Special Feature Applications

Name: The Goblin Queen

Character name: Ivaylo Voynikov

Feature you are applying for: Vision - sort of

Description of the character: Ivaylo Voynikov is a middle-aged, Bulgarian wizard who looks back on a long career as an auror. He is a physically fit and capable man in general, with finely honed magical and analytical skills. He currently serves the Bulgarian Ministry as an ambassador to Wizarding Britain and has held this position since the end of the war. Throughout the war he fought on the side of Dumbledore and the order, motivated in equal parts by personal desire and principled convictions.

Ivaylo was born in Varna and grew up in a conflicted household. His muggle father struggled to cope with the magical abilities of his wife and children, unable to reign in his jealousy and feelings of aggression and inadequacy. Events culminated when Ivaylo was six years old. His father tried to leave his wife and children. Not fully comprehending what he was doing, Ivaylo drank some of his mother’s potion ingredients in the belief they would make him fall asleep and not wake up until kissed by a princess. 

The reality was much more gruesome. Ivaylo struggled for his life and barely survived the overdose of dragon’s blood he had consumed. The incident had repercussions that are affecting him to this day. Having been blinded by the magical reaction of the ingredients he had consumed, Ivaylo never regained his eyesight.

In the wake of what the family would later on simple refer to as “the accident” Ivaylo’s mother did everything she could to afford her son a normal life. She tried to get a magical eye for him (like Alastor Moody’s) but the eyes wouldn’t work due to the internal and irreparable nerve damage Ivaylo had suffered.

As an accomplished alchemist she eventually developed a potion and a set of enchanted glasses that would restore some of her son’s vision. However, rather than seeing properly it merely lets him perceive his surroundings as blurred and grainy shadows in a dull, black and white world. Recognising faces, reading, writing and many other common everyday tasks remain difficult for Ivaylo to master, but not impossible. (His quick quotes quill is one of his fondest possessions though.)

By the time he turned 11 and his magical ability came into bloom Ivaylo started to suddenly experience blinding flashes of colour and brightness. It was naturally assumed that this was just another symptom of the damage that had been caused to his visual nerve. Over the course of his first few years at Durmstrang Ivaylo became to realise that the dragons blood had not completely taken his vision, but changed it. He could see magic in the making like blueprints and schematics painted in the air.

He eventually quit school as he was unable to keep up with the reading requirements. His mothe home schooled him for a while trying to push him into a career in alchemy.

Ivaylo, as a teenager/young man eventually came upon a duelling instructor who showed him how to use his disability as a strength and helped him taking the first steps to becoming a fully-fledged auror – a long and arduous path, complicated by his lack of formal education.

He married, settled down and started a family. Too late, did he realise that his wife was not who he thought she was.  He is tried to live in denial and ignore the signs, but eventually it became obvious that her commitment to him was primarily to gain access to auror department data. Though he doesn’t know for sure he suspects that the daughter he helped raise – Violeta -  is not even his.

These are the history elements that are likely to stay.

Ivaylo is a revival of an old character that no longer fits the writing standard of Magical Hogwarts in his original form. The character had a ridiculous history that will need plenty of fixes and adjustments to read well and cohesively. I gave a brief overview of where I am going, and I can offer a long mess of where I am coming from.

There is a bit of fixed sheet for perusal as well.

Application: Ivaylo’s (dis)ability has to be divided into three sections.

1 | He is completely blind. Without his glasses to help him see, there is only nothingness in non-magical surroundings.

2 | To compensate for the world remaining black to him, Ivaylo wears a pair of magically enchanted sunglasses, not dissimilar to the magical eye used by Alastor Moody. However, there is a notable difference between Ivaylo's glasses and a magical eye. They provide him only with very basic vision. His vision is a bit like an old black and white movie filmed with a shaky hand. He sees dust and scratches, his vision is rough and blurry, distorted and on occasion there are a few missing frames. It enables him to recognise large objects and structures with ease. He lacks detail vision that would allow for recognition of faces and other complex tasks. He has no colour vision either. Reading and writing is an ordeal to Ivaylo as he has trouble to make out the symbols. In fact the writing often appears blurred to him, sometimes he cannot see it all. With lots of time and patience he can manage to make out bold and clear lettering if he absolutely has to.  Anything that requires a certain degree of visual precision is pretty much a lost cause with Ivaylo. Putting some beads on a string for example would be a near hopeless endeavour.

Since Ivaylo's glasses differ from Moody's magical eye quite a bit, they also required a different kind of care. The enchantment placed on them usually wears off over the course of a day and needs to replenished at evening time. For that the glasses are placed in a special kind of purple potion which is the only potion Ivaylo is any good at making. Overnight, the glasses need to remain in the violet solution to return to their full effectiveness. The wear of these spectacles is often seen as exhausting by Ivaylo, who frequently suffers from headaches and slight nausea. When alone and in private Ivaylo prefers to not wear them and feel his way around. He is quite comfortable to be that way in places that are familiar to him. It is usually for work and social gatherings that he prefers to wear his glasses to be aware of everything that is happening around him.

3 | The accident has altered Ivaylo’s senses. He since can see magic in the form of colourful auras. Each magical being has an aura, regardless of magic actively being cast at the time. It's a way of perceiving their magical potential and nature. The auras he perceives have different colours and intensities and he might be able to draw some conclusions from what he sees. The presence of an auror has defined characteristics that differ from the presence of a potions master. A house elf has a different kind of presence than a centaur.

He can determine with ease if a person is a muggle or a wizard merely by looking at them. He can make out a squib in a matter of seconds. He can see if an artefact is magical and he can easily tell if food or drink have been poisoned with a potion or have been magically tampered with otherwise. All it takes is a quick glance. He sees spells that are being cast as colourful ribbons in the sky, even if the incantation was invoked non-verbally. This ability is as reliable to him as seeing and hearing is to others. 

He has some unreliable forensic ability as well. Auras of particularly powerful people and spells tend to linger. When arriving on a crime scene he might see aura evidence of how a victim was killed or he might not. It depends on a variety of factors from time elapsed since the murder to strength of the magic used, the level of ambient magical noise, his day to day fitness and well-being. This sense is quite open to misinterpretations by Ivaylo and he has learned not to ever rely on it. However, it frequently gives him ideas and impulses he then investigates carefully and rationally. 

However, much like other people Ivaylo does not necessarily notice everything he sees, even if it is of significance. He is just as easily distracted and just as forgetful as any other wizard. Often the plethora of magical impressions is overwhelming and causes him to shut down. Quite frequently, he does not pay as much attention to the world around him as he perhaps should.

The muggle world is deeply unsettling to Ivaylo as it remains black and white to him entirely. When he visits it he often misses the sparkling colours of wizards auras and the beautiful ribbons of spellwork flying in the sky. Without his glasses he is completely lost and completely blind there, which is usually reason for Ivaylo to avoid the muggle world if it can be helped at all. He prefers to not go there unless he absolutely has to.

While his ability to see auras surely does have its advantages he is not sure if he is entirely happy with it. Quite often his is frustrated with his state. There however is not much to be done, as no cure to reverse damage caused by dragon blood exists. The psychological impact of this condition has shaped his very being.   

I will not make any arguments how this fits - it doesn't fit and that clearly is the point of it. The (non) feature is a freak accident and its changed his perception of himself, the world and everybody and everything in it. It has both enabled and hindered him and is a quintessential part of who he is, what he does and where he will go from here.

Future plots: I don't really view this ability/feature as something that lends itself to being the centre of a plot and I am reluctant to ask people for threads just to fill this section of the application with some junk text. The way I see it, this ability will feature in some way in every thread this character as ever has. I don't view it as much more than a very polished sense of intuition and a dash of Holmesian perceptiveness. It's really meant as a magical compensation mechanism for what he is missing.

That being said, I've talked to Soufflé Girl about posting this character with her Leah which would lend itself to a number of situation in which his perception of the world might be explored. Since he relies on his instinct quite a lot, it seems interesting to me how he would handle being wrong about somebody and arriving at completely inaccurate conclusions.

I've talked a little but to Cam about possibilities with Ira or Theoren. It might be am interesting experience for Ira to deal with someone now swayed by appearances, while Theoren and Ivaylo could be involved in an international crime case together, potentially leading to a larger plot.

I'd like to bring some life to the ministry and put some open threads out there as I have time to pursue them.

I'm intrigued by the possibilities of posting with Niska or Amaranth, but I've not actually amazed to track down Meridian to work out any details.

I think there will be enough opportunities to post this ability, and while I am away often I do honour the special features I have when I am around to play my characters.

RP sample using the feature: Ivaylo felt that returning to Britain was one of the best decisions he had made in his life. He loved the country, he loved the people and he felt that he had come to a place where he could make a difference. The war had destroyed great many things, but Ivaylo believed that upon reaching its lowest point society was open for the greatest change. That made for an exciting opportunity. Wizarding Britain had the chance to become a place without corruption, where wizards and witches of all backgrounds could participate equally to shape the future. He wanted a piece of that, he wanted to learn. By the time such change would become possible in Bulgaria he wanted to be an expert and bring home knowledge of how to make a country fairer and better for its citizens.

These were the lofty ideals and grandiose thoughts he woke up with in the mornings until the reality of his day to day routine caught up with him. Most days, he found that Britain wasn’t better, just different. Still, there was learning even in that and, perhaps, he was making progress towards his goals even when the banality of life was getting painful. You could accomplish more things together than on your own. Strength was the result of unity. International politics could trigger internal change.

Still, he had imagined the work of an ambassador to be more demanding and inspiring. There were indeed formal events, debates, official dinners and meetings with the wizarding government of Britain as he had imagined, but these things only comprised a small part of his duties. More time was spent on signing passport applications, extradition agreements, providing support and information on import and export regulations, granting visa to British citizens wishing to visit Bulgaria and other paperwork that Ivaylo didn’t see as particularly important. He did understand why it was necessary though.

The constant reading and writing was tiring though, and made the enchantment on his glasses wear off much faster than he was accustomed to. Sometimes, he could barely see a thing by lunchtime other than the thin, golden ribbon caused by his quick quotes quill moving over parchment. There was a certain beauty and symmetry even in that and as long as Ivaylo could stay behind his desk, he didn’t mind it so much. When he was booked for afternoon appointments though, like today, he needed to remind himself of his lofty ideal to see things through. It was necessary. The potential outcome outweighed the slight discomfort he would suffer in accomplishing it.

Before meeting with some undersecretary from the department of International Magical cooperation though, he should probably grab some lunch. The ministry canteen wasn’t one of his favourite haunts, but he knew his way around the place and the food was free to him as a diplomatic courtesy. In Ivaylo’s opinion that was a good thing as he could not have imagined himself paying for the greasy and tasteless creations served at the place. Convenience well and truly was the mother of all disappointment.

What he liked about the canteen was that it felt thoroughly magical. He could see the colourful presence of other wizards, spinning orbs of coiled energy and spells bouncing from corner to corner. It was a cheerful place. His eyes followed a light blue line crossing the room; ministry paper plane. It stopped at a patch of perfect blackness. Ivaylo smiled. She was here. Carefully he made his way past some of the other witches and wizards to reach his acquaintance.

Ever since starting at the ministry, he had noticed this young lady who didn’t produce any magical signature at all. She remained dark and indistinguishable to him just as a muggle. At first the idea had frightened Ivaylo, but soon reason had offered an explanation. The lady in question had to be a squib. A squib working for the ministry of magic. It seemed odd and had he not seen it for himself he’d not have believed it. But didn’t it just show that change was everywhere, omnipresent and saturating every aspect of society? He liked this.

Unofficially, the lady, Carrington, had become somewhat of a pet project to him. She didn’t seem to get a lot of recognition and support, but Ivaylo was determined to make a difference here. It was something he could do. He knew how hard it was to find people that made you feel included despite being different. So he was determined not to mention anything directly, but simply be there. “Carrington,” he greeted cheerfully and took the free seat at her table. “I must be a very lucky man to catch you not once but twice this week. How are things going? I heard all about your visit to France. Now if I was your superior I’d be thrilled.” He offered a slightly awkward smile. “Now tell me all how you got out of that pickle without using any magic. I don’t think I could have managed that myself.”

[carys]approved! [/carys]

Name: Hanhan
Character name: Olivia Welks
Feature you are applying for: Werewolf

The Animal Lover:

Olivia Welks loves everything to do with magical creatures. Those beasts is one of her favorite things in the magical world. She will not harm a living creature or even interrupt their natural habitat. Basically, Olivia is a hippie. Since Hogwarts she is drawn to adventures and the dangers of the forest, never considering the risks. Olivia is brave and never super cautious. She tries to help everybody without thinking of the bad effects of doing so. She thinks everybody has a good part to their body. It is naive, but she just does not ever want to think someone is truly bad. Olivia does go hunting animals alone, which leaves her wide open to attacks or anything else that could happen. Olivia does this only because she feels if she brings someone along they will scare the other animals away. This just leaves her in a dangerous situation.

The Wolf:

Animals was always something that intrigued Olivia. She worked with the ministry with the dragons and with the werewolf registry unit. She knows her beasts and loves to study them. This normally brought her to visit undisclosed areas to try to find the animals that did not want to be found. Olivia was on a regular adventure in the Grizedale Forests in North West England in January. It was cold and pretty desolated in the forest that time of the year. Many of the normal animals were not even in sight. She was searching for wild Bowtruckles. The forests were very dark and Olivia was not paying attention to the time or what day it was. With her luck it was a full moon and clear outside, close to dark. The woman's only mission was to find the Bowtruckles so that she would have another lesson plan for the students and something else new that she could enjoy. As the afternoon continued into dark, Olivia did not pay attention. The bowtruckles were extremely hard to spot and now since it was turning dark it was nearly impossible. Almost giving up she was ready to leave and she heard a snap. She did not know what it was but thinking it was a bowtruckle she continued forward in the dark with her wand illuminated. That is when she saw two yellow eyes peering at her. She heard a snarl. Most of the time beasts were gentle, but she thought maybe it was a wild wolf. Her first instinct was to make a loud sound and scare it away. That caused the beast to move even closer. That is when she got the first view of the animal. It took a step closer and howled. It was deep and felt like it shook all the trees around her. When it moved into the full moonlight it was a deep gray color with hair sticking out everywhere. It's yellow eyes pierced straight into her. Olivia was in pure shock that she was just in front of a creature that she was studying for half of her career. The last time she ever seen one of these was when she was in the ministry, but she had other people with her. She was never alone...

The creature stared at her confused. The first thing she thought she would have to do was distract it. Olivia picked up her wand and swished it, speaking some words softly under her breath not to scare the creature anymore. She did not want to hurt it but she wanted it to look another way. As the bag came toward her she flicked it the other way and the bag full of her equipment hit a tree behind the creature. It looked the way the bag went and Olivia quickly took off in the other direction. She had no clue where to go, but she had to get out of there. She heard the animal behind her, but she had to either hide or keep running. Running would not last long. She was already feeling tired. Olivia was out of breath already and wanted to stop, even the thought of stopping made her pause slightly which caused the creature to catch up. Something caught her ankle and the first thought in her mind was her son. She had to keep going for him. The pain was immense. It burnt. The animal then began to drag her. She was not going to die. Using the first spell that she could think of which was Incendio. The flames that came out hit a bush close to the beast. It did not stop it from dragging her. Olivia felt like her ankle was going to fall out. Finally she managed to shoot out another spell before she felt to weak to do anything. This one was Incarcerous, which tied the beast up with ropes. She did not hurt it but stopped it. It was already attempting to wriggle free and Olivia was not sure how much longer she had before she felt like passing out. The first thing she did was close her eyes and focused as much energy as possible and she ended up apparate out of the woods. She ended up in the next magical town over close to a inn. The woman who found her was surprised to say the least. The ended up taking her to a private practice where she received care from Kit Emberton.  They applied powered silver and dittany which sealed up her wound on the ankle, thus turning her into the creature she studied for this many years. Olivia decided to keep a secret to only the people close to her, fearing she might lose her job or family.

She-wolf:

When you turn, it is the blood and the saliva that makes the damage. Many muggles do that survive the attack. The victims after the attack gain a taste of red meat and wolf tendencies. They itch and scratch like a wolf. They basically have wolf traits. Olivia would gain these traits after her mauling. Olivia is technically part magical, so she would be able to survive the attack. Every full moon she will go through a horrible transformation and would have to seclude herself from her family, friends, and even students. Many werewolves attack themselves out of frustration when they do have other humans to attack or other animals to keep it company. The wolfsbane potion does that stop the transformation, just keeps their mind during the event. If a werewolf does not take the potion, their mind is a complete blank and will not recall anything that happened that night. They could kill their own family and not recall any of the event.

This would change Olivia's view point on everything. She will be more protective of her family after the event and fear for them even more. Olivia is already fearful of her muggleborn status, but being a werewolf is even more discrimination. They get treated completely different than other magical folk, only because they were attacked. The attack is already going to be hard on her but knowing that she could hurt any one of her family members without having a clue of doing it would effect her the most. Olivia would feel like she always should seclude herself. Society already makes it hard for them to obtain jobs. Since 1998,  Kingsley Shacklebolt has opened up less discrimination. She would still have to register in the Beast Division.

Olivia's personality would not change a lot. She would still be a hippie and animal lover, just a more cautious form of it. Olivia will be second guessing everything before even attempting it. She will be more fearful for everything around her. She will be a big worry wart.

When she is transformed, Olivia looks like any other werewolf. She has the extended limbs and walks on all fours. Her fur is a reddish brown color, to match her natural auburn hair. She actually has a tan body in her form and her hair is slightly longer and fuzzy forgot throughout her body. Oliva's eyes are still a bright green eyes. Days before transformation Olivia has her senses enhanced, which shows her its near. She usually feels more energy during this time and has troubles trying to sleep. After the event she is very sick. Her body is achy and some bruises or random scratches are among her body. She is sick for a couple days after the event.

