Xi): Serenei. Ah, Serenei. Sweet, giggly Serenei. Pretty Serenei. /Stupid/ Serenei.

Raerinne and Serenei were like sisters, growing up. Serenei's father and Raerinne's father were close friends, and as such, so were Serenei and Raerinne. They had much in common; Serenei was the only daughter in her family (and the youngest one, at that), just like Raerinne. Serenei liked pretty gowns and glittering jewels and adorning her hair with ornate hairpins stolen from her mother's jewelry box when she was bored-just like Raerinne.

But as they grew older, the differences emerged. There was a rage, a /fury/, in Raerinne that wasn't in Serenei. There was an unrelenting thirst for power in Raerinne that wasn't in Serenei. There was a bitterness and an anger in Raerinne that Serenei could never understand. Serenei was content with her lot in life; she was content with marrying some suitably rich and powerful lord or and she still delighted in pretty gowns and sparkly jewelry when Raerinne had cast those things aside for her larger, and more /important/, ambitions. And Serenei saw this anger and darkness and bitterness in Raerinne, and she was frightened.

After Raerinne's first marriage, the two fell out of touch. However, four years ago (just after the untimely demise of Raerinne's first husband, Lord Devran), they unexpectedly encountered each other at court. They also discovered that they were after the same man: (insert name of Big Bad Wolf here). Serenei's father wanted Serenei to marry (Big Bad Wolf) in order to get closer to the throne; Raerinne wanted to marry BBW for that exact same reason.

Well. Raerinne was /not/ about to just sit down and play nice. Who do you think she is?

One of Serenei's brothers, Clarrik Farwynd, got into a little /accident/ while on a hunting trip. He died from his injuries a month later. The entire kingdom mourned the passing of such a promising young man, and the squire that Raerinne bribed kept his mouth shut about the whole small-dose-of-potentially-lethal-poison-in-wine thing.

Serenei knew it was her. Raerinne knew that Serenei knew. Raerinne hadn't meant to kill Clarrik, if you can believe it, but rather to...impede his senses and maybe just /cripple/ him. As a warning. Obviously, /that/ backfired.

Serenei had no evidence that it was Raerinne, and neither did anybody else (not even that squire). Devastated, Serenei threw herself out of her tower bedroom not a year later, leaving Raerinne to claim BBW for herself.

Raerinne feels no remorse. Serenei and her father should have /never/ crossed her. The fact that Clarrik died-Clarrik, who she'd known her entire /life/ and who had teased her and Serenei and snuck them delectable raspberry tartlets from the kitchens-the fact that Serenei soon followed-those are just...unfortunate consequences in Raerinne's pursuit of something more grand. Something more /important/.

Right?

*LADY MARLEYA of House Ilyana (Anna Selezneva): Raerinne's current BFF. Lady Marleya has a string of dead husbands and stillborn children, but more importantly, she has a knowledge of arcane spells and incantations that she is more than willing to put to use for Raerinne's purposes. Lady Marleya is the last of her house-most of her family was killed a generation ago, after House Ilyana rose up in rebellion against the current ruling family-and Marleya is angry and bitter and vengeful...just like Raerinne.

Lovely and lethal, Lady Marleya and Raerinne are startlingly similar. Marleya is a sorceress of some sort (she won't divulge the specifics), and she keeps her true identity a secret. Raerinne, however, was able to deduce who she truly was when she first arrived in the capital, and she agreed to help her keep her secret, in exchange for her loyalty. It was through this alliance that the two formed a strange but very real bond. Raerinne told Marleya of her deepest fears and her deepest regrets, and Marleya did the same, and Raerinne /does/ love Marleya's sharp wit and scathing sense of humor.

But at the end of the day, Raerinne still doesn't know if she should completely trust her. Because Raerinne knows herself enough to know that she will stop at /nothing/ for the crown-and if she and Lady Marleya are so similar, then why should it be any different with her?

—Foes | (Okay, /now/ we're talking!)
*LORD DEVRAN of House Vaele (Arthur Gosse; deceased): Lord Devran Vaele was Raerinne's first husband. The two were married when Raerinne was sixteen, and from the start, Raerinne could see that she and her husband were extremely similar. Both of them had an insatiable ambition that consumed their every thought.

Raerinne initially married Lord Devran in order to bring House Sadelyn closer to the throne (the Vaeles were slightly less distantly related to the royal family than the Sadelyns, you see), but she quickly grew to resent his domineering ways. Even so, she kept quiet, and she bided her time.

Lord Devran was infamous for his interest in the "dark arts", as the commoners would call it, and Raerinne was always aware of the sorcerers and wizards that passed through his castle. Even so, the fact that he would sacrifice Cecile-that he would sacrifice their /daughter/-for his deluded dreams of immortality shocked and infuriated Raerinne.

Of course, she wasn't about to let him sit back and just /get away/ with it. She killed him.

But what's new?

*LADY PHILLIPA of House Vaele: The mother of dearest, deadest Devran, Lady Phillipa is a force to be reckoned with. Known throughout the kingdom for her fiery hair and her temper to match, Phillipa puts up with no bullshi.t whatsoever. Lady Phillipa strongly suspects that Raerinne was involved with the murder of her son, but she has no evidence. Still, Raerinne keeps an eye on her-she knows that Lady Phillipa will act, one day, and Raerinne intends on being fully prepared for when she does.

+various other people she's probably pi.ssed off in her bid for the throne (tbd during plotting)

—Romances | What is /romance/???? -Raerinne, probably
*Big Bad Wolf: tbd (headcanon is that although Raerinne doesn’t truly love him, she and BBW get along swellingly and work together /very/ well)

*LORD DEVRAN of House Vaele (deceased): see "foes"

*Various men that she’s probably teased, flirted with, etc in order to get them to do what she wants

(Do any of these even count as romances if Raerinne doesn't actually love them? Whoops!)

More family/friends/foes/romances here: [insert plotting set link]

✦ 𝐎𝐏𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐀𝐋 ✦
—Quotes/Random Facts |
—Collection |
—Moodboard | polyvore.com/cgi/set?id=234952727
polyvore.com/cgi/set?id=235376458
—Playlist | polyvore.com/make_me_their_queen-raer…
—Camera Roll | polyvore.com/cgi/set?id=235380478

♔ 𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐘
polyvore.com/theres_an_old_man_sittin…

Full name: Ariella von Brendt (the name she goes by now, in any case. She's changed her names dozens of times)
Nicknames: Just Lady von Brendt, please and thank you. Call her Ari or something equally as stupid and she’ll have you poisoned in your sleep.
(Though she is secretly quite fond of one of her current nicknames-the Princess of Roses, for her penchant for the color red and the estate she and her husband own, Rose Point. And she is quite aware that people called her the Queen of Thorns behind her back, thank you very much)
Age: Somewhere upwards of 2,000 (2,135, to be exact). Appears to be around 30
Gender: Female
Sexual Orientation: Asexual, probably. But Ariella hasn't thought about love, much less her sexuality, in a long, long time

Species: Vampire

Personality: Ariella is very practical and has both feet planted firmly on the ground. She is capable of saying exactly what she means without saying anything at all, as well as flattering and insulting someone in the same breath. Ariella is more than capable of bandying words about all day long, and she is extremely perceptive when it comes to what others are thinking or feeling. She has almost all the vampires in London afraid of her and her husband-and the ones who are not afraid of her will learn to fear her, or they will die.

Ariella is observant and analytical; calm and collected under even the most trying of circumstances. She is logical and rational and constantly aware of her surroundings (she misses nothing), and her sly, shrewd intelligence allows her to pick up even the slightest of cues. Ariella is more “terrifying” than “charming”, but she is able to be charismatic-albeit in a vaguely terrifying sort of way. She is meticulous and thorough in everything she does (whether it’s plotting an assassination or planning a ball), and she knows the ins and outs of two thousand years of court etiquette like the back of her hand. She tends to think things through before she acts, and rarely lets her temper get the best of her-though when she is well and truly angry, Ariella is completely blinded by her emotions.

If information is the game, then Ariella is a merchant of great renown. Capable of lying, manipulating, seducing, or blackmailing her way to someone's secrets, Ariella will have what she wants out of someone before they even realize she has her sights set on them. Ariella is a coolly charismatic seductress who will play with her victim like a cat plays with a mouse, torturing them with frostily polite words and coy looks-all the while teasingly wrapping her arms around her husband.

Ariella is very haughty and aloof (she can be shortsightedly disparaging) and she has an inability to trust others that could very much cost her her life one day. She has a rather cynical and bitter view of the world (she doesn't believe in true love, for example), and she has a tendency to be very judgmental of others. At first, she burned with a need for vengeance against her first husband for what he did to her daughter, even though he was already dead and gone by Ariella's own hand (and she killed the rest of his family too, in fact), but now that it’s been so long and so many centuries have passed, Ariella finds that she just doesn’t know a life without this rage that lives inside her, this cruelty. She believes that people are not inherently good nor evil, but that it is easier to be evil in difficult situations, so people tend to be selfish and greedy-Ariella herself included.

Ariella is ruthless and amoral. She can be extremely cold and callous, especially if she does not view somebody as "important". Ariella will literally do anything-lie, cheat, steal, murder, blackmail, manipulate, whatever-to get what she wants.

But on the inside, past the millennia of rage and regret, Ariella is a mess of sorrow and fury and ambition that have combined to create the woman, the vampire, that she is now. Ariella is obsessively power-hungry chasing after control of all vampires in London (at the present, at least. She’s had many similar schemes in the past), in the hopes that it will help fill the hole left inside her after what her first husband did-the hole that still persists, despite all the time that has passed, despite all the bloodshed and destruction and glory that she has left in her wake.

(She knows that it won't).

Description of Character:



Ariella has brown hair so dark that it's almost black. It is thick and wavy and falls to somewhere around halfway down her back. Ariella prefers to either arrange her hair in elaborate formations, adorned with jewels and ornate hairpins, or let it hang loose and free. She's not big on the hats that are fashionable nowadays, but she will admit that they're useful for protection against the sun. God bless those rich English ladies and their obsession with pale skin.

Ariella's eyes are a dark brown color, and most people who have met her say that there's something undeniably alluring yet utterly terrifying about those eyes. Ariella has mastered the art of staring someone down while fluttering her eyelashes in a scandalously flirtatious way; her eyes change to fit whatever expression she needs at the moment. The one constant, however, is the sharp, piercing edge to them that hasn't gone away ever since her first husband did what he did, all those centuries ago.

Ariella has high cheekbones and a delicately curved jawline-her face practically screams "snooty rich aristocrat". Ariella is rather tall, and she is definitely on the slender side. In fact, there is nothing "womanly" at all about her figure-she is all sharp edges and long, lean lines and angular limbs. There is no softness to her whatsoever, be it in her eyes or her fingers or simply the way that she holds herself.

Ariella favors gowns of crimson and black and gold with plunging necklines and bold accents; coquettish and domineering all at once. Ariella likes sleek, streamlined silhouettes (she is so thankful that the wide skirts of the decades past have gone out of fashion, although she didn't mind the bustle all that much) and ensembles dripping with jewels that scream "I'm more important than you are!!!" in the most discreet way possible. She adores scandalously dark lip tints, and she's always loved rubies and onyx and everything elegant but expensive.

Backstory: Lady Ariella von Brendt, the Princess of Roses-

Beautiful. Brutal.

Nobody can dispute the fact that Ariella is as lovely as any rose. With her high cheekbones and slender frame and elegant features, Ariella is classically beautiful in the most aristocratic sense of the word.

But all roses have thorns, they say, and what makes you think that Ariella is any different?

Ariella once wanted a throne. And why not? Her family had quite the prestigious pedigree. But as the fifth and youngest child of two Egyptian nobles, Ariella was destined for a betrothal from the moment that she was born. She was, after all, a girl, and in this world, all girls are good for is marriage.

Or so they would have you think, anyway.

Ariella learned from an early age that marrying a man that she'd never met would not be the end of the world. "You may not love your husband, but you will love your children," her mother used to tell her as she brushed out her hair and deftly braided it into an appropriately elaborate arrangement for whatever banquet or ball that they were about to attend. Ariella was confused by these words, at first, until she saw the same truth in her mother-

-her mother, who felt nothing for Ariella's father, but would have burned the world for her children.

Ever since Ariella was officially considered fit to be wedded and bedded by some lord or the other, her father had been looking for a suitable husband. One suitor after another came and went, and Ariella was paraded before them like a horse at an auction, albeit a very valuable horse. Her brothers were destined for riches and glory, while Ariella was to be sold to some stranger like the aforementioned horse, to be ridden whenever her new owner liked, beaten whenever he liked, and cast aside in time for a younger filly.

Or so she thought, anyway.

Ariella's mother taught her of manners and how to be a good wife-the only things that a woman ought to know, they said.

But when her father and her brothers and the servants were all in bed...

...Ariella’s mother would show her the poisons.

Nobody was entirely sure of her mother’s ancestry, only that she knew things that a woman of her position and standing, well, shouldn’t. Ariella’s mother showed her the poisons, just like her mother had done for her and her grandmother had done for Ariella’s grandmother. Poisons that could stun; poisons that could kill. Poisons that could cause the victim to break out into warts; poisons that could cause the victim to suffocate to death. Ariella’s mother showed Ariella everything she knew, and Ariella knew it all by heart (she still does, in fact), for one day, she would pass this knowledge on to her daughter.

Her mother knew more than poison, though. She knew how to flatter and flirt; how to manipulate. How to say exactly what she meant without saying anything at all. How to say nothing yet everything all at once.

How to decapitate a foe with nothing but an excessively ornate hairpin.

And Ariella knows, too.

Her father died from a mysterious illness that left his tongue too swollen for speech and his body too feeble to even stand when Ariella was fourteen. There was no doubt in her mind that this was the work of her mother; it was not a terribly exotic poison, really, made from a relatively common plant.

With her father gone, her mother could take control. And she did exactly that, dismissing all of her father's old advisers all at once. She quickly replaced them with her own men and women, who hailed from strange lands that Ariella had never heard of. The servants called them witches and sorcerers, but Ariella could see their power. Their wisdom.

When Ariella was sixteen, she married another noble. The two had been betrothed for three years, and yet their wedding was the first time that they had ever even laid eyes on each other.

When she was seventeen, she gave birth to her daughter-her precious, beloved daughter. She named the girl after her mother, and after that, it didn't matter so much that her husband came to bed every night drunk or that he was cruel and wanted the kind of woman that Ariella just was not. It didn't matter so much that Ariella missed her mother and her brothers and her home. Ariella would go through the motions with her husband at night, and in the morning, she would have her daughter.

Ariella was happy, when she was with her daughter. She would forget all her ploys and plots and schemes, and allow herself to just...exist, with her daughter. And for those all-too-brief years, Ariella was happy.

That all came crashing down when her daughter was murdered.

The servants had been whispering of her husband's increasingly erratic habits for some time. Ariella herself was also aware that he was dabbling in dangerous things. She saw what her husband was doing. He was playing with black magic, and he wanted immortality. Why, Ariella could not say. She didn't really care, because the more distracted her husband was, the more power she had-

-at least, she didn't care until he had her daughter sacrificed for the ritual that was to grant him this so-called immortality.

Ariella doesn't know the specifics. She doesn't care. All she knows is that it felt so good to stab out her husband's eyes as his heart stopped beating.

She went home. And after all the hubbub had died down, she set her eyes on the crown. When she had a throne, she reasoned, she would be able to bring her daughter the justice she deserved, for Ariella was not so much of a fool as to think that her husband’s family would be back for vengeance. When she wore a crown, nobody would dare to touch her children. Nobody would dare to cross her ever again.

Ariella married the younger brother of the pharaoh-her second husband-who had found true immortality by sacrificing his soul. And on their wedding night, he made her a vampire, too. She doesn't love him, not really, but the two of them have similar aspirations. And they do make a wonderfully diabolical team.

The two of them went from Egypt to Rome, and when Rome fell they stayed in Constantinople for a while before traveling to Germany, France, Spain, Italy, England. And England is where they have remained, for four centuries now. Ariella and her husband (who goes by Phillip, nowadays) are the Father and Mother of one of London’s most powerful vampire clans. They are a duke and a duchess, with all the land and wealth that they could ever need.

