Talulah Fourier

19 | Female

Talulah is on the shorter and smaller end, with a lithe figure measuring only a finger over five feet tall without her witch’s hat. Her wavy dark black hair is done up in twintails, with a monocle on her smug mug.

Despite her personality, she dresses somewhat traditionally as a witch in all black, with long black robes, big black witch’s hat, matching shoes, and not much else. She makes up the variety with alterations to her neckline and collar—a white collared shirt and colorful tie might peek out of her robes one day, complete absence another; or then something high collared another day.

Arrogant and smug, with a flair for the dramatic, but with the sort of subdued self-awareness that has come from being humbled and tempered by actual experience. Quite a bit different from the grating conceit her peers might have remembered her from her academy days, Talulah is a witch that has a good measure of herself and where she stands, often surprising her old classmates with her newfound relative maturity since returning to Refne from her foreign expeditions.

Cooperative although slightly crabby at times, Talulah is a hard worker where she wasn’t before, pushing her boundaries for both self-improvement and research. Sometimes her laziness still shines through, especially when it comes to taking shortcuts. For her own amusement, she pushes boundaries socially too, though not always in the best way, sometimes straddling the line between infuriating and personable. It often ends in her finding a bird wing thwumping into her face for her efforts.

These days she vacillates between smug and flustered depending on the circumstance.

She has rarely strayed from her interest for new places and the old and unknown, going far and wide for these experiences. She has also always been a speed junkie. Fly fast, and she’ll never turn down a race.

Talulah has a well-rounded education from a prestigious magic school, with the knowledge of a graduate of all three categories of magic. White magic by far is her weaker point, using enhancements to aid her other magic. Her evocation is not much better beyond the baseline, although she puts in the work to stay fresh in the field in support of her birds. The majority of Talulah’s beyond the book repertoire is in black magic, mainly in offensive magic with a secondary specialty in cursebreaking— not too surprising, given Talulah’s reputation as a curse magnet.

Her black magic is varied, but not particularly notable in strength—her main niche is speed, efficiency, and accuracy in all respects. She likes targeting and homing spells—both for herself and to augment companions. One of her main spells allows her to instantly swap with Trifoliata, and in general most of her spells lend well to scouting, following up with a rapid saturating response and an equally fast retreat.

She is a great, if somewhat reckless flyer. Although she doesn’t have a direct affinity for general research, Talulah is talented at appraising the function of magic artifacts and the value of general antiques on the fly, well enough that she had considered at point opening up a shop just for them before dismissing the idea.

Outside of strictly magical matters, Talulah is a falconer. It wasn’t something she grew up with, but something she had to quickly learn once she began working with Trifoliata and other birds but she’s taken an affinity towards both training non-sapient birds and hunting.

Talulah’s monocle is a piece made from a recovered artifact, with its optics acting as a mage arm of sorts that helps her target, track, and augment her abilities to home in on targets for her spells with a very high accuracy.

Her wand, while standard equipment for a witch is high quality and robust, but it’s her broom that stands out, being race-built, with a customized handle and smooth varnished wood.

Talulah is from an old, well-established magical family in Refne. The name Fourier was prominent in the early years of the establishment of the Moon Circle Society, but over the centuries the house has declined in size and grandeur to just being one of the many notable families in the society, though just one with a storied background.

As such, the black-haired witch grew up surrounded by magic. She had the best magical toys, the newest brooms and wands, and a good education, attending one of the more prominent and prestigious magical schools in Lumiere. Talulah had a divisive reputation there; she had been a student with good grades and ideas, but with an ego to match and far too much arrogance for her own good.

She carried this attitude with her past graduation. She always had a bit of wanderlust, and she soon found herself attached to expeditions that took her far beyond the borders of Refne, to sandy lands across an entire ocean with ancient tombs and buried labyrinths of their own. Carrying herself with all the bombast of a new academy graduate, she quickly proceeded to alienate herself from all her colleagues, fell in well over her head in increasingly dire gauntlets of ruins, and sprung just about every curse trap that existed in that wind-swept land. She probably spent more time out of commission with cursebreakers going over her body than not. Her luck was that bad.

It took her a full year of this for her to fully eat her humble pie. A brush with death in a half-buried house, silenced by a very unluckily triggered cursed plate, and left high and dry after a particularly violent sandstorm finally made her shape up. Talulah had been led to safety by an unusually curious and attached falcon. It stuck around, but it too wouldn’t give the poor witch a break. It would fly with her when she scouted out ruins from the sky, and to her consternation, constantly kept beating her when she raced it.

She could never catch a break.

Eventually, she named her Trifoliata.

Despite being bullied by the bird, Talulah began working with her, making Trifoliata her familiar and actually learning some semblance of teamwork. She even got back into the good graces of some of her colleagues, although even with finally some support, Talulah still seemed to be a curse magnet whatever she tried.

It was a particularly bad curse that brought her back home to Refne to rest and recuperate.

Trifoliata [+]

Trifoliata is a brown falcon. Her thoughts and human form made manifest by Talulah, she is a bird that thrives on schadenfreude. She’s a grinning, teasing creature, usually friendly but not always helpful. She keeps Talulah in check when the witch strays too far from the path. In her bird form, she roosts on her shoulder or head. Talulah’s also nicknamed her Trifle, but she usually gets a wing to the face each time she calls her that. Talulah does it anyway.

She mostly stays as a bird, and is primarily Talulah’s support in that form, helping her scout ahead, communicating with her in real time. She can coordinate other non-sapient birds into cooperating, carry objects as a courier or as a payload, and is nasty with her talons, but generally stays out of harm’s way unless Talulah can immediately swap in for her.

In her human form, she stands nearly a foot taller than Talulah and mostly exists to gorge on food. She can act as an assistant, but doesn’t very often.