The Damage:

The physical damage from the bite will be noticeable for Olivia, but her combat boot could easily hide it. The bite was located on her ankle. Many of the skin was torn, but will heal nicely. She will have a scar there for the rest of her life. Werewolves premature age, so Olivia will do this in return. She will just gain a few grey streaks, but she will try to hide it with magical spells if it works. During his transformations she could harm herself or be harmed by anti-werewolf associates. Olivia would have scars from those attacks, eventually. Currently she will only have her bandaged bite mark.

Hopefully I get to start this in the next month's playtime, but I am currently going to roleplay the hospital time out with Kit Emberton(Gage), Gregoire Cartier(Samm), and Geri Trickett(Sunshine Girl). This will be the after care and what to expect after the attack. Geri stays by her side the whole time and takes care of her afterward. He is supportive of the whole deal. Kit will do the beast healing. Greg will be her close friend that is supportive. Olivia needs as much support as possible and will have to have a few people that keep her secret close.

Olivia's main plot is her dealing with what exactly happened. She will fear losing her job and having her son shun her. Letting her son know what happened is going to be hard thing to do. Olivia will fear him not accepting his mother of what she is. This woman will fear she will hurt him one of these days if she does not keep safe. Olivia will also fear losing her job. They are more open to werewolves in the work force, but Olivia will fear that because she will need to take a few days off a month to lock herself away and come back sickly that it would worry her students. She does not want to do that to them. Olivia would be taking a month off after the attack to recoup and dread her first pain change.

Another plot involves Conall Regan(Sunshine Girl) and Olivia. Olivia would escape from her shack during the change and run into a wolf. She would be intrigued and end up accompanying him while he runs around, but he smells human. Olivia and Conall both discover that they are wolves, two different forms and keep each other secret. They create a wolf bond. Olivia gains someone new that will help her keep her secret.

Because of the attack, Geri Trickett(Sunshine Girl) will become closer to Olivia and protective. He will start helping make wolfsbane and locking Olivia up when she needs it. Geri will be Olivia's shoulder when she needs it. This will open her up more for a relationship with the Trickett baker and a future with someone... even though the whole time she will fear hurting him and fear losing him.

This will open up Olivia for more plots and chances to role-play with other people. She could have many opportunities with other werewolves or even with animagus people. She will have to go through a lot, but she will have many friends that will bring her closer and will help her when she needs it. This will make Olivia even more stronger than what she is.

It was that time of the month for Olivia Welks. The classes were ending and she was taking a momentary leave from the students and her normal job. Since her attack in Northern England everything was a little harder. Grey was still not speaking to her, which shocked Olivia. His disappointment came from his mother being alone in the woods, which caused the attack. Olivia just was no prepared and was comfortable with studying creatures like she normally did, which caused damage throughout her life. Olivia managed to keep her job as long as she kept her illness a secret. Every few days of a month she would go on a leave, saying she was searching for a new animal for the lesson or working on a section of her book, and she would continue on into the Forbinned Forest past her shack and past anywhere that students could simply think of. There was located a tiny little shed. There she would take the wolfsbane potion and lock herself up. It was the only way to keep everybody safe. That is all she really cared. Safety. Nobody will get hurt thanks to her.

Olivia prepared water and a few other snacks for wait. The chocolate frogs were the best part. She did manage to get some cupcakes from her favorite bakery in Hogsmeade. Olivia only be at the shack for the night and walk back to her hut in the morning and do the same over and over again until the full moon was away.

The walk through the Forbinned Forest was nice during the day. She knew she had to walk about a mile or two into the deep forest to get to her little shed. Since the attack her senses were enhanced much more when it was closer to a full moon. During that time she would not need her glasses as much and she could smell the water or other animals even if they were five hundred feet away. The enhancements helped her with not getting lost in the Forest. She knew where the shed was thanks to its musky, dusty smell. She hated that smell now since she was stuck there over night. The wolfsbane potion helped her keep her mind during the transformation. The first time she drank that liquid she hated it. It was stuck in her throat and couldn't even go past. It tasted like you were swallowing iron. Olivia was dreading drinking the liquid, but she needed to so nobody would get hurt. As she got closer to the shed, she noticed it was already close to sunset. Olivia paid more attention to those times now since she turned. She felt like it was easier to time herself so she did not spend much time in the shed.

As she opened the shed's padlock she set her bag inside, along with the key. The locks inside worked just as fine as the outside locks, but Olivia set a key up inside a stump just in case. She had a few people that were helping that could lock the outsides if she forgot to take the wolfsbane potion. Olivia was pretty set on her list for things to do. Once she was in the shed, she locked the door and shoved the key under a floor board close to the door. The only reason why she did that was because she was not sure how much of this shed she could destroy. The only thing she could see safe was under the floor. Olivia reached into the bag that had the cupcakes pulling out a small silver flask. That had the wolfsbane potion. As she screwed off the top, Olivia made a funny face and plugged her nose. She swallowed the liquid. It felt like it was burning, but she had to bear it. Finishing it off it was now time to wait. When it got closer Olivia would chain up her ankle with another key. This one she would leave in a different area than the other key. The only reason why she did this was for even more protection. This woman was not even sure how strong she was in the form. She was taking every precaution she could.

The moon was finally coming up, Olivia ate about three cupcakes as she waited. As soon as the moon came Olivia felt it. Her whole body felt tingly and then a burning sensation came. The sensation was to much. Olivia cried out as she put her hands in her face. Her legs begun to extend and so did her arms. Olivia felt like all of her bones in her body were breaking. They were deforming and changing to the new form. Olivia's face then stared to change. Her mouth and nose started to come out more, into a snout. The ears started to point out. The pain was so much that Olivia was not even crying anymore, she was more focused on trying to keep good thoughts in her mind. The pain was to much to bear, finally Olivia passed out while the transformation continued. As the transformation ended the only thing left was a reddish-brown werewolf with its leg chained to a wall of the shed, whimpering while it slept. 

[jul]APPROVED! 

Name: Ty
Character name: Zachary Incarnadine
Feature you are applying for: Legilimency and Occlumency
Application:

The Incarnadine family works as information brokers on the edge (and often quite far past the edge) of the law. They are the go-to people if you need to discreetly purchase some intelligence. They have a network of contacts throughout western Europe in a variety of positions and can usually track down whatever it is one wants if it's available.  They can also exert pressure on individuals to part with certain items or information, be it an incriminating personal letter that one wants never to see the light of day, a signed first edition of Tales of Beedle the Bard or a dragon egg, the Incarnadines have means of persuasion which have been honed over the last two hundred years. The family engages in corporate espionage, 'private investigation' to a certain extent (i.e. if the mark is worthwhile investigating), cover-ups and 'research'. If it involves the flow (or stemming the flow) of information that the pureblood elite (or at least more influential half-bloods) might be interested in, the Incarnadines will want to have a hand in it.

The family does not just start to gather intelligence when commissioned by some third party. They make it their business to pry into the affairs of state and the black market as well as high profile families and figures so that they have information of value to hold over people if necessary. Over the course of their expanding enterprise the family has amassed a repository of information that means they can extort other influential individuals or families should the occasion arise, but they prefer not to stoop to such levels. However, having a hand in the flow of information and acting as mercantile information gatherers for secret services across a variety of nations means that their influence extends across western Europe through back channels into national ministries, the black market and people of interest.[1]

Zachary is the heir to this family and in the last two or three years has taken to the family trade with gusto.  Following a seven year apprenticeship to a potions master, he thinks (with his usual self-assured arrogance) he's learned just about all that is worth knowing about potions and so to keep himself occupied has been branching out into dabbling in the family trade.  He's been forging his own network of contacts with the aid of family friends, name-dropping and generally as the result of his own wiles but certain people remain closed off to him.

Repeated attempts at manipulating well placed people into sharing drinks with him into which he can drop a potion have been largely unsuccessful, and whilst he has all manner of recipes for concoctions that would have even the most strong willed individual begging for mercy, torture is only good for so much.  Coercion and psychological torment is much more Zachary's style than outright physical violence and so recently he has been going over his family records for other ways his forebears have obtained information in the past.

He found two themes throughout the records, besides potions and blackmail - the Imperius Curse and legilimensy.  Although having a person effectively as a slave to his every desire does hold a lot of appeal for Zi, and he would have no issue with using an unforgivable curse, the Imperius curse seems distasteful to him.  It is a sledgehammer where a fine engraving chisel would do, and lacks the elegance and finesse he demands of himself. As such he has been reading up on legilimency in whatever publications he can find (there is remarkably little on the subject) and is more and more drawn to the possibly of literally getting into someone's head, having always enjoyed just figuratively doing so.

Aside from being useful for business, manipulating people and messing with their heads is one of Zachary's favourite pastimes. He derives the ultimate joy out of playing god with people's lives and subtly encouraging them to act as he wishes them to, whether he is doing this for any particular purpose or just to see whether he could.  Zi would not be above using legilimency as light for entertainment or just to settle petty disagreements, and indeed relishes in the upper hand it will give him within his very small circle of friends.

Since deciding that he wanted to master this dark skill, Zachary has constantly been on the lookout for a legilimens that can teach him, as his few attempts made from what he could glean from writings on the subject were complete failures.^[2]  However, a few months ago, Zachary was in Germany on family business that happened to coincide with a person of interest to a local counterpart and they co-ordinated the abduction, detention and interrogation of their mark.  As it was the Incarnadine trade to extract information, he was given the first opportunity to question the detainee but despite the application of veritaserum, various potions to lower inhibitions and other less pleasant incentives, their unwilling informant was not forthcoming.

As his counterpart was observing the interrogation, he was becoming more and more frustrated, and eventually told Zachary to give him two minutes with the prisoner.  Grudgingly, Zachary did this, but he soon forgot his displeasure at being cast aside when he realised how the local man was obtaining the intell. Not a word was said whilst he was in the room, and Zachary watched in rapt attention as the face of the victim morphed from defiance to horror to shame. His tormentor then gave Zachary the information he had been after (his family had wanted the man in custody and could not have cared less about the contents of his mind), which was corroborated by other pieces Zi had already learned from other sources.

With their work business concluded, the unfortunate man was left drugged and incarcerated in a safehouse whilst Zachary and his colleague repaired to a local bar to unwind, and eventually the aspiring legilimens approached the subject in a circuitous and euphemistic manner.  Even without the powers, he could tell that his meaning had been understood, and the older man seemed amenable to the idea of taking on a pupil.  After he made Zi jump through a few hoops, all of which Zachary managed to perform satisfactorily, he agreed to tutor Zi in legilimency for an unnamed cost - or at least one so vague ('being in his debt') so as to give Zi pause. However his obsession with the idea of learning the skill overcame his caution at commiting himself to an unnamed price and he agreed.

Over the last few months, Zachary has been studying hard and practising at every opportunity he has had.  A supply of willing victims is somewhat difficult to find and so outside of his lessons with his mentor he is not above abducting and detailing muggles for a few hours while he practices on them, then obliviating them and returning them (assuming he has not damaged their psyche too much).  In this fashion he has attained a basic grasp of the magic that is at least vaguely useful to him, although he still has much work to do to achieve any level of proficiency.

At present, he is able to access and navigate a willing participant's (or a weak-minded muggle's) memories without too much risk to either party. However, as soon as someone with magical blood starts to resist, he is unable to get more than the briefest flashes of images, and by no means are these images necessarily related to what he is looking for.  In these circumstances, his is able to use the ability at least to tell whether someone is being deceitful or unforthcoming with him but he isn't able to discover what it is they are hiding (and in the circles he moves in, at almost every point in time, everyone is hiding something and lies through their teeth. Perhaps it will be more useful to discover when someone is actually being honest and open).  Even a beginner occlumens is able to thwart his attempts to read their mind and even his lie-detection is unreliable.

^[3]


Morrison - Zi's cousin, and is taking the legilimensy classes with him^[4].  Normally when Zi and Morrison practise legilimency on each other, they do so at Zi's place, having his pensieve^[5] in which they could deposit their more private thoughts. However Morrison at some point shall catch Zi unawares and be met with memories of his male sexual encounters, thereby outing Zi to him.   


Alain -  For want of a better word, Alain is Zi's boyfriend. But he has plenty of secrets from him, most notably that he is an elemental, a fact that he is not supposed to spread around according to council rules.  Recently he's spent three years without his memory in Egypt after a bungled attempt at retrieving some ancient runic magic. Zi came across an amnesia-ridden Alain whilst trying to obtain some Nubian artifacts, and discovered that he has no memory of his former life.

Zi's first attempt at restoring Alain's memory will be to give him a potion of remembering, since he is not confident enough in his legilimency skills to start tampering with the mind of one of the few people he actually cares about. However this will result in a torrent of memories being unleashed and overwhelming the poor young man's mind. As such, as a matter of necessity, Zi will have to suppress these memories once again with obliviation and enter Alain's mind and try to find some key memories that he can pull out and share with Alain in his pensieve in order to give him some sense of structure and context for the onrush of memories that undoing the obliviation will cause.

Whilst trying to select important memories from Alain's psyche, he is bound to come across memories pertaining to his elementalism.  Zi's curiosity and need to know everything about everyone is too strong for his feelings for Alain to overcome the urge to take one of these along with more normal memories and put it to one side for later viewing.  In this manner Zi will learn about the Elemental Council of Inverness and Alain's involvement with them, and after being unable to find any more information about them, will confront Alain with it.

Aside from causing a large amount of relationship troubles, once though eventually cool down this will result in Zi getting embroiled in Alain's descent towards darkness and his mission to learn forbidden elemental magics. It also opens the world of elementalism up to Zi who would be intrigued by these people, their culture, the international reach of their organisation and most particularly their power.

Pureblooded Heirs - Farren Abercrombie has taken it upon herself to restore the proper order to the world and fix the ailing class system in wizarding Britain.  Zi and Morrison have talked about this in the past, but have always had something better to do. However following this call to arms, Zi does not want to be on the outside looking in and so will be taking a leading role in their mission along with Ren.  They are corralling the influential pureblooded heirs along that have dark leanings, or at least those without light leanings, and attempting to form an oligarchical council to coordinate their efforts and reinvigorate their respective families' influences over the wizarding world. Current allies include the families Incarnadine, Thorne, Abercrombie, and Malfoy.

Such a room full of self-centered, egotistical megalomaniacs are bound to be backstabbing, devious and out for themselves. In such a situation Zi would most definitely feel it necessary to use his skills to make sure he has the upper hand as much as possible. He would consider proclaiming his skills (and indeed exaggerating them) as a warning not to try to deceive him, in an attempt to establish his position as the first among equals. However, his current level of training in legilimency allows him to do little more than tell if anyone is holding something back, which of course most people will be, or if anyone is outright lying.

For his part, Draco is not entirely enthusiastic about Farren's plans and doesn't really want to get involved. Unfortunately, the Incarnadines have very little of use to hold over the Malfoys at this stage as most of their material on the family came out following the war and they have been absolved of it. As such, Zachary will take it upon himself to seek out Draco and seek in Draco's mind something that he could use against him. Unbeknownst to Zi however, Draco is trained in occlumency and so the Incarnadine's lacklustre legilimency will be thwarted, which will annoy him beyond measure, make him practice a lot more and could upset his claim to the top of the table in the council of heirs.

Lochlan - Lochlan is dating Isolde, Zachary's cousin of whom he is very protective. Zi knows very little of this man or his family, and they did not have the most auspicious first meeting. He would, therefore, want to use his legilimency to ensure that Lock's intentions regarding Isolde are honorable, and that he has no skeletons in his closet that could hurt his dear sweet cousin.  This will not go down well with Izzy once Zi lets slip what he has done so and would not exactly endear him to her boyfriend, should she tell him or were he to realise.

Zi looked nervously at Alain as the amnesiac made himself comfortable on his beanbag.  Normally when he practised the art of legilimensy, he drugged and restrained his victim to make them more compliant. However today he was actually using it in an attempt to help an old friend, so that didn't seem quite proper. Instead he had brought Alain to his snug and was trying to make him as at ease as possible.

"Now, this shouldn't actually hurt if you're opening your mind to me, but it may be a little unsettling. Just try to relax and let it happen - if you fight it, the harder it will be on both of us."  He was sitting on the floor next to his friend, leaning against the very beanbag that Alain was using as a seat.  Once the other man had stopped fidgeting he took his wand and placed it to the blonde man's temple. With his other hand, he gently cupped the back of Alain's head and supported it as he brought their foreheads together to rest on one another.  This close, his nose filled with Alain's aftershave and Zi had to stop himself from kissing the man who had apparently picked up some rather forceful homophobic tendencies during his time in Egypt.  This was not the time for that though, and the budding legilimens was already worried that the tender way he was treating the other man might be going too far.

Not wanting to put it off any longer, Zi took a deep breath to prepare himself, then closed his eyes and murmured the incantation: "legilimens". He gave it a couple of seconds while the rushing sensation abated, then opened his eyes again and looked around. He was back in Abu Simbel, looking at himself with Alain hanging upside down in front of him. It was a most unfortunate place to start, and he immediately felt something starting to push back at him - presumably Alain's subconscious as he was forced to relive the fear that had gripped him at the time. Zi concentrated and pressed on deeper, to any other memory just to get out of that one and alleviate his subject's discomfort.

Now he was in a large room. As the mental mist that swirled around him resolved into objects, he saw bookshelves emerge - many bookshelves, and a lot of teenagers in uniforms.  This was Beauxbatons's school library - it was an easy conclusion to draw. It was as good a place as any to try to get his bearings. Whatever this memory was, it did not seem hugely likely to be as violently distressing as that of Abu Simbel.  Zi concentrated, trying to zoom out from the library and see the structure of the mind he was in, to feel for any structure to the way that the frenchman's memories was organised, but it was unlike any mind he had ever felt before. 

With most people there was some kind of reasonably intuitive mental filing system - memories were grouped chronologially or by emotional resonance or by theme.  But here all that he could feel were hundreds if not thousands of little clusters. Whatever had caused Alain's condition and made him loose the previous 19 years of his life had not just thrown up a wall around those memories, it had shattered the whole structure of his memory into innumerable pieces.  This is what Zachary had to put together, and he was rather concerned that he was very much out of his depth.

