VitoftheVoid

The Marchand School of Sorcery

Helena had been spending the last couple of minutes struggling to mop up the amorphous puddle of cereal with two napkins, fearing any greater movement to fetch more would disturb the small lake and send it over the rug that she suspected cost quite a considerable amount of money. She had sort of hoped someone might offer some assistance, but as she was too embarrassed to actually ask, she'd resigned herself to this frustrating exercise.

That was until Esperanza intervened. Even though it might well have been just out of a wish to find an open seat, Helena was incredibly grateful, and gave a sheepish grin as she soaked the milk up with the new supply of napkins. Someone had had sufficient concern to help her out, and was sufficiently friendly to offer greeting.

"Thank you so much... I wasn't sure how I was going to.. Oh! I'm Helena. Helena Kingsley. My friends call me Hel."

Or rather they would, if she had friends aside from her younger brother, members of a Labyrinth fan forum, and stuffed toy rabbit she occasionally relayed her problems to.
@EchoicChamber

---

Hilda Norrevinter, the woman stood with the scandinavian group, turned from her niece in order to catch sight of Professor Byrne, and returned with a smile that probably could be considered convincing.
"Maeve, you look well!
Kora, this is Maeve Byrne, she was a ...colleague of mine and of your father's, during the war."

The pause in the statement was apparently lost on the tall, ginger-haired teenager, who extended her hand to shake Maeve's in a way that had probably sprained some wrists in the past. Being as she had a set of headphones hung round her neck that were still issuing the quite background-noise of someone scream-growling in norwegian it was probably not totally her own fault.
"You teach combat right? I can't wait. "

With the bags sat at her feet was a large leather scabbard, a hilt and crossguard of a large, roughly-hewn sword visible. There was also a decorated bear skull, a bag of runes, and a small wood box filled with aesir idols carved out of volcanic rock. Kora was apparently well-prepared.@ScoundrelQueen

---

Oren paced around the room beside the door like a puma in a duster, occasionally checking her phone for a look at the time.
The arrival of Ray Matheos warranted a nod from the woman, but also the look of disapproving contempt that people tended to gain when Oren knew they;d fallen down in something.

She wasn't going to berate another staff member in front of the new intake. If they didn't present a united front to begin, the brats would take any opportunity to capitalize on that. However the look alone seemed like it could probably petrify small mammals, so that was possibly enough.

The Marchand School of Sorcery

'So it begins.'

Professor Oren Kovalenko, an angular figure with dark hair and a long blue coat, watched the numerous new students filing in, passing through the front office and signing off on forms with a sceptical eye. Well, one eye was on the throngs of their new intake, the other was on her phone where she was busy informing any staff members that were not already aware that the first large bus had pulled up and the place was beginning to fill up.

And she didn't expect a group of young mages to maintain any standard of behaviour for very long.

Especially not ones that were more often than not rich, privileged, sheltered, and had never been taught how to properly behave.

Speaking of that-

Norwegian shouting from the entranceway. Oh christ.
From where she was standing Oren could make out three figures at least a head taller than most of the people filtering around them. A woman in he late thirties with long, grey-flecked ginger hair and a crimson coat on, and a hulking man with a beard you could lose a family pet in, both hugging and saying their goodbyes to a third figure. Younger, but still with nearly a foot of height on the Professor, with a mop of red-orange hair and a voice with a strong nordic accent that was carrying over near enough everyone else's together.

Norrevinters.
No mistaking those.

With one deft movement Miss Kovalenko stepped back into the shadow of one of the hall's pillars, and melted into the darkness without a word.

Somebody else could handle Ren's spawn and the ginger storm. She'd see to making sure no-one had started killing each other in the common room.

As it was some students had started eating, or introducing themselves. Oren materialized out from behind the door, quite alarming several students who'd been milling round up there, and proceeded to check over the status of things.

Over to one side, on an otherwise yet unoccupied table, a small figure was slumped over the the surface, next to what was now the degenerated milky sludge of a bowl of cereal left uneaten beyond its time, and something that long ago ceased to be a hot drink.

Her long, rather untidy-looking red hair was spread across the table like seaweed, and she was wearing a blue sweater lined with knitted purple cat faces, the phrase 'Have a Mice Day' inset into the back and front. It was at least two sizes too big and luridly coloured enough that the student was clashing with the furnishings.

Professor K came to a halt behind the student, regarding the girl with her look of pitiless reptilian distaste before finally speaking up.

"Are we boring you already, Kingsley?"

The redhead awoke with a start, knocking her bowl astray with one hand and splattering the fortified mud across the surface.

The Professor remained perfectly stationary whilst one of her charges scrambled, blinking, to try and both stem the flow of milk from the upturned bowl, and address her at the same time.

"Oh..no! No Professor! I was just um...is it breakfast time?"
Apparently only just realising how many others had entered the room, the student known as 'Kingsley' gave a rather sheepish smile.

Kovalenko's expression however was her usual weary mask of disapproval.
"Well Kingsley that is what everyone else is doing, if you would like to try and catch up with the timetable, I think it would probably be beneficial for you. And please try and avoid wasting food in the future."

"Y-yes Professor..." the girl hastily responded, pale cheek reddening a little as the watched the aquamancer turn and walk off down the row.
"...so that's the year off to a good start..."