And still Ariella plots and schemes and plans, hoping that power will help fill the hole that used to be her daughter, her daughter who died all those years ago in Egypt.

(She knows that it won't).

No matter, though. She is Lady Ariella von Brendt, the Duchess of Rose Point, the Queen of Thorns-

-and she is deadly. She is dangerous.

Weapons of choice:
*Poison-almost as soon as she became a vampire, Ariella began experimenting with the poison in her saliva. She has come up with many “recipes” through the years, mixing vampire venom with poisonous plants-and more recently, things like chloroform and cyanide.

*Blades-although Ariella doesn’t wave swords around like a deranged chicken, in a physical altercation (not that she would ever seek one of these out-they're so terribly uncouth), she would be more than capable of holding her own with her viciously practical stiletto blades (which she dips in lethal poisons of her own creation). She also loves a good bladed fan and/or hatpin/hairstick with an unduly sharp end. Teeny-tiny hairpin daggers with ornate hilts are a good thing, too.

*Firearms-Ariella adores pretty little pistols with mother-of-pearl handles and gilt metalwork, though more often than not, she has a viciously practical revolver hidden in a pocket sewn into her petticoats. Ah, the wonders of voluminous skirts!

*Parasols-perfect for whacking someone upside the head. Ariella will sometimes have them custom-made with blades on the ends, which are concealed by silk bows and satin rosettes and layers and layers of lace.

*Words-Ariella fights with words just as well as she fights with her poison and her daggers. She hates it when things get messy, and she mostly fights with icy looks and coy smiles and threats cleverly disguised as compliments. Ariella would never be engaged in an all-out fight (especially in a public place!), though she is quite skilled with, well, everything I’ve already listed.

Preferred abilities/powers: Like all vampires, Ariella is superhumanly fast and strong, with enhanced senses. Ariella is especially adept at the quasi-mind control that most vampires possess, even if she is not the physically strongest of her kind.

STUDENT INFORMATION FORM

NAME: Cassius "Cass" Valentine
HERO OR VILLAIN: Hero
SPECIES: Mutant
AGE: 15
GRADE: Sophomore
GENDER: Male
SEXUALITY: Pansexual
FACE CLAIM+DESCRIPTION: Cameron Boyce; wears glasses with horrendously thick frames

ABILITIES: Cass is capable of absorbing factual information through skin-to-skin contact. He is also able to transfer "life force" in between living beings (which allows him to "Raise" the dead, provided that he sustains their unlife with transferred life force), although this is a recently-developed ability that nobody but he (and to a certain extent, Jenny) is aware of.

PERSONALITY: awkward, nerdy, geeky, perpetually nervous, very good at memorizing things, very good at analyzing/processing things from an objective point of view, pretty dense when it comes to people's feelings, has a hard time expressing himself in a coherent manner, kind-hearted, loves video games and acquiring new knowledge, shy, timid, reserved, very quiet, hates being the center of attention, gets really embarrassed really easily, comes off as extremely apologetic, rather calm and level-headed if he knows that he can handle a situation, kind of a goofball if he's around people he's familiar with, a total goody two-shoes

MINI-BIOGRAPHY: Cassius Valentine was born to a perfectly normal family. He has a mother and a father who are perfectly human, as well as three older sisters who are also perfectly human. His parents are unaware of the existence of non-human species and do not know that Cass is a mutant, which he is perfectly fine with. Cass discovered his abilities in middle school, and he caught the attention of the headmistresses when a news story covered his "uncanny ability" to learn new things. The headmistresses told him what was going on and told him the importance of keeping his abilities a secret from his family, then sent him off to the Academies (his parents think he's at an elite boarding school on a scholarship).

Cass had always been a bit of an outcast, but at Hero High, the feeling of "not belonging" was more acute than ever. His classmates all knew each other from middle and elementary school, but Cass was an outsider coming in straight from the human world. He quickly faded into the background when the other students realized that he didn't really have much to say (nor did he have a particularly flashy ability, like James Zhao) and that he was a stickler for following the rules.

From the moment that Cass laid eyes on Genevieve Schmidt, he knew that he was in love-which was /quite/ problematic, as he knew that she would never even give him the time of day. When he heard of her death towards the end of his first year at Hero High, he was devastated. This was also around the same time that his life-force transferring abilities were beginning to manifest. Cass practiced his new ability for a couple weeks, then took a chance-he managed to smuggle Jenny's body (gross, I know) through the portal into the human world, where he Raised her from the dead and called 9-1-1, saying that he found her collapsed on the side of the road while he was going out for a walk. Jenny was rushed to the nearest hospital, which happened to be the university hospital that his father worked at. Due to the fact that Cass had not completely mastered his ability to transfer life-force, it took a few weeks to stabilize Jenny's condition and another few weeks for her to wake up.

During the time that Jenny was in a coma, the doctors and medics at the hospital realized that she wasn't quite.../human/. Although Jenny's wings had shriveled up and died with her body, there were still slight indications of her faerie nature, especially in her DNA. Cass managed to stall and divert their questions, though he knows that his tactics will not be able to hold them off forever.

Now that he's started his second year at Hero High by accompanying an undead girl everywhere he goes, Cass doesn't know what he's going to do. He thought that Raising Jenny and having her finally notice him would make him happy, but for some reason, it's...not (Jenny doesn't really /say/ anything to him, you see, and she doesn't seem particularly happy). In any case, Cass has no choice but to continue going forward. He can only hope that everything works out alright.

TAG MODS WHEN COMPLETE: @ayzrules @flannels-wine-and-cigarettes

[OPTIONAL]
CLASS SCHEDULE:

-Practical Skills for Mutants II (PRACTICAL SKILLS)
-Physical Education II (PHYSICAL EDUCATION)
-Computer Science
-Zombie Biology/ "Zombology" (BIOLOGY)
-Heroic World History (HISTORY)
-AB Calculus (MATHEMATICS)
-Spanish II (WORLD LANGUAGES)
-Transcendentalist Literature (ENGLISH)

EXTRACURRICULARS: An inter-Academy gaming club (there are like two members, including him) and various other nerdy pursuits (coding club, robotics, etc)

**STUDENT INFORMATION FORM**
**Title/Role:** THE NERD
**Name:** Cassius Valentine
**Aliases:** Cass, brace-face, four-eyes, basically any other nickname that the jocks like to give the nerds in cliche high school movies
**Age+Grade:** 15+Sophomore
**Hero or Villain?** Hero
**Species:** Mutant
**Faceclaim:** Cameron Boyce
**Appearance:** A pretty scrawny boy for his age. Wears horrendously thick glasses, ratty t-shirts, baggy sweat-shirts, and hole-y jeans on a daily basis. Has literally no sense of fashion whatsoever.

**Likes:** video games, DnD, all sorts of animals, coding, robotics, National Geographic, reading, superhero movies, recognition, old 2000s shows and movies (especially from Disney/Nickelodeon/Cartoon Network), French fries, indie music

**Dislikes:** being forced to dress nicely, when he loses his glasses, the way that contact lenses make his eyes feel all itchy, stereotypical jerkish jocks, being "uncool" or "unpopular", being the odd one out, excessive social media use, annoying pop music/trashy rap songs

**Personality:** awkward, nerdy, geeky, perpetually nervous, very good at memorizing things, very good at analyzing/processing things from an objective point of view, pretty dense when it comes to people's feelings, has a hard time expressing himself in a coherent manner, kind-hearted, loves video games and acquiring new knowledge, shy, timid, reserved, very quiet, hates being the center of attention, gets really embarrassed really easily, comes off as extremely apologetic, rather calm and level-headed if he knows that he can handle a situation, kind of a goofball if he's around people he's familiar with, a total goody two-shoes

**Biography:** Cassius Valentine was born to a perfectly normal family. He has a mother and a father who are perfectly human, as well as three older sisters who are also perfectly human. His parents are unaware of the existence of non-human species and do not know that Cass is a mutant, which he is perfectly fine with. Cass discovered his abilities in middle school, and he caught the attention of the headmistresses when a news story covered his "uncanny ability" to learn new things (Cass didn't tell them that he can absorb factual information through skin-to-skin contact, though. He's not an *idiot*). The headmistresses told him what was going on and told him the importance of keeping his abilities a secret from his family, then sent him off to the Academies (his parents think he's at an elite boarding school on a scholarship).

Cass had always been a bit of an outcast, but at Hero High, the feeling of "not belonging" was more acute than ever. His classmates all knew each other from middle and elementary school, but Cass was an outsider coming in straight from the human world. He quickly faded into the background when the other students realized that he didn't really have much to say (nor did he have a particularly flashy ability, like Jay Zhao) and that he was a stickler for following the rules.

From the moment that Cass laid eyes on Genevieve Schmidt, he knew that he was in love-which was *quite* problematic, as he knew that she would never even give him the time of day. When he heard of her death towards the end of his first year at Hero High, he was devastated. This was also around the same time that his life-force transferring abilities were beginning to manifest. Cass practiced his new ability for a couple weeks, then took a chance-he managed to smuggle Jenny's body (gross, I know) through the portal into the human world, where he Raised her from the dead and called 9-1-1, saying that he found her collapsed on the side of the road while he was going out for a walk. Jenny was rushed to the nearest hospital, which happened to be the university hospital that his father worked at. Due to the fact that Cass had not completely mastered his ability to transfer life-force, it took a few weeks to stabilize Jenny's condition and another few weeks for her to wake up.

During the time that Jenny was in a coma, the doctors and medics at the hospital realized that she wasn't quite...*human*. Although Jenny's wings had shriveled up and died with her body, there were still slight indications of her faerie nature, especially in her DNA. Cass managed to stall and divert their questions, though he knows that his tactics will not be able to hold them off forever.

Now that he's started his second year at Hero High by accompanying an undead girl everywhere he goes, Cass doesn't know what he's going to do. He thought that Raising Jenny and having her finally notice him would make him happy, but for some reason, it's...not (Jenny doesn't really *say* anything to him, you see, and she doesn't seem particularly happy). In any case, Cass has no choice but to continue going forward. He can only hope that everything works out alright.

*OPTIONAL EXTRAS*

**Rumors/Romantic Interests:** As one can imagine, there are *so* many rumors that say Jenny Schmidt and Cass are dating (and Cass doesn't really know *what* they are, and he doesn't want to put a "label" on it until Jenny says something, you know? If she ever does say something?). Some students believe that Cass had a hand in Raising her, which makes Cass nervous. Other students believe that he stole a love potion from a witch and gave it to Jenny, which is why she stays with him. It's all very dramatic and tangled up and Cass just really doesn't want to deal with it right now.

**Extracurriculars:** An inter-Academy gaming club (there are like two members, including him) and various other nerdy pursuits (coding club, robotics, etc)
**Favorite and Least Favorite Class:** Computer science (it just *makes sense*, you know?) is his favorite, while Physical Education is his least-favorite (his ability isn't very, well, useful, in such a class)

**Class Schedule:**

-Practical Skills for Mutants II (PRACTICAL SKILLS)
-Physical Education II (PHYSICAL EDUCATION)
-Computer Science
-Zombie Biology/ "Zombology" (BIOLOGY)
-Heroic World History (HISTORY)
-AB Calculus (MATHEMATICS)
-Spanish II (WORLD LANGUAGES)
-Transcendentalist Literature (ENGLISH)

{CHRISTINA LI}

NAME: Christina Li
NICKNAME/ALIASES: Tina (by most people), Chrissy (very occasionally)
DATE OF BIRTH+AGE: 28
SEXUALITY: Heterosexual

FACE CLAIM: Xiao Wen Ju
TEXTUAL DESCRIPTION: Tina is definitely not the most formidable of people, standing at a measly five feet and three inches and weighing less than one-hundred and ten pounds. Indeed, with her diminutive stature and petite frame, most people can't help but to find her...cute. Which pisses her off to no end (it doesn't help that she "looks like a twelve-year-old", according to Tina herself).

Tina has lively, expressive brown eyes and rosebud lips that are perpetually glossed to perfection. Her sleek black hair falls just past her shoulder blades (Tina *would* keep it longer, but she always gets so impatient and loves trying out new styles). It's stick-straight, which is quite irritating (she *adores* curly hair), but otherwise Tina doesn't mind. She likes to keep it in a high ponytail or a messy bun.

Tina doesn't think she wears *that* much make-up, although some of her co-workers disagree. In any case, she would never be seen in public with mussed hair or broken nails (especially broken nails. Nails are a serious business!) and she loves high heels and cute skirts. Although her favorite color is by far pink, Tina's wardrobe is a veritable rainbow of all sorts of colors, from pastel yellow to neon blue. She also loves fun jewelry and has an obsession with hoop and/or dangly earrings of all sorts. Recently, Tina's been into a slightly "edgier" aesthetic-chokers and combat boots and pleated, high-waisted skirts and the like. Her mother thinks she looks like a teenager, which Tina can't really deny. Unfortunately.

LIKES: talkative "sources", getting a scoop before anyone else, her job, gossiping, witnessing celebrity drama first-hand, fruit smoothies, sweet foods, strawberry milkshakes, glitter/sparkles, pop music (especially of the "trashy" variety), her hot-pink car, social media, strawberries, Starbucks fraps (even though they are *so* bad for you), high-heels, lip gloss, nail polish, make-up in general, short skirts, organization, sparkly pens, colorful planners and sticky notes, choker necklaces, hoop earrings, yogurt-covered pretzels, perfectly color-coded *anything*, her very extensive network of informants (who happen to come from all walks of life, thank you very much-hell, she's even been in contact with an actual *prince* before!), her work being *appreciated* (it's not an easy job, grabbing the attention of these people when they literally have the attention span of a goldfish!), being recognized for her journalist skills, dry humor and satire (she was in a *huge* Lu Xun phase for a while, but she's found that she's in more of a Osvaldo Dragún phase, nowadays), cute purses, dresses with pockets

DISLIKES: when college guys hit on her because she literally looks ten years younger than she actually is (and *especially* when they won't back down when she tells them she's almost thirty!), being looked down upon because of her job (hey, a tabloid isn't the Aciras Times-level journalism, but she's still a journalist!), when people just won't tell her what they know (no matter how much she begs and pleads and bribes and blackmails), people who think she's stupid because she likes gossiping and make-up, shitty airplane food, superhero movies (there are so. Many. Plot. Holes. Which is a bit rich, coming from a gossip columnist like her, but *still*), those annoying bougie vegan hipster restaurants that serve spirulina-infused magical algae (like, seriously-what is she, made of money?!), being seen in public in sweatpants (it's not like this would ever happen though, of course), sneakers (they're kinda...ugly, if you think about it. Heels are *way* better), Washington DA rush hour traffic (fuck that *shit*), when people tell her she needs to swear less, when people feel like they can tell her what to do in general

PERSONALITY: Scathingly sarcastic and stunningly irreverent, Tina Li may have found herself the perfect job when she became a gossip columnist. Indeed, Tina is rather shallow (and she's perfectly aware of this, thank you very much), her life basically revolving around whether Generic Female Actress was dating Attractive Male Singer or not-and whether she could get a good story out of it, or not. She has a dry, tongue-in-cheek sort of humor that is (more often than not) *not* kept "in cheek". At all.

Despite her critical and rather cynical nature, Tina is usually quite friendly and outgoing. Her cheerful (if slightly sarcastic) disposition is well-liked by her peers, even if they do make fun of her for disturbing habit of sprinting after celebs after they've gotten into cars. In 6-inch heels.

Tina is also too curious for her own good-she's been known to follow a lead past the point of sanity. She loves drama and she loves gossip, and what brings more drama and gossip than a good ol' fashioned celebrity scandal? Flippant and impulsive, Tina is full of sarcastic qups and has an unfortunate tendency for making smart, snarky remarks at exactly the *wrong* times.

Despite her sharp tongue and dry humor, Tina is naturally people-smart and possesses a sharp intelligence and an ability to analyze all sorts of problems and situations in the blink of an eye. She is a natural-born diplomat and compromiser, capable of expertly mediating tense situations with her blunt matter-of-factness. She has a brisk, breezy way of going about her business, and she is remarkably good at keeping track of and managing people, for all her sparkly (and gossipy) ways.