Zi had found the best way to navigate a mind was by mapping the internal structure of memories onto a metaphor - a large house full of corridors where individual memories were behind doors, or a train station where each platform took one to a different area of memory and one just got off the train at the appropriate stop, for example - something through which he could explore and find what he was looking for. In Alain's head, this library structure seemed to be appropriate, he was a very intelligent and bookish person, and so Zi focussed on forcing his patient's memories into books and organising them onto shelves.  It took a lot of concentration but he succeeding in creating a blizzard of silvery strands of memory that rushed into books, and the books in turn flew around the room to emulate Alain's psychic filing system.

Unfortunately, this just resulted in a library strewn with small piles of books everywhere - on tables, on the floor, on return trolleys, falling off of shelves. It was just as disordered as he had worried.  There was no way he was going to be able to reorganise it from within. He would be lost in Alain's mind forever if he tried to piece it back together manually. Still, at least he now had a framework that he could move through, and the human mind was a remarkable thing. If the legilimens could track down some formative memories, which in this metaphor would presumably have ended up in the biggest or at least the most used books, then Alain's subconscious should be able to sort the rest of it out for itself.

Zi looked around the image of the library for a particularly well-worn book and soon found one that seemed to have had its binding replaced multiple times and was dog-eared. Flipping through it, it was covered in notes. He opened it fully and mentally dove in, to check it was going to be of some use.





[1] - Taken from the (approved) EFB.
[2] - It read very odd when I tried to write this from a meta-game perspective, so please take this as 'history changes' and backstory explaining how he learned it.
[3] - All the following plots have been discussed with and approved by the appropriate drivers.
[4] - Pending Cameron's app, obviously.
[5] - Approved in the magical item registry.

Name: Ty
Character name: Zachary Incarnadine
Feature you are applying for: Legilimency and Occlumency
Application:

The Incarnadine family works as information brokers on the edge (and often quite far past the edge) of the law. They are the go-to people if you need to discreetly purchase some intelligence. They have a network of contacts throughout western Europe in a variety of positions and can usually track down whatever it is one wants if it's available.  They can also exert pressure on individuals to part with certain items or information, be it an incriminating personal letter that one wants never to see the light of day, a signed first edition of Tales of Beedle the Bard or a dragon egg, the Incarnadines have means of persuasion which have been honed over the last two hundred years. The family engages in corporate espionage, 'private investigation' to a certain extent (i.e. if the mark is worthwhile investigating), cover-ups and 'research'. If it involves the flow (or stemming the flow) of information that the pureblood elite (or at least more influential half-bloods) might be interested in, the Incarnadines will want to have a hand in it.

The family does not just start to gather intelligence when commissioned by some third party. They make it their business to pry into the affairs of state and the black market as well as high profile families and figures so that they have information of value to hold over people if necessary. Over the course of their expanding enterprise the family has amassed a repository of information that means they can extort other influential individuals or families should the occasion arise, but they prefer not to stoop to such levels. However, having a hand in the flow of information and acting as mercantile information gatherers for secret services across a variety of nations means that their influence extends across western Europe through back channels into national ministries, the black market and people of interest.[1]

Zachary is the heir to this family and in the last two or three years has taken to the family trade with gusto.  Following a seven year apprenticeship to a potions master, he thinks (with his usual self-assured arrogance) he's learned just about all that is worth knowing about potions and so to keep himself occupied has been branching out into dabbling in the family trade.  He's been forging his own network of contacts with the aid of family friends, name-dropping and generally as the result of his own wiles but certain people remain closed off to him.

Repeated attempts at manipulating well placed people into sharing drinks with him into which he can drop a potion have been largely unsuccessful, and whilst he has all manner of recipes for concoctions that would have even the most strong willed individual begging for mercy, torture is only good for so much.  Coercion and psychological torment is much more Zachary's style than outright physical violence and so recently he has been going over his family records for other ways his forebears have obtained information in the past.

He found two themes throughout the records, besides potions and blackmail - the Imperius Curse and legilimensy.  Although having a person effectively as a slave to his every desire does hold a lot of appeal for Zi, and he would have no issue with using an unforgivable curse, the Imperius curse seems distasteful to him.  It is a sledgehammer where a fine engraving chisel would do, and lacks the elegance and finesse he demands of himself. As such he has been reading up on legilimency in whatever publications he can find (there is remarkably little on the subject) and is more and more drawn to the possibly of literally getting into someone's head, having always enjoyed just figuratively doing so.

Aside from being useful for business, manipulating people and messing with their heads is one of Zachary's favourite pastimes. He derives the ultimate joy out of playing god with people's lives and subtly encouraging them to act as he wishes them to, whether he is doing this for any particular purpose or just to see whether he could.  Zi would not be above using legilimency as light for entertainment or just to settle petty disagreements, and indeed relishes in the upper hand it will give him within his very small circle of friends.

Since deciding that he wanted to master this dark skill, Zachary has constantly been on the lookout for a legilimens that can teach him, as his few attempts made from what he could glean from writings on the subject were complete failures.^[2]  However, a few months ago, Zachary was in Germany on family business that happened to coincide with a person of interest to a local counterpart and they co-ordinated the abduction, detention and interrogation of their mark.  As it was the Incarnadine trade to extract information, he was given the first opportunity to question the detainee but despite the application of veritaserum, various potions to lower inhibitions and other less pleasant incentives, their unwilling informant was not forthcoming.

As his counterpart was observing the interrogation, he was becoming more and more frustrated, and eventually told Zachary to give him two minutes with the prisoner.  Grudgingly, Zachary did this, but he soon forgot his displeasure at being cast aside when he realised how the local man was obtaining the intell. Not a word was said whilst he was in the room, and Zachary watched in rapt attention as the face of the victim morphed from defiance to horror to shame. His tormentor then gave Zachary the information he had been after (his family had wanted the man in custody and could not have cared less about the contents of his mind), which was corroborated by other pieces Zi had already learned from other sources.

With their work business concluded, the unfortunate man was left drugged and incarcerated in a safehouse whilst Zachary and his colleague repaired to a local bar to unwind, and eventually the aspiring legilimens approached the subject in a circuitous and euphemistic manner.  Even without the powers, he could tell that his meaning had been understood, and the older man seemed amenable to the idea of taking on a pupil.  After he made Zi jump through a few hoops, all of which Zachary managed to perform satisfactorily, he agreed to tutor Zi in legilimency for an unnamed cost - or at least one so vague ('being in his debt') so as to give Zi pause. However his obsession with the idea of learning the skill overcame his caution at commiting himself to an unnamed price and he agreed.

Over the last few months, Zachary has been studying hard and practising at every opportunity he has had.  A supply of willing victims is somewhat difficult to find and so outside of his lessons with his mentor he is not above abducting and detailing muggles for a few hours while he practices on them, then obliviating them and returning them (assuming he has not damaged their psyche too much).  In this fashion he has attained a basic grasp of the magic that is at least vaguely useful to him, although he still has much work to do to achieve any level of proficiency.

At present, he is able to access and navigate a willing participant's (or a weak-minded muggle's) memories without too much risk to either party. However, as soon as someone with magical blood starts to resist, he is unable to get more than the briefest flashes of images, and by no means are these images necessarily related to what he is looking for.  In these circumstances, his is able to use the ability at least to tell whether someone is being deceitful or unforthcoming with him but he isn't able to discover what it is they are hiding (and in the circles he moves in, at almost every point in time, everyone is hiding something and lies through their teeth. Perhaps it will be more useful to discover when someone is actually being honest and open).  Even a beginner occlumens is able to thwart his attempts to read their mind and even his lie-detection is unreliable.

^[3]


Morrison - Zi's cousin, and is taking the legilimensy classes with him^[4].  Normally when Zi and Morrison practise legilimency on each other, they do so at Zi's place, having his pensieve^[5] in which they could deposit their more private thoughts. However Morrison at some point shall catch Zi unawares and be met with memories of his male sexual encounters, thereby outing Zi to him.   


Alain -  For want of a better word, Alain is Zi's boyfriend. But he has plenty of secrets from him, most notably that he is an elemental, a fact that he is not supposed to spread around according to council rules.  Recently he's spent three years without his memory in Egypt after a bungled attempt at retrieving some ancient runic magic. Zi came across an amnesia-ridden Alain whilst trying to obtain some Nubian artifacts, and discovered that he has no memory of his former life.

Zi's first attempt at restoring Alain's memory will be to give him a potion of remembering, since he is not confident enough in his legilimency skills to start tampering with the mind of one of the few people he actually cares about. However this will result in a torrent of memories being unleashed and overwhelming the poor young man's mind. As such, as a matter of necessity, Zi will have to suppress these memories once again with obliviation and enter Alain's mind and try to find some key memories that he can pull out and share with Alain in his pensieve in order to give him some sense of structure and context for the onrush of memories that undoing the obliviation will cause.

Whilst trying to select important memories from Alain's psyche, he is bound to come across memories pertaining to his elementalism.  Zi's curiosity and need to know everything about everyone is too strong for his feelings for Alain to overcome the urge to take one of these along with more normal memories and put it to one side for later viewing.  In this manner Zi will learn about the Elemental Council of Inverness and Alain's involvement with them, and after being unable to find any more information about them, will confront Alain with it.

Aside from causing a large amount of relationship troubles, once though eventually cool down this will result in Zi getting embroiled in Alain's descent towards darkness and his mission to learn forbidden elemental magics. It also opens the world of elementalism up to Zi who would be intrigued by these people, their culture, the international reach of their organisation and most particularly their power.

Pureblooded Heirs - Farren Abercrombie has taken it upon herself to restore the proper order to the world and fix the ailing class system in wizarding Britain.  Zi and Morrison have talked about this in the past, but have always had something better to do. However following this call to arms, Zi does not want to be on the outside looking in and so will be taking a leading role in their mission along with Ren.  They are corralling the influential pureblooded heirs along that have dark leanings, or at least those without light leanings, and attempting to form an oligarchical council to coordinate their efforts and reinvigorate their respective families' influences over the wizarding world. Current allies include the families Incarnadine, Thorne, Abercrombie, and Malfoy.

Such a room full of self-centered, egotistical megalomaniacs are bound to be backstabbing, devious and out for themselves. In such a situation Zi would most definitely feel it necessary to use his skills to make sure he has the upper hand as much as possible. He would consider proclaiming his skills (and indeed exaggerating them) as a warning not to try to deceive him, in an attempt to establish his position as the first among equals. However, his current level of training in legilimency allows him to do little more than tell if anyone is holding something back, which of course most people will be, or if anyone is outright lying.

For his part, Draco is not entirely enthusiastic about Farren's plans and doesn't really want to get involved. Unfortunately, the Incarnadines have very little of use to hold over the Malfoys at this stage as most of their material on the family came out following the war and they have been absolved of it. As such, Zachary will take it upon himself to seek out Draco and seek in Draco's mind something that he could use against him. Unbeknownst to Zi however, Draco is trained in occlumency and so the Incarnadine's lacklustre legilimency will be thwarted, which will annoy him beyond measure, make him practice a lot more and could upset his claim to the top of the table in the council of heirs.

Lochlan - Lochlan is dating Isolde, Zachary's cousin of whom he is very protective. Zi knows very little of this man or his family, and they did not have the most auspicious first meeting. He would, therefore, want to use his legilimency to ensure that Lock's intentions regarding Isolde are honorable, and that he has no skeletons in his closet that could hurt his dear sweet cousin.  This will not go down well with Izzy once Zi lets slip what he has done so and would not exactly endear him to her boyfriend, should she tell him or were he to realise.

Zi looked nervously at Alain as the amnesiac made himself comfortable on his beanbag.  Normally when he practised the art of legilimensy, he drugged and restrained his victim to make them more compliant. However today he was actually using it in an attempt to help an old friend, so that didn't seem quite proper. Instead he had brought Alain to his snug and was trying to make him as at ease as possible.

"Now, this shouldn't actually hurt if you're opening your mind to me, but it may be a little unsettling. Just try to relax and let it happen - if you fight it, the harder it will be on both of us."  He was sitting on the floor next to his friend, leaning against the very beanbag that Alain was using as a seat.  Once the other man had stopped fidgeting he took his wand and placed it to the blonde man's temple. With his other hand, he gently cupped the back of Alain's head and supported it as he brought their foreheads together to rest on one another.  This close, his nose filled with Alain's aftershave and Zi had to stop himself from kissing the man who had apparently picked up some rather forceful homophobic tendencies during his time in Egypt.  This was not the time for that though, and the budding legilimens was already worried that the tender way he was treating the other man might be going too far.

Not wanting to put it off any longer, Zi took a deep breath to prepare himself, then closed his eyes and murmured the incantation: "legilimens". He gave it a couple of seconds while the rushing sensation abated, then opened his eyes again and looked around. He was back in Abu Simbel, looking at himself with Alain hanging upside down in front of him. It was a most unfortunate place to start, and he immediately felt something starting to push back at him - presumably Alain's subconscious as he was forced to relive the fear that had gripped him at the time. Zi concentrated and pressed on deeper, to any other memory just to get out of that one and alleviate his subject's discomfort.

Now he was in a large room. As the mental mist that swirled around him resolved into objects, he saw bookshelves emerge - many bookshelves, and a lot of teenagers in uniforms.  This was Beauxbatons's school library - it was an easy conclusion to draw. It was as good a place as any to try to get his bearings. Whatever this memory was, it did not seem hugely likely to be as violently distressing as that of Abu Simbel.  Zi concentrated, trying to zoom out from the library and see the structure of the mind he was in, to feel for any structure to the way that the frenchman's memories was organised, but it was unlike any mind he had ever felt before. 

With most people there was some kind of reasonably intuitive mental filing system - memories were grouped chronologially or by emotional resonance or by theme.  But here all that he could feel were hundreds if not thousands of little clusters. Whatever had caused Alain's condition and made him loose the previous 19 years of his life had not just thrown up a wall around those memories, it had shattered the whole structure of his memory into innumerable pieces.  This is what Zachary had to put together, and he was rather concerned that he was very much out of his depth.

Zi had found the best way to navigate a mind was by mapping the internal structure of memories onto a metaphor - a large house full of corridors where individual memories were behind doors, or a train station where each platform took one to a different area of memory and one just got off the train at the appropriate stop, for example - something through which he could explore and find what he was looking for. In Alain's head, this library structure seemed to be appropriate, he was a very intelligent and bookish person, and so Zi focussed on forcing his patient's memories into books and organising them onto shelves.  It took a lot of concentration but he succeeding in creating a blizzard of silvery strands of memory that rushed into books, and the books in turn flew around the room to emulate Alain's psychic filing system.

Unfortunately, this just resulted in a library strewn with small piles of books everywhere - on tables, on the floor, on return trolleys, falling off of shelves. It was just as disordered as he had worried.  There was no way he was going to be able to reorganise it from within. He would be lost in Alain's mind forever if he tried to piece it back together manually. Still, at least he now had a framework that he could move through, and the human mind was a remarkable thing. If the legilimens could track down some formative memories, which in this metaphor would presumably have ended up in the biggest or at least the most used books, then Alain's subconscious should be able to sort the rest of it out for itself.

Zi looked around the image of the library for a particularly well-worn book and soon found one that seemed to have had its binding replaced multiple times and was dog-eared. Flipping through it, it was covered in notes. He opened it fully and mentally dove in, to check it was going to be of some use.





[1] - Taken from the (approved) EFB.
[2] - It read very odd when I tried to write this from a meta-game perspective, so please take this as 'history changes' and backstory explaining how he learned it.
[3] - All the following plots have been discussed with and approved by the appropriate drivers.
[4] - Pending Cameron's app, obviously.
[5] - Approved in the magical item registry.

Approved

Name: Nicole
Character name: Laura Palmer/Lucina Tamboia
Feature you are applying for: Lamia’s gaze {original SF}

Lucina (or Laura, her pseudonym) is normally a very shy and quiet girl. She’s the type of person who doesn’t want to cause trouble but manages to find trouble happening all around her. It perhaps doesn’t help that she’s a bit paranoid and always looking for signs that something isn’t going right. Her brain is always in overdrive trying to connect dots and put together patterns. And oh does she find them; she’s a smart and clever individual, and although not all of the dots connect all the time, she tends to see when they do. She’s not unattractive, and generally isn’t against using what she has to get what she wants. The issue is less that and more that she’s anxious around other people for the most part. Once she gets over her initial anxieties, though, she’s a passionate person. The one major thing that Lucina resents is her magic; in her mind, it’s the cause of all her troubles, starting from getting her kicked out of her own house. The only time she uses it is when she needs to calm down; after all, her job requires her to occasionally do things live and she needs to be able to calm down. As such, her magic and her abilities are a safety blanket for when she’s feeling anxious or nervous. For the most part, though, she’s behind the microphone and remains unseen, just the way she likes it.

Lucina Tamboia comes from a well off muggle family, one that has more than enough money to spare. They’re a family with a history, and although they don’t flaunt it, it’s also not exactly a secret. The thing is, they’ve never really known their family’s secrets, so the fact that Lucina is a witch ends up being an unpleasant surprise. She started showing signs of her magic young, but it didn’t manifest in the form of moving objects or creating sparks. No, her powers manifested with unintentional shows of her abilities, which led to tension between her and former friends. She didn’t understand what was happening, and was generally in the dark about why people were starting to act differently around her. She was kicked out of her home the same day she found out she was a witch, which didn’t endear her to school or anything about the lifestyle. In addition to that, she didn’t get any training with her secondary abilities until she was a few years into school, which meant that they were left unchecked. While she was already anxious around others, this only served to help her withdraw into her shell even more and brought out her paranoid tendencies.