The Marchand School of Sorcery

Dinah Fox

Full Name: Dinah Jael Fox

Nicknames/Aliases: Di, Tigger, Pothead

Age: 16

Gender: Female

Primary: Terramancy

Student

Secondaries of Interest: Tracking, toxin production.

Description: Dinah is a little on the tall side (albeit nowhere near as much as a Norrevinter) and built like someone not unused to exercize. She has long, unkempt-looking light brown hair. 'Rat's Nest' might be a term used by some. She doesn't brush it quite as often as she should, and it quite often contains the odd leaf or twig. She has brown eyes and a rather laissez-faire attitude towards fashion, if the faded appearance of many of her outfits is to be taken into account. Most of her appearance reflects her rather laid-back (perhaps too laid-back) attitude to life.

Skills:
Bonded with Nature Dinah's upbringing has lacked much supervision, but her rather wild background has given her a very keen sense of the flora and fauna aspects of her primary. Spending time out in the woods with just plants and animals has done wonders for her abilities.

Survival Related to this, Dinah is pretty self-sufficient,she can survive well on her own, and is perhaps rather more worldly than many of the students.


Weaknesses:
- Slacker A tearaway with little sense of discipline, Dinah is a slacker with little drive or direction, and doesn't tend to apply herself in academic studies, meaning her chances of developing secondaries are rather unlikely.

Personality:
Dinah Fox is a person who has nearly always lived by her own rules.

Di is not a person to keep how she feels about anything to herself. She is outwardly affectionate to people she likes..to the point that a personal bubble doesn't seem to exist where she'd concerned. If she likes a person she'll flying tackle them and hug them to death as a greeting if she wants to. At the same time if she dislikes a person, she will not in the slightest bit hesitate about showing them the extent of that.

Possibly in a similar vein, Di could be seen as being rather...feral. She always has been that way.
She doesn't wear makeup. She was once persuaded to try wearing nail polish and ended up scraping it off with her teeth because she thought it made her nails feel odd. She had no concept of manners or formality. She eats pretty much everything with her hands...unless it's soup, then she'll just lift it up and drink it right out of the bowl. She is perfectly happy to break school rules for her own interests.

Despite this behaviour, something that can often cause a bit of friction, Di has an innate sense of compassion. Seeing others suffer disturbs her enormously and she cannot stand unnecessary cruelty or sadistic behaviour.

Brief History:
Dinah's own history is relatively uneventful. She and her older brother, Cyrus, spent most of their childhood being passed around peripheral relatives in their extended family, rarely staying very long.

What is far more notable about her is the history of her family.

The Fox family, once the council seat of Terrmancy, are fairly infamous among others for having supported the new world cult during the civil war. Both terramancers, her mother and father, Matthew and Morgana Fox, were key players in some of the frontline assaults during the war, until their detainment. This fracture lost the wider family their say in political council, the removal of the Fox crest from many official archives. The extended branches of the family have, in the fourteen years since the war, remained on the periphery of the magical world, having little contact with others from that community.

As such, Dinah grew up rather aware that she had few expectations of success. Divorced from the terrible war years, but well aware of the reputation they'd gained as a family, she developed a general feeling of apathy towards the jostling and machinations of the magical bloodlines. This was to the point that she was in two minds about whether she wished to attend at all. However, after falling out with her current set of guardians after a certain incident involving crashing her brother's car, she came to the decision that it was in her best interests to attend for a while.

Helena Kingsley

Helena

Full Name: Helena Alys Kingsley

Nicknames/Aliases: Hel

Age: 16

Gender: Female

Primary: Defensive

Student

Secondaries of Interest: Blood Magic

Description: Helena is not a terrible imposing creature, topping out at out an unintimidating 5'2. Her build is slim, with light curves on the hips and chest rather than any defined muscle and her face is heart-shaped and girlish, with a set of wide, blue-grey eyes.She has a mop of untidy, red hair, which falls for her lower back. She has very pale skin that is quite prone to burning.

People often pick Helena out on her somewhat..idiosyncratic sense of fashion. Her outfit tends to frequently consist of skirt, leggings, sheepskin boots, and some of the most hideous sweaters known to mankind, hewn in rainbow colours and emblazoned with animal designs. All are at least two sizes too big. Seeing what abomination she will wear is quickly becoming a bit of a morbid curiosity among students.


Personality: Helena is kinda of.....weird. Perhaps the fact that she'd not had a whole lot of peer interaction in her life, or perhaps inherently, she can be kind of strange. Her fashion sense is quite eccentric and she tends to both think about and react to things in quite...unconventional ways.

She tends to let her mind wander frequently, and doesn’t often commit to things, her actions and her appearance often making people assume that she is rather weak-willed, but, her outward delicacy hides a fire or great proportions. When she commits to something, she can pursue things with a dogged determination that can be quite impressive.

Helena is not too easily moved into fighting. She tends to put up with a great deal before losing her temper. That being said, when pushed too far, Hel’s temper is completely explosive in its short bursts.

Skills: Helena appears to have some low level of inherent negation, however by magical bloodline standards she is quite underpowered.

Aside from that she is a fairly talented artist and painter, though it has little practical application.

For her size, she can be impressively strong.

Weaknesses: Helena seems to have quite a weak magical ability.

On top of this she seems prone to rather peculiar behaviour, often spacing out in the middle of tasks.