Tina is always prepared for *everything*, be it a slew of paperwork or a broken nail (and if she herself doesn't know how to fix it, there's a 99% chance that she knows someone who can). Although she's quite flighty, Tina very talented multi-tasker-she can apply sparkly pink eye shadow while reciting exact date that some famous actress or the other hooked up with their current boyfriend, broke up with their current boyfriend, got back together with their current boyfriend, and broke up again with the same boyfriend while operating a motor vehicle (which is quite an impressive feat in D.A. traffic!). Tina has a talent with faces and names and picking up teeny-tiny signs-if you give her even the *slightest* clue, the tiniest hint, Tina will have the truth out of you. She is most certainly not as ditzy as she (sometimes) comes off as, and before you know it, she'll have the name of the mysterious woman GoodLooking MaleSinger was making out with at the club last night, her address, if she likes Pepsi or Coke, her phone number, her Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter usernames (and maybe even the passwords), and (probably) her social security number out of you just like *that*.

+Determined, optimistic, analytical and observant/perceptive, spunky and spontaneous, vivacious
-Kind of annoying, impulsive, a bit shallow and superficial, silly, slightly ridiculous, really extra

Real name: Hermes
Mortal name: Christina Li
Nickname: Tina (by most everyone she knows), Chrissy
Age: 29 (appears); actual age is nearing 3,000

Appearance:
(I couldn't really find any art that fit what I wanted, but I can definitely change it to a drawing if you prefer it!)
i.pinimg.com/564x/eb/4b/92/eb4b929904…


Tina is definitely not the most formidable of people, standing at a measly five feet and three inches and weighing less than one-hundred and ten pounds. Indeed, with her diminutive stature and petite frame, most people can't help but to find her...cute. Which pisses her off to no end (it doesn't help that she "looks like a twelve-year-old", according to Tina herself).

Tina has lively, expressive brown eyes and rosebud lips that are perpetually glossed to perfection. Her sleek black hair falls just past her shoulder blades (Tina would keep it longer, but she always gets so impatient and loves trying out new styles). It's stick-straight, which is quite irritating (she adores curly hair), but otherwise Tina doesn't mind. She likes to keep it in a high ponytail or a messy bun.

Tina doesn't think she wears that much make-up, although some of her co-workers disagree. In any case, she would never be seen in public with mussed hair or broken nails (especially broken nails. Nails are a serious business!) and she loves high heels and cute skirts. Although her favorite color is by far pink, Tina's wardrobe is a veritable rainbow of all sorts of colors, from pastel yellow to neon blue. She also loves fun jewelry and has an obsession with hoop and/or dangly earrings of all sorts.

Gender: Female
Sexuality: Bisexual

Pairs: tbd

Relationships with the other gods: tbd

Abilities:
-Winged sandals that allow her to basically fly from one place to another. They are currently disguised as fairy-wing high heels, though Tina is unaware of this. All she knows is that they give her a funky feeling whenever she wears them. Normally, she would be suspicious, but they're cute, so she keeps them around.

-Inhumanly fast and agile. This has manifested itself most directly in Tina being able to outrun everyone she's ever met (even track stars in high school!), even though she loathes cardio and would rather die than run on a treadmill.

-Persuasion. Although Tina isn't aware of it, she can subtly manipulate people's feelings and emotions through her voice alone. This trait gave rise to the association of Hermes with trickery and thievery in the ancient times, and it also gave Tina a reputation for being able to "talk the secrets out of anyone."

Strengths:
-Tina possesses a sharp intellect that allows her to quickly analyze any situation from every perspective and come up with a solution
-Capable of regurgitating all sorts of facts and figures
-A very talented multi-tasker-she can apply sparkly pink eyeshadow while reciting exact date that some famous actress or the other hooked up with their current boyfriend, broke up with their current boyfriend, got back together with their current boyfriend, and broke up again with the same boyfriend while operating a motor vehicle (which is quite an impressive feat in L.A. traffic!)
-Running in high heels of any sort (and outrunning you while she's at it)
-Tina is an organizational genius-she is prepared for everything, be it a slew of paperwork or a broken nail. And if she herself doesn't know how to fix it, there's a 99% chance that she knows someone who can
-Friendly and outgoing, Tina easily makes connections with people. She is well-liked amongst her peers. Her knack for remembering random facts and figures applies to faces and names as well
-Observant. Tina misses nothing
-Conversationally fluent in Mandarin Chinese; reasonably proficient in Spanish

Weaknesses:
-Tina just can't help but to chase a good story
-Can be shallow and superficial, especially when it comes to her looks
-Extra. Like, really, really extra
-Gets distracted very easily
-Will fight anyone and everyone, even when she knows she's wrong or can't win
-Doesn't think things through-Tina tends to be quite impulsive
-Flighty and erratic and inconsistent when she doesn't care about something with every fiber of her being
-Lives for drama, which should technically be a strength because that's what her job entails-drama-but this particular trait extends to Tina's personal relationships too, unfortunately. Can't keep out of other people's business
-Not very practical when it comes to clothing choices. She's been known to wear miniskirts in the wintertime (or what qualifies as winter in Los Angeles, anyway) then hate herself for it, only to do the exact same thing the next day
-Kind of a shitty driver, despite the fact she can apply some bomb ass winged eyeliner while operating a motor vehicle
-Also loves to gossip, and she's not great at keeping secrets
-A bit on the blunt side; too flippant and irreverent for her own good

Likes/Dislikes:
Likes-flowers and floral print (Tina is obsessed with flowers, for some obscure reason that even she is not entirely sure of), sushi, red bean baozi, watermelon and watermelon juice, short, ruffled/pleated skirts, crop tops, tank tops/spaghetti strap tank tops, sundresses, the smell of old books, sweets and sugary drinks, organization, sparkly gel plans and colorful planners, history, period dresses (she adores Victorian-era gowns), museums, high heels, choker necklaces, make-up, shopping, hoop earrings, cute clothes in general, strawberry milkshakes, glitter/sparkles, pop music (especially of the "trashy" variety), Chinese period dramas (because the outfits are so gorgeous), her hot-pink car, social media, strawberries, Starbucks fraps (even though they are so bad for you), talkative "sources", getting a scoop before anyone else, her job, gossiping, witnessing celebrity drama first-hand, fruit smoothies, sweet foods

Dislikes-boats (she gets horribly seasick), hamburgers (one food that she is content to stay far, far away from, thank you very much), disappointing other people, when people just won't tell her what they know (no matter how much she begs and pleads), people who think she's stupid because she likes gossiping and make-up, messy notes, drab clothing in subdued colors, ruining her hair/clothes/make-up, the smell of cigarette smoke, big dogs (but only when they slobber all over her. Big dogs are fine as long as they stay far, far away, ya feel?), disorganization, rainy days, long plane rides, racist/sexist people, when people are being annoying pieces of shit in general, when college guys hit on her because she literally looks ten years younger than she actually is (and especially when they won't back down when she tells them she's almost thirty!), being looked down upon because of her job (hey, a tabloid isn't New York Times or Washington Post-level journalism, but she's still a journalist!)

Personality: At a first glance, Tina is unnecessarily focused on small, overly specific details and unbearably girly. She is rather outgoing, and her cheerful (if slightly sarcastic) disposition is well-liked by her peers, even if they do make fun of her for her propensity of wearing high heels everywhere she goes. Tina is also too curious for her own good-she's been known to follow a lead past the point of sanity. She loves drama and she loves gossip, and what brings more drama and gossip than a good ol' fashioned celebrity scandal?

Tina is naturally people-smart and is good at picking up subtle hints that indicate shifts in emotions in others. She's a very good listener and always willing to offer comfort to other people, even if she will just have to add in a sarcastic quip here or there (indeed, she has an unfortunate tendency for making smart, snarky remarks at exactly the wrong times). Tina is perpetually impeccably organized and ready for anything. She's a bit of a perfectionist with a stickler for keeping everything neat and organized.

Despite her sharp tongue and dry humor, Tina is a natural-born diplomat and compromiser, capable of expertly mediating tense situations with her blunt matter-of-factness. Armed with a firm belief in common courtesy and a natural gift for "reading" people, she is able to get even the most stubborn of people to agree to things through the application of hot drinks and sugary treats and pure politeness. She has a breezy, brisk way of going about her business, and she is remarkably good at keeping track of and managing people, for all her sparkly (and gossipy) ways.

Finally, although one wouldn't guess it from Tina's outward appearance and mannerisms, Tina possesses a sharp intelligence and an ability to analyze all sorts of problems and situations in the blink of an eye. If you give her even the slightest clue, the tiniest hint, Tina will have the truth out of you. She is most certainly not as ditzy as she comes off as, and before you know it, she'll have the name of the mysterious woman GoodLooking MaleSinger was making out with at the club last night, her address, if she likes Pepsi or Coke, her phone number, her Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter usernames (and maybe even the passwords), and (probably) her social security number out of you just like that.

+Determined, optimistic, analytical and observant/perceptive, spunky and spontaneous, vivacious
-Kind of annoying, impulsive, a bit shallow and superficial, silly, slightly ridiculous, really extra

Biography: Tina doesn't remember anything about being a goddess (or god, if you ask the ancient Greeks). In fact, the only thing she does remember is her life in Los Angeles. She's a gossip columnist for one of L.A.'s most famous (or infamous? Depending on who you ask) tabloids, and although it's no New York Times or Washington Post, Tina takes her job very seriously. Very, very seriously. Gossip, she finds, is always a serious matter-and doubly so when it has to do with the lives of rich and famous people.

Although she has no memory of it, Tina was once the messenger between heaven and Earth. Known equally for her efficiency and silver tongue, Tina was also the guardian of tricksters and thieves, able to persuade people that they just hadn't seen her steal a that bunch of grapes with her voice. Frivolous and flippant, Tina had built quite a reputation for herself...before.

Her frequent trips to the earthly realm in her life before has led to Tina adapting extremely easily to life with the humans. She was among the first to forget her true origins, and she will likely to be among the last to truly remember, if only because she's got more pressing concerns, such as, you know, whether Attractive Female Television Host is starting a Twitter feud with Generic Male Singer or not. And whether Generic Instagram Model has had lip-fillers and a nose, boob, and possibly knee (apparently those are a thing now? Even if they're not, it makes for quite an interesting story) job. In any case, Tina loves life on earth, whether she realizes it or not. Although those cute fairy-wing heels always give her such a weird vibe when she wears them.

Even though Tina doesn't mind her job as a gossip columnist, her true aspirations are in the field of investigative journalism. After a few false starts straight out of college, though, Tina's accepted the fact that maybe that wouldn't work out. And so she settled for the second-best option: a tabloid. All the annoyed celebrities aside, Tina loves her job, and more importantly, she's good at it. Give her the tiniest tidbit of information, the merest speck of a rumor, and she'll spin it into a salacious, headline-worthy story in the space of ten minutes. Celebrities may hate her for it, but hey, a girl's gotta eat. Tina also prides herself on having a very extensive network of informants, from the hairdresser at one of L.A.'s most trendy salons to the manager of the local McDonald's.

Although Tina's life is a veritable whirlwind, one thing's for sure: if you need the latest insider celebrity gossip, Tina's ya girl. No matter who, what, when, where, why, or how, Tina's always got the scoop. The credibility of aforementioned "scoop" may be a bit...questionable, but hey, that's just schematics. Beggars can't be choosers, yeah?

Other facts: Tina lives with (who she thinks is) her great-aunt, a cranky old cat lady who can't hear anything unless you scream into her ear.

**☽ CHRSTINA "TINA" LI, 28**
**Occupation:** gossip columnist (Tina prefers the term "journalist")
hometown: Los Angeles, California
**Schooling:** Tina has a bachelor's in journalism
**Studies Focus:** majored in journalism, minored in Spanish

**Extracurricular Activities:** shopping, she's actually very well-read and loves satire and literature sprinkled with dark/deadpan humor (despite what most people may think, given her occupation), dabbles in writing (rather sarcastic) poetry every once in a while, shopping, refreshing various news websites 20000 times a minute, shamelessly binge-watching shows targeted towards a *much* younger demographic (W.I.T.C.H. and various other cartoons/animes come to mind-she's quite a sucker for Sailor Moon and Madoka Magica as well), shamelessly binge-watching cheesy rom-coms and just feel-good movies in general, shopping, scrolling through look books and couture collections while pretending like she can afford those clothes, shopping, pretending like her life isn't a mess :^), shopping, and oh-did I say shopping?

**Reason for being in Seaside:** Because a whole slew of famous, swoon-worthy surfers and their significant others and their fans and even the occasional model or celebrity or singer are in Seaside for this competition, and there's be *bound* to be drama that unfolds. And you know that ya girl is gonna be here to see it all...and get it plastered on the front page of L.A.'s most infamous tabloid, too.
**Belief:** Tina's pretty firmly on the skeptic side, but she's definitely willing to listen to both sides of the story...if only so that she'll have something for *her* story
**Role:** I couldn't really figure out one for her....? She's just here for the drama, honestly
**Driving Force:** Tina's never been one to turn down a good story. Long story short, there's bound to be plenty of gossip and/or drama surrounding this whole thing, and plus a bunch of surfers who are famous in the L.A. crowd. When the people in charge of the tabloid she works for asked her to go down to Florida and check it out, how could Tina *possibly* say no?

**Likes:** talkative "sources", getting a scoop before anyone else, her job, gossiping, witnessing celebrity drama first-hand, fruit smoothies, sweet foods, strawberry milkshakes, glitter/sparkles, pop music (especially of the "trashy" variety), her hot-pink car, social media, strawberries, Starbucks fraps (even though they are *so* bad for you), high-heels, lip gloss, nail polish, make-up in general, short skirts, organization, sparkly pens, colorful planners and sticky notes, choker necklaces, hoop earrings, yogurt-covered pretzels, froyo, bubble tea, perfectly color-coded *anything*, her very extensive network of informants (who happen to come from all walks of life, thank you very much), her work being *appreciated* (it's not an easy job, grabbing the attention of these people when they literally have the attention span of a goldfish!), being recognized for her journalist skills, dry humor and satire (she was in a *huge* Lu Xun phase for a while, but she's found that she's in more of a Osvaldo Dragún phase, nowadays), cute purses, dresses with pockets

**Dislikes:** when college guys hit on her because she literally looks ten years younger than she actually is (and *especially* when they won't back down when she tells them she's almost thirty!), being looked down upon because of her job (hey, a tabloid isn't the Washington Post or New York Times-level journalism, but she's still a journalist!), when people just won't tell her what they know (no matter how much she begs and pleads and bribes and blackmails), people who think she's stupid because she likes gossiping and make-up, shitty airplane food, superhero movies (there are so. Many. Plot. Holes. Which is a bit rich, coming from a gossip columnist like her, but *still*), those annoying bougie vegan hipster restaurants that serve spirulina-infused magical algae (like, seriously-what is she, made of money?!), being seen in public in sweatpants (it's not like this would ever happen though, of course), sneakers (they're kinda...ugly, if you think about it. Heels are *way* better), L.A. rush hour traffic (fuck that *shit*), when people tell her she needs to swear less, when people feel like they can tell her what to do in general

**Personality:** Scathingly sarcastic and stunningly irreverent, Tina Li may have found herself the perfect job when she became a gossip columnist. Indeed, Tina is rather shallow (and she's perfectly aware of this, thank you very much), as her life basically revolves around whether Generic Female Actress was dating Attractive Male Singer or not-and whether or not she could get a good story out of it. She has a dry, tongue-in-cheek sort of humor that is (more often than not) *not* kept "in cheek". At all.

Although she has a critical and rather cynical outlook on life in general, Tina is usually quite talkative and outgoing. Her cheerfully wry (if slightly sarcastic) disposition is well-liked by her peers, even if they do make fun of her for disturbing habit of sprinting after celebs after they've gotten into cars. In 6-inch heels.