The Lamia of ancient mythology were seductresses and temptresses, but were later turned into demons. Fitting, considering that’s what Laura thinks she is. While she doesn’t know where this ability of hers came from (be it some mark of her family or a very thinned out bloodline from a squib in her past), she does know what it does. Much like a veela or siren, lamia use their wiles to get others to do what they want and tend to be subtle about it. They do not overtly show their power, instead planting suggestions and phrases into the heads of those that hear. It’s not uncommon to find the target of a lamia claiming full responsibility for their actions despite the suggestion originally coming from someone else. These implanted suggestions can last for some time, although that varies based on how practiced the lamia is in that particular aspect. Unlike the veela or siren, however, the lamia does not need to use music to achieve their goals. In fact, many don’t because of its distractions. While those who aren’t versed in their abilities cannot make others do harm to themselves, true lamia and those who have been practicing for a long time (over thirty years) are able to with some difficulty. Humans are generally wired to protect themselves first and foremost, after all.

While a veela or siren will be beautiful, those who have this ability may or may not be. Lamia heritages do not necessarily bestow beauty to those who inherit these abilities; only the appearance of beauty to those that could and would be charmed. Lamia are always female, but their targets vary. Anyone who could feel attraction to a lamia can be affected by their powers. Those unaffected by the gaze see the person as they truly appear, not as an idealized or romanticized version of themselves. With training, this part of the lamia’s ability can be disconnected from the implementation of suggestions, leaving them with the appearance of beauty but not the hypnotic aspect. Those who are affected by the full extent of the powers not only see the projection of beauty from the user, but also start to feel an innate sense of trust and a compulsion to do as the woman says or wants (to a certain extent; see the above about harming themselves).

Those who have what is sometimes called the “lamia’s gaze” are usually in a blood line with lamia heritage. This could be as far back as the original Lamia from ancient Greece, or could be more recent. While men can’t have the powers that come with their bloodline, they can carry it and pass it along to their own children. Those who are purely carriers never exhibit magical abilities; the reverse is also true however. Females who exhibit the powers of their bloodline are always also witches. Because it’s an innate ability, the powers can manifest without them being called upon. In fact, this it is a common occurrence. In half or pureblood lines, witches may get help controlling their abilities. Muggleborns rarely find such help because of the subtlety of the magic. As such, it’s not until they go to school that they are able to start the process of controlling themselves. Beauxbatons has the highest percentage of lamia blooded individuals, followed by Durmstrang (although some regions call them children of the naga). Hogwarts rarely sees this particular bloodline because of where it originates from.

When they have proper training, those with lamia heritage can learn to suppress their abilities by their eleventh birthday. By their graduation from school, they’re able to disassociate their appearance alteration with the power of suggestion. It’s in their mid-thirties that they are able to start pushing their targets to more extreme measures. Muggleborns, however, have a different timeline that varies based on how quickly they find someone able to help them. Generally, it takes them an extra two years to learn to suppress their abilities, an extra five to disassociate, and an extra ten to grow in power.

While all lamia have these powers, not all who possess the lamia’s gaze are technically lamia, only have their blood running through them. True lamia have many abilities in addition to this, including being able to create full-fledged illusions, a far better grasp on their hypnosis and seduction, and the ability to seduce those who would not normally be affected. Although the powers do not get significantly weaker the more generations have passed between a lamia and the next person to inherit the power, they are a shadow of what a true lamia can do. Some might keep track of their family line and if they have a lamia in it; it’s not rare to find Greek witches to claim that they’ve got lamia blood somewhere in their family. Those who use the lamia’s gaze refer to themselves as lamia sometimes, but should not be confused with true lamia.

• Elaine Morgan {Soufflé Girl} – Soufflé Girl and I have talked about the idea that these two ran into each other and, without realizing it, Laura was using her powers. Elaine happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and once the women left, was intrigued by her abilities because they’re generally unknown in the Hogwarts area. As such, Laura gets a sort of stalker in the form of a curious Elaine.


• Aurora Zimmerman {Taylor} – Aurora and Laure went to school at about the same time. The two could have known each other during school and even been friends. With how well traveled Aurora is, it’s likely that the first actual information Laura gets about her abilities comes from her friend, or else she can elaborate on things that were never explained to her. This would be later in life, as at school they don’t know much about it and Aurora would also be unaware exactly what it is.


• Wonder Bee’s BB boy – Although there is a large age difference between the two (with Wonder Bee’s currently unnamed character entering school as Laura was graduating), Laura managed to influence the boy. She unknowingly had her charm on while he was around and young, and growing up he’s had a subtle obsession with her. We talked about this manifesting in different ways, such as all the women he dates looking vaguely like her among other things.


• Cian Lennox {Gage} – Unlike the others, where Laura did this on accident, the plot with Cian has Laura using her powers on purpose. The two met during a Daily Prophet interview for her radio show, and he took some pictures of her. She had the charm cranked up so that she could get through the interview without getting anxious, and he was there. The two hit it off, and although she’s not sure if his affection goes beyond her abilities, she finds him… pleasant, which is a change of pace.


• Kendrick and Jocasta Silverman {Helena & Ashton respectively} – It’s true that the two of them are inseparable. Laura was using her charm on someone else, but Kendrick happened to be in the line of fire (as is wont to happen). While he felt a pull at first, he was able to resist it in no small part due to his faithfulness to his wife. This alone would have Laura ecstatic and apologetic to the couple; she’s not a home wrecker and never wants to be. The fact that there is something that can lessen her hold on others is something she had no idea about and she’d love to explore it more.

Days waxed and waned, acted as their own capsules of time within the month, each month contained with a year, and so on until something happened that would stop the seemingly endless progression. And yet, despite knowing that each day could only hold twenty-four hours, it seemed as though some sped by. There were plenty of days that seemed to pass in the blink of an eye: her graduation, the day she first met Aurora. There were many more to list, and yet, today was not one of those days.

Not at all.

Lucina sighed and stared down into her drink, a Pimm's Cup. The bite of alcohol helped her quiet her internal monologue, the nervous voices bouncing around in her head. Most of them were hers, and even the ones that weren't spawned from her brain, that much was clear. Whenever she got this way, she had a habit of attracting people and she didn't want that. Not today. So instead, she'd drink a bit and enjoy some time alone, no one around to charm on accident. It was a plan, a good plan, and for once it was going to work.

It wasn't, but maybe if she kept telling herself it would, eventually things would change. The Pimm's was refreshing at least, the ginger not too strong, and she was analyzing her drink. That's exactly what she had in mind when she wanted peace and alone time, if only because it meant her mind wasn't preoccupied with other things. A small smile managed to push itself onto her face; this was exactly the kind of day she wanted.

"Another drink for ya." The voice of the bartender cut through her thoughts, and in an instant Lucina shot up. She hadn't ordered anything, and despite her own drink getting low, she hadn't even thought of refilling it yet. Her eyes darted around the bar, but there wasn't anyone else at the stools with her. That left... the booths. It couldn't be from the man server her; he'd never been affected before whenever she'd come in and used her abilities. Finally she took the drink, taking a tentative sip before nodding.

"... Thank you, James. How mu - " The bartender held up a hand before cutting her off.

"Lovely lady over there paid for it." He nodded off to a booth, and Lucina followed his gaze. The color drained from her face as she saw someone sitting there, although really what had she been expecting. The other woman didn't look at her, although it was clear that she knew Lucina had spotted her. From the corner of her eye, she could see James shrug. "You need me to handle it, Laura?"

There was a moment of disconnect as Lucina put her new name together with the need for a response. Laura Palmer. Not Lucina Tamboia here. She probably could have gone by her normal name, but for the show she did here, she'd decided to use a false name for entertainment's sake. Besides, it kept it separated from what she did with her personal life. When it finally did click, though, she shook her head. "I... I can handle it. Thanks." She downed her drink, gulping it down at least in prat to deal with her nerves. She was feeling more confident today than normal, and it was either because of her success with the radio show or... I am an idiot.

Of course she felt confident. It took her a second to recognize what was happening, but Lucina bit her lip as she did her best to calm herself down enough to be able to control her... Whatever the hell people called it. The fact that she had once again lost control wasn't helping her at all, though, and by the look she had just received from whoever it was at the booth, she had only managed to succeed in putting herself in the spotlight. Without a second thought, she fished some coins out of her bag and left them on the counter, taking a paper James slid her way before bolting out the door.

It wasn't until she was already back to her flat that she realized the paper had a name. Elaine Morgan... great.

Name: Nicole
Character name: Laura Palmer/Lucina Tamboia
Feature you are applying for: Lamia’s gaze {original SF}

Lucina (or Laura, her pseudonym) is normally a very shy and quiet girl. She’s the type of person who doesn’t want to cause trouble but manages to find trouble happening all around her. It perhaps doesn’t help that she’s a bit paranoid and always looking for signs that something isn’t going right. Her brain is always in overdrive trying to connect dots and put together patterns. And oh does she find them; she’s a smart and clever individual, and although not all of the dots connect all the time, she tends to see when they do. She’s not unattractive, and generally isn’t against using what she has to get what she wants. The issue is less that and more that she’s anxious around other people for the most part. Once she gets over her initial anxieties, though, she’s a passionate person. The one major thing that Lucina resents is her magic; in her mind, it’s the cause of all her troubles, starting from getting her kicked out of her own house. The only time she uses it is when she needs to calm down; after all, her job requires her to occasionally do things live and she needs to be able to calm down. As such, her magic and her abilities are a safety blanket for when she’s feeling anxious or nervous. For the most part, though, she’s behind the microphone and remains unseen, just the way she likes it.

Lucina Tamboia comes from a well off muggle family, one that has more than enough money to spare. They’re a family with a history, and although they don’t flaunt it, it’s also not exactly a secret. The thing is, they’ve never really known their family’s secrets, so the fact that Lucina is a witch ends up being an unpleasant surprise. She started showing signs of her magic young, but it didn’t manifest in the form of moving objects or creating sparks. No, her powers manifested with unintentional shows of her abilities, which led to tension between her and former friends. She didn’t understand what was happening, and was generally in the dark about why people were starting to act differently around her. She was kicked out of her home the same day she found out she was a witch, which didn’t endear her to school or anything about the lifestyle. In addition to that, she didn’t get any training with her secondary abilities until she was a few years into school, which meant that they were left unchecked. While she was already anxious around others, this only served to help her withdraw into her shell even more and brought out her paranoid tendencies.

The Lamia of ancient mythology were seductresses and temptresses, but were later turned into demons. Fitting, considering that’s what Laura thinks she is. While she doesn’t know where this ability of hers came from (be it some mark of her family or a very thinned out bloodline from a squib in her past), she does know what it does. Much like a veela or siren, lamia use their wiles to get others to do what they want and tend to be subtle about it. They do not overtly show their power, instead planting suggestions and phrases into the heads of those that hear. It’s not uncommon to find the target of a lamia claiming full responsibility for their actions despite the suggestion originally coming from someone else. These implanted suggestions can last for some time, although that varies based on how practiced the lamia is in that particular aspect. Unlike the veela or siren, however, the lamia does not need to use music to achieve their goals. In fact, many don’t because of its distractions. While those who aren’t versed in their abilities cannot make others do harm to themselves, true lamia and those who have been practicing for a long time (over thirty years) are able to with some difficulty. Humans are generally wired to protect themselves first and foremost, after all.

While a veela or siren will be beautiful, those who have this ability may or may not be. Lamia heritages do not necessarily bestow beauty to those who inherit these abilities; only the appearance of beauty to those that could and would be charmed. Lamia are always female, but their targets vary. Anyone who could feel attraction to a lamia can be affected by their powers. Those unaffected by the gaze see the person as they truly appear, not as an idealized or romanticized version of themselves. With training, this part of the lamia’s ability can be disconnected from the implementation of suggestions, leaving them with the appearance of beauty but not the hypnotic aspect. Those who are affected by the full extent of the powers not only see the projection of beauty from the user, but also start to feel an innate sense of trust and a compulsion to do as the woman says or wants (to a certain extent; see the above about harming themselves).

Those who have what is sometimes called the “lamia’s gaze” are usually in a blood line with lamia heritage. This could be as far back as the original Lamia from ancient Greece, or could be more recent. While men can’t have the powers that come with their bloodline, they can carry it and pass it along to their own children. Those who are purely carriers never exhibit magical abilities; the reverse is also true however. Females who exhibit the powers of their bloodline are always also witches. Because it’s an innate ability, the powers can manifest without them being called upon. In fact, this it is a common occurrence. In half or pureblood lines, witches may get help controlling their abilities. Muggleborns rarely find such help because of the subtlety of the magic. As such, it’s not until they go to school that they are able to start the process of controlling themselves. Beauxbatons has the highest percentage of lamia blooded individuals, followed by Durmstrang (although some regions call them children of the naga). Hogwarts rarely sees this particular bloodline because of where it originates from.

When they have proper training, those with lamia heritage can learn to suppress their abilities by their eleventh birthday. By their graduation from school, they’re able to disassociate their appearance alteration with the power of suggestion. It’s in their mid-thirties that they are able to start pushing their targets to more extreme measures. Muggleborns, however, have a different timeline that varies based on how quickly they find someone able to help them. Generally, it takes them an extra two years to learn to suppress their abilities, an extra five to disassociate, and an extra ten to grow in power.

While all lamia have these powers, not all who possess the lamia’s gaze are technically lamia, only have their blood running through them. True lamia have many abilities in addition to this, including being able to create full-fledged illusions, a far better grasp on their hypnosis and seduction, and the ability to seduce those who would not normally be affected. Although the powers do not get significantly weaker the more generations have passed between a lamia and the next person to inherit the power, they are a shadow of what a true lamia can do. Some might keep track of their family line and if they have a lamia in it; it’s not rare to find Greek witches to claim that they’ve got lamia blood somewhere in their family. Those who use the lamia’s gaze refer to themselves as lamia sometimes, but should not be confused with true lamia.

• Elaine Morgan {Soufflé Girl} – Soufflé Girl and I have talked about the idea that these two ran into each other and, without realizing it, Laura was using her powers. Elaine happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and once the women left, was intrigued by her abilities because they’re generally unknown in the Hogwarts area. As such, Laura gets a sort of stalker in the form of a curious Elaine.


• Aurora Zimmerman {Taylor} – Aurora and Laure went to school at about the same time. The two could have known each other during school and even been friends. With how well traveled Aurora is, it’s likely that the first actual information Laura gets about her abilities comes from her friend, or else she can elaborate on things that were never explained to her. This would be later in life, as at school they don’t know much about it and Aurora would also be unaware exactly what it is.


• Wonder Bee’s BB boy – Although there is a large age difference between the two (with Wonder Bee’s currently unnamed character entering school as Laura was graduating), Laura managed to influence the boy. She unknowingly had her charm on while he was around and young, and growing up he’s had a subtle obsession with her. We talked about this manifesting in different ways, such as all the women he dates looking vaguely like her among other things.


• Cian Lennox {Gage} – Unlike the others, where Laura did this on accident, the plot with Cian has Laura using her powers on purpose. The two met during a Daily Prophet interview for her radio show, and he took some pictures of her. She had the charm cranked up so that she could get through the interview without getting anxious, and he was there. The two hit it off, and although she’s not sure if his affection goes beyond her abilities, she finds him… pleasant, which is a change of pace.


• Kendrick and Jocasta Silverman {Helena & Ashton respectively} – It’s true that the two of them are inseparable. Laura was using her charm on someone else, but Kendrick happened to be in the line of fire (as is wont to happen). While he felt a pull at first, he was able to resist it in no small part due to his faithfulness to his wife. This alone would have Laura ecstatic and apologetic to the couple; she’s not a home wrecker and never wants to be. The fact that there is something that can lessen her hold on others is something she had no idea about and she’d love to explore it more.

Days waxed and waned, acted as their own capsules of time within the month, each month contained with a year, and so on until something happened that would stop the seemingly endless progression. And yet, despite knowing that each day could only hold twenty-four hours, it seemed as though some sped by. There were plenty of days that seemed to pass in the blink of an eye: her graduation, the day she first met Aurora. There were many more to list, and yet, today was not one of those days.

Not at all.

Lucina sighed and stared down into her drink, a Pimm's Cup. The bite of alcohol helped her quiet her internal monologue, the nervous voices bouncing around in her head. Most of them were hers, and even the ones that weren't spawned from her brain, that much was clear. Whenever she got this way, she had a habit of attracting people and she didn't want that. Not today. So instead, she'd drink a bit and enjoy some time alone, no one around to charm on accident. It was a plan, a good plan, and for once it was going to work.

It wasn't, but maybe if she kept telling herself it would, eventually things would change. The Pimm's was refreshing at least, the ginger not too strong, and she was analyzing her drink. That's exactly what she had in mind when she wanted peace and alone time, if only because it meant her mind wasn't preoccupied with other things. A small smile managed to push itself onto her face; this was exactly the kind of day she wanted.

"Another drink for ya." The voice of the bartender cut through her thoughts, and in an instant Lucina shot up. She hadn't ordered anything, and despite her own drink getting low, she hadn't even thought of refilling it yet. Her eyes darted around the bar, but there wasn't anyone else at the stools with her. That left... the booths. It couldn't be from the man server her; he'd never been affected before whenever she'd come in and used her abilities. Finally she took the drink, taking a tentative sip before nodding.

"... Thank you, James. How mu - " The bartender held up a hand before cutting her off.

"Lovely lady over there paid for it." He nodded off to a booth, and Lucina followed his gaze. The color drained from her face as she saw someone sitting there, although really what had she been expecting. The other woman didn't look at her, although it was clear that she knew Lucina had spotted her. From the corner of her eye, she could see James shrug. "You need me to handle it, Laura?"

There was a moment of disconnect as Lucina put her new name together with the need for a response. Laura Palmer. Not Lucina Tamboia here. She probably could have gone by her normal name, but for the show she did here, she'd decided to use a false name for entertainment's sake. Besides, it kept it separated from what she did with her personal life. When it finally did click, though, she shook her head. "I... I can handle it. Thanks." She downed her drink, gulping it down at least in prat to deal with her nerves. She was feeling more confident today than normal, and it was either because of her success with the radio show or... I am an idiot.

Of course she felt confident. It took her a second to recognize what was happening, but Lucina bit her lip as she did her best to calm herself down enough to be able to control her... Whatever the hell people called it. The fact that she had once again lost control wasn't helping her at all, though, and by the look she had just received from whoever it was at the booth, she had only managed to succeed in putting herself in the spotlight. Without a second thought, she fished some coins out of her bag and left them on the counter, taking a paper James slid her way before bolting out the door.