Brief History: Helena's family, the Kingsleys, are an old, relatively well-known magical family, coming out of Wiltshire, Southern England. The family was held in high regard for many years,holding the Council seat for Runic Casting, however suffered a considerable lapse in its reputation after the civil war, when rumours began to spread of their tacit support of the portal cult. Investigations were launched into their possible involvement with the enemy force, but nothing was ever proved. The Kingsleys retain their wealth and status, however the mounting pressure drove them to willingly give up their council seat in order to preserve any kind of amicable relations with some of the major players in the magical world.

Helena is the daughter of Aeryn Kingsley, the current family head, however it is also clear that the girl was born some time before the woman married to her existing husband, and her primary being utterly different from either supposed parents, has suggested that the man was not her father. This led to Helena being something of an embarrassment at formal events. This, combined with the general magical tendency to educate their children at home, and her parents' constant travels in their frantic attempts to repair their familial reputation, meant that Helena frequently found herself with lots of time on her hands. She read, drew, and watched a lot of cartoons to pass time, and spent little time with people of her own age.

As such, the prospect of a school that accepted those such as herself was highly appealing to the girl...however she quickly found this life fraught with complications.

The Marchand School of Sorcery

Professor K

Professor Kovalenko

Full Name: Oren Dariya Kovalenko

Nicknames/Aliases: Professor K., The Robot, The Snow Queen.

Age: 36

Gender: Female

Primary: Aquamancy (Cryomancy specialist.)

Professor of Aquamancy and Shadow Magic

Secondaries[/size] Shadowstep, Blood Magic.

Description:: Oren stands at about 5'7, an angular-looking woman with blue-black hair, grey eyes. She has high, noticeable cheekbones and a naturally pale complexion.

She often wears black gloves and a dark blue duster, sporting a small grey band on the arm with an oval and concentric circles pattern laid in black print.

Oren is usually seen wearing black eyeliner, and a look of general humourless disdain. Unlike many of her war veteran peers, Oren appears largely free of visible scarring. She also has no tattoos.

An accomplished shadowstepper, Oren has learned how to move quickly, gracefully, and economically, and makes her way round the school with the stealthy surefootedness of a wild cat, and the pitiless piercing stare of a hunting owl.

Personality: A lot of people who know Oren have compared her to a robot. Except she is a robot programmed to hate everyone. The aquamancy professor is antisocial, unempathetic, and has very little sense of humour.

She holds everyone, including herself, to unreachable standards and is quick to express her contempt for people due to their inability to meet them. She either has no sense of tact, or has chosen never to express it, as she has no issues with insulting others, including students within her classes, and has a highly caustic mode of interaction which is sure to rub some the wrong way.

Despite this, it's clear that the woman is highly intelligent and very dedicated to her work, and puts a great deal of effort into educating the next generation...even if her methods are a little bit controversial.

The general view held in the student population is that Professor K is good at what she does, but is kind of....scary. She is quite inflexible when it comes to enforcing the school rules, has no issue meting out some kind of punishment for infraction, and to make it more intimidating is often doing so alongside Professor Byrne (something that has resulted in some slightly inappropriate graffiti about them in the ground floor bathroom.)

On top of that she rarely ever seems to sleep, as she can often be seen stepping out of the darkness in the early hours of the morning from...wherever she came from.

[Skills: -Very adept hydromancer. Oren tends to specialize particularly in cryomancy, or ice manipulation, and is experienced enough that she can form ice simply out of airborne moisture, rarely leaving her without any form of weapon.

- Oren is one of the most experienced shadowstep users on site. She is able to step in an out with near as much ease as strolling through the courtyard, and seems to be capable of appearing most anywhere. This tends to keep students on their toes and prevent them from being too quick to speak ill of the professor.

Weaknesses: - Oren has very little in the way of social skill, and tends to quite easily upset people.

-Oren cannot materialize ice or water in very dry air, meaning she will struggle round widespread fire or in very low humidity.

-She cannot stand unwarranted physical contact and is likely to lose her cool if grabbed or held for any length of time.


Brief History: Oren Kovalenko was the (very much illegitimate) daughter of Emil Kovalenko, a prominent and well known hungarian aquamancer. The birth of a bastard child was a disaster for the (married) mage, and her presence was the source of rumours and ridicule. As such, the young Oren did not have the most affectionate or understanding upbringing. She was pushed very hard for intelligence and academic achievement, and had little opportunity to make friends.

It was through formal gatherings that Oren was taken to that she first met Maeve Byrne. Their initial interactions hardly pointed towards them making a very meaningful bond, but through a twist of fate, it was the red-haired aeromancer from her childhood that Oren found herself teamed up with during the hardest fights of the civil war.

The war is not something Oren talks about in detail...not if she can help it certainly. She was part of the youngest generation involved in the conflict, and because of her strong aquamancy traits was placed in the position of a frontline soldier. Despite her promising skills in her primary, Oren, and those of her age group, fund themselves wholly unprepared for the ferocity of the conflict, and the initial casualties were massive. The young woman gained her skills very quickly, as she needed to do so in order to survive. And skill was something she ended up with no shortage of, ending up as the second component of 'Storm II',working her freezing abilities in conjunction with Byrne's abilities to manipulate the atmosphere to cut swathes of destruction through enemy forces.

Afterwards her place as a deadly cryomancer was set into the public consciousness, at least as far as the council were concerned. As such she found plenty of work after the end of the war for them. Despite her reputation for not being the most pleasant person to work with, she seemed surprisingly invested in the creation of an academy for young magic users, and had a hand in the setup of the location of Marchand and the installation of its facilities.