Tina is also too curious for her own good-she's been known to follow a lead past the point of sanity. She loves drama and she loves gossip, and what brings more drama and gossip than a good ol' fashioned celebrity scandal? Flippant and impulsive, Tina is full of sarcastic qups and has an unfortunate tendency for making smart, snarky remarks at exactly the *wrong* times.

Despite her sharp tongue and dry humor, Tina is naturally people-smart and possesses a sharp intelligence and an ability to analyze all sorts of problems and situations in the blink of an eye. She is a natural-born diplomat and compromiser, capable of expertly mediating tense situations with her blunt matter-of-factness. She has a brisk, breezy way of going about her business, and she is remarkably good at keeping track of and managing people, for all her sparkly (and gossipy) ways.

Tina is always prepared for *everything*, be it a slew of paperwork or a broken nail (and if she herself doesn't know how to fix it, there's a 99% chance that she knows someone who can). Although she's quite flighty, Tina very talented multi-tasker-she can apply sparkly pink eye shadow while reciting exact date that some famous actress or the other hooked up with their current boyfriend, broke up with their current boyfriend, got back together with their current boyfriend, and broke up again with the same boyfriend while operating a motor vehicle (which is quite an impressive feat in L.A. traffic!). Tina has a talent with faces and names and picking up teeny-tiny signs-if you give her even the *slightest* clue, the tiniest hint, Tina will have the truth out of you. She is most certainly not as ditzy as she (sometimes) comes off as, and before you know it, she'll have the name of the mysterious woman GoodLooking MaleSinger was making out with at the club last night, her address, if she likes Pepsi or Coke, her phone number, her Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter usernames (and maybe even the passwords), and (probably) her social security number out of you just like *that*.

+Determined, optimistic, analytical and observant/perceptive, spunky and spontaneous, vivacious
-Kind of annoying, impulsive, a bit shallow and superficial, silly, slightly ridiculous, really extra

**Bio:** Christina Li grew up in Los Angeles, California, and she's lived there for practically her entire life. Her childhood was pretty standard-dad, mom, annoying younger brother, equally (if not *more*) annoying older sister, et cetera, et cetera. Tina wasn't a star student, but it's not like she flunked out of school, either, and she had a great time as a cheerleader during her high school years, even if the thought of one of those handspring-handspring-handspring-round off-back tuck sequences makes her joints ache nowadays (her grandma would laugh at her for being over-dramatic about "achy joints", but Tina would beg to differ-cheer and gymnastics *really* fuck up your body, and she's *not* being over-dramatic!).

Tina went to college in California, too, and she majored in journalism (and minored in Spanish), dreaming of becoming an undercover investigative reporter-like the muckrakers, back in the day (in fact, Tina *loves* Upton Sinclair and the whole investigation of meat-packing plants that went on in the early twentieth century). However, as time went on, Tina realized that getting a job at the L.A. Times was not as easy as she thought it would be. Sure, she had internships and wrote for the school newspaper and graduated from college, but so did everyone else trying to write for the L.A. Times.

So instead, Tina took her career in journalism in a markedly different direction-tabloids. After graduating from college, she accepted a position at one of L.A.'s most infamous tabloids, and she has worked there for a good six or seven years now. It's not a bad job-in fact, Tina quite enjoys it-but it's not NYT-level journalism, either. But hey. It could be worse, and all the annoyed celebrities aside, Tina loves her job...and more importantly, she's good at it. Give her the tiniest tidbit of information, the merest *speck* of a rumor, and she'll spin it into a salacious, headline-worthy story in the space of ten minutes. Celebrities may hate her for it, but hey, a girl's gotta eat. Tina also prides herself on having a very extensive network of informants, from the hairdresser at one of L.A.'s most trendy salons to the manager of the local McDonald's.

When Tina's boss caught wind of the fact that one of the most popular "it" girls of Hollywood would be taking to the waves in Seaside, Florida, along with a slew of lesser-known celebs, he sent Tina straight down there to, well, basically follow them around and find something to make a scandalous, newsworthy story of. Tina doesn't mind-it's a free trip to the beach, really, and she *would* appreciate a break from the atrocious L.A. rush hour traffic.

Although Tina's life is a veritable whirlwind, one thing's for sure: if you need the latest insider celebrity gossip, Tina's ya girl. No matter who, what, when, where, why, or how, Tina's always got the scoop. The credibility of aforementioned "scoop" may be a bit...questionable, but hey, that's just schematics. Beggars can't be choosers, yeah?

**Model:** Xiao Wen Ju
**Taken by:** @ayzrules

{AYLEANNA KATHERINE LYNTON OF ACIRAS}

NAME: Ayleanna "Lea" Katherine Lynton
NICKNAME/ALIASES: Lea, by pretty much everyone
DATE OF BIRTH+AGE: May 8th, 21
SEXUALITY: Bisexual

FACE CLAIM: Letitia Wright


TEXTUAL DESCRIPTION: With her sparkly nails and winged eyeliner, most people are able to deduce that Lea is very, very extra without hesitation. Indeed, Lea adores anything glittery and anything pink, and shamelessly so-she is practically guaranteed to be wearing something both sparkly and pink at any given moment.

Lea has chocolate-brown eyes that are perpetually sparkling with mirth. Although her lips are rather thin, they are always curved up in a cheerful smile or a cheeky grin. There is usually a dash of playful mischief in her expression, and always a heaping amount of enthusiastic optimism. Lea has a very expressive face. She never makes any attempt to hide her true feelings, and every single emotion that passes through her shows on her features.

Lea has gleaming black hair, which she plays around with all the time. Some days, it's curled, while some days it's straightened. Some days, she wears it up, while on other days, she wears it down. Lea likes to keep her hair relatively short, just so that it doesn't get in the way (she really can't abide by sitting still, and definitely moves around way more than she probably should), though she wishes she had the patience to let it grow long (because long hair is pretty!). Lea is around average height, standing at an unremarkable five feet and five inches, although she is on the slimmer side. Lea is covered with lean, sinewy muscle from doing gymnastics since she was five or six years old, and she moves with a breezy brusqueness, even in seven-inch platform heels. Overall, Lea isn't supermodel gorgeous, but there is something about her infectious grin and good-natured cheer that makes her all the more attractive.(edited)
LIKES: flowers and floral print (Lea is obsessed with flowers, for some obscure reason that even she is not entirely sure of), PLANTS, veggie sushi, bubble tea, any restaurants that serve vegan dishes, spaghetti, watermelon and watermelon juice, short, ruffled/pleated skirts, crop tops, tank tops/spaghetti strap tank tops, sundresses, the smell of old books, sweets and sugary drinks, up-cycled anything, really, organization, sparkly gel plans and colorful planners, history, period dresses (she adores Victorian-era gowns), museums, high heels, choker necklaces, make-up, shopping, hoop earrings, cute clothes in general, strawberry milkshakes, tumbling, glitter/sparkles, pop music (especially of the "trashy" variety), pop culture in general, acrylic nails, period dramas (because the outfits are so gorgeous), her hot-pink car, her younger sister, social media, environmental science, environmental law, all the great environmental non-profit organizations that are based in Aciras, all the great environmental non-profit organizations from anywhere in the world, sustainable fashion, "vegan" anything, learning about the rad new eco-friendly tech/commodities that people are developing, anything pink, ANIMALS, the earth, artistic gymnastics/dance (her favorite event is definitely floor, for all the fun dance elements she can include), being active, strawberries, Starbucks and other cafes that serve cancer-inducing sugary drinks, vlogging, posting way too much personal information on various forms of social media, using way-too-obscure texting acronyms IRL, pride parades, LGBTQ+ and environmental activists of every variety
DISLIKES: when people admonish her for "literally being on her phone all the goddamn time" (her mother's words, not hers!), annoying ass "climate change is a hoax" conservatives, racist people, sexist people, homophobic people, boats (she gets horribly seasick), hamburgers and just eating meat or animal products in general (why should she derive pleasure from literally eating cooked animal carcass? Or baby cow growth formula?), feeling less than perfect, disappointing other people, feeling like she hasn't met her own expectations, people who think she's stupid because she likes gossiping and make-up, people who are ignorant about the environmental problems faced by society in the contemporary era, the blandness associated with many Western dishes (she loves spicy food), messy notes, drab clothing in subdued colors, ruining her hair/clothes/make-up, black coffee (it's waaaaaaaaaaaaaayy too bitter. So is dark chocolate, to be honest), the smell of cigarette smoke (Lea isn't trying to die of lung cancer from secondhand smoking, thank you very much!), big dogs (but only when they slobber all over her. Big dogs are fine as long as they stay far, far away, ya feel?), disorganization, rainy days, long plane rides, when her younger sister ignores her for her computer games, when fashion labels/make-up brands have questionable environmental ethics (Lea just can't bring herself to support anything that uses real leather, for example, even if it's so pretty)
PERSONALITY: At a first glance, Lea is unnecessarily focused on small, overly specific details and unbearably girly. She is bubbly and outgoing, and her friendly, cheerful disposition is well-liked by her peers, even if they do make fun of her for her propensity of wearing high heels everywhere she goes. Though Lea can be very prissy and a bit shallow or superficial, she doesn't have a single mean bone in her body. She can talk about anything and everything for hours on end. Some tend to find this incessant chatter exceedingly irritating, which Lea is not always the most aware of. She is a kind and sweet person at heart, and she refuses to say anything bad about other people as a general principle. Lea is a friendly chatterbox with too much energy to be healthy. Blessed with an endless reserve of enthusiasm, Lea is quite easy to get along with and can strike up a conversation with anyone and everyone, about anything and everything. Despite her obsession with pretty clothes and make-up, Lea is a very grounded and down-to-earth person.

If Lea is not always aware of how much she talks, she is aware of the feelings and thoughts of others. Lea is naturally people-smart and is good at picking up subtle hints that indicate shifts in emotions in others. She's a very good listener and always willing to offer comfort to other people. Empathetic, understanding, and ceaselessly cheerful, Leah is perpetually impeccably organized and ready for anything. She's a bit of a perfectionist with a stickler for keeping everything neat and organized. Lea has an infernal inability to keep her mouth shut on things that don't really matter, making her an incorrigible gossip-something that her parents probably hate her for and the Aciran media gobbles up.
Despite her rather silly tendencies, Lea is a natural-born diplomat and compromiser, capable of expertly mediating tense situations. Armed with a firm belief in common courtesy and a natural gift for "reading" people, she is able to get even the most stubborn of people to agree to things through the application of hot drinks and sugary treats and pure politeness. She has a breezy, brisk way of going about her business, and she is remarkably good at keeping track of and managing people, for all her sparkly ways.

Finally, although one wouldn't guess it from Lea's outward appearance and mannerisms, Lea possesses a sharp intelligence and an ability to analyze all sorts of problems and situations in the blink of an eye. She is most certainly not as ditzy as she comes off as, in terms of academics and things like ruling the country or the effects of anthropogenic carbon dioxide on coral reefs. Armed with sparkly pink miniskirts, sparkly pink planners (made of recycled paper!), and a vast collection of sparkly pink heels, Lea is ready to take on being Aciras's future queen and fixing everything that humans have done to ruin the environment, one annoying conservative climate-change denier at a time.
BIOGRAPHY: Ayleanna Katherine Lynton is the first-born daughter of the king and queen of Aciras, Landon and Cecilia ("Cece", to those who know her) Lynton. Ayleanna has gone by Lea ever since she was a toddler. Indeed, her mother was the one who first began calling her "Lea", and the name just stuck.

From the moment that she was born, Lea was in the spotlight. The Aciran public found the spunky little princess to be endearingly charming, and with the addition of Lea's younger sister approximately three years later, the royal siblings became the darlings of Aciras. Lea grew up being tutored and taking online classes in various subjects. In her free time, she became fascinated with all things fashion (she did live in one of the fashion capitals of the world, after all), and with cute animals (because who wouldn't be fascinated with cute animals?).
When Lea was around thirteen years old, she was able to take an environmental science class through the online program that she was enrolled in. That was when her interest in all things environmental began-not only did she quickly grasp the underlying science behind ocean acidification, coastal eutrophication, global warming, and the like, she realized that as the future queen of one of the most wasteful nations in the world, she could actually make a significant difference in world-wide environmental degradation.

Lea wrote to a couple environmental non-profits and organizations and got in contact with many other environmental groups around the world. Once word got out that the Aciran princess was extremely supportive of any efforts to help the environmental movement, Lea suddenly found herself swarmed by both the media and various other environmental NGOs. Of course, the more conservative of the Acirans were quite against Lea's outspoken nature regarding environmental problems, and her parents have (on more than one occasion) asked if she could please tone it down a little bit, pretty please with a cherry on top?
Lea lowkey ignored her parents and charged on ahead. At 18, she enrolled in online classes at the nearby Washington University, renowned for its law school. Lea is currently in her third year there, double majoring in Environmental Thought and Practice and Environmental Science, with the intention of going to Washington University's law school after she finishes her undergrad coursework (with a focus on environmental law and policy, of course). Lea's social media presence is also very widespread-her Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and YouTube channel all have millions of followers, and her vlogs are very popular in Aciras. Lea's vegan YouTube channel (where she films the palace cooks preparing yummy vegan dishes) is her pride and joy, and the blog where she posts the same recipes is also quite popular.
All in all, Lea is definitely Aciras's sweetheart-outgoing and charismatic, Lea is able to make anyone she meets feel liked. Lea is amicable and agreeable, and open and accepting of everybody (save for annoying climate-change deniers and the like). Lea is somewhat of a controversial figure amongst the older generation; some like her open and outspoken nature, while others find it "unseemly" of a princess. In any case, Lea isn't going to let them stop her; #HatersGonHate, as she would say. Indeed, it was quite a scandal when Lea breezily told some interviewer or the other that she was "totally bi" (to which the interviewer responded, "What?" and Lea replied, "Yeah, girls are pretty! And guys are too!"). Lea is always running around from one place to the other, attending conferences and meetings and sometimes even green fashion shows (she wholeheartedly supports sustainable fashion brands!), and she is never without a pair of suicidally-high stilettos and her (extremely extensive) vegan make-up kit.

OPTIONAL EXTRAS
THEME SONG: "Sit Still, Look Pretty" by Daya (or, alternatively, "Lifetimes" by Oh Wonder, seeing as it's about climate change)

AESTHETIC-Y STUFF: will add pinterest board if I get around to making one lol

KINGDOM NAME: Aciras
KINGDOM COLORS: Red and white
KING AND QUEEN: King Landon and Queen Cecilia "Cece" Lynton. King Landon is a calm, steadfast, and reliable man, while his wife is known for her sharp wit and blunt nature. In Aciras, the throne passes to the oldest child (rather than the oldest male child) and has ever since the mid-1900s. As such, King Landon married into the family. Although Queen Cecilia is rather left-leaning, the two monarchs try to keep the royal platform squarely in the center in order to avoid any long, drawn-out conflicts between the conservative and liberal factions of Aciras's constitutional monarchy.

WHAT KINGDOM IS KNOWN FOR: Aciras has a very high standard of living (due to being one of the first countries to industrialize) when compared with that of many other nations in the rest of the world. It is also one of the wealthiest nations, as well as one of the most wasteful. As one of the more powerful nations in the world, Aciran "mainstream" culture is well-known in many of the other countries, if only in their large cities. It's cultural influence stretches far and wide across the globe.

Aciras's constitutional monarchy is simultaneously admired and the butt end of many light-hearted jokes. Their political system does grant the common people some say in the government; however, the Aciran legislative branch and Aciran politicians are constantly bickering with each other and can never seem to agree on anything.

The Aciran government is also known for being surprisingly tolerant of dissent, criticism, and demonstrations/protests. In fact, peaceful demonstrations sometimes receive the support of the royal family if they have to do with issues that the king or queen is keen on. Of course, the Acirans do not take national security lightly, and any potential breach of security is shut down very quickly.

Aciras is a hotspot for art and pop culture; indeed, New Lincoln City is one of the fashion capitals of the world, and Los Santos is the home to many famous movie directors and actors/actresses. Aciras is an extremely diverse country, being the home to many immigrants, and as such it is nicknamed the "melting pot". Last but not least, the Aciran military is a force to be reckoned with-there's a reason that Aciras has been able to spread its influence around the world, after all.