It wasn't until she was already back to her flat that she realized the paper had a name. Elaine Morgan... great.

[jen]~ approved

name: Jess
character name: Rajani Akhlys
feature you are applying for: 1/2 Keres
description of the character:
Raj is a socially awkward and humorless woman. She has a lot of difficulty processing humor. In particular sarcasm, which she takes fairly seriously. This is due to a lack of humor without the Keres' society where everything that said is taken at face value. This is also one of the reasons Raj appears very socially awkward. She often has trouble keeping up with the human conversations around her and tends to react inappropriately to what is being said. She is extremely stubborn and has a very difficult time experiencing any type of change. Raj often deals with an inner battle between the dark ruthless nature from her Keres heritage and the moral compassion of her human half. This leaves her with a need to kill and feed off other humans, but an inability to follow through due to her human morality. This basically means that when she tries to harm another human being her abilities become stunted and she is unable to follow through. This causes her great emotional discomfort. Not only does she feel like a failure as a Keres, but she also feels like a failure as a human. This conflict between her two opposing bloodlines often causes her to feel completely isolated. She likes to pretend that she's fearless and unstoppable, but is often thwarted by her clumsiness and tactless nature. Raj often finds herself falling face first into anything around her, especially when she becomes angry or overly excited.

Many of Raj's more negative attributes come from her life among the Keres and her subsequent rejection from her clan. Raj was one of the few Keres to be born of a human father. Unlike her half-siblings whose fathers were an array of different magical creatures, Raj's lineage made her an outsider. This is because a Keres' decision to mate with a magical creature is to due to the belief that some semblance of the creatures abilities will strengthen and improve the new child. For example in mating with a male centaur, the mother hopes her child will inherent their agility which will aid in her hunting. In Raj, however, the human blood of her father, caused many of the normal Keres attributes to be rejected or malformed. Although this can happen when Keres' mix with other magical creatures, it is more common when they mate with humans. This is why breeding with humans has become fairly uncommon. This included an inability to control the shifting between a humanoid appearance and a true Keres form (elongated spike like teeth, razor sharp talons and raven feathered wings). Raj's transformations were emotionally driven, which often makes hunting with her sisters nearly impossible. She was also never able to fully develop her wings, instead she experienced painful feather-like growths across her back that need to be pruned monthly. Given her shortcomings it wasn't long before her mother rejected her and abandoned her to be raised by her mortal grandparents. Blaming Raj's father for her deformed child, Raj's mothered devoured the man.

Although her grandparents tried their best, Raj has never been able to fully assimilate with other mortal witches and wizards. She holds a lot of resentment towards her mortal half and would do anything in her power to become a full Keres. From day one she has believed that if she were able to fully devour a victim she would be able to become a full-fledged Keres, no longer held back by her father's genetics. This ambition has made it very hard for her to make or keep many social acquaintances, particularly because she has a penchant for biting people when she becomes overly stimulated. This action of gnawing on people, only occurs when Raj interacts with those that are purely human. This includes witches and wizards with extraordinary learned abilities such as becoming an animagus. She seems to be able to better control herself when she is around other magical creatures, even if they have some human heritage.

Because of how difficult it is for her to make friends, the ones she does have she is extremely protective of. She would stop at nothing to keep them happy and safe, even if it means her own pain or demise. She attempts to associate herself with those who are no fully human so that she doesn't have to deal with her constant inner battle of whether to eat them or not. The few pure humans she does consider her close friends often cause an almost painful turmoil within her and she has had slips before during which she has bitten them. When she fears one of them is in danger, she often goes into nearly uncontrollable rages and destroys whatever is around her. When these rages are in full force she will often black out and wake up with everything around her torn to pieces and no recollection as to why she did it. As close as she is with her very small friend group, she does not understand or enjoy intimacy very much. Given her feather deformity she despises being naked and is too self-conscious to ever let a possible romantic partner touch her.

application:
So I've been on MH on and off again (with long on-periods and long off-periods) for the last seven years. Throughout this time I've had some amazing characters and plots come to life around me. I even got to play Draco for a period, which was amazing. The one experience I always wanted, but never really thought was possible, was to make my dream magical creature. I'd bounced ideas for years, especially when I was around MH all the time, but ended up chickening out. This idea, however, has been like a typhoon for my muse. Even before I was set on applying for her, I was already able to think of plots and ways to incorporate her into the MH universe. I honestly haven't been this excited by a character since the birth of Celeste and I would cherish the chance to make her a reality. I do realize that she would be considered an 'original' creature, due to her not really fitting with the already approved magical creatures such as Veelas and Sirens. Like Sirens, Keres appear in mythology particularly Greek. I think she's unique enough and the Keres is such an interesting creature, that having her around would do enhance role playing opportunities. So here goes!

      History
The Keres are the daughters of Nyx, and the sisters of the fates. Much like Valkyries, who are tied to the battlefield to take honored soldiers to Valhalla, the Keres swarm the battlefields to devour weak and dishonored soldiers. They follow death and although they can't force the fate of a man, they do have the ability to lead them towards their deaths. The Keres normally gain power from devouring the flesh and souls of fallen soldiers, and when soldiers are not available they hunt any weak human. The Keres are known to be attracted to any type of violent or cruel death, including that of disease, battle, murder and accidental death. They are not known to discriminate against muggles and wizards, deeming one group as human as the other, although there is some pride that goes into overtaking a witch or wizard, due to their extraordinary abilities. 

They attack swiftly, but have been known to begin devouring the flesh of their victims while they are still alive. If unable to kill, the Keres can also feed off of fear, hatefulness and brutality though it does not increase their powers. As mentioned before the Keres are solely female and therefore must breed with other magical creatures to produce more of their species.Though the Keres are solely female, in rare cases a father's DNA will overpower and either enhance the powers of the child or stunt them. When males are born to the Keres, they retain their paternal DNA and are given to their fathers as they are not considered useful to the Keres. If a female child is proven to be defective the mother will devour the father to ensure no other Keres can breed with what is deemed as diseased stock. The child is then given to her paternal family to be raised as they see fit.

There are several myths associated with the Keres. The two most poignant being that were the last of the creatures to fly out of Pandora's box, and that they were the death spirits associated with the great hero Odysseus. In looking at HP canon, they would be more known for their participation in Odysseus' journey. When he killed the Cyclops, the Keres would have been the ones to devour the Cyclops’s soul, given his defeat. The Keres also did battle against Odysseus several times and have always held a particular need to devour his soul.

   Appearance
When in humanoid form, which the Keres mainly keep during their mating seasons, they are depicted as beautiful women with long raven hair, violet eyes and nearly translucent skin, athough it is said that even in human form their hands and mouths are often stained with old blood from all the men they have devoured. When they are on the attack the Keres are shown in their true forms which are rather harpy-like. Their skin darkens to a blueish tint, their eyes glaze over red, their teeth elongate into needle-like shards, their hands morph into razor sharp talons, and raven-feathered wings pierce through their backs
   
   Alignment
They would be known as dark creatures, but they are fairly sedentary in their ways. The Keres only answer to Nyx, the Greek gods, or their own elders. They have been fairly dispersed throughout the different wizarding wars, however Raj's sect lives in the Kyllini mountain range of Corinthian. Her mother in particular is of the Akhlys lineage and also known as the 'mist of death'. This lineage of Keres is known to have an affinity for painful deaths related to accidents.  As the Keres are creatures of war and the battlefield, they were known to randomly appear in hordes during both wars with Voldemort. They would appear towards the end of a particularly bloody duel to collect their feasting prizes. They were not known to aid any particular side and feasted from both the bodies of Death Eaters and light wizards alike. In this regard they have often been compared to vultures, scavenging during the after math of something bloody.

Due to their viciousness and general danger to the public, the Greek Ministry of Magic has put several regulation on this particular species. Under punishment of death, the Keres are no longer permitted to devour the flesh of wizards and muggles. They may feed off the auras associated with injury and sickness, but cannot maim and eat people. Given their tendencies to swarm, the Ministry has also declared that the Keres are limited to breeding every ten years or so. If the Ministry believes the population has become a threat, they will often ‘remove’ or relocate groups of Keres throughout the Greek territories. If a group of Keres goes wild, the Ministry will often send Aurors to assess and either eliminate or rehabilitate the group.

   Mating Habits

Although Keres were known for eating soldiers they were  also known to mate with them as well. During their mating seasons, the Keres would seek out creatures and sometimes wizards that they deemed to be strong and brave warriors. Once the mating is done, the Keres do not see the males again unless a son is born or a defective daughter. If a son or defective daughter is born, they are returned to their paternal families. Before the laws were put into place, the mother Keres would often devour a father who was shown to produce sons or defective daughters, to ensure no other Keres would breed with them.

      General Magic
The Keres' powers tend to be specific to their clans. As Raj's mother was of the Akhlys 'mist of death' clan, their powers are associated with accidents. This means that these particular Keres' are able to sense when someone is about to succumb to an unfortunate accident and are often drawn to these people. There are several other clans known as Anaplekte, Nosos, Ker and Stygere. While each clan shares the basic Keres abilities, each also has their own unique sense specific abilities. The Anaplekte clan are associated with quick painful deaths. They are known to be drawn to those who will experience some type of execution and tend to hover around criminals in particular. The Nosos clan is known to sense the presence of disease. These Keres tend to feed on those slowly dying for sickness and are often drawn to towns where contagious diseases have begun to spread. Some lore states that the Nosos are the bringers of disease, but the Keres have stated this is false as they are unable to force death.

The Ker are a Keres clan that feed off of destruction. These Keres are drawn to wars and natural disasters, where they take the souls of the injured and maimed. They can sense when a disaster is impeding and will often watch from a safe distance as a town is ravaged by an earthquake, before swooping in to feast. Lastly, there is the Stygere clan. They Stygere clan hold the ability to sense when a hate fueled death is about to occur. They like their sister clans are drawn to war. These Keres in particular feed from victims of murder and abuse. They are able to sense when a persons fate ends in their murders. All clans may feed off of any type of dead or dying individual, but each gains strength from what their clans are associated with. An ability that all the Keres have is the ability to sense when death is near for someone. This is usually how they target their victims.

The Keres also have the ability to shapeshift between a humanoid form and their natural form. They are able to shift at will, but will often chose to stay in their natural forms when not around other creatures. A very significant attribute of the Keres, are their spectacular wings. These large and foreboding wings are covered in large raven like feathers and are sharp to the touch. Some Keres are known to have their feathers and claws tipped with a natural poison. Another staple of the Keres is their longevity and heartiness. Before they were regulated, Keres were able to feed fairly often and therefore were practically immortal. As they are now regulated and may only consume the aura of their victims, they still age slowly, but have a limited life-span of several hundred years.

     Rajs' Magic

Given that Raj isn't a full Keres she doesn't have the ability to pinpoint who will succumb to an accident, but she can still sense when and where an accident will occur. Some say that part of the reason she is so clumsy is due to her wizarding genetics interfering with her Keres ability. Meaning in a way she has become the personification of accidents. Raj also hasn't been able to fully developed the ability to all death. When she does her accuracy tends to be about 50/50, although her accuracy does tend to get better if the thing dying is a small animal.

Raj has retained the ability to transform back and forth for the most part, though she has some difficulty controlling it. When she was younger she would change back and forth when her emotions would vary. Usually her shifts would happen when she would feel threatened, angry, or overly excited. As an adult she has been able to suppress these shifts through the use of specified potions and practice in controlling her emotions. Unfortunately for Raj, her wings have never been able to fully develop and instead her back sprouts a painful cover of feathers each month. When they grow too painful she has to visit a healer of magical creatures to prune and remove them. If she feeds it is rare for Raj to become sick and the pain from her wings tends to listen. She also ages slower than your average wizard, but due to her mortal heritage and her difficulties in feeding her life-span is only slightly longer than any other witch or wizard.


      General Limitations

Although the Keres are fairly hardy and powerful, they do have several limitations. Before regulations a Keres only needed to devour one or two creatures a month to keep their strengthen. With the ministry limitations a Keres needs to feed at least twice a week on the aura of a weakened creature. If they do not feed they will grow weaker and weaker and will open themselves up to being attacked and killed by other creatures. Keres also feel incomplete when they are separated from their 'sisters'. As mentioned Keres hunt together and swarm their prey together. This is because they feed off of each others powers and hold a greater strength as a unit. When they are forced apart from their clans/sisters they will often grow weaker and refuse to properly feed themselves due to the loneliness they experience.

      Rajs Limitations
Raj has a number of limitations. Her biggest limitation is her difficulty in properly feeding. Raj is lucky if she can feed once a month and that leads her to often feeling weaker and being more prone to injury. The less she is able to feed, the harder it is for her to control her rages. To help control her rages and her shifting, she is forced to take monthly potions that help strengthen her control over the magic. Given her inability to properly feed, she is forced to consume regular food more often. Her body metabolizes food fairly quickly, so she is nearly always seen eating to keep from getting sick. If starved she will quickly begin to thin and wilt. Although she cannot die from starvation, but she can become nearly comatose and therefore left open for attack.

Due to being removed from her clan, Raj has never felt completely whole. She will always feel as if there is some part of her that is missing and will forever strive to find her missing piece. This is why she is determined to become a full Keres, in hopes that her sisters will accept her and she will no longer feel her loneliness. Unfortunately for Raj, her human half also forces her to crave being around other witches and wizards, almost as badly as her craving to be with 'her kind'.

future plots: Raj has several planned plots! If she is accepted and sorted, she will be living with Maia Etxegarai in a cabin in England. She will be looking for different odd jobs to help support herself and Maia, because she doesn’t want to feel like a burden to her best friend. I will be trying to get her as many different experiences as possible with different witches and wizards, because it’s going to be important for her to explore whether the Keres side of her will win or her humanity.

     Maia
Maia has basically been Raj's savior. After Raj left her grandmother’s home to move into the world and find herself, she quickly realized she wasn’t able to survive in the human world on her own. Maia was kind enough to take her in and help her adjust. In turn, Raj is very protective of Maia and would do anything to see her happy. Whenever a suitor upsets Maia, Raj acts much like an attack dog. She’ll lunge and make it clear that if they don’t stay away from her friend, they won’t survive another night. Maia will also help Raj begin to understand what intimacy is and help her explore the feeling she experiences for Kit. Oh and the two will wreak wondrous havoc together.

     Mila Mosquera (Toris WIP)
When Raj hit puberty her feathers began to grown in much faster and would often leave her in excruciating pain. Knowing that a regular mediwitch or wizard would be of no use, Raj’s grandmother took Raj to see Mila an expert in the healing of magical creatures. From this point Raj began to seek Mila's help monthly (either traveling to her or vice verse), to trim and prune her feathers. Mila was the first mortal outside of Raj’s family that Raj trusted. She was also the one to send Raj to Kit when she made the move to England.

     Kit Emberton
Kit is the specialist Raj visits in London to continue Mila's work. Kit brings out very odd and confusing feelings within Raj. On one hand being around him gives her an overwhelming feeling of safety. On the other hand she constantly has the urge to bite into him and eat him. She is wary around him, but continues to trust him due to her loyalty to Mila.

     Mateusz Dąbrowski
Due to Mat and Maia’s negative interactions, Raj is often on guard when around the quidditch player. From the first time he brushed Maia off, Raj deemed him as a threat to her happiness. Due to this whenever Mat and Raj come in contact, it is difficult for her to control her rages. Every time the two end up in contact she freaks out, blacks out and wakes up with the place entirely torn up, but Mat unharmed.

     Noemi Gambino
This talented potions master has been a godsend to Raj. Noemi brews her a monthly supply of potions that help suppress her transformations. To help pay for the expensive brews, Raj will often do odd jobs for Noemi, without questioning their legality. She knows that without the potions she would be unable to successfully blend into the wizarding and muggle worlds.

rp sample using the feature:
Pain and fire seared across her back and threw Raj from her slumber. She awoke covered in sweat, choking on air. It was that time again, the time of the month she dreaded most. She moved from the bed, feet dragging across the frosty wood floor. Each step felt as though a thousand daggers were slipping in and out of her spine. “Deep breath Rajna, it will be okay,” she whispered the words to herself, stifling a scream as not to wake Maia. A few more steps and she found herself in front of her full length mirror. Turning carefully, she lifted her sweat soaked t-shirt and peered at her back. Razor like feathers had once again began to pierce through random bits of her back. Each wet and oozing feathers was tipped with vicious poison and as they broke through her skin she felt agonizing pain.

It was three in the morning and she dreaded making the necessary journey to London. She knew Kit wouldn’t be up anyway and she dreaded dealing with his nursing staff. Another wave of pain smacked through her and she yelped. With the new surge of pain she began to shift into her Keres form and needle like teeth pierced through her lip. Raj grunted, “So not only am I in pain, but now I’m bleeding. This is just wonderful.” Given that Maia didn’t run into see if she was okay, it was clear to Raj that the siren was out on another of her adventure. It was better this way though, Maia wouldn’t have to watch her suffer.

Inhaling deeply, Raj moved her way into the bathroom and began sifting through her medicine cabinet. Her fingers curled around a small purple vile and she chugged the liquid down. Cool relief began to run through her veins and she slumped on top of the toilet. It was moments like this that she could just kiss Mila for supplying her with these pain relieving potions. The pain would come back in a few hours, but it gave her enough time to dress herself and apparate to the clinic.

She moved back into the room and quickly jotted down a letter to owl out to Kit, so that he would hopefully be there to greet her when she arrived. Fastening the note to her small barn owl Lyal, she lifted the window and released the bird on his way. With the pain gone, she was able to dress fairly quickly and within the next hour was ready to leave. Leaving a note on Maia’s bed, she fastened her jacket and apparated to the clinic. Realizing that no one had arrived yet, she slumped on the porch steps and closed her eyes. “Get here soon Kit, please.”