Kora

Kora

Full Name: Jarla Kora Mari Nørrevinter of Vollr, Firstborn of Reinhardt the Red, Bearer of the Fires of Surtr

Nicknames/Aliases: Kora to most people. Ginger, The Viking, Princess, Conan the Barbarian to some others.
Age: 17

Gender: Female

Primary:[Pyromancy

Student[/size]

Secondaries of Interest Familiar Conjuring, Weapon Infusement

Description: Kora is, shall we say,a rather distinct individual. Over six and a half feet tall, she comes across as pretty intimidating at first glance. And for many she only becomes more intimidating from there.
She has a mop of red-ginger hair that reaches above her shoulders, and pale skin that makes her a magnet for sunburn. Her eyes appear a dark, blue-tinted grey.

Kora speaks with a distinct scandinavian accent, and is able to speak in English and Norwegian, having been born off the coast of Norway. She tends to shout when annoyed, or excited, or trying to emphasize, so she's rather hard to ignore.

The girl rarely thinks too hard about clothing, (and at 6'6 can't exactly afford to be picky) so tends to just wear whatever she can get hold of and whatever happens to be easy to move round in at the time. What tends to be less negotiable is her pewter Mjölnir pendant, that she will wear as long as she is able to. An old, plain thing that retains a large amount of spiritual significance to her.

Personality: Kora is defined mostly be being quite...intense. In pretty much all ways. If she is angry she is screaming and shouting and breaking things. If she's happy she's also screaming and shouting and breaking things. Most extremes of emotion seem to manifest in destruction of some form, and when she isn't doing any of these she's often listening to far-too-loud heavy metal music or bragging about something her or her family can do. She can...grate on people a little.

Kora has a serious trouble controlling her temper, and struggles not to let small slights turn into fighting.

In addition, she is also kind of a brat. Kora has been raised to see herself as destined for greatness. The child of 100 generations of selective breeding, she feels that she is special, that she is just waiting to show the world something amazing. Whether this is justified or not, remains to be seen.

Stemming from this, Kora is a little bit elitist in regard to bloodlines. She tends to see herself around the top spot, other bloodlines below. She doesn't mistreat them, but she will sometimes condescend to them and neglect to understand why they might be irritated by this.

Whilst she has many faults, Kora is, if nothing else, extraordinarily brave and unflinchingly loyal. She thinks nothing about taking a hit for others, or fighting to defend people. As far as she is concerned, that is her reason to be.


Skills:
-The Nørrevinter family have been preparing Kora for her destiny for years, since she was a very young child. As a result, Kora is both athletic and a very skilled pyromancer already. She demonstrates impressive power and control for her age. (And has no problems showing it off.)

- The Nørrevinter family's perfected technique, berserker rage, was taught to her at a young age by her aunt.
The technique allows a pyromancer to remove the natural 'safety limits' their own minds and bodies place on the manipulation of their element.
A berserk pyromancer's abilities vastly increase, and their own temperature skyrockets, skin starting to become searingly hot to the touch, enough to cauterize wounds shut very quickly.
They can channel huge amounts of energy in this time.

Weaknesses:- The berserker ability is extremely damaging for a pyromancer. As such, Kora has been frequently instructed to use it only in dire emergency, and it more often than not results in the death, or horrific scarring, of the user.

-The combination of selective inbreeding within the family in order to increase their pyromantic ability has resulted in many inherited defects in the family. As such many of her family die young, or suffer from poor health in later life. It is thought to e part of the reason that the Nørrevinters still stress the usage of the potentially fatal berserker technique.


Brief History: Kora was born on the small island of Vollr as the daughter of Reinhardt (or Ren) Nørrevinter, the then family head. As the named heir she was showered with attention that her siblings did not receive, and had most anything she could want.

The Nørrevinter are an ancient and very powerful pyromancer line, who have held a seat on the Council of Eight for centuries, and who have always had a loud (and often angry) voice in the political mage world. Their own folklore claiming that they have the blood of eldjötnar in their veins, the family have been warriors since their inception, and have selectively bred over generations to that end. Tall, loud, aggressive, and built like giants, to provoke the wrath of a Nørrevinter was the risk great danger for yourself and anything flammable in your general area.

This however, did little to prevent the war, and Kora's father father was killed in action when Kora was only three years old. As such, much of Kora's upbringing was seen to by her Aunt Hilda, and Uncle Erik. Hilda had resolved to take over leadership of the family after the death of her brother, awaiting his heir's coming of age. In the interim time Kora was raised on the isolated scandinavian isle, and relentlessly trained in pyromancy and combat. She was only too eager to take up her place at the school. For her, it presented a chance to shine, to show what one hundred generations of preparation could do.

Dinah Fox

Full Name: Dinah Jael Fox

Nicknames/Aliases: Di, Tigger, Pothead

Age: 16

Gender: Female

Primary: Terramancy

Student

Secondaries of Interest: Tracking, toxin production.

Description: Dinah is a little on the tall side (albeit nowhere near as much as a Norrevinter) and built like someone not unused to exercize. She has long, unkempt-looking light brown hair. 'Rat's Nest' might be a term used by some. She doesn't brush it quite as often as she should, and it quite often contains the odd leaf or twig. She has brown eyes and a rather laissez-faire attitude towards fashion, if the faded appearance of many of her outfits is to be taken into account. Most of her appearance reflects her rather laid-back (perhaps too laid-back) attitude to life.