KINGDOM HISTORY:
-Aciras was established as a constitutional monarchy following a bloody revolution in the 1700s. The most notable features of the Aciran government is the legislative branch.

-Through the years, two distinct "factions" formed within the Aciran political system-conservatives and liberals-though there are multiple parties that fall under each category. Conservatives usually favor greater social control and lesser economic control by the government, while liberals usually favor lesser social control and greater economic control.

-Aciras was one of the earlier countries to industrialize, due to the fact that its economic system (free-market capitalism) favored those who found more efficient ways to earn money. Today, it is one of the wealthiest nations in the world.

-However, the wealth was most definitely not distributed equally, and neither were the effects of industrialization. Around 1900, it was agreed that the state of Texas would become an independent nation (known as the Texas Sovereignty). This was brought about without the violence that characterized the first revolution.
-As Aciras's wealth grew, so did its the might of its military and its influence around the world. Aciras became 'culturally' dominant, and mainstream Aciran celebrities/movies/art/literature is well-known around the globe.

-Not only is Aciras one of the wealthiest countries in the world, but it is also one of the most wasteful. A drawback of the Aciran political system is that there is no way for the monarchs to instate harsh environmental regulations without the approval of the legislature, which has always had enough conservatives to veto any regulation that they deem too constrictive. However, things may just yet change once Lea becomes queen.

OTHER: The capital city of Aciras is known as Washington, DA (District of Aciras), or DA for short. One of the six fashion capitals of the world is located in the Aciran city of New Lincoln City.

🌸𝓝𝓪𝓶𝓮
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🌸𝓣𝓲𝓽𝓵𝓮
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🌸𝓐𝓰𝓮
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🌸𝓖𝓮𝓷𝓭𝓮𝓻
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🌸𝓢𝓮𝔁𝓾𝓪𝓵𝓲𝓽𝔂
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🌸𝓐𝓹𝓹𝓮𝓪𝓻𝓪𝓷𝓬𝓮
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🌸𝓟𝓮𝓻𝓼𝓸𝓷𝓪𝓵𝓲𝓽𝔂
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🌸𝓛𝓲𝓴𝓮𝓼 + 𝓓𝓲𝓼𝓵𝓲𝓴𝓮𝓼
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🌸𝓑𝓲𝓸𝓰𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓱𝔂
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🌸𝓕𝓒 + 𝓒𝓸𝓵𝓸𝓻 𝓒𝓸𝓭𝓮
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🌸𝓣𝓱𝓮𝓶𝓮 𝓢𝓸𝓷𝓰
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🌸𝓑𝓮𝓽𝓻𝓸𝓽𝓱𝓮𝓭 𝓣𝓸
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🌸𝓚𝓲𝓷𝓰 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓠𝓾𝓮𝓮𝓷
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🌸𝓚𝓲𝓷𝓰𝓭𝓸𝓶 𝓒𝓸𝓵𝓸𝓻𝓼
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🌸𝓦𝓱𝓪𝓽 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓚𝓲𝓷𝓰𝓭𝓸𝓶 𝓲𝓼 𝓚𝓷𝓸𝔀𝓷 𝓕𝓸𝓻
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🌸𝓡𝓮𝓬𝓮𝓷𝓽/𝓡𝓮𝓵𝓮𝓿𝓪𝓷𝓽 𝓚𝓲𝓷𝓰𝓭𝓸𝓶 𝓗𝓲𝓼𝓽𝓸𝓻𝔂
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🌸𝓞𝓽𝓱𝓮𝓻
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𓆅 KAMAINJA CACERES
s o n . o f . q e t e s h

“A savage is not the one who lives in the forest, but the one who destroys it.” (Unknown)

Nickname(s) •• Kam, Kammy, some of the people he met while training used to jokingly call him "ninja" because his name kind of sounds like it
Age •• 23
Birthday •• May 24th
Star Sign •• Gemini
Birthplace •• A Tirió village deep within the northern Amazon (located in present-day Suriname)

Gender •• Male
Sexuality •• Homosexual
Model •• Benjamin Lessore

Dæmon Name •• Aryina
Has their dæmon form settled? •• Yes; she's a stoic, unflappable black panther who has no time for Kam's bullshit. His dæmon form settled quite early, actually, and although some people might have been surprised that his dæmon form was not a toucan or macaw or some other flashy (and annoying!) bird, those who know him well would not have been overly surprised-beneath his cheeky grins and colorful feathers, Kam is actually quite...serious.

Occupation •• Guide and translator, though he also helps his dad and half-sister around the house and in their fields when there's not much other work to be done
Education •• Besides the training provided by the Amun Society, Kam's not had a lick of schooling in his life. He learned everything he needs for his current job from the people in his village (though he would very much like to at least visit a university one day)

Skills/Strengths •• Kam speaks a wide variety of languages fluently, thanks to both his upbringing and his time in training (the most notable being his own native Tirió, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, and a variety of Amazonian and Amerindian languages, including Quechua, Ayamara, Nahuatl, Mapuche, and Ki'che'). Growing up in the jungle, Kam has known how to hunt, farm, cook, and live off the land ever since he was a young boy. He can find his way through the dense undergrowth of the Amazon without a problem, and he has made the trip to the Surinamese capital and back to his own village innumerable times. He is also very knowledgeable in regards to the properties of dozens and dozens of rainforest plants, and knows more about the animals of the jungle than some western biologists could ever dream of.

As a child, Kam was very skilled with the bow and arrow-the choice weapon of his tribe, when it comes to hunting-and during his time in training, he expanded into more modern variants, such as the crossbow. He's also a deadly shot with a handgun and pretty decent when it comes to knives, daggers, and other blades. Although he's not as strong as some agents, Kam is quick and agile and flexible, and he knows how to make use of his natural balance, grace, and coordination when he's in a fight. In regards to his magic, Kam is extremely talented-this, coupled with the scientific knowledge that he's gained from aiding biologists and botanists and the like-has made him accutely aware of the conditions in the flora and fauna of his surroundings. Kam can tell you, with an almost uncanny precision, what pollutants are affecting what plants, where, and how long they have been there. Sometimes, when he is alone in the jungle, he can almost feel the very cells that form the air and water and trees themselves.

Finally, Kam is someone who has gotten very good at hiding everything that he truly thinks behind a flamboyant facade, all the while analyzing and observing everything going on around him. He misses very little, and has an eye for detail. Kam can be cunning and manipulative if he wants to, but for the most part, he's content to sit back and watch things unfold rather than directly get involved.

Besides. He's got more important things to worry about.

Flaws/Weaknesses •• Kam's really not very strong, physically-speaking, when compared to some of the people in the Amun Society. In addition, although he is very skilled when it comes to his magic, it tends to be weaker in urban centers, where the air and land are the most polluted. It's also harder for him to concentrate when he's in busy industrial cities, and he finds that his stamina/endurance is lowered. He finds that he feels REAL shitty if he eats over-processed foods, or fruits/vegetables that were doused in pesticides. So he tends to avoid meat altogether when he's away from home, and he's always suspicious of fast food. But dear /god/, fries are good.

Kam's not entirely familiar with certain aspects of twenty-first century culture, seeing as he's spent most of his life in what many people would consider the middle of nowhere. He's no super genius when it comes to computers, or mathematics, and I mean /yes/ he can operate a motor vehicle, but sometimes he forgets to use the turn signal or turn on his headlights. You know, no biggie. Kam knows what wifi is, thank you very much, but sometimes when the wifi's broken and he needs to restart the router-well, whether or not Kam knows what a router really is is...questionable. Kam takes his appearance /extremely/ seriously, and he would never step foot out in public unless he was perfectly put-together, a fact that makes him late to practically everything.

Kam tends to think about things from every possible angle, considering every possibility, so it always takes him by surprise if somebody straight-up says what they think, to the point where he will over-analyze and read way too much into it. His general personality can also piss people off, and it's really, /really/ hard to get Kam to act like he's taking things seriously.

Finally, Kam is /terrified/ that his village will find out that he's really not into women at all. Most of the men his age are already married and starting families, but Kam has not so much as started considering marriage, which has worried his father and caught the attention of the rest of the village. Kam knows that they can't find out about his, ah, /preferences/, but he also doesn't want to marry somebody and pretend like he's in love with her for the rest of his life.

Magical Abilities •• Kam is able to manipulate plant life and induce plant growth at unnatural speeds, as well as communicate with plants and animals. He can sense plant life through layers of steel and concrete and rock, and he draws energy and strength from plants (which is great when he's in the middle of the jungle, but kinda sucks when he's stuck 30 stories above the ground in a skyscraper made of metal and glass). In addition, Kam has an immunity to many plant-based poisons.

Personality •• Kam exudes an aura of airy frivolousness, accentuated by his flamboyant style of dressing (you know that ya boy loves his feathers and paint) and his overly feminine features. He appears dismissively unconcerned about matters that are important to others (such as, you know, the economy) and overly concerned with entirely trivial difficulties (how hard it is to find parrot feathers to decorate his clothes with in the city, for example). Kam can be rather flippant and rarely, if ever, loses his composure-unruffled and unflappable, Kam is infuriatingly calm and cheeky in even the most pressing of circumstances. He has a penchant for creating entirely unfitting nicknames for others that some may find to be excessively irritating. He goes about everything with an air of nonchalance, and people who know him know to never expect him to be entirely serious during the course of a conversation.

Kam is a total social butterfly-his light-hearted and joking manner may be irritating to some people, but it endears him to most others, and he has a magnetic sort of personality that makes him a friend to all. It takes a LOT to truly offend him, and he always, always, always insists on being perfectly put together before leaving the house (which, admittedly, makes him late to many things-but Kam likes to think that he's /fashionably/ late, not just plain old late). He has a reputation for being quite flighty when it comes to girlfriends (and when it comes to most things in general, to be honest); he's had a few flings in the past, but nothing has come out of them-much to the chagrin of his father, who wants him to, and I quote: "Hurry up and get married already!"

Kam is hellaciously vain, placing his looks and clothing (and feathers and paint and all that jazz) very high on his list of priorities. He is also very shrewd, a fact he hides with his outrageous demeanor, and keenly observant-more observant than one would guess. Kam tends to conceal what he's really thinking or feeling with an excess of false, over-exaggerated emotions, especially when dealing with highly personal issues. He has an acute memory and is able to remember specific, random and seemingly irrelevant facts from years in the past; he's also very good at remembering faces and names. Kam's attitude of airy disregard, excessive flattery, and impeccable fashion sense (because come on-even though the cityfolk like wearing European-style clothes, Kam knows that he looks bomb AF no matter what he's wearing, be it traditional Tirió headresses or a suit and tie) have earned him quite a reputation, though it is, in truth, meant to disguise his less-than-conventional views regarding human morality and the environment, as well as his...less-than-conventional education (and his own insecurities regarding his place in the world and the Amun society, of course. But shh. We don't talk about that).

Kam adores gossip of any kind, although he is very tight-lipped when it comes to his sources. He values independence and the freedom to choose-the freedom to choose who he associates with, the freedom to love and marry who he wants, the freedom to gossip about who and what he wants, and most importantly, the freedom to choose what to /wear/. Kam does everything fashionably, sometimes to the exclusion of everything else (including common sense), and he fervently believes that 'outrageous' is oftentimes one's best disguise.

And indeed, behind his outrageous demeanor, Kam is actually quite serious and thoughtful. He can feel the jungle-/his/ jungle-dying; he can feel it sputtering and choking on the world's smoke and smog and pesticides and poisons, and he wants nothing more than to /stop/ this. And to do that, he must catch the eye of the gods, one way or the other.

Biography •• Before he had even known his own name, Kam had known the jungle.

And what a beautiful jungle it was! There were vivid fuschia flowers and woody lianas and funny-looking monkeys that swayed from tall tree branches, and there were eye-poppingly bright frogs (which his father said to never, /ever/ touch) and huuuuuuge butterflies and bitter coca and all the cassava plants they grew, half-hidden by the foliage. It was alive, all around him-chirping insects and singing birds and prowling panthers; towering trees and twisting vines and blossoming flowers.

Kam grew up in this jungle. He'd never met his mother-she died when he was born, they said-and so his aunts and older cousins became his mothers, while his father laughed at the way they would put flowers in his hair and try to get him to wear a dress (and he laughed even harder when Kam /agreed/ to it).

Kam remembers his childhood years with a nostalgic fondness; he remembers his first taste of cassava beer, sitting with his father and two aunts and his older cousin Kajamaro, who is now married and has three children. It was /disgusting/, back when he was five, though he quite likes it now.

He remembers tagging along to hunt with his father, watching him effortlessly shoot a bird through the eye and spear a fish without getting his clothes wet. He remembers his aunt's hands, powdery with manioc flour; he remembers his cousins giving him his first earring, made from parrot feathers. He still has that earring (it's a great earring!).

His younger years were not all sunshine and rainbows, though. In this day and age, Amazonian tribes are fading away, either losing their culture in exchange for a religion from the other side of the world and Western medicine and technology, or being forced to give everything up after conflicts with farmers and loggers and corporations who would claim the rainforest for themselves, or both. Kam remembers hearing the stories from other villages; he remembers how it made his father so /angry/, and how helpless it made him feel.

When Kam was nine or ten, his father re-married. The marriage was controversial in that he married an outsider; a biologist from Lima, Peru who had come to study the plants of the northern Amazon. She had been coming for ten or so years by that time, and Kam was fond of her. She knew so much about all the plants-names in three different languages, and parts and stuff about something called "genes" and "DNA", and Kam was always eager to know more, and she was always so happy to share!

After much debate, it was finally decided that Kam and his father would go to Lima with Kam's stepmother. The city was a big change-and it was frightening at times-but Kam would only be there a year before the summons came.

Kam's father hid his true heritage from his stepmother, from everyone in their village. Instead, he told them that Kam had gotten a scholarship to go to a school overseas, and that they were very strict on visiting times, and that it was a huge honor, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so Kam went to Egypt, and "school" was freaking terrifying sometimes (to be fair, though, it certainly didn't help that Kam had spent the greater part of his life in a jungle village), but Kam adapted quickly. And he found himself /liking/ it, sometimes, especially when it came to the friends he made.

(And the kohl. Kam /loves/ kohl).

It wasn't until the fourth year that Kam realized he was madly, deeply in love with one of his classmates. He didn't understand, at first, and so he hid it until he could hide it no more, and the two of them were caught "eating their faces off" (as one of the other students so delicately put it) in a stairwell. The other boy was older than Kam, and Kam hasn't seen him since he graduated, which he supposes is a good thing; there was no future for the two of them, at least not in the village. And Kam couldn't imagine spending his life anywhere other than the jungle.

After finishing his schooling, Kam went back home to his village, where he quickly made up for the years he'd missed and learned what his own people had to teach him amidst the screams of spider and howler monkeys and the squawks of red macaws echoing from dense stands of bamboo. He re-discovered the wild papaya and mahogany trees and bananas and palms; the bitter cassava beer that tasted like home and the flora and fauna of the jungle.

But this time, Kam could /feel/ the jungle, more than ever before. And thanks to his time in Egypt, he could not only feel it, but also manipulate and communicate with it-though he didn't need any of that to know that the jungle was dying. He began working as a translator and guide, bringing researchers and scientists from the Surinamese capital city of Paramaribo through the jungle and to the Tirió villages. He loves hearing about their work; some of them want to cure cancer with plants from the rainforest, while others want to observe the last Amerindian cultures before they disappear completely, and sitll others want to meet with the chiefs and shamans and elders and find a way to stop corporations and loggers and farmers from clearing the land and putting cattle ranches where the jungle makes its home.

From these people, Kam learned about things like nitrous oxides and methane and carbon; he learned about how coastal eutrophication was killing the fish and pesticides were killing the birds and greenhouse gases were causing a hole in the atmosphere that had the potential to kill /people/. And from these people, Kam learned that there was no /time/.

The jungle-no, the /world/-is dying. Kam knows that the gods can save it; he knows that his mother, if he can find a way to reach her, can help put a stop to this. Kam has always revered the gods, but now, when they're his only chance to stop the rainforest from hurting, Kam wants to catch their attention even more. And Kam wonders; do /all/ humans truly deserve to exist, after what they've done to the earth?