Name: Meridian
Character name: Amaranth Stringfellow
Feature you are applying for: Second Origin (Horcrux Vessel)

INTRODUCTION

For the past couple years I have been trying to figure out the endgame for Amaranth. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with her. I was happy for a while having her as a mercenary but I didn't think that suited someone with her past, her abilities, and her personality. She turned out much more empathetic and emotional and human than I thought she would be. It didn't make sense that she could just be a heartless mercenary forever if she’s already become so purposeless after less than five years. I eventually came up with the idea of her finding Herpo's lair and exploring dark magic and I thought it would be perfect for her. But as I developed this idea, I realized that I would need to apply for it, and thus was born this Second Origin app.

I wanted to portray Amaranth as an alternative Slytherin: ambitious without being outright evil, just morally ambiguous. She'll work really hard at her research and it’s such a perfect career for her. She'll be passionate and curious about her work, which will occasionally do good things in the world. Even when Amaranth was a much newer character, I wanted to make her a bit different from the Crabbes and Goyles of the world and give her some humanity and an ambition that isn’t inherently evil.

This transformation is going to change her magical abilities, her body, and her personality. Some of it is going to be because of the Horcrux, the rest will just be a result of her finally figuring out her purpose in the world and embracing the darkness inside her instead of letting it dictate her moral life.

PRE-TRANSFORMATION

The current Amaranth thinks she's found her place in the world, but in fact she is still very much lost. She was forced into mercenary work-- it was that or be killed. The more suspicious, older members of the Stringfellow family thought she was an omen of bad luck and arranged to have her taken care of, but the assassin they hired grew attached to her and promised to keep her away from the family in exchange for her life. The Stringfellows, being somewhat afraid of the assassin, agreed. Since then Amaranth has lived a lonely life, only occasionally visiting her parents, though she has been essentially disowned by the family.

After a while, Amaranth began to suffer under all of the loneliness that came with her lifestyle. She wasn’t necessarily opposed to killing but it gave her no joy, unlike some of the crazy people out there who love the thrill of murder, who are much better suited for the role of assassin. Her affinity for darkness allowed her to survive and thrive as a mercenary, and she was quite good at it, but it wasn’t something she had a passion for.

And all powerful dark magic comes at a price. Amaranth is the poster child for what it can do to the mind: warping it and constantly bringing one to the brink of complete madness. Amaranth has been very involved in the dark arts and has considerable skill in it, considering she very rarely uses any other kind of magic. Her warped soul has resulted in a mind that can survive under the pressure and emotional pain of constantly performing dark magic, accepting darkness rather than letting it consume her. She has a ravenous appetite for power and control, but to a slightly lesser extent, knowledge, which she will later find is actually the key to the power and control.

The pre-transformed Amaranth is young, unsociable, ruthlessly violent, and incredibly frustrated with her life. She refuses help from other because she trusts no one, a trait only amplified when her family tried to have her killed. But in her heart, Amaranth has a strong desire to be respected and wanted. Snakes are her closest friends, since she trusts no one, but she also yearns to be accepted by her own kind, something that, tragically, she will never have.

BACKGROUND

AMARANTH

Amaranth has always had a fascination with basilisks. Once she discovered that she was a Parselmouth, she became obsessed with them. At the age of four, with the coaxing of her less than well-meaning snake friends, she took to making one. For days she watched egg after egg crack under the weight of the obsess pond toad she had kidnapped from the garden, to no avail. It was after a week that her parents discovered what she was doing and forbad their daughter to ever do such a thing again. So little Amaranth tucked the fanciful idea into the back of her head but never forgot.

Fast forward sixteen years and Amaranth is a mercenary, traveling the world and doing dirty work for the rich and powerful, ending lives and filling her pockets with bloodstained galleons. She had become a powerful dark witch in just a few years after going through training from hell by one of the darkest, most vicious criminals the world had to offer. In the year since her debut, Amaranth gained access to a vast network of information, and one day something caught her attention. Because of her Parselmouth abilities and her mercenary connections her investigations were eventually fruitful. After combing through thousands of scrolls and hundreds of artifacts, Amaranth discovered some strange inconsistencies and clues that she was able to piece together into one glorious picture: Herpo the Foul had a hidden laboratory.

The Stringfellow family has many secrets, and the truth of them is a widely debated topic amongst the family members. One of the least credible of which is the one claiming the Stringfellows to be decedents of the original Slytherin family. Most members of the family consider this particular legend to be false, an attempt at elevated the fallen family’s social status. Except, during her research, Amaranth has come to suspect there may be some truth in it, mostly due to the fact that there have been many Parselmouths in the family's history, an ability only known to come from the Slytherin line. She suspects that the Slytherin’s hailed from Herpo the Foul, as did the Stringfellows, which is how she has the ability.

HERPO THE FOUL

Herpo the Foul lived and flourished in Ancient Greece, and was the earliest known dark wizard. The legacy he left behind is one of the most powerful and influential Dark Arts practitioners in history. Among his discoveries were: the invention of numerous vile and deadly curses too dark for even those times, the creation of the horcrux, and—perhaps most famously-- the breeding of the first basilisk. He was a progressive and intelligent man far ahead of his time, and his laboratory was the epicenter of all of his discoveries and research. Toward the end of his life, Herpo, who had become somewhat obsessed with immortality, made his one “perfect” horcrux.

He hid the horcrux where he knew only someone worthy would find it, and then layered it with various charms and curses in order to keep it safe. He wanted to live forever, considering himself far too important of a wizard to be constrained to just one life time. He had much, much more to do and once he was reawakened, he would gather enough power to make the world dance at his fingertips. So he went to sleep for what he did not realize would be over three millennia, with all of his knowledge and powers sealed away with him.

THE PLOT

Amaranth has devoted the last year and a half chasing the age-old rumor that Herpo's the Foul's basilisk is alive and hibernating somewhere deep underground in Greece. Her best lead came when she found a piece of a star-map with Herpo's crest on the bottom. Not long later she was caught breaking into a museum where the rest of the map was packed away in the basement, the curators unaware of its value. Under veritiserum and quite a lot of coercion, she confessed to the ministry that what they thought was an obsolete drawing of a constellation from Ancient Greece is actually a map of the labyrinth that houses Herpo's creature and possibly many of his other dark artifacts.

The ministry officials interrogating her realized that such an asset would be invaluable and that the ministry needed to find that lair before it fell into the wrong hands. So they completely took over her mission. They confiscated the map and intended to throw Amaranth in jail until she mentioned that if there was indeed a basilisk somewhere in that labyrinth, they'd probably want the only known surviving Parselmouth to be there as well. So in exchange for her freedom, Amaranth agreed worked under the ministry to locate and navigate the maze.

Once she deciphered the map and gained a working knowledge of the complicated system of tunnels that was Herpo’s lair, she and five ministry agents made their way to where she had deduced the entrance to the lair to be. The maze could only be entered by using a key to turn a stone dial hidden high up in the green hills of Ithaca. Once turned, the stone dial clicked into place to reveal a staircase that seemed to spiral down into the center of the earth. The groups walked for hours, descending lower and lower until Amaranth was sure they must have reached the underworld.

At the end of the eleventh long hour, a ghostly whisper reached her ears, telling her that only the worthiest of wizards could reach Herpo’s lair, and that her escrots were not worthy. She was able to ignore the voice until its words managed to convince her that they would walk until they died and never find their goal. So, taking advantage of the dank darkness of the caves, Amaranth mumbled a charm that cast a dark shadow over the group and was able to slip away. As someone who lived in only shadows, the spell made no difference to her and she followed the voice through the cave hours in a hypnotic trance.

After what felt like days, Amaranth finally reached the entrance to the lair. But once she entered the chamber, she was crushed to discover that Herpo the Foul’s basilisk was dead, and had been dead for more than a millennium. All that remained of the mighty beast was a massive desiccated corpse clinging to an ivory skeleton. She collapsed on her bleeding feet, feeling as if the world was crashing down around her and nothing mattered. This had been her chance to find a kindred spirit and to wield a power no other being had. She had tried so hard to believe, to have faith that the basilisk might be alive and hibernating, but her faith shattered as she knelt before the corpse and she wept for her future.

Through her tears, the voice called to her once more, and she rose to her feet, swaying gently as if the slightest breeze would have knocked her over. The voice whispered softly in Parseltongue, beckoning her closer. Even in her blindness, she could see something glimmering, pulsating with very old, ancient magic in the skull of the dead basilisk. She pushed her hand into the empty eye socket and her fingers brushed against something small and perfectly round, like a marble. It was humming with magic, something dark and dangerous and beckoning with promises she could not resist. And against all her better judgment, she ate it. Swallowed the whole thing.

It was as if lighting had struck her body. It was the most painful thing she’d ever felt, as if she was burning alive and there was a fire racing through her veins. She fell over and curled up in the fetal position, her burning body melting into the cool stone floor. Eventually the agony was too much and Amaranth passed out.

She woke up twelve days later, covered in dust and feeling very, very different.

MANIFESTATION

PHYSICALLY

Amaranth’s coma was much like a cocoon; as she slept her body begun to morph as a result of the horcrux being inside of her. Plate of scales begun to grow from her collar to the edges of her face, the backs of her hands and arms, the sides of her legs, and from her lower back to form sort of a V to her shoulder blades. The olive-colored scales are much like a snake’s: perpetually cool, and smooth to the touch. The small patch of scales that formed through her left eye gives her a sinister and dangerous expression. There were some smaller changes to her appearance as well, including the increased paleness of her skin, slight sharpening of her teeth, and an overall air of something otherworldly.

Aside from the scales, the other immediately noticeable change to her appearance is that Amaranth’s eyes are two different colors. Her right eye is the same bright blue color that she was born with, but her left eye is a pale gold. The blue eye is hers, but the golden eye belongs to Herpo the Foul. When she is channeling Herpo, she can see out of her gold eye with perfect vision. Her blue eye is completely blind.

Amaranth’s body is in a constant state of flux. Depending on how much dark magic she is using, she will become less and less human. The more dark magic she uses, the more the  scales cover her body, sometimes enveloping her completely if she pushes herself too far. Her hands become more and more like claws, similar to that of a dragon or a lizard, and she starts to look more and more like a monster. Once she stops using so much magic, the scales recede and she returns to her normal form, which is human, though with scales still. It is not uncommon for her to be working and as the minutes go on, the scales start to grow bigger and more pronounced and her hands to become more clawed.

MANNERISMS

Now that Amaranth has a snake soul living in her, she tends to talk to herself a lot. She often refers to Herpo as another person she shares a mind with, almost like she is his disciple. She has a tendency to speak in riddles and cryptic sayings. The thoughts make perfect sense to her, but when she says them out loud they sound like gibberish. This is a frustrating habit of hers when it comes to talking to others, but to her it really does seem like the most straightforward way to say things. To her, three-dimensional language cannot properly encompass Herpo’s fifth-dimensional thoughts. When she is channeling Herpo, her voice gets warped, like two voices talking over each other but saying the exact same thing, And even weirder, sometimes Amaranth’s tongue becomes forked as a result of her channeling too much magic, and it slips out to taste the air. She doesn’t even notice she does this.

PERSONALITY

Just because Amaranth is a dark presence does not mean that she is evil. Sure she has the capability to do a lot of damage, but she is a purist in her pursuit of knowledge. Courtesy of Herpo, she has gained a great deal of wisdom in a very short amount of time. With this wisdom comes the feeling that she is above the dichotomy of good and evil. She feels as if she is a neutral player in the game, allowed to help both sides as she sees fit.

Amaranth has matured substantially and is no longer as childish as she once was. While she will occasionally take part in whimsical pursuit or act a bit silly, it is very rare. She is much more wise and worldy now. She also acts with much more formality. As a person with very few friends or family left in the world, she has few chances to act causally or familiarity with anyone. Most of the people she meets with, she interacts with at a business capacity. She speaks very formally, though maintains much of her sarcastic wit. It's much more dry and cutting than it used to be, which suits her very well. When she is being sarcastic, she has a way of making some people feel very stupid, as if the answer is obvious. Sometimes she forgets that she has a slight advantage with the second mind in her body.

Though Amaranth is not a bad person by nature, she is most dangerous because she is ruthless and dangerously pragmatic. She does not side with good or bad, rather conforming to her own agenda. If she has decided what the right path is, she will take it regardless of who it helps or hurts. She is a consummate planner, acting much like a chess master who manipulates their pieces with only the endgame in mind. She tends to stay out of most "worldly" conflicts, seeing everything with a cool detached eye. Her actions are confident and decisive. She is no longer tied down by insecurity or hesitation. She makes her choices purposefully, believing her way to always be the correct way, even if it seems like it may not be. She’s become much more noble, haughty, and confident in all of her actions.

POWERS

Herpo’s horcrux served as a capsule for his soul. He created it with the intention of using it to find a vessel and come back to life centuries after he passed so that he could continue his work. But the horcrux, being one of the first ones ever made, was imperfect. When Amaranth ate it (which was not what he had expected her to do) instead of becoming possessed by that fragment of Herpo’s soul, it basically fused his consciousness into her brain, bringing with it of his memories and magical knowledge. Amaranth became a sentient vessel to Herpo’s soul.

The state of Amaranth's mind could be compared to amnesiac, but for memories that aren’t actually hers. The more immersed she becomes in Herpo’s research, the more the memories come back to her. Certain thoughts will trigger Herpo’s memories and following in his scientific footsteps will allow her to make sense of Herpo’s knowledge. As a result, she is able to pick up where his research left off with only a few delays before continuing his research.

THE ARCHIVE

Horcrux vessel manifests in many different way, the most prominent of which is Amaranth’s access to darker and more powerful magic than she ever had before, which she refers to as The Archive. Amaranth has in her possession the vast knowledge of everything that Herpo knew. She is a sentient vessel for his mind and all of the discoveries he made in his time are sealed away there. Though she knows of a lot of powerful magic, she can't currently perform the spells until she's advanced enough. Sometime she will gets snippets of information that make no sense and she has to decipher it in order to understand it. Her life is like a million small epiphanies, like suddenly remembering things she didn't even know she ever knew and putting it all together. Herpo doesn’t explicitly talk to her with words. They communicate through feelings and whispers and instinct. She doesn’t technically speak to him, she just moves as her instincts tell her to.

HIVE MIND

Millennia ago, Herpo pushed his consciousness out through the minds of one hundreds snakes all over the world, and in this way he has been able to gather information about the world as time passed, even though he was asleep. The descendants of those hundred snakes still serve him. While he was asleep, he was able to see through the eyes of his servants and the millennia that he lost to him were not necessarily empty. Herpo retains much of this knowledge, and thus, sometimes Amaranth is able to access it. Amaranth also has the capability of entering the minds of Herpo’s snakes and seeing what they see, given she has the magic power and her mind is letting her do it. She refers to being connected to so many snakes the Hive Mind.

SECOND SOUL POSSESSION

Because Amaranth is a Horcrux Vessel, sometimes the second soul takes over and she becomes possessed. She is completely awake while this is happening and can remember everything, but has very little control over what her body is doing. During this trance and while just channeling she is able to see out of her golden eye, and this is the only time she is able to see at all. When she is being possessed she has a lot of Herpo’s technical skills (potion making, reading and speaking ancient greek, etc.). There is a limit to the amount of stuff that she is able to do, but since Herpo’s soul is basically taking over her body, she gains almost 100% of his skillset. This is not a complete possession by Herpo himself (as that would be disastrous), but more of his soul resonating with hers and allowing her to do things she thought impossible. When she is channeling him, she refers to Herpo as “I”, speaking as if she was him.

LIMITATIONS

All of this great power comes at a serious cost. Amaranth can't access the majority of the Herpo's knowledge at the moment. It will slowly reveal itself to her, but it will take a lot of hard work. She only has access to a very, very small percent of Herpo's vast collection of knowledge. It is like being in a library: all of the information is there but she has to sort through it all to make sense of it.

Amaranth is essentially living for two. Her body is not built to support two souls and she tires very, very easily. Working eats all of her energy and she tends to pass out frequently from exhaustion. She is often in physical pain, which is her body buckling from the sheer strain of containing two souls in one body. As a result, Amaranth does not do anything quickly. She moves slowly and deliberately. She would not be able to protect herself in a fist fight because her body is extremely fragile. For this reason she avoids physical contact with all others. Amaranth is easily overwhelmed, and when this happens she either passes out or the second soul takes over.

She also has lost the ability to do most other types of magic, only able to do simple instinctive things like move objects. Just because she possesses the knowledge to perform all of Herpo's magic, doesn’t mean she can instinctively perform it. Her body's ability to do stronger magic is still very low, and much of the magic Herpo did was far too advanced for her relatively weaker body.

If Amaranth tries to do magic beyond her ken, she runs the risk of either being swallowed up by the second soul or being ripped apart from the inside out. Magic that is simply too strong will destroy her body and tear her soul apart. Alternatively, she is constantly in danger of losing her humanity and becoming a scaley, mindless beast if she lets the dark magic consume her, and when that happens, she knows that Herpo's is waiting for her to lose control of herself so that he can take over. Even though Amaranth is using his mind, she knows that to let him loose into the modern world would result in disaster. If Amaranth doesn't keep herself in perfect delicate balance all the time, she runs the risk of going mad. Insanity doesn't sound very palatable to her. She understands that ancient dark magic is unpredictable and very unforgiving, which deserves the respect of all those who do not want to be devoured by it.

As a result of her pursuit of knowledge, Amaranth has become very obsessive, occasionally dipping into the Mad Scientist territory. Nothing is more important than unraveling the mysteries of magic. She will work herself sick and keep going due to her demonic drive to learn more. It is as if the magic possesses her and she becomes a slave to Herpo's research.