Skills:
Bonded with Nature Dinah's upbringing has lacked much supervision, but her rather wild background has given her a very keen sense of the flora and fauna aspects of her primary. Spending time out in the woods with just plants and animals has done wonders for her abilities.

Survival Related to this, Dinah is pretty self-sufficient,she can survive well on her own, and is perhaps rather more worldly than many of the students.

Weaknesses:
- Slacker A tearaway with little sense of discipline, Dinah is a slacker with little drive or direction, and doesn't tend to apply herself in academic studies, meaning her chances of developing secondaries are rather unlikely.

Personality:
Dinah Fox is a person who has nearly always lived by her own rules.

Di is not a person to keep how she feels about anything to herself. She is outwardly affectionate to people she likes..to the point that a personal bubble doesn't seem to exist where she'd concerned. If she likes a person she'll flying tackle them and hug them to death as a greeting if she wants to. At the same time if she dislikes a person, she will not in the slightest bit hesitate about showing them the extent of that.

Possibly in a similar vein, Di could be seen as being rather...feral. She always has been that way.
She doesn't wear makeup. She was once persuaded to try wearing nail polish and ended up scraping it off with her teeth because she thought it made her nails feel odd. She had no concept of manners or formality. She eats pretty much everything with her hands...unless it's soup, then she'll just lift it up and drink it right out of the bowl. She is perfectly happy to break school rules for her own interests.

Despite this behaviour, something that can often cause a bit of friction, Di has an innate sense of compassion. Seeing others suffer disturbs her enormously and she cannot stand unnecessary cruelty or sadistic behaviour.

Brief History:
Dinah's own history is relatively uneventful. She and her older brother, Cyrus, spent most of their childhood being passed around peripheral relatives in their extended family, rarely staying very long.

What is far more notable about her is the history of her family.

The Fox family, once the council seat of Terrmancy, are fairly infamous among others for having supported the new world cult during the civil war. Both terramancers, her mother and father, Matthew and Morgana Fox, were key players in some of the frontline assaults during the war, until their detainment. This fracture lost the wider family their say in political council, the removal of the Fox crest from many official archives. The extended branches of the family have, in the fourteen years since the war, remained on the periphery of the magical world, having little contact with others from that community.

As such, Dinah grew up rather aware that she had few expectations of success. Divorced from the terrible war years, but well aware of the reputation they'd gained as a family, she developed a general feeling of apathy towards the jostling and machinations of the magical bloodlines. This was to the point that she was in two minds about whether she wished to attend at all. However, after falling out with her current set of guardians after a certain incident involving crashing her brother's car, she came to the decision that it was in her best interests to attend for a while.

Helena Kingsley

Helena

Full Name: Helena Alys Kingsley

Nicknames/Aliases: Hel

Age: 16

Gender: Female

Primary: Defensive

Student

Secondaries of Interest: Blood Magic

Description: Helena is not a terrible imposing creature, topping out at out an unintimidating 5'2. Her build is slim, with light curves on the hips and chest rather than any defined muscle and her face is heart-shaped and girlish, with a set of wide, blue-grey eyes.She has a mop of untidy, red hair, which falls for her lower back. She has very pale skin that is quite prone to burning. She has a noticeable, irregular pinky-red mark around her left eye, that continues down her face, neck and shoulder. Birthmark or scar, it's not completely clear.

People often pick Helena out on her somewhat..idiosyncratic sense of fashion. Her outfit tends to frequently consist of skirt, leggings, sheepskin boots, and some of the most hideous sweaters known to mankind, hewn in rainbow colours and emblazoned with animal designs. All are at least two sizes too big. Seeing what abomination she will wear is quickly becoming a bit of a morbid curiosity among students.

Personality: Helena is kinda of.....weird. Perhaps the fact that she'd not had a whole lot of peer interaction in her life, or perhaps inherently, she can be kind of strange. Her fashion sense is quite eccentric and she tends to both think about and react to things in quite...unconventional ways.

She tends to let her mind wander frequently, and doesn’t often commit to things, her actions and her appearance often making people assume that she is rather weak-willed, but, her outward delicacy hides a fire or great proportions. When she commits to something, she can pursue things with a dogged determination that can be quite impressive.

Helena is not too easily moved into fighting. She tends to put up with a great deal before losing her temper. That being said, when pushed too far, Hel’s temper is completely explosive in its short bursts.

Skills: Helena appears to have some low level of inherent negation, however by magical bloodline standards she is quite underpowered.

Aside from that she is a fairly talented artist and painter, though it has little practical application.

For her size, she can be impressively strong.

Weaknesses: Helena seems to have quite a weak magical ability.

On top of this she seems prone to rather peculiar behaviour, often spacing out in the middle of tasks.

Brief History: Helena's family, the Kingsleys, are an old, relatively well-known magical family, coming out of Wiltshire, Southern England. The family was held in high regard for many years,holding the Council seat for Runic Casting, however suffered a considerable lapse in its reputation after the civil war, when rumours began to spread of their tacit support of the portal cult. Investigations were launched into their possible involvement with the enemy force, but nothing was ever proved. The Kingsleys retain their wealth and status, however the mounting pressure drove them to willingly give up their council seat in order to preserve any kind of amicable relations with some of the major players in the magical world.