Top Three •• son of Qetesh, daughter of Ma'at, daughter of Hapi

Writing Sample •• urstyle.com/styles/489855 (scroll down past the ****)

❂ 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐋𝐃
loves the sea as her parents used to take her sailing as a child, makes potions that help with problems the school won’t (e.g. hangovers, fatigue, menstrual cramps), ignores most school rules and finds her potion ingredients from roaming the grounds or stealing them from the gardens/greenhouse

☾ 𝐂𝐀𝐓𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐀, 𝟏𝟗

"A mermaid found a swimming lad,
Picked him for her own,
Pressed her body to his body,
Laughed; and plunging down
Forgot in cruel happiness
That even lovers drown."

-"The Mermaid", by William Butler Yeats

𝐅𝐮𝐥𝐥 𝐍𝐚𝐦𝐞: Catalina Caceres
𝐍𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐧𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐬: Lina (most everyone calls her that)
𝐁𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐡𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐞: Mallorca (Majorca), Spain (though she's been living in England for the last two years)
𝐁𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐡𝐝𝐚𝐲: March 2nd
𝐆𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫: Female
𝐒𝐞𝐱𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲: Homosexual
𝐌𝐨𝐝𝐞𝐥: Luiza Scandelari

𝐎𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰 𝐨𝐟 𝐌𝐚𝐠𝐢𝐜 𝐀𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐬: Lina's strength lies in elemental magic, especially when it comes to water. She also excels in her Divination classes, and can see possible futures in the waves. Finally, she's always been very good at anything to do with plant life, and she's loved making potions since she was a child.

𝐂𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐧 𝐒𝐮𝐛𝐣𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐬: Elemental Magic, Divination, Oneiromancy, Necromancy & Demonology, History of Magic

𝐄𝐱𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐮𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐮𝐥𝐚𝐫 𝐀𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐬: Human Studies, Swimming, French

𝐏𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲: As a child, Lina was kind and sweet and gentle, always ready with a cheerful smile and reassuring words. Although she was rather soft-spoken, Lina was well-liked by her peers, if only for her friendly and welcoming personality. She was always very curious, too, though it wasn't something that she liked to advertise, as her parents were quite strict and conservative. Nevertheless, every time she heard somebody talking about "forbidden" topics ("forbidden" meaning that her parents would never let her or her sister talk about them, not that they were necessarily taboo among other witches), Lina was fascinated.

Lina was never one who liked being in the limelight or going against the status quo; there was part of her that strived to please everyone she could. As such, she was extremely generous and never went back on her word. Although she was quiet, she was always 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦, ready to be the shoulder to cry on for anybody and everybody. Lina had a tendency to fade into the background, though that is not to say that she particularly 𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘥. She had always been content to watch from the sidelines, and hated making a fuss of any sort.

After she met Maria, though...after she met Maria, there was a visible change in the way that Lina held herself. The sweetly shy young girl that Lina had been evolved into a confident young woman who went everywhere with a spring in her step and a yearning for new adventures. Outgoing and vivacious, there was a contagious sort of optimism in everything she did, and Lina finally started allowing her childhood curiosity really express itself-why was the sky blue, the ocean deep, the sun bright?

In this time, Lina was energetic, though never rebellious. However, after Maria was gone, Lina became sad and lonely and increasingly erratic. Nowadays, Lina is quite standoffish and rarely speaks unless she absolutely has to. There is a profound melancholy in her eyes as she stares at the waves for hours at a time, though her expression shutters and she becomes snappish and unpredictable if somebody tries to disturb her peace. There are parts of her that are bitterly unhappy, and parts of her that are miserably sad, and parts of her that are searingly 𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘳𝘺, and one small, final part of her that's just...tired. So very, very tired.

Ever since Maria's apparent death and the events that immediately followed, Lina has become quite partial to flouting the rules, if not blatantly disobeying them. She's become distant and wistful and withdrawn, though she is still keenly perceptive when it comes to people's emotions, as she has been since she was a child.

𝐒𝐤𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐬: fluent in Spanish, Catalan, and English and took a couple years of French when she was younger (which she has chosen to continue at the Lodge), swimming, anything to do with water-related magic, divination, a decent gardener, well-versed on a wide variety of wild plants and flowers, has a preternatural sense when it comes to animals, especially aquatic animals (she feels like she can almost 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘶𝘯𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘵𝘦 with them), great at concocting up her own potions, also pretty good at cooking traditional Spanish dishes that have been passed down in her family for generations, sewing and embroidery, calligraphy

𝐁𝐢𝐨𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐩𝐡𝐲: From the day she arrived on this earth, Lina was one with the sea. Her mother gave birth to her in the family estate, right on the beach. And before she could even walk, she'd been on dozens of sailing trips, and Lina learned how to swim while she learned that "a" is for "apple" (well, technically, "m" for "manzana", but I digress).

The Caceres were an old, proud family of witches, and Lina's childhood home was a centuries-old castle where the Mallorcan shores met the Mediterranean, shrouded from human view with ancient magic that had held since the days of the Roman Empire. Lina grew up with the sun and sand and sea, and in those early days, there was nothing that she didn't have.

Lina's family, however, was considered 𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 conservative, even for magic folk. Her parents and grandparents were not particularly trusting of humans (it had much to do with the Spanish Inquisition, which Lina now thinks is a bit ridiculous-that was 𝘩𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘳𝘦𝘥𝘴 of years ago!), so they kept themselves isolated to the castle by the sea, hidden from the tourists and beaches of modern Palma de Mallorca with a complex web of spells and illusions.

And when she was a child, that was alright. Lina was perfectly content with the life she had-they would go sailing together, almost every morning, and she loved watching the sun rise above the horizon while her sister sat beside her and painted the colors spreading across the sky like watercolors on a damp sheet of paper. She learned four languages and she learned how to sew and embroider and how to cook, and she learned which kind of shrimp was best for her family's famous paella, and through it all, she knew that she was one with the sea.

Her sister, six years her senior, was off to the Lodge to refine her magical skills when Lina was twelve. After that, she began going to the human markets with her mother-to buy food and other necessities, and that was it. Lina was 𝘧𝘢𝘴𝘤𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥 by the sights and sounds-the smell of sunlight and salt-spray, the sound of honking horns and lively music, the sight of colorful fruit and rainbow-reflective fish-though her mother never let her look for more than a second or two before hurrying her along.

Lina was perfectly aware of the stares she and her mother would get, wearing their old-fashioned skirts and wide sun hats as they strolled down the streets filled with people in T-shirts and jeans, though she didn't particularly mind. She was 𝘤𝘶𝘳𝘪𝘰𝘶𝘴, and she longed to see more. She wanted to go inside the gleaming malls and run her fingers through the wigs in the window of the barber shop; she wanted to try ice cream and popsicles and Oreos; she wanted to ride a bike and a motorcycle and even maybe fly in an airplane; she wanted to sail a tiny fishing boat out to the tourist-filled beaches of Palma de Mallorca and just sit and people-watch.

Lina showed a rare talent with magic when she was a child, especially when it came to divination and water-based magic (though she was also quite good with earth/plant-based magic, and she was as good of a potion-maker as she was a cook). She learned a great deal from her mother, great-aunt, and older sister. It was not until she was older that she showed any promise at all with oneiromancy, although she’s almost obsessively practicing it nowadays.

Lina had just turned thirteen when a pretty girl with an unruly mane of dark hair and wind-wild eyes washed up on the shores of her home, unconscious. Her mother and great-aunt were horrified, believing that the magic that hid them from humans had failed. While they argued over what to do, Lina and her father brought the human girl inside, determined to nurse her back to health.

Over the course of the next few days, Lina learned that she was two years older than her, from the city of Palma, and that she had been in a plane crash, resulting in her subsequent arrival in the Caceres’ ancestral lands. Her name was Maria-like 𝘦𝘭 𝘮𝘢𝘳, like the sea-and even at thirteen, Lina knew that Maria was the prettiest girl she had ever laid eyes on. But there was something more, Lina would later realize; she was so very, very 𝘩𝘶𝘮𝘢𝘯, with her hopes and dreams and aspirations, and Lina found herself wondering what it would be like to be as passionate as Maria was.

When Maria was well enough to return home, Lina brewed a potion that would make her forget that the incident ever even happened-as per her mother’s orders-although desperate, wistful thoughts of Maria lingered within her. She simply could not forget Maria’s infectious grin or her gloriously carefree laughter, like sunlight skipping across a restless sea.

She was fourteen when she saw Maria again, less than a year later. Her mother had twisted her ankle, and the potion to fix the problem would take ten hours to brew. Her great-aunt sent her and her father to the human marketplace for groceries.

Pedro, Lina’s father, was much more willing to indulge in his youngest daughter than his wife was. Remembering his own childhood in Barcelona, Pedro bought Lina ice cream and churros and they sat on the boardwalk to enjoy the treats.

Lina turned her head. She saw Maria.

Lina remembers that moment achingly clearly; Maria was alone, wearing a pair of cut-off denim shorts, her legs covered in sand and saltwater. Her hair-her beautiful, beautiful hair-was in a high ponytail, the strands plastered to the back of her neck. She was furiously scribbling something in a notebook, stopping and frowning at the paper every once in a while.

She was human. She was beautiful.

Her father caught her staring. “Why don’t you go say hi?” he’d said.

Lina stood up. Walked over. Maria didn’t notice her, at first, but when she looked up, Lina’s face broke out into a wide smile.

Maria, of course, didn’t recognize her. Her smile was blandly polite, her eyes mildly interested.

“Hi,” Lina said.

“Hello,” answered Maria, her lips quirked up bemusedly. “Can I help you?”

Lina didn’t know how to respond to that. Instead, she held out the churros. “Do you want one?”

Maria grinned, then. “Sure.”

Lina handed her the churro and sat down beside her. Maria looked back down at the paper; Lina leaned over her shoulder. “What’s that?”

Maria grimaced. “Calc,” she responded, and Lina had absolutely no idea what that meant. Maria laughed, slightly. “I try to pretend that doing it by the beach makes it better. It really doesn’t.” She gave Lina a sidelong glance. “Why do I feel like I know you from somewhere?”

Lina’s heart raced. She looked at the ground. “I don’t know,” she replied, softly. “I come here a lot. Maybe that’s how?”

Maria frowned thoughtfully. “Maybe,’ she said, “though I would have noticed you before, I think. Like. Your dress is absolutely 𝘨𝘰𝘳𝘨𝘦𝘰𝘶𝘴. Where’d you get it?”

Lina blushed. “I made it,” she answered. “With my mother.” She looked away, shyly. “I like to embroider.”

Maria set down her ‘calc’. “That’s 𝘴𝘰 𝘤𝘰𝘰𝘭!!!” she exclaimed, and the two of them talked until Maria said she had to go home and finish her ‘calc’ if she ‘ever wanted to graduate’. “But it was so fun talking to you,” she told Lina as she stood up. “You said you came here a lot?” A toothy grin. “I’ll see you around, yeah? I live just a couple minutes away.”

Lina let a hopeful smile come over her face. “Yeah.”

She went home that night dreaming of sunny seas and long legs and lively eyes. It took her two days before she mustered up the courage to sneak out without her parents’ permission. She met Maria by the same bench, and Lina listened to her talk of coral and fish and the ocean and churros and every other thing under the sun, and she was content.

Lina kept visiting her, secretly. Sometimes they would go down to the water, when it was early in the morning and all the tourists were still asleep, and they would eat sun-sweetened peaches as rays of light filled the world. Other times Maria would take her to places in the city-her favorite churro place, her favorite coffee shop, her favorite museum, her favorite diner.

But Lina loved it the most when Maria took her to the ocean, to the places where the sun and sky and sea seemed to bleed into each other like watercolors, away from the noise and heat of the tourist attractions. They would go to the ocean for picnics, or sometimes they’d just go for the water, or sometimes Maria would bring one of her textbooks and show Lina pictures of the creatures that called the water their home. And Lina would think to herself, 𝘺𝘦𝘴, 𝘐 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸, 𝘐 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮 𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦. 𝘐 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯 𝘮𝘦, 𝘐 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘳.

Lina never explicitly told Maria of her true origins, nor did she say anything about magic folk. But some part of her knows that Maria sensed it, and that same part of her knows that Maria would not have cared, one way or the other.

Lina was fifteen when she realized that she was madly, hopelessly in love with her. She was almost sixteen when they kissed for the first time, with nothing but the quiet sea and the moonlight as their witness.

Lina was seventeen, and Maria nineteen, when they were found out.

It was Lina’s sister, actually. Carina was the perfect daughter, in many ways-pretty and kind and caring and willing to bend to her mother’s every whim. She had noticed Lina sneaking out at the crack of dawn, and she had followed her. She’d caught Lina and Maria kissing underneath the almond trees, the white blossoms dyed orange in the sunrise.

Later, Carina would tell Lina that she only wanted the best for her. That she was frightened. That she was worried, that they couldn’t trust non-magic folk.

But that didn’t change the fact that Lina 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘥 Maria and that Maria loved her. That didn’t change the fact that she told their parents and great-aunt. That didn’t change the fact that as soon as they found out, they kept her confined to her room until they ultimately decided to ship her off to England to stay with her Aunt Jo (who was in reality her mother’s cousin) until she was old enough to attend the Lodge.

Lina would learn, a few months later, that Maria’s family found out; when Carina caught the two of them, the commotion had attracted plenty of attention, including that of one of their neighbors. Lina would learn that Maria’s parents and community were devout Catholics, that she had gone to a Catholic high school, that they all thought what had existed between her and Lina was 𝘸𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘨. She would learn that, after hearing nothing from Lina and after her parents basically disowned her, Maria jumped into the sea to be with the fish she loved so much.

Her parents did not tell her, of course. Neither did her Aunt Jo. But Lina found out when the dreams came-she 𝘴𝘢𝘸, clear as day, the moment that Maria jumped. She felt her fear and she felt her peace, and she felt Maria become one with the sea, with their precious 𝘮𝘢𝘳, and she felt all the flora and fauna of the ocean, from the humble sea slug to the enormous humpback whale and the Californian kelp forests, become a part of her.

And she woke up, and Maria was gone.

The visions and dreams became stronger and stronger with each passing week, until she was essentially communicating with Maria while she slept.

At first, the messages were fairly benign, but then Maria began telling her to join her, to jump into the water and become one with the sun and sky and sea. She said that they had much to do; the oceans were dying, she said, and they could save it.

And Lina listened. A month before she was to leave for the Lodge, she jumped off the cliffs near her Aunt Jo’s home and plunged into the depths-

-and it was agony, it was 𝘢𝘨𝘰𝘯𝘺-

-and then she was being pulled up to the shore, and she dimly remembers worried voices and Aunt Jo’s concerned eyes and feeling tired, so tired…

It turned out that the waves had warned Aunt Jo; they had shown her that Lina would jump. And Lina would have been angry, except all she wanted to do was to sleep and go back to the almond trees and beaches and sunlight of Mallorca.

At the Lodge, Lina does not have any true friends. Sure, the people she makes potions for seem to like her well enough (and she’s one of the only people ballsy enough to steal plants from the gardens and greenhouse), but none of them understood her the way that Maria did. And Maria still comes to her, in her dreams, and Lina doesn’t know what to do, if any of this is real, or if it’s all just…in her head.

She doesn’t know which one would be worse.

𝐈𝐦𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐑𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩𝐬-
CARMEN CACERES (79): Great-aunt; Carmen is a powerful clairvoyant, and she has taught Lina much of what she knows about divining the future from the waves. Blunt and matter-of-fact, there is nothing that Carmen can’t get done. Indeed, she single-handedly raised seven children in rural Spain after eloping with a human man when she was eighteen. The former matriarch of the Caceres family disowned her for this action, although Elena, Lina’s mother and the oldest daughter, loved her favorite aunt and convinced her grandmother (Carmen’s mother, Lina’s great-grandmother) to allow Carmen to come back after her human husband filed for divorce. The children she had with him were given to their father, and she hasn’t seen them since (and as far as she knows, they have no magical talent). Through the years, the hopeful idealist in her-the one that longed for her husband to reach out to her, to come 𝘣𝘢𝘤𝘬-faded, and now Carmen has an extremely traditionalist attitude towards humans, and was less than pleased (to say the least) about Lina’s relationship with Maria. But after some time she began to understand, to some degree, and when she read in the waves that Maria was going to take her own life, she did everything in her power to try to stop her. Ultimately, her efforts were futile, and she’ll always regret that she did too little, too late.