POST-TRANSFORMATION

Once Amaranth transforms, her life’s mission becomes to continue Herpo the Foul’s work. She becomes a dark magic researcher and dedicates her life to unraveling the mysteries of magic, particularly the dark kind. Using both Herpo’s knowledge and her own considerable dark magic experience, she is able to make great strides in the various theories and discoveries of the dark magic universe. Her goal is to prove that dark magic is very powerful and very deadly, but also that it is one of the purest forms of magic. Dark magic intertwines itself with the soul, making it one with the user’s existence, coming from their deepest desires. She focuses on the science of magic, and what it is in its raw form. She is a neutral presence, believing in following the course of nature. She has inherited much of Herpo’s wisdom, but differs from him in the way she wants to use it. Herpo was obsessed with immortality, which is why he made the horcrux, and he wanted to rule the world. Amaranth’s desire is less megalomaniacal (though she certainly does have her moments). Her goal is to gain and spread knowledge of all kinds and make the world a wiser place.

Amaranth’s story quickly spreads among those with the right connections, known as the vessel for an ancient and powerful sorcerer, who is also now a very dangerous sorceress in her own right. Very few people know her true name, and even fewer refer to her by it. She has many titles and names, but is most commonly referred to as Medusa or The Oracle. As a depository of dark and ancient magical information, as well having a network of snake spies that stretches back for multiple millennia, she is the ultimate library. She can help people who come to her for information they thought lost or magic though to be impossible. She sees it as a challenge. Nothing gives her more satisfaction that solving a mystery and learning new magic.

She remains underground in Herpo’s lair, having made the network of tunnels and caverns her home. She rarely leaves the Underworld (what she calls her underground lair), but does get quite a few visitors. Ministry officials, criminals, people searching for answers—many people come to in hopes of accessing her knowledge. And she’s usually fine with this. Her goal is to share information, as opposed to hiding it. To take advantage of her hospitality is unwise though, as is trying to deceive her. She is a very powerful sorceress, one who people would be foolish to trifle with. Her belief in their fear is what allows her to give away the information so freely. Of course, finding the Underworld is not easy, nor is securing an audience with her.

In a way, Amaranth is a ministry asset. In return for her freedom, she consults with them on various dark magical matters and comminucates most of her findings to a small group of ministry officials. They do not interfere with her work or try to control her, and she continues to cooperate with them. She knows at this point, that she is more than capable of taking her own freedom back, but finds that unnecessary. She is content to be a ministry consultant, and has no desire to outright betray them as long as they do the same. Amaranth does follow her own moral code though, and will not hesitate to do something if she feels it is right, even if it goes up against the ministry’s agenda.

Now that she has a certain reputation, Herpo’s soul wants her to mimic antiquity, harkening back to the glory of Ancient Greece. He firmly believes it is better for her to maintain the dramatic, mysterious aura of the proper dark sorceresses of the era. As such, the lair and Amaranth herself are decorated in the ancient style. Her fashion choices are very ancient and ornamental when she is forced to make an appearance in the above world, and it is often risque and dramatic. Even when she is just researching in the lair, she wears flowing white robes and looks the picture of an ancient oracle. Her clothes and hair are almost gravity defying, seeming to always be billowing around her, to varying degrees of strength. This gives the illusion of snakes in her hair. Now, Amaranth definitely looks the part.

FUTURE PLOTS

1. As a condition her being allowed to do her research in peace, Amaranth, sometimes gives reports on her discoveries and lets herself be summoned for consultations to various ministry departments, one of which is Ingrid Trickett’s division. The two interact on a regular basis, though neither are thrilled about it.

2. She is like an ambassador of dark magic and will have to drag her antisocial ass out of the lair to make appearances and what not, sort of like random royalty being forced to show up at events.

3. Special people will be granted invitations to the lair (dark wizards and witches with friends in high places) if they want to talk to her or have access to any of the artifacts/ research materials in the lair. One of these is Rosaline Bane, who is invited to the liar for a short apprenticeship, due to Amaranth’s belief in her potential.

4. As Amaranth is not an expert at everything, there are many areas of dark science that she is unfamiliar with, even though Herpo knows a lot about them. As this is a barrier keeping her from accessing is making sense of much of Herpo's magic, she will be forced to call on experts in their fields to help her. Amaranth has always naturally been terrible at potions, so she calls upon an old friend, Zachary Incarnadine, for help her in many of these cases.

5. Herpo the Foul was around a very long time ago, alive for the rise of Ancient Greece. As a man of the snakes, he was once acquainted with the original Lamia. Lucina Tamboria/ Laura Palmer is a descended from the original Lamia, and when she has questions about her heritage, she comes to Amaranth for information.

6. This SF overall has a lot of potential for a lot of great plots. Now that the world is post-Voldemort, we will soon need a new Big Bad. Even if it isn’t Amaranth, I think there are a lot of directions we could go with this. I’m excited.

ROLE PLAY RESPONSE

Crusty, dusty eyes fluttered open as Amaranth woke from the dead. Her head was pounding painfully and her limbs ached as she tried to recall where she was. Why did she feel so… empty. When she thinks, there’s supposed to be something there, right? Everything felt hazy, like her memory was shrouded in a dense fog. Her body was somehow both numb and freezing. Amaranth looked around and found herself face to face with the giant white skull of some kind of monster. She shouted and then skittered backwards. Where was she? She had no memory of anything: how she got here, who she was, nothing.

Her skin was covered in dust and the sleeves of her long black coat were moth-eaten, like she had been here for a long time. She patted the dust from her coat, releasing large clouds of white into the air and she coughed, her throat feeling like it was full of chalk. And gods, her body was so sore from laying on the floor. She rolled her shoulders and massaged her neck, pausing when she felt something hard and scarred on the back of it. She traced the spiral shape burned into her flesh with her fingers, knowing there was something important about it but she just couldn’t… remember. Amaranth looked around the dark cave, taking in the curve of the black stone walls and the maw-like tunnel just to her right. Long pointed stalactites hung precariously overhead and sitting directly under the made her very nervous.
   
She had… been here before? Something about the cavern was intimately familiar, as if she this was her home. Amaranth got to her feet, dusting herself off and walking forwards. This tunnel… this was the right tunnel. Somewhere in her head was a memory of this tunnel, though there was a light at the other end. The image flickered in front of her as she walked down the tunnel. At the end was an expansive cave, too dark and large to see the end of. Another image flickered into her sight: the cave lit with flames, rows of tables and endless shelves of scrolls stretching out as far as the eye could see. In a second, the image disappeared and she was back in the dark.

Amaranth glanced at a bronze shield hanging on the wall and the shimmering image reflected back at her nearly made her jump out of her skin. Something about it was insanely familiar, though the rest made her stomach knot painfully. One bright blue eye and one glowing gold eye stared back at her, but that wasn’t what scared her. There was a patch of dark olive scales growing up her porcelain neck and through her left eye. When she blinked, she could feel the scales scraping against her eyelashes. But when she touched them, they were smoother and colder than she had expected them to be, more like a snake than a fish.

But the scales were on the backs of her hands too. She yanked at the collar of her coat and frantically unbuttoned it. How far did they go? She shed her coat entirely, then her shirt and pants and shoes until she was standing in her underwear, staring at a pale body covered in large patches of olive-green scales. They were fused with her flesh, as if she had grown them from her own skin. Am I a monster? What is happening?!

The more she stared at her reflection, the more her head hurt, as if something was trying to claw its way out through her left eye socket. What was happening to her? Something about this face staring back at her felt strange, like an old friend she hadn’t seen in years. She let out a little yelp when she suddenly realized she was supposed to be blind. She’d been blind for over five years. Then it all came back to her: Hogwarts, Kranovich, being a mercenary, the ministry, the basilisk, the…

“Oh Merlin,” she muttered painfully, closing her eyes. She’d eaten the basilisk eye.

As if on cue, she let out a blood curling scream and dropped to her knees, clutching her head as if someone had struck her. Images and memories swirled around her mind like a hurricane of thoughts, going too fast for her to see and making her feel so dizzy she thought she was going to puke. There were too many colors and sounds and sensations to handle and it was agonizing. Her brain was liquefying into molten metal and going to burst out the front of her head, the pressure behind her right eye building as she clasped a hand over it. What was happening to her?! Was she dying? Amaranth gasped for air, choking on her own tongue and then vomiting dark blood onto the stone floor with a sickening splat. These memories weren’t hers, but they were rushing into her in a tidal wave of excruciating sensation and she just wanted it to stop before her head split in two. Merlin, make it stop! She couldn’t take it much longer. She was going to explode--

And it stopped. Suddenly everything stopped and she was very, very still. After a deathly silent few seconds, Amaranth raised her head and looked around the lair, carefully drawing to her feet and wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. There was an cold tingling sensation as the scales grew until they covered the entirety of her forearms and across her cheeks. She threw her hands out and suddenly the line torches in the room flared to light, illuminating the huge room in a corridor of blazing blue flames. She could feel magic surging through her veins, ancient and dangerously powerful. She frowned. The magic was trapped beneath the skin. Inaccessible.

“Well. This was not supposed to happen,” she said dryly, examining her scaley skin. Her voice was strange and warped, like two voices speaking unison. She then looked down at her body, as if for the first time, and raised an eyebrow as she took in her petite figure. “Not the body I would have chosen, but I suppose it is a nice change of pace.” Amaranth waved her hand, summoning a white robe from somewhere else in the lair, then wrapped it around herself. But it was far too big, draping off her shoulders so she had to hold it closed in the front. She glanced around the lair, at the tall white marble columns holding up the glassy black stone ceilings, bright azure flames dancing along the walls. A wicked smile curled along her scaled lips and a forked tongue darted out experimentally.

“Well now. Let's see what this world has to offer, shall we?”

name: Jess
character name: Rajani Akhlys
feature you are applying for: 1/2 Keres
description of the character:
Raj is a socially awkward and humorless woman. She has a lot of difficulty processing humor. In particular sarcasm, which she takes fairly seriously. This is due to a lack of humor without the Keres' society where everything that said is taken at face value. This is also one of the reasons Raj appears very socially awkward. She often has trouble keeping up with the human conversations around her and tends to react inappropriately to what is being said. She is extremely stubborn and has a very difficult time experiencing any type of change. Raj often deals with an inner battle between the dark ruthless nature from her Keres heritage and the moral compassion of her human half. This leaves her with a need to kill and feed off other humans, but an inability to follow through due to her human morality. This basically means that when she tries to harm another human being her abilities become stunted and she is unable to follow through. This causes her great emotional discomfort. Not only does she feel like a failure as a Keres, but she also feels like a failure as a human. This conflict between her two opposing bloodlines often causes her to feel completely isolated. She likes to pretend that she's fearless and unstoppable, but is often thwarted by her clumsiness and tactless nature. Raj often finds herself falling face first into anything around her, especially when she becomes angry or overly excited.

Many of Raj's more negative attributes come from her life among the Keres and her subsequent rejection from her clan. Raj was one of the few Keres to be born of a human father. Unlike her half-siblings whose fathers were an array of different magical creatures, Raj's lineage made her an outsider. This is because a Keres' decision to mate with a magical creature is to due to the belief that some semblance of the creatures abilities will strengthen and improve the new child. For example in mating with a male centaur, the mother hopes her child will inherent their agility which will aid in her hunting. In Raj, however, the human blood of her father, caused many of the normal Keres attributes to be rejected or malformed. Although this can happen when Keres' mix with other magical creatures, it is more common when they mate with humans. This is why breeding with humans has become fairly uncommon. This included an inability to control the shifting between a humanoid appearance and a true Keres form (elongated spike like teeth, razor sharp talons and raven feathered wings). Raj's transformations were emotionally driven, which often makes hunting with her sisters nearly impossible. She was also never able to fully develop her wings, instead she experienced painful feather-like growths across her back that need to be pruned monthly. Given her shortcomings it wasn't long before her mother rejected her and abandoned her to be raised by her mortal grandparents. Blaming Raj's father for her deformed child, Raj's mothered devoured the man.

Although her grandparents tried their best, Raj has never been able to fully assimilate with other mortal witches and wizards. She holds a lot of resentment towards her mortal half and would do anything in her power to become a full Keres. From day one she has believed that if she were able to fully devour a victim she would be able to become a full-fledged Keres, no longer held back by her father's genetics. This ambition has made it very hard for her to make or keep many social acquaintances, particularly because she has a penchant for biting people when she becomes overly stimulated. This action of gnawing on people, only occurs when Raj interacts with those that are purely human. This includes witches and wizards with extraordinary learned abilities such as becoming an animagus. She seems to be able to better control herself when she is around other magical creatures, even if they have some human heritage.

Because of how difficult it is for her to make friends, the ones she does have she is extremely protective of. She would stop at nothing to keep them happy and safe, even if it means her own pain or demise. She attempts to associate herself with those who are no fully human so that she doesn't have to deal with her constant inner battle of whether to eat them or not. The few pure humans she does consider her close friends often cause an almost painful turmoil within her and she has had slips before during which she has bitten them. When she fears one of them is in danger, she often goes into nearly uncontrollable rages and destroys whatever is around her. When these rages are in full force she will often black out and wake up with everything around her torn to pieces and no recollection as to why she did it. As close as she is with her very small friend group, she does not understand or enjoy intimacy very much. Given her feather deformity she despises being naked and is too self-conscious to ever let a possible romantic partner touch her.

application:
So I've been on MH on and off again (with long on-periods and long off-periods) for the last seven years. Throughout this time I've had some amazing characters and plots come to life around me. I even got to play Draco for a period, which was amazing. The one experience I always wanted, but never really thought was possible, was to make my dream magical creature. I'd bounced ideas for years, especially when I was around MH all the time, but ended up chickening out. This idea, however, has been like a typhoon for my muse. Even before I was set on applying for her, I was already able to think of plots and ways to incorporate her into the MH universe. I honestly haven't been this excited by a character since the birth of Celeste and I would cherish the chance to make her a reality. I do realize that she would be considered an 'original' creature, due to her not really fitting with the already approved magical creatures such as Veelas and Sirens. Like Sirens, Keres appear in mythology particularly Greek. I think she's unique enough and the Keres is such an interesting creature, that having her around would do enhance role playing opportunities. So here goes!

      History
The Keres are the daughters of Nyx, and the sisters of the fates. Much like Valkyries, who are tied to the battlefield to take honored soldiers to Valhalla, the Keres swarm the battlefields to devour weak and dishonored soldiers. They follow death and although they can't force the fate of a man, they do have the ability to lead them towards their deaths. The Keres normally gain power from devouring the flesh and souls of fallen soldiers, and when soldiers are not available they hunt any weak human. The Keres are known to be attracted to any type of violent or cruel death, including that of disease, battle, murder and accidental death. They are not known to discriminate against muggles and wizards, deeming one group as human as the other, although there is some pride that goes into overtaking a witch or wizard, due to their extraordinary abilities. 

They attack swiftly, but have been known to begin devouring the flesh of their victims while they are still alive. If unable to kill, the Keres can also feed off of fear, hatefulness and brutality though it does not increase their powers. As mentioned before the Keres are solely female and therefore must breed with other magical creatures to produce more of their species.Though the Keres are solely female, in rare cases a father's DNA will overpower and either enhance the powers of the child or stunt them. When males are born to the Keres, they retain their paternal DNA and are given to their fathers as they are not considered useful to the Keres. If a female child is proven to be defective the mother will devour the father to ensure no other Keres can breed with what is deemed as diseased stock. The child is then given to her paternal family to be raised as they see fit.

There are several myths associated with the Keres. The two most poignant being that were the last of the creatures to fly out of Pandora's box, and that they were the death spirits associated with the great hero Odysseus. In looking at HP canon, they would be more known for their participation in Odysseus' journey. When he killed the Cyclops, the Keres would have been the ones to devour the Cyclops’s soul, given his defeat. The Keres also did battle against Odysseus several times and have always held a particular need to devour his soul.

   Appearance
When in humanoid form, which the Keres mainly keep during their mating seasons, they are depicted as beautiful women with long raven hair, violet eyes and nearly translucent skin, athough it is said that even in human form their hands and mouths are often stained with old blood from all the men they have devoured. When they are on the attack the Keres are shown in their true forms which are rather harpy-like. Their skin darkens to a blueish tint, their eyes glaze over red, their teeth elongate into needle-like shards, their hands morph into razor sharp talons, and raven-feathered wings pierce through their backs
   
   Alignment
They would be known as dark creatures, but they are fairly sedentary in their ways. The Keres only answer to Nyx, the Greek gods, or their own elders. They have been fairly dispersed throughout the different wizarding wars, however Raj's sect lives in the Kyllini mountain range of Corinthian. Her mother in particular is of the Akhlys lineage and also known as the 'mist of death'. This lineage of Keres is known to have an affinity for painful deaths related to accidents.  As the Keres are creatures of war and the battlefield, they were known to randomly appear in hordes during both wars with Voldemort. They would appear towards the end of a particularly bloody duel to collect their feasting prizes. They were not known to aid any particular side and feasted from both the bodies of Death Eaters and light wizards alike. In this regard they have often been compared to vultures, scavenging during the after math of something bloody.

Due to their viciousness and general danger to the public, the Greek Ministry of Magic has put several regulation on this particular species. Under punishment of death, the Keres are no longer permitted to devour the flesh of wizards and muggles. They may feed off the auras associated with injury and sickness, but cannot maim and eat people. Given their tendencies to swarm, the Ministry has also declared that the Keres are limited to breeding every ten years or so. If the Ministry believes the population has become a threat, they will often ‘remove’ or relocate groups of Keres throughout the Greek territories. If a group of Keres goes wild, the Ministry will often send Aurors to assess and either eliminate or rehabilitate the group.

   Mating Habits

Although Keres were known for eating soldiers they were  also known to mate with them as well. During their mating seasons, the Keres would seek out creatures and sometimes wizards that they deemed to be strong and brave warriors. Once the mating is done, the Keres do not see the males again unless a son is born or a defective daughter. If a son or defective daughter is born, they are returned to their paternal families. Before the laws were put into place, the mother Keres would often devour a father who was shown to produce sons or defective daughters, to ensure no other Keres would breed with them.