Helena is the daughter of Aeryn Kingsley, the current family head, however it is also clear that the girl was born some time before the woman married to her existing husband, and her primary being utterly different from either supposed parents, has suggested that the man was not her father. This led to Helena being something of an embarrassment at formal events. This, combined with the general magical tendency to educate their children at home, and her parents' constant travels in their frantic attempts to repair their familial reputation, meant that Helena frequently found herself with lots of time on her hands. She read, drew, and watched a lot of cartoons to pass time, and spent little time with people of her own age.

As such, the prospect of a school that accepted those such as herself was highly appealing to the girl...however she quickly found this life fraught with complications.

The Marchand School of Sorcery

Kora

Kora

Full Name: Jarla Kora Mari Nørrevinter of Vollr, Firstborn of Reinhardt the Red, Bearer of the Fires of Surtr

Nicknames/Aliases: Kora to most people. Ginger, The Viking, Princess, Conan the Barbarian to some others.
Age: 17

Gender: Female

Primary:[Pyromancy

Student[/size]

Secondaries of Interest Familiar Conjuring, Weapon Infusement

Description: Kora is, shall we say,a rather distinct individual. Over six and a half feet tall, she comes across as pretty intimidating at first glance. And for many she only becomes more intimidating from there.
She has a mop of red-ginger hair that reaches above her shoulders, and pale skin that makes her a magnet for sunburn. Her eyes appear a dark, blue-tinted grey.

Kora speaks with a distinct scandinavian accent, and is able to speak in English and Norwegian, having been born off the coast of Norway. She tends to shout when annoyed, or excited, or trying to emphasize, so she's rather hard to ignore.

The girl rarely thinks too hard about clothing, (and at 6'6 can't exactly afford to be picky) so tends to just wear whatever she can get hold of and whatever happens to be easy to move round in at the time. What tends to be less negotiable is her pewter Mjölnir pendant, that she will wear as long as she is able to. An old, plain thing that retains a large amount of spiritual significance to her.

Personality: Kora is defined mostly be being quite...intense. In pretty much all ways. If she is angry she is screaming and shouting and breaking things. If she's happy she's also screaming and shouting and breaking things. Most extremes of emotion seem to manifest in destruction of some form, and when she isn't doing any of these she's often listening to far-too-loud heavy metal music or bragging about something her or her family can do. She can...grate on people a little.

Kora has a serious trouble controlling her temper, and struggles not to let small slights turn into fighting.

In addition, she is also kind of a brat. Kora has been raised to see herself as destined for greatness. The child of 100 generations of selective breeding, she feels that she is special, that she is just waiting to show the world something amazing. Whether this is justified or not, remains to be seen.

Stemming from this, Kora is a little bit elitist in regard to bloodlines. She tends to see herself around the top spot, other bloodlines below. She doesn't mistreat them, but she will sometimes condescend to them and neglect to understand why they might be irritated by this.

Whilst she has many faults, Kora is, if nothing else, extraordinarily brave and unflinchingly loyal. She thinks nothing about taking a hit for others, or fighting to defend people. As far as she is concerned, that is her reason to be.


Skills:
-The Nørrevinter family have been preparing Kora for her destiny for years, since she was a very young child. As a result, Kora is both athletic and a very skilled pyromancer already. She demonstrates impressive power and control for her age. (And has no problems showing it off.)

- The Nørrevinter family's perfected technique, berserker rage, was taught to her at a young age by her aunt.
The technique allows a pyromancer to remove the natural 'safety limits' their own minds and bodies place on the manipulation of their element.
A berserk pyromancer's abilities vastly increase, and their own temperature skyrockets, skin starting to become searingly hot to the touch, enough to cauterize wounds shut very quickly.
They can channel huge amounts of energy in this time.

Weaknesses:- The berserker ability is extremely damaging for a pyromancer. As such, Kora has been frequently instructed to use it only in dire emergency, and it more often than not results in the death, or horrific scarring, of the user.

-The combination of selective inbreeding within the family in order to increase their pyromantic ability has resulted in many inherited defects in the family. As such many of her family die young, or suffer from poor health in later life. It is thought to e part of the reason that the Nørrevinters still stress the usage of the potentially fatal berserker technique.


Brief History: Kora was born on the small island of Vollr as the daughter of Reinhardt (or Ren) Nørrevinter, the then family head. As the named heir she was showered with attention that her siblings did not receive, and had most anything she could want.

The Nørrevinter are an ancient and very powerful pyromancer line, who have held a seat on the Council of Eight for centuries, and who have always had a loud (and often angry) voice in the political mage world. Their own folklore claiming that they have the blood of eldjötnar in their veins, the family have been warriors since their inception, and have selectively bred over generations to that end. Tall, loud, aggressive, and built like giants, to provoke the wrath of a Nørrevinter was the risk great danger for yourself and anything flammable in your general area.

This however, did little to prevent the war, and Kora's father father was killed in action when Kora was only three years old. As such, much of Kora's upbringing was seen to by her Aunt Hilda, and Uncle Erik. Hilda had resolved to take over leadership of the family after the death of her brother, awaiting his heir's coming of age. In the interim time Kora was raised on the isolated scandinavian isle, and relentlessly trained in pyromancy and combat. She was only too eager to take up her place at the school. For her, it presented a chance to shine, to show what one hundred generations of preparation could do.