ELENA CACERES (46): Mother; like Carmen, Elena Caceres has a no-nonsense, can-do attitude. She has a mind like a steel trap, takes no bullshit, and has absolutely no patience for incompetent people. Growing up, Elena was taught that humans are greedy, selfish, evil, wicked, et cetera, and what Carmen’s husband did to her has only reinforced this idea in her head. Strict and severe, Elena is rather controlling and overprotective. Nevertheless, she has a soft side that most people rarely get to see; like most members of her family, Elena has a love for the sea, and she still occasionally goes sailing in the mornings the way that she used to with her husband and children, though it’s much lonelier when her husband won’t talk to her, her youngest daughter hates her, and her oldest daughter can’t look her in the eye. Elena truly wants to do what she thinks is best for her family, but she’s coming to realize what 𝘴𝘩𝘦 thinks is the best may not be what her family really needs.

PEDRO CACERES (46): Father; Pedro was originally born to a moderately-influential witch family in Barcelona, and he met Elena when his family visited the Caceres on Mallorca when the two of them were in their late teens. Pedro is kind and gentle-the complete opposite of Elena, really-and although his family wasn’t exactly the most accepting of humans, they 𝘵𝘰𝘭𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥 them. As such, Pedro definitely has a more “liberal” view of non-magic folk. He married into the Caceres family when he and Elena were twenty, and he loves his children with all his heart. He has been the most understanding of Lina’s predicament, although Carmen and Elena shot him down every time he tried to defend her. Pedro is starting to realize that maybe he doesn’t really 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 his wife, anymore, and has been wondering if he would somehow be able to obtain legal custody of Lina and move back in with his family in Barcelona.

CARINA CACERES (25): Older sister; Carina was always somebody that Lina looked up to, and Carina has always tried her best to be a good older sister to Lina. She was her mother’s perfect daughter, in every sense of the word, and she was the one who found out about Lina and Maria’s relationship. She later told their parents, which Lina swore she would never forgive her for, but she truly did it with her sister’s best interests in mind. Carina has started to regret the decision, now, but she doesn’t know if Lina will ever speak to her again.
(FC-Antonina Vasylchenko)

JOSEFINA "JO" CACERES (36): First cousin once-removed; Lina’s ‘Aunt’ Jo has close ties with the Lodge and the teachers there. Lina stays with her Aunt Jo in England when the Lodge is on holiday.
(FC-Eva Green)

MARIA DE LA GARZA (DECEASED AT 19): Lina's former girlfriend. Maria was two years older than Lina, and she was everything that Lina was not-lively, outgoing, rebellious, and reckless, with a love for adventure and a passion that burned like wildfire. The two bonded over their love of the sea, and Maria would regale Lina with stories about the science behind it all. Maria studied marine biology and environmental science in one of Spain's universities, and she could talk for hours and hours about kelp or mangroves or plankton or whales. Maria was from a devout Catholic family and community, who basically told her that she was a sinner damned to hell when word got out about her and Lina. Maria eventually committed suicide after Lina was forced to leave Mallorca for England and her parents essentially instructed her to never speak to them or her siblings again.
(FC-Neelam Gill)

𝐐&𝐀 𝐒𝐄𝐍𝐓 𝐎𝐔𝐓 𝐁𝐘 𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐃𝐌𝐈𝐒𝐓𝐑𝐄𝐒𝐒 𝐂𝐎𝐑𝐃𝐄𝐋𝐈𝐀 𝐌𝐂𝐁𝐑𝐈𝐃𝐄-
𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐝𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐥 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐋𝐨𝐝𝐠𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐁𝐫𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐡𝐨𝐨𝐝?: It's fine, I guess. I don't really have an opinion.

𝐃𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐛𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐯𝐞 𝐩𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐛𝐞 𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐝 𝐛𝐞𝐭𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐡𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐦𝐚𝐠𝐢𝐜 𝐟𝐨𝐥𝐤?: Well, why not? Of course, my 𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘴 don't think so, but I don't see why we shouldn't be at peace.

𝐀𝐫𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐬𝐚𝐟𝐞𝐭𝐲 𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐋𝐨𝐝𝐠𝐞?: No, not really.

𝐓𝐨𝐩 𝐓𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐞: the Lovers, the Moon, the Magician

𝐎𝐏𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐀𝐋 𝐄𝐗𝐓𝐑𝐀𝐒-
𝐋𝐢𝐤𝐞𝐬: Maria, water, the sea (especially 𝘩𝘦𝘳 sea), the sun and sky, wildflowers, dolphins, fresh blueberries, the color white (Lina used to 𝘢𝘥𝘰𝘳𝘦 bright, flashy colors-bubblegum pink, daffodil yellow, electric blue. But now they just make her eyes hurt), the color blue, calligraphy, fanciful fantasies of true love (Lina still holds on-she still holds on, despite everything-and she knows that she's fooling nobody at all, least of all herself), singing (Lina has quite a lovely singing voice), watching the sunrise, watching the sunset, standing outside in the rain, swimming (in all sorts of weather-blizzards, thunderstorms, typhoons, hurricanes...), meadows and country paths, the smell of the world after a rainstorm, old photographs from her life before the 𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘵, sunlight, moonlight, the stars, fish and all other forms of aquatic life, delicate lace and gauzy silk, seashells, the calm sea, the stormy sea, clear, cloudless days where she can see her reflection in the water, gray skies and gray winds that cause the sea to stir like a restless dragon, warm, breezy days, lazy summer afternoons, stories about mermaids and selkies and sirens, rainy days, saltwater, the river near the Lodge (where she spends most of her time out of class, now), making potions, flowers and herbs and just plants in general

𝐃𝐢𝐬𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞𝐬: being away from home and her sea for so long, too-sweet coffee or tea (or anything, really-soda, cookies, candy, ice cream; she can't stand that stuff. Though she used to love it), her friends who keep asking her "what's wrong?" (they wouldn't 𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘥, trying to remember something but being unable to, bright colors (oranges, yellows, and reds, mostly), social gatherings of any sort, people who have no respect for nature, wilting flowers, the smell of dead fish, meat, seeing people harm plants and animals, the concept of zoos and aquariums (don't get her wrong-Lina's fine with them if they're helping injured/sick/endangered animals survive, of course. But the thought of human crowds gawking at caged animals just makes her sick to her stomach), droughts, being in a crowded room or area, seeing her parents or Aunt Jo (they're always walking on eggshells around her, now. It's...awkward. And she will 𝘯𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 forgive them for what happened two years ago), the Lodge's dumb rules (𝘦𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘤𝘪𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 the ones about necromancy), Maria's family, not really too fond of her older sister or mother at the moment

𝐏𝐥𝐚𝐲𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭: coming soon, hopefully
𝐏𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐁𝐨𝐚𝐫𝐝: pinterest.com/ayzrules/catalina-lina-…

𝐌𝐨𝐨𝐝𝐛𝐨𝐚𝐫𝐝
1. urstyle.com/styles/1826760
2. urstyle.com/styles/1827651
3. urstyle.com/styles/1827083

𝐈𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐦: hopefully coming soon!

𝐅𝐚𝐯𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐫: Yara Driskell; Lina's become /very/ interested in the subject she teaches, recently.

𝐅𝐚𝐯𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐥𝐨𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐢𝐧 𝐬𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐨𝐥: The river near the Lodge. Lina knows that it flows to the sea, where Maria is (now if only the ceasg who live in the river would be /useful/ for once and actually answer Lina's questions...)

𝐅𝐚𝐯𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐨𝐧: Oneiromancy, because her dreams are the only place she can talk to Maria.

"A mermaid found a swimming lad,

Picked him for her own,
Pressed her body to his body,
Laughed; and plunging down
Forgot in cruel happiness
That even lovers drown."

-"The Mermaid", by William Butler Yeats[

Title/Role: The New Girl
Name: Catalina Caceres
Aliases: Lina
Age+Grade: 19+Junior (dropped out of a private academy after her sophomore year, for unspecified reasons, and is now attending Villain Academy to complete her high school education)
Hero or Villain? Villain
Species: Sorceress
Faceclaim: Luiza Scandelari

Likes: Maria, water, the sea (especially her sea), the sun and sky, wildflowers, dolphins, fresh blueberries, the color white (Lina used to 𝘢𝘥𝘰𝘳𝘦 bright, flashy colors-bubblegum pink, daffodil yellow, electric blue. But now they just make her eyes hurt), the color blue, calligraphy, fanciful fantasies of true love (Lina still holds on-she still holds on, despite everything-and she knows that she's fooling nobody at all, least of all herself), singing (Lina has quite a lovely singing voice), watching the sunrise, watching the sunset, standing outside in the rain, swimming (in all sorts of weather-blizzards, thunderstorms, typhoons, hurricanes...), meadows and country paths, the smell of the world after a rainstorm, old photographs from her life before the 𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘵, sunlight, moonlight, the stars, fish and all other forms of aquatic life, delicate lace and gauzy silk, seashells, the calm sea, the stormy sea, clear, cloudless days where she can see her reflection in the water, gray skies and gray winds that cause the sea to stir like a restless dragon, warm, breezy days, lazy summer afternoons, stories about mermaids and selkies and sirens, rainy days, saltwater, the beach near Hero High, making potions, flowers and herbs and just plants in general

Dislikes: being away from home and her sea for so long, too-sweet coffee or tea (or anything, really-soda, cookies, candy, ice cream; she can't stand that stuff. Though she used to love it), her friends who keep asking her "what's wrong?" (they wouldn't 𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘥, trying to remember something but being unable to, bright colors (oranges, yellows, and reds, mostly), social gatherings of any sort, people who have no respect for nature, wilting flowers, the smell of dead fish, meat, seeing people harm plants and animals, the concept of zoos and aquariums (don't get her wrong-Lina's fine with them if they're helping injured/sick/endangered animals survive, of course. But the thought of human crowds gawking at caged animals just makes her sick to her stomach), droughts, being in a crowded room or area, seeing her parents or Aunt Jo (they're always walking on eggshells around her, now. It's...awkward. And she will 𝘯𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 forgive them for what happened two years ago), Maria's family, not really too fond of her older sister or mother at the moment

Personality: As a child, Lina was kind and sweet and gentle, always ready with a cheerful smile and reassuring words. Although she was rather soft-spoken, Lina was well-liked by her peers, if only for her friendly and welcoming personality. She was always very curious, too, though it wasn't something that she liked to advertise, as her parents were quite strict and conservative. Nevertheless, every time she heard somebody talking about "forbidden" topics ("forbidden" meaning that her parents would never let her or her sister talk about them, not that they were necessarily taboo among other sorcerers), Lina was fascinated.

Lina was never one who liked being in the limelight or going against the status quo; there was part of her that strived to please everyone she could. As such, she was extremely generous and never went back on her word. Although she was quiet, she was always 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦, ready to be the shoulder to cry on for anybody and everybody. Lina had a tendency to fade into the background, though that is not to say that she particularly 𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘥. She had always been content to watch from the sidelines, and hated making a fuss of any sort.

After she met Maria, though...after she met Maria, there was a visible change in the way that Lina held herself. The sweetly shy young girl that Lina had been evolved into a confident young woman who went everywhere with a spring in her step and a yearning for new adventures. Outgoing and vivacious, there was a contagious sort of optimism in everything she did, and Lina finally started allowing her childhood curiosity really express itself-why was the sky blue, the ocean deep, the sun bright?

In this time, Lina was energetic, though never rebellious. However, after Maria was gone, Lina became sad and lonely and increasingly erratic. Nowadays, Lina is quite standoffish and rarely speaks unless she absolutely has to. There is a profound melancholy in her eyes as she stares at the waves for hours at a time, though her expression shutters and she becomes snappish and unpredictable if somebody tries to disturb her peace. There are parts of her that are bitterly unhappy, and parts of her that are miserably sad, and parts of her that are searingly 𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘳𝘺, and one small, final part of her that's just...tired. So very, very tired.

Ever since Maria's apparent death and the events that immediately followed, Lina has become quite partial to flouting the rules, if not blatantly disobeying them. She's become distant and wistful and withdrawn, though she is still keenly perceptive when it comes to people's emotions, as she has been since she was a child.

Biography: From the day she arrived on this earth, Lina was one with the sea. Her mother gave birth to her in the family estate, right on the beach. And before she could even walk, she'd been on dozens of sailing trips, and Lina learned how to swim while she learned that "a" is for "apple" (well, technically, "m" for "manzana", but I digress).

The Caceres were an old, proud family of sorcerers, and Lina's childhood home was a centuries-old castle where the Mallorcan shores met the Mediterranean, shrouded from human view with ancient magic that had held since the days of the Roman Empire. Lina grew up with the sun and sand and sea, and in those early days, there was nothing that she didn't have.

Lina's family, however, was considered 𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 conservative, even for sorcerers. Her parents and grandparents were not particularly trusting of humans (it had much to do with the Spanish Inquisition, which Lina now thinks is a bit ridiculous-that was 𝘩𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘳𝘦𝘥𝘴 of years ago!), so they kept themselves isolated to the castle by the sea, hidden from the tourists and beaches of modern Palma de Mallorca with a complex web of spells and illusions.

And when she was a child, that was alright. Lina was perfectly content with the life she had-they would go sailing together, almost every morning, and she loved watching the sun rise above the horizon while her sister sat beside her and painted the colors spreading across the sky like watercolors on a damp sheet of paper. She learned four languages (English, French, Catalan, Spanish) and she learned how to sew and embroider and how to cook, and she learned which kind of shrimp was best for her family's famous paella, and through it all, she knew that she was one with the sea.

Her sister, six years her senior, was off to a private academy when Lina was eight. After that, she began going to the human markets with her mother-to buy food and other necessities, and that was it. Lina was 𝘧𝘢𝘴𝘤𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥 by the sights and sounds-the smell of sunlight and salt-spray, the sound of honking horns and lively music, the sight of colorful fruit and rainbow-reflective fish-though her mother never let her look for more than a second or two before hurrying her along.

Lina was perfectly aware of the stares she and her mother would get, wearing their old-fashioned skirts and wide sun hats as they strolled down the streets filled with people in T-shirts and jeans, though she didn't particularly mind. She was 𝘤𝘶𝘳𝘪𝘰𝘶𝘴, and she longed to see more. She wanted to go inside the gleaming malls and run her fingers through the wigs in the window of the barber shop; she wanted to try ice cream and popsicles and Oreos; she wanted to ride a bike and a motorcycle and even maybe fly in an airplane; she wanted to sail a tiny fishing boat out to the tourist-filled beaches of Palma de Mallorca and just sit and people-watch.

Lina showed a rare talent with magic when she was a child, especially when it came to divination and water-based magic (though she was also quite good with earth/plant-based magic, and she was as good of a potion-maker as she was a cook). She learned a great deal from her mother, great-aunt, and older sister. It was not until she was older that she showed any promise at all with oneiromancy, although she’s almost obsessively practicing it nowadays.

Lina had just turned thirteen when a pretty girl with an unruly mane of dark hair and wind-wild eyes washed up on the shores of her home, unconscious. Her mother and great-aunt were horrified, believing that the magic that hid them from humans had failed. While they argued over what to do, Lina and her father brought the human girl inside, determined to nurse her back to health.

Over the course of the next few days, Lina learned that she was two years older than her, from the city of Palma, and that she had been in a plane crash, resulting in her subsequent arrival in the Caceres’ ancestral lands. Her name was Maria-like 𝘦𝘭 𝘮𝘢𝘳, like the sea-and even at thirteen, Lina knew that Maria was the prettiest girl she had ever laid eyes on. But there was something more, Lina would later realize; she was so very, very 𝘩𝘶𝘮𝘢𝘯, with her hopes and dreams and aspirations, and Lina found herself wondering what it would be like to be as passionate as Maria was.