The Marchand School of Sorcery

Professor K

Professor Kovalenko

Full Name: Oren Dariya Kovalenko

Nicknames/Aliases: Professor K., The Robot, The Snow Queen.

Age: 36

Gender: Female

Primary: Aquamancy (Cryomancy specialist.)

Professor of Aquamancy and Shadow Magic

Secondaries[/size] Shadowstep, Blood Magic.

Description:: Oren stands at about 5'7, an angular-looking woman with blue-black hair, grey eyes. She has high, noticeable cheekbones and a naturally pale complexion.

She often wears black gloves and a dark blue duster, sporting a small grey band on the arm with an oval and concentric circles pattern laid in black print.

Oren is usually seen wearing black eyeliner, and a look of general humourless disdain. Unlike many of her war veteran peers, Oren appears largely free of visible scarring. She also has no tattoos.

An accomplished shadowstepper, Oren has learned how to move quickly, gracefully, and economically, and makes her way round the school with the stealthy surefootedness of a wild cat, and the pitiless piercing stare of a hunting owl.

Personality: A lot of people who know Oren have compared her to a robot. Except she is a robot programmed to hate everyone. The aquamancy professor is antisocial, unempathetic, and has very little sense of humour.

She holds everyone, including herself, to unreachable standards and is quick to express her contempt for people due to their inability to meet them. She either has no sense of tact, or has chosen never to express it, as she has no issues with insulting others, including students within her classes, and has a highly caustic mode of interaction which is sure to rub some the wrong way.

Despite this, it's clear that the woman is highly intelligent and very dedicated to her work, and puts a great deal of effort into educating the next generation...even if her methods are a little bit controversial.

The general view held in the student population is that Professor K is good at what she does, but is kind of....scary. She is quite inflexible when it comes to enforcing the school rules, has no issue meting out some kind of punishment for infraction, and to make it more intimidating is often doing so alongside Professor Byrne (something that has resulted in some slightly inappropriate graffiti about them in the ground floor bathroom.)

On top of that she rarely ever seems to sleep, as she can often be seen stepping out of the darkness in the early hours of the morning from...wherever she came from.

[Skills: -Very adept hydromancer. Oren tends to specialize particularly in cryomancy, or ice manipulation, and is experienced enough that she can form ice simply out of airborne moisture, rarely leaving her without any form of weapon.

- Oren is one of the most experienced shadowstep users on site. She is able to step in an out with near as much ease as strolling through the courtyard, and seems to be capable of appearing most anywhere. This tends to keep students on their toes and prevent them from being too quick to speak ill of the professor.

Weaknesses: - Oren has very little in the way of social skill, and tends to quite easily upset people.

-Oren cannot materialize ice or water in very dry air, meaning she will struggle round widespread fire or in very low humidity.

-She cannot stand unwarranted physical contact and is likely to lose her cool if grabbed or held for any length of time.


Brief History: Oren Kovalenko was the (very much illegitimate) daughter of Emil Kovalenko, a prominent and well known hungarian aquamancer. The birth of a bastard child was a disaster for the (married) mage, and her presence was the source of rumours and ridicule. As such, the young Oren did not have the most affectionate or understanding upbringing. She was pushed very hard for intelligence and academic achievement, and had little opportunity to make friends.

It was through formal gatherings that Oren was taken to that she first met Maeve Byrne. Their initial interactions hardly pointed towards them making a very meaningful bond, but through a twist of fate, it was the red-haired aeromancer from her childhood that Oren found herself teamed up with during the hardest fights of the civil war.

The war is not something Oren talks about in detail...not if she can help it certainly. She was part of the youngest generation involved in the conflict, and because of her strong aquamancy traits was placed in the position of a frontline soldier. Despite her promising skills in her primary, Oren, and those of her age group, fund themselves wholly unprepared for the ferocity of the conflict, and the initial casualties were massive. The young woman gained her skills very quickly, as she needed to do so in order to survive. And skill was something she ended up with no shortage of, ending up as the second component of 'Storm II',working her freezing abilities in conjunction with Byrne's abilities to manipulate the atmosphere to cut swathes of destruction through enemy forces.

Afterwards her place as a deadly cryomancer was set into the public consciousness, at least as far as the council were concerned. As such she found plenty of work after the end of the war for them. Despite her reputation for not being the most pleasant person to work with, she seemed surprisingly invested in the creation of an academy for young magic users, and had a hand in the setup of the location of Marchand and the installation of its facilities.

The Marchand School of Sorcery (REBOOT- In Need of Students!)

Reserve me my grumpy professor and that goddamn fire princess please, haha.

A Truly "Gifted" Life (Ignore post count)

The Citadel

Commander Green watched, with his usual,y slightly amused impassivity, as shortly after Commander Botrelle's departure, the other representative of the biological warfare department, stood up and walked out of the meeting without a word.

His mile widened ever so slightly, before he addressed the visitor's question.

"No, Commander Lovette, it's not common practice here for people to simply walk out of interdepartmental meetings." he responded.
"...most have a little more sense than that.

On that note, we must press on and take a vote in regards to my proposal to outsource certain work from the medical research department. All in favour of assigning some alchemists from biological research?"

There were more than a few hands raised, taking advantage of the opportunity to both shirk potential additional workload by offloading it onto someone else, and the opportunity to do it without that someone else knowing they'd been one of those to do so.

"Very well if there are no objections that should work out wonderfully."

Shortly after, the door opened and they were greeted by the base's Viceroy himself.
"Quite well Viceroy Varren, quite well. We've had a few unplanned absences due to circumstances, but we've managed as best we can. I believe matters are more or less worked out."

A Tale of Seven Children

It was an average night.

Helena sat in a rowing boat in the middle of a lake, the surface lit by a multicoloured sheen, helping a giant rabbit haul in a fishing net full of bone china teasets.

Quite normal as it went for Helena.

"So." The rabbit announced as it removed a pastel pink teacup from the netting precariously with its pas.
"You seem a little quiet today, is something the matter?"

The young woman shook her head, avoiding much eye contact with her companion as she searched for the lid to go with the teapot she was holding.
"Oh, no...just not had a lot to talk about. Not much going on right now."

She sighed.
"I dunno Rabbit. I sometimes feel like I'm not really doing anything with my life. Like...you've got your fishing.. and The Archer has hunting and I think...I really need a purpose or something. "

The Rabbit shrugged his shoulders and set a saucer on one of the seats of the boat.
"I'm sure you'll find your calling in time Helena. It's all a matter of patience. You know, when I was your age-"
He stopped, long white ears twitching.
"Get the oars. Something's coming."

Helena pushed herself up into a standing position, struggling not the rock the laden rowing boat, and stumbled across to reach for the oars. As she did the girl couldn't help but look out across the wide expanse of the lake.

That was where she saw it. The water was turning black. It was sweeping in towards the two of them, a featureless, formless cloud of darkness that had taken over the coloured patina of the lake.

She grabbed hold of one oar, but as she tried to seize the second, her arm bumped the edge, rocking it free of the rings and onto the water. Helena cursed and scrambled over to the side, dropping onto her knees as the boat bucked and lurched from the sudden movement. She flung her arms out over the edge, reaching out toward the disappearing oar, only to find herself staring into the dark water...and seeing the huge luminous eyes staring back at her from the abyss-

Knock Knock.

Helena Kingsley's eyes flickered open. Someone was knocking at the door.

She took a moment to try and get some idea of her situation, before shouting out a rather groggy.
"..j-just a sec!"

What time was it?

Half-awake, Helena slid off of the bed and stepped into the chaos of her room. It wasn't especially big in size. The heavy clawfoot bed gave way to a colourful rug scattered with bits of half-finished drawings and novels. All across one wall was a bookshelf quietly overflowing with any number of volumes, and strewn across the remaining furniture were stuffed animals, art supplies, and whatever other curio the young woman had taken to collecting.

The room was sufficiently crowded with stuff that it took her a while to dig out some clothes. A mauve skirt. Aubergine leggings. A bright green T-shirt. And a large, baggy wool sweater with a mutlicoloured dinosaur on the front.

Armed with her standard sort of outfit, and hair hanging in limp fronds like a dead sea creature, Helena went to open the door.

"Good morning Helena, how are you today?" the figure stood in the doorway was quite familiar to her.

Tall, slender-looking, neatly dressed. His hair was silvery in colour and his eyes a bright, near unsettling green. They reminded her of something, but she really could not put a finger on it.

"Hey dad.. good...not so bad..." the young woman mumbled, trying not to let on that she'd only just woken up, and most likely failing miserably at it.

"Good." came the reply.
"I just thought I'd let you know that I'm back for a few days and will be in my office if you need me. Brought you a few things back from my trip that you'll find downstairs." he smiled.
"Glad that all is well here. Hopefully I should not have to leave for the rest of the week so perhaps we can arrange the time to go somewhere?"

Helena nodded and lightened her expression. It sounded pretty appealing. Even as introverted as she tended to be, the place was starting to get a little claustrophobic.
"That'd be great."

Another, rather knowing smile from the man she called father.
"We'll talk about this properly when you've woken up...I'll see you later."
With that, he set off down the hall and out of sight of his adopted daughter.

Once he was well enough out of the way, Leviathan pulled a phone from his pocket and set off a call.
"I see there's been no progress. I'm rather disappointed. Little but minor abilities in near eighteen years of trying. I think we can consider our arrangement at an end.

No, I'm afraid I have given all the chances I can possibly afford. I have been very patient with you, but the time has come to look for an alternative technique. I'm terribly sorry to have to resort to this.

Yes. You will soon find out. Do take care."

The voice on the other end carried on speaking, but Leviathan pressed to end the call, with little interest in what they had to say.

If he was going to realize his plan he was going to have to resort to something a little more complicated.

Still. He prided himself as one never to shy away from a task. If something was worth doing, it was worth doing well.

And if this paid off, there was little limit to where it could lead.

Leviathan smiled, and, were someone watching through the windows of the big, isolated hour, they might have seen as his shadow on the hallway wall flickered momentarily, from that of a man to something vast and twisting, all teeth and coils.

Intrigue in the Fifth City - A Fallen London RP

Hi there! Kind of had to suppress a little squeak of excitement when I saw this, as I have been badly missing an opportunity to use some characters of mine I made for a previous Fallen London RP.

With that in mind, would a zailor hailing from the Chelonate work out? Loves harpoons, fermented shark blood, scars, and worshipping Storm. I was playing a little bit too much Sunless Sea when I wrote her up.

Alternatively I also have some oddly well-to-do honey addict who has a devil acting as a benefactor.