When Maria was well enough to return home, Lina brewed a potion that would make her forget that the incident ever even happened-as per her mother’s orders-although desperate, wistful thoughts of Maria lingered within her. She simply could not forget Maria’s infectious grin or her gloriously carefree laughter, like sunlight skipping across a restless sea.

She was fourteen when she saw Maria again, less than a year later. Her mother had twisted her ankle, and the potion to fix the problem would take ten hours to brew. Her great-aunt sent her and her father to the human marketplace for groceries.

Pedro, Lina’s father, was much more willing to indulge in his youngest daughter than his wife was. Remembering his own childhood in Barcelona, Pedro bought Lina ice cream and churros and they sat on the boardwalk to enjoy the treats.

Lina turned her head. She saw Maria.

Lina remembers that moment achingly clearly; Maria was alone, wearing a pair of cut-off denim shorts, her legs covered in sand and saltwater. Her hair-her beautiful, beautiful hair-was in a high ponytail, the strands plastered to the back of her neck. She was furiously scribbling something in a notebook, stopping and frowning at the paper every once in a while.

She was human. She was beautiful.

Her father caught her staring. “Why don’t you go say hi?” he’d said.

Lina stood up. Walked over. Maria didn’t notice her, at first, but when she looked up, Lina’s face broke out into a wide smile.

Maria, of course, didn’t recognize her. Her smile was blandly polite, her eyes mildly interested.

“Hi,” Lina said.

“Hello,” answered Maria, her lips quirked up bemusedly. “Can I help you?”

Lina didn’t know how to respond to that. Instead, she held out the churros. “Do you want one?”

Maria grinned, then. “Sure.”

Lina handed her the churro and sat down beside her. Maria looked back down at the paper; Lina leaned over her shoulder. “What’s that?”

Maria grimaced. “Calc,” she responded, and Lina had absolutely no idea what that meant. Maria laughed, slightly. “I try to pretend that doing it by the beach makes it better. It really doesn’t.” She gave Lina a sidelong glance. “Why do I feel like I know you from somewhere?”

Lina’s heart raced. She looked at the ground. “I don’t know,” she replied, softly. “I come here a lot. Maybe that’s how?”

Maria frowned thoughtfully. “Maybe,’ she said, “though I would have noticed you before, I think. Like. Your dress is absolutely 𝘨𝘰𝘳𝘨𝘦𝘰𝘶𝘴. Where’d you get it?”

Lina blushed. “I made it,” she answered. “With my mother.” She looked away, shyly. “I like to embroider.”

Maria set down her ‘calc’. “That’s 𝘴𝘰 𝘤𝘰𝘰𝘭!!!” she exclaimed, and the two of them talked until Maria said she had to go home and finish her ‘calc’ if she ‘ever wanted to graduate’. “But it was so fun talking to you,” she told Lina as she stood up. “You said you came here a lot?” A toothy grin. “I’ll see you around, yeah? I live just a couple minutes away.”

Lina let a hopeful smile come over her face. “Yeah.”

She went home that night dreaming of sunny seas and long legs and lively eyes. It took her two days before she mustered up the courage to sneak out without her parents’ permission. She met Maria by the same bench, and Lina listened to her talk of coral and fish and the ocean and churros and every other thing under the sun, and she was content.

Lina kept visiting her, secretly. Sometimes they would go down to the water, when it was early in the morning and all the tourists were still asleep, and they would eat sun-sweetened peaches as rays of light filled the world. Other times Maria would take her to places in the city-her favorite churro place, her favorite coffee shop, her favorite museum, her favorite diner.

But Lina loved it the most when Maria took her to the ocean, to the places where the sun and sky and sea seemed to bleed into each other like watercolors, away from the noise and heat of the tourist attractions. They would go to the ocean for picnics, or sometimes they’d just go for the water, or sometimes Maria would bring one of her textbooks and show Lina pictures of the creatures that called the water their home. And Lina would think to herself, 𝘺𝘦𝘴, 𝘐 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸, 𝘐 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮 𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦. 𝘐 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯 𝘮𝘦, 𝘐 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘳.

Lina never explicitly told Maria of her true origins, nor did she say anything about the nonhuman society that thrived right under the noses of humans. But some part of her knows that Maria sensed it, and that same part of her knows that Maria would not have cared, one way or the other.

Lina was fifteen when she realized that she was madly, hopelessly in love with her. She was almost sixteen when they kissed for the first time, with nothing but the quiet sea and the moonlight as their witness.

Lina was seventeen, and Maria nineteen, when they were found out.

It was Lina’s sister, actually. Carina was the perfect daughter, in many ways-pretty and kind and caring and willing to bend to her mother’s every whim. She had noticed Lina sneaking out at the crack of dawn, and she had followed her. She’d caught Lina and Maria kissing underneath the almond trees, the white blossoms dyed orange in the sunrise.

Later, Carina would tell Lina that she only wanted the best for her. That she was frightened. That she was worried, that they couldn’t trust humans.

But that didn’t change the fact that Lina 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘥 Maria and that Maria loved her. That didn’t change the fact that she told their parents and great-aunt. That didn’t change the fact that as soon as they found out, they kept her confined to her room until they ultimately decided to ship her off to America to stay with her Aunt Jo (who was in reality her mother’s cousin) and be home-schooled until she was "over" this "phase".

Lina would learn, a few months later, that Maria’s family found out; when Carina caught the two of them, the commotion had attracted plenty of attention, including that of one of their neighbors. Lina would learn that Maria’s parents and community were devout Catholics, that she had gone to a Catholic high school, that they all thought what had existed between her and Lina was 𝘸𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘨. She would learn that, after hearing nothing from Lina and after her parents basically disowned her, Maria jumped into the sea to be with the fish she loved so much.

Her parents did not tell her, of course. Neither did her Aunt Jo. But Lina found out when the dreams came-she 𝘴𝘢𝘸, clear as day, the moment that Maria jumped. She felt her fear and she felt her peace, and she felt Maria become one with the sea, with their precious 𝘮𝘢𝘳, and she felt all the flora and fauna of the ocean, from the humble sea slug to the enormous humpback whale and the Californian kelp forests, become a part of her.

And she woke up, and Maria was gone.

The visions and dreams became stronger and stronger with each passing week, until she was essentially communicating with Maria while she slept.

At first, the messages were fairly benign, but then Maria began telling her to join her, to jump into the water and become one with the sun and sky and sea. She said that they had much to do; the oceans were dying, she said, and they could save it.

And Lina listened. A month before she was to leave for Villain Academy, she jumped off the cliffs near her Aunt Jo’s home and plunged into the depths-

-and it was agony, it was 𝘢𝘨𝘰𝘯𝘺-

-and then she was being pulled up to the shore, and she dimly remembers worried voices and Aunt Jo’s concerned eyes and feeling tired, so tired…

It turned out that the waves had warned Aunt Jo; they had shown her that Lina would jump. And Lina would have been angry, except all she wanted to do was to sleep and go back to the almond trees and beaches and sunlight of Mallorca.

At the Academy, Lina does not have any true friends. Sure, the people she makes potions for seem to like her well enough (and she’s one of the only people ballsy enough to steal plants from the gardens and greenhouse), but none of them understood her the way that Maria did. And Maria still comes to her, in her dreams, and Lina doesn’t know what to do, if any of this is real, or if it’s all just…in her head.

She doesn’t know which one would be worse.

OPTIONAL EXTRAS
Rumors/Romantic Interests: Most people have absolutely no idea where Lina came from, and why she's only a junior at 19. The headmistresses think that Lina may be part-mermaid, given her affinity with the sea and water-based magic/divination.

Extracurriculars: Choir, though it's not like she shows up 90% of the time.

Favorite and Least Favorite Class: Lina likes her Practical Skills class for the oneiromancy and divination aspects of it; her dreams are the only place where she can talk to Maria, after all. Her least favorite class is probably stats-she's only taking it to get the stupid math requirement out of the way.

Class Schedule: Practical Skills for Sorcerers III (PRACTICAL SKILLS), Hydrology (ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE), Physical Education III (PHYSICAL EDUCATION), Spells and Potions for Sorcerers (CHEMISTRY), Statistics (MATHEMATICS), Modern Human History (HISTORY), Classical Greek Literature (ENGLISH), Choir (CHOIR)

Important Relationships-
CARMEN CACERES (79): Great-aunt; Carmen is a powerful sorceress with plenty of clairvoyant abilities, and she has taught Lina much of what she knows about divining the future from visions and the waves. Blunt and matter-of-fact, there is nothing that Carmen can’t get done. Indeed, she single-handedly raised seven children in rural Spain after secretly eloping with a human man when she was eighteen. The former matriarch of the Caceres family disowned her for this action, which was (and is still) considered illegal, although Elena, Lina’s mother and the oldest daughter, loved her favorite aunt and convinced her grandmother (Carmen’s mother, Lina’s great-grandmother) to allow Carmen to come back after her human husband filed for divorce. The children she had with him were given to their father, and she hasn’t seen them since (and as far as she knows, they have no magical talent). Through the years, the hopeful idealist in her-the one that longed for her husband to reach out to her, to come 𝘣𝘢𝘤𝘬-faded, and now Carmen has an extremely traditionalist attitude towards humans, and was less than pleased (to say the least) about Lina’s relationship with Maria. But after some time she began to understand, to some degree, and when she read in the waves that Maria was going to take her own life, she did everything in her power to try to stop her. Ultimately, her efforts were futile, and she’ll always regret that she did too little, too late.

ELENA CACERES (46): Mother; like Carmen, Elena Caceres has a no-nonsense, can-do attitude. She has a mind like a steel trap, takes no bullshit, and has absolutely no patience for incompetent people. Growing up, Elena was taught that humans are greedy, selfish, evil, wicked, et cetera, and what Carmen’s husband did to her has only reinforced this idea in her head. Strict and severe, Elena is rather controlling and overprotective. Nevertheless, she has a soft side that most people rarely get to see; like most members of her family, Elena has a love for the sea, and she still occasionally goes sailing in the mornings the way that she used to with her husband and children, though it’s much lonelier when her husband won’t talk to her, her youngest daughter hates her, and her oldest daughter can’t look her in the eye. Elena truly wants to do what she thinks is best for her family, but she’s coming to realize what 𝘴𝘩𝘦 thinks is the best may not be what her family really needs.

PEDRO CACERES (46): Father; Pedro was originally born to a moderately-influential sorcerer family in Barcelona, and he met Elena when his family visited the Caceres on Mallorca when the two of them were in their late teens. Pedro is kind and gentle-the complete opposite of Elena, really-and although his family wasn’t exactly the most accepting of humans, they 𝘵𝘰𝘭𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥 them. As such, Pedro definitely has a more “liberal” view of humans. He married into the Caceres family when he and Elena were twenty, and he loves his children with all his heart. He has been the most understanding of Lina’s predicament, although Carmen and Elena shot him down every time he tried to defend her. Pedro is starting to realize that maybe he doesn’t really 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 his wife, anymore, and has been wondering if he would somehow be able to obtain legal custody of Lina and move back in with his family in Barcelona.

CARINA CACERES (25): Older sister; Carina was always somebody that Lina looked up to, and Carina has always tried her best to be a good older sister to Lina. She was her mother’s perfect daughter, in every sense of the word, and she was the one who found out about Lina and Maria’s relationship. She later told their parents, which Lina swore she would never forgive her for, but she truly did it with her sister’s best interests in mind. Carina has started to regret the decision, now, but she doesn’t know if Lina will ever speak to her again.
(FC-Antonina Vasylchenko)

JOSEFINA "JO" CACERES (36): First cousin once-removed; Lina’s ‘Aunt’ Jo has close ties with Villain Academy. Lina was sent to Aunt Jo after her relationship with Maria was discovered, and now she stays with her Aunt Jo in America over the school breaks.
(FC-Eva Green)

MARIA DE LA GARZA (DECEASED AT 19): Lina's former girlfriend. Maria was two years older than Lina, and she was everything that Lina was not-lively, outgoing, rebellious, and reckless, with a love for adventure and a passion that burned like wildfire. The two bonded over their love of the sea, and Maria would regale Lina with stories about the science behind it all. Maria studied marine biology and environmental science in one of Spain's universities, and she could talk for hours and hours about kelp or mangroves or plankton or whales. Maria was from a devout Catholic family and community, who basically told her that she was a sinner damned to hell when word got out about her and Lina. Maria eventually committed suicide after Lina was forced to leave Mallorca for America and her parents essentially instructed her to never speak to them or her siblings again.
(FC-Rasika Navare)

💎𝓝𝓪𝓶𝓮
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💎𝓣𝓲𝓽𝓵𝓮
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💎𝓐𝓰𝓮
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💎𝓖𝓮𝓷𝓭𝓮𝓻
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💎𝓢𝓮𝔁𝓾𝓪𝓵𝓲𝓽𝔂
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💎𝓐𝓹𝓹𝓮𝓪𝓻𝓪𝓷𝓬𝓮
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💎𝓟𝓮𝓻𝓼𝓸𝓷𝓪𝓵𝓲𝓽𝔂
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💎𝓛𝓲𝓴𝓮𝓼 + 𝓓𝓲𝓼𝓵𝓲𝓴𝓮𝓼
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💎𝓑𝓲𝓸𝓰𝓻𝓪𝓹𝓱𝔂
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💎𝓕𝓒 + 𝓒𝓸𝓵𝓸𝓻 𝓒𝓸𝓭𝓮
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💎𝓣𝓱𝓮𝓶𝓮 𝓢𝓸𝓷𝓰
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💎𝓑𝓮𝓽𝓻𝓸𝓽𝓱𝓮𝓭 𝓣𝓸
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💎𝓞𝓽𝓱𝓮𝓻
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💎𝓚𝓲𝓷𝓰𝓭𝓸𝓶 𝓝𝓪𝓶𝓮
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💎𝓚𝓲𝓷𝓰 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓠𝓾𝓮𝓮𝓷
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💎𝓚𝓲𝓷𝓰𝓭𝓸𝓶 𝓒𝓸𝓵𝓸𝓻𝓼
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💎𝓦𝓱𝓪𝓽 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓚𝓲𝓷𝓰𝓭𝓸𝓶 𝓲𝓼 𝓚𝓷𝓸𝔀𝓷 𝓕𝓸𝓻
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💎𝓡𝓮𝓬𝓮𝓷𝓽/𝓡𝓮𝓵𝓮𝓿𝓪𝓷𝓽 𝓚𝓲𝓷𝓰𝓭𝓸𝓶 𝓗𝓲𝓼𝓽𝓸𝓻𝔂
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💎𝓞𝓽𝓱𝓮𝓻
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Name: Captain Adrianna Iphigenia Kingsford
Age: 29
Faceclaim: Marion Cotillard
Guild: Aeronaut
Guild gift: The usual enhanced physical abilities characteristic of Aeronauts-augmented senses, superhuman strength, lightning-fast reflexes, and whatnot. Not as fast as some of her counterparts, though
Personality: Adrianna is as steadfast as a mountain. She never seems to tire, and she throws herself wholeheartedly into her duties. Adrianna is extremely loyal, and very analytical. She can be a bit cold and unfeeling, sometimes, and she's not very people-smart. Adrianna is a bit on the quiet side, and she can be rather stoic, but she is pretty damn good with a gun.

Mini-bio: Born to a moderately important Aeronaut family, Adrianna has followed the footsteps of her parents and grandparents and great-grandparents and devoted her life to serving the Aeronaut Guild, and by extension, the Council. Her mother, however, firmly believed that simply knowing how to shoot a gun was not enough-an Aeronaut needed to be able to spy and manipulate, as well. She sent Adrianna to Madame Geraldine's, where she excelled in courses regarding guns and swords and physical confrontations, but did not do as well in the etiquette classes. Nevertheless, Adrianna enjoyed her time at the finishing school, and she is finding some of the skills she learned there particularly useful in her career, especially now that she has to lead this investigation.

Additional Information: Became best friends with Rowena Imperia-Airwright during finishing school. Their relationship is...complicated, at best, but Adrianna definitely values Rowena's input on anything to do with etiquette and espionage.

N A M E
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A G E
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O C C U P A T I O N
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A P P E A R A N C E
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P E R S O N A L I T Y
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B I O G R A P H Y
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