      General Magic
The Keres' powers tend to be specific to their clans. As Raj's mother was of the Akhlys 'mist of death' clan, their powers are associated with accidents. This means that these particular Keres' are able to sense when someone is about to succumb to an unfortunate accident and are often drawn to these people. There are several other clans known as Anaplekte, Nosos, Ker and Stygere. While each clan shares the basic Keres abilities, each also has their own unique sense specific abilities. The Anaplekte clan are associated with quick painful deaths. They are known to be drawn to those who will experience some type of execution and tend to hover around criminals in particular. The Nosos clan is known to sense the presence of disease. These Keres tend to feed on those slowly dying for sickness and are often drawn to towns where contagious diseases have begun to spread. Some lore states that the Nosos are the bringers of disease, but the Keres have stated this is false as they are unable to force death.

The Ker are a Keres clan that feed off of destruction. These Keres are drawn to wars and natural disasters, where they take the souls of the injured and maimed. They can sense when a disaster is impeding and will often watch from a safe distance as a town is ravaged by an earthquake, before swooping in to feast. Lastly, there is the Stygere clan. They Stygere clan hold the ability to sense when a hate fueled death is about to occur. They like their sister clans are drawn to war. These Keres in particular feed from victims of murder and abuse. They are able to sense when a persons fate ends in their murders. All clans may feed off of any type of dead or dying individual, but each gains strength from what their clans are associated with. An ability that all the Keres have is the ability to sense when death is near for someone. This is usually how they target their victims.

The Keres also have the ability to shapeshift between a humanoid form and their natural form. They are able to shift at will, but will often chose to stay in their natural forms when not around other creatures. A very significant attribute of the Keres, are their spectacular wings. These large and foreboding wings are covered in large raven like feathers and are sharp to the touch. Some Keres are known to have their feathers and claws tipped with a natural poison. Another staple of the Keres is their longevity and heartiness. Before they were regulated, Keres were able to feed fairly often and therefore were practically immortal. As they are now regulated and may only consume the aura of their victims, they still age slowly, but have a limited life-span of several hundred years.

     Rajs' Magic

Given that Raj isn't a full Keres she doesn't have the ability to pinpoint who will succumb to an accident, but she can still sense when and where an accident will occur. Some say that part of the reason she is so clumsy is due to her wizarding genetics interfering with her Keres ability. Meaning in a way she has become the personification of accidents. Raj also hasn't been able to fully developed the ability to all death. When she does her accuracy tends to be about 50/50, although her accuracy does tend to get better if the thing dying is a small animal.

Raj has retained the ability to transform back and forth for the most part, though she has some difficulty controlling it. When she was younger she would change back and forth when her emotions would vary. Usually her shifts would happen when she would feel threatened, angry, or overly excited. As an adult she has been able to suppress these shifts through the use of specified potions and practice in controlling her emotions. Unfortunately for Raj, her wings have never been able to fully develop and instead her back sprouts a painful cover of feathers each month. When they grow too painful she has to visit a healer of magical creatures to prune and remove them. If she feeds it is rare for Raj to become sick and the pain from her wings tends to listen. She also ages slower than your average wizard, but due to her mortal heritage and her difficulties in feeding her life-span is only slightly longer than any other witch or wizard.


      General Limitations

Although the Keres are fairly hardy and powerful, they do have several limitations. Before regulations a Keres only needed to devour one or two creatures a month to keep their strengthen. With the ministry limitations a Keres needs to feed at least twice a week on the aura of a weakened creature. If they do not feed they will grow weaker and weaker and will open themselves up to being attacked and killed by other creatures. Keres also feel incomplete when they are separated from their 'sisters'. As mentioned Keres hunt together and swarm their prey together. This is because they feed off of each others powers and hold a greater strength as a unit. When they are forced apart from their clans/sisters they will often grow weaker and refuse to properly feed themselves due to the loneliness they experience.

      Rajs Limitations
Raj has a number of limitations. Her biggest limitation is her difficulty in properly feeding. Raj is lucky if she can feed once a month and that leads her to often feeling weaker and being more prone to injury. The less she is able to feed, the harder it is for her to control her rages. To help control her rages and her shifting, she is forced to take monthly potions that help strengthen her control over the magic. Given her inability to properly feed, she is forced to consume regular food more often. Her body metabolizes food fairly quickly, so she is nearly always seen eating to keep from getting sick. If starved she will quickly begin to thin and wilt. Although she cannot die from starvation, but she can become nearly comatose and therefore left open for attack.

Due to being removed from her clan, Raj has never felt completely whole. She will always feel as if there is some part of her that is missing and will forever strive to find her missing piece. This is why she is determined to become a full Keres, in hopes that her sisters will accept her and she will no longer feel her loneliness. Unfortunately for Raj, her human half also forces her to crave being around other witches and wizards, almost as badly as her craving to be with 'her kind'.

future plots: Raj has several planned plots! If she is accepted and sorted, she will be living with Maia Etxegarai in a cabin in England. She will be looking for different odd jobs to help support herself and Maia, because she doesn’t want to feel like a burden to her best friend. I will be trying to get her as many different experiences as possible with different witches and wizards, because it’s going to be important for her to explore whether the Keres side of her will win or her humanity.

     Maia
Maia has basically been Raj's savior. After Raj left her grandmother’s home to move into the world and find herself, she quickly realized she wasn’t able to survive in the human world on her own. Maia was kind enough to take her in and help her adjust. In turn, Raj is very protective of Maia and would do anything to see her happy. Whenever a suitor upsets Maia, Raj acts much like an attack dog. She’ll lunge and make it clear that if they don’t stay away from her friend, they won’t survive another night. Maia will also help Raj begin to understand what intimacy is and help her explore the feeling she experiences for Kit. Oh and the two will wreak wondrous havoc together.

     Mila Mosquera (Toris WIP)
When Raj hit puberty her feathers began to grown in much faster and would often leave her in excruciating pain. Knowing that a regular mediwitch or wizard would be of no use, Raj’s grandmother took Raj to see Mila an expert in the healing of magical creatures. From this point Raj began to seek Mila's help monthly (either traveling to her or vice verse), to trim and prune her feathers. Mila was the first mortal outside of Raj’s family that Raj trusted. She was also the one to send Raj to Kit when she made the move to England.

     Kit Emberton
Kit is the specialist Raj visits in London to continue Mila's work. Kit brings out very odd and confusing feelings within Raj. On one hand being around him gives her an overwhelming feeling of safety. On the other hand she constantly has the urge to bite into him and eat him. She is wary around him, but continues to trust him due to her loyalty to Mila.

     Mateusz Dąbrowski
Due to Mat and Maia’s negative interactions, Raj is often on guard when around the quidditch player. From the first time he brushed Maia off, Raj deemed him as a threat to her happiness. Due to this whenever Mat and Raj come in contact, it is difficult for her to control her rages. Every time the two end up in contact she freaks out, blacks out and wakes up with the place entirely torn up, but Mat unharmed.

     Noemi Gambino
This talented potions master has been a godsend to Raj. Noemi brews her a monthly supply of potions that help suppress her transformations. To help pay for the expensive brews, Raj will often do odd jobs for Noemi, without questioning their legality. She knows that without the potions she would be unable to successfully blend into the wizarding and muggle worlds.

rp sample using the feature:
Pain and fire seared across her back and threw Raj from her slumber. She awoke covered in sweat, choking on air. It was that time again, the time of the month she dreaded most. She moved from the bed, feet dragging across the frosty wood floor. Each step felt as though a thousand daggers were slipping in and out of her spine. “Deep breath Rajna, it will be okay,” she whispered the words to herself, stifling a scream as not to wake Maia. A few more steps and she found herself in front of her full length mirror. Turning carefully, she lifted her sweat soaked t-shirt and peered at her back. Razor like feathers had once again began to pierce through random bits of her back. Each wet and oozing feathers was tipped with vicious poison and as they broke through her skin she felt agonizing pain.

It was three in the morning and she dreaded making the necessary journey to London. She knew Kit wouldn’t be up anyway and she dreaded dealing with his nursing staff. Another wave of pain smacked through her and she yelped. With the new surge of pain she began to shift into her Keres form and needle like teeth pierced through her lip. Raj grunted, “So not only am I in pain, but now I’m bleeding. This is just wonderful.” Given that Maia didn’t run into see if she was okay, it was clear to Raj that the siren was out on another of her adventure. It was better this way though, Maia wouldn’t have to watch her suffer.

Inhaling deeply, Raj moved her way into the bathroom and began sifting through her medicine cabinet. Her fingers curled around a small purple vile and she chugged the liquid down. Cool relief began to run through her veins and she slumped on top of the toilet. It was moments like this that she could just kiss Mila for supplying her with these pain relieving potions. The pain would come back in a few hours, but it gave her enough time to dress herself and apparate to the clinic.

She moved back into the room and quickly jotted down a letter to owl out to Kit, so that he would hopefully be there to greet her when she arrived. Fastening the note to her small barn owl Lyal, she lifted the window and released the bird on his way. With the pain gone, she was able to dress fairly quickly and within the next hour was ready to leave. Leaving a note on Maia’s bed, she fastened her jacket and apparated to the clinic. Realizing that no one had arrived yet, she slumped on the porch steps and closed her eyes. “Get here soon Kit, please.”

~ Approved

Name: Meridian
Character name: Amaranth Stringfellow
Feature you are applying for: Second Origin (Horcrux Vessel)

INTRODUCTION

For the past couple years I have been trying to figure out the endgame for Amaranth. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with her. I was happy for a while having her as a mercenary but I didn't think that suited someone with her past, her abilities, and her personality. She turned out much more empathetic and emotional and human than I thought she would be. It didn't make sense that she could just be a heartless mercenary forever if she’s already become so purposeless after less than five years. I eventually came up with the idea of her finding Herpo's lair and exploring dark magic and I thought it would be perfect for her. But as I developed this idea, I realized that I would need to apply for it, and thus was born this Second Origin app.

I wanted to portray Amaranth as an alternative Slytherin: ambitious without being outright evil, just morally ambiguous. She'll work really hard at her research and it’s such a perfect career for her. She'll be passionate and curious about her work, which will occasionally do good things in the world. Even when Amaranth was a much newer character, I wanted to make her a bit different from the Crabbes and Goyles of the world and give her some humanity and an ambition that isn’t inherently evil.

This transformation is going to change her magical abilities, her body, and her personality. Some of it is going to be because of the Horcrux, the rest will just be a result of her finally figuring out her purpose in the world and embracing the darkness inside her instead of letting it dictate her moral life.

PRE-TRANSFORMATION

The current Amaranth thinks she's found her place in the world, but in fact she is still very much lost. She was forced into mercenary work-- it was that or be killed. The more suspicious, older members of the Stringfellow family thought she was an omen of bad luck and arranged to have her taken care of, but the assassin they hired grew attached to her and promised to keep her away from the family in exchange for her life. The Stringfellows, being somewhat afraid of the assassin, agreed. Since then Amaranth has lived a lonely life, only occasionally visiting her parents, though she has been essentially disowned by the family.

After a while, Amaranth began to suffer under all of the loneliness that came with her lifestyle. She wasn’t necessarily opposed to killing but it gave her no joy, unlike some of the crazy people out there who love the thrill of murder, who are much better suited for the role of assassin. Her affinity for darkness allowed her to survive and thrive as a mercenary, and she was quite good at it, but it wasn’t something she had a passion for.

And all powerful dark magic comes at a price. Amaranth is the poster child for what it can do to the mind: warping it and constantly bringing one to the brink of complete madness. Amaranth has been very involved in the dark arts and has considerable skill in it, considering she very rarely uses any other kind of magic. Her warped soul has resulted in a mind that can survive under the pressure and emotional pain of constantly performing dark magic, accepting darkness rather than letting it consume her. She has a ravenous appetite for power and control, but to a slightly lesser extent, knowledge, which she will later find is actually the key to the power and control.

The pre-transformed Amaranth is young, unsociable, ruthlessly violent, and incredibly frustrated with her life. She refuses help from other because she trusts no one, a trait only amplified when her family tried to have her killed. But in her heart, Amaranth has a strong desire to be respected and wanted. Snakes are her closest friends, since she trusts no one, but she also yearns to be accepted by her own kind, something that, tragically, she will never have.

BACKGROUND

AMARANTH

Amaranth has always had a fascination with basilisks. Once she discovered that she was a Parselmouth, she became obsessed with them. At the age of four, with the coaxing of her less than well-meaning snake friends, she took to making one. For days she watched egg after egg crack under the weight of the obsess pond toad she had kidnapped from the garden, to no avail. It was after a week that her parents discovered what she was doing and forbad their daughter to ever do such a thing again. So little Amaranth tucked the fanciful idea into the back of her head but never forgot.

Fast forward sixteen years and Amaranth is a mercenary, traveling the world and doing dirty work for the rich and powerful, ending lives and filling her pockets with bloodstained galleons. She had become a powerful dark witch in just a few years after going through training from hell by one of the darkest, most vicious criminals the world had to offer. In the year since her debut, Amaranth gained access to a vast network of information, and one day something caught her attention. Because of her Parselmouth abilities and her mercenary connections her investigations were eventually fruitful. After combing through thousands of scrolls and hundreds of artifacts, Amaranth discovered some strange inconsistencies and clues that she was able to piece together into one glorious picture: Herpo the Foul had a hidden laboratory.

The Stringfellow family has many secrets, and the truth of them is a widely debated topic amongst the family members. One of the least credible of which is the one claiming the Stringfellows to be decedents of the original Slytherin family. Most members of the family consider this particular legend to be false, an attempt at elevated the fallen family’s social status. Except, during her research, Amaranth has come to suspect there may be some truth in it, mostly due to the fact that there have been many Parselmouths in the family's history, an ability only known to come from the Slytherin line. She suspects that the Slytherin’s hailed from Herpo the Foul, as did the Stringfellows, which is how she has the ability.

HERPO THE FOUL

Herpo the Foul lived and flourished in Ancient Greece, and was the earliest known dark wizard. The legacy he left behind is one of the most powerful and influential Dark Arts practitioners in history. Among his discoveries were: the invention of numerous vile and deadly curses too dark for even those times, the creation of the horcrux, and—perhaps most famously-- the breeding of the first basilisk. He was a progressive and intelligent man far ahead of his time, and his laboratory was the epicenter of all of his discoveries and research. Toward the end of his life, Herpo, who had become somewhat obsessed with immortality, made his one “perfect” horcrux.

He hid the horcrux where he knew only someone worthy would find it, and then layered it with various charms and curses in order to keep it safe. He wanted to live forever, considering himself far too important of a wizard to be constrained to just one life time. He had much, much more to do and once he was reawakened, he would gather enough power to make the world dance at his fingertips. So he went to sleep for what he did not realize would be over three millennia, with all of his knowledge and powers sealed away with him.

THE PLOT

Amaranth has devoted the last year and a half chasing the age-old rumor that Herpo's the Foul's basilisk is alive and hibernating somewhere deep underground in Greece. Her best lead came when she found a piece of a star-map with Herpo's crest on the bottom. Not long later she was caught breaking into a museum where the rest of the map was packed away in the basement, the curators unaware of its value. Under veritiserum and quite a lot of coercion, she confessed to the ministry that what they thought was an obsolete drawing of a constellation from Ancient Greece is actually a map of the labyrinth that houses Herpo's creature and possibly many of his other dark artifacts.

The ministry officials interrogating her realized that such an asset would be invaluable and that the ministry needed to find that lair before it fell into the wrong hands. So they completely took over her mission. They confiscated the map and intended to throw Amaranth in jail until she mentioned that if there was indeed a basilisk somewhere in that labyrinth, they'd probably want the only known surviving Parselmouth to be there as well. So in exchange for her freedom, Amaranth agreed worked under the ministry to locate and navigate the maze.

Once she deciphered the map and gained a working knowledge of the complicated system of tunnels that was Herpo’s lair, she and five ministry agents made their way to where she had deduced the entrance to the lair to be. The maze could only be entered by using a key to turn a stone dial hidden high up in the green hills of Ithaca. Once turned, the stone dial clicked into place to reveal a staircase that seemed to spiral down into the center of the earth. The groups walked for hours, descending lower and lower until Amaranth was sure they must have reached the underworld.

At the end of the eleventh long hour, a ghostly whisper reached her ears, telling her that only the worthiest of wizards could reach Herpo’s lair, and that her escrots were not worthy. She was able to ignore the voice until its words managed to convince her that they would walk until they died and never find their goal. So, taking advantage of the dank darkness of the caves, Amaranth mumbled a charm that cast a dark shadow over the group and was able to slip away. As someone who lived in only shadows, the spell made no difference to her and she followed the voice through the cave hours in a hypnotic trance.

After what felt like days, Amaranth finally reached the entrance to the lair. But once she entered the chamber, she was crushed to discover that Herpo the Foul’s basilisk was dead, and had been dead for more than a millennium. All that remained of the mighty beast was a massive desiccated corpse clinging to an ivory skeleton. She collapsed on her bleeding feet, feeling as if the world was crashing down around her and nothing mattered. This had been her chance to find a kindred spirit and to wield a power no other being had. She had tried so hard to believe, to have faith that the basilisk might be alive and hibernating, but her faith shattered as she knelt before the corpse and she wept for her future.

Through her tears, the voice called to her once more, and she rose to her feet, swaying gently as if the slightest breeze would have knocked her over. The voice whispered softly in Parseltongue, beckoning her closer. Even in her blindness, she could see something glimmering, pulsating with very old, ancient magic in the skull of the dead basilisk. She pushed her hand into the empty eye socket and her fingers brushed against something small and perfectly round, like a marble. It was humming with magic, something dark and dangerous and beckoning with promises she could not resist. And against all her better judgment, she ate it. Swallowed the whole thing.

It was as if lighting had struck her body. It was the most painful thing she’d ever felt, as if she was burning alive and there was a fire racing through her veins. She fell over and curled up in the fetal position, her burning body melting into the cool stone floor. Eventually the agony was too much and Amaranth passed out.

She woke up twelve days later, covered in dust and feeling very, very different.

MANIFESTATION

PHYSICALLY

Amaranth’s coma was much like a cocoon; as she slept her body begun to morph as a result of the horcrux being inside of her. Plate of scales begun to grow from her collar to the edges of her face, the backs of her hands and arms, the sides of her legs, and from her lower back to form sort of a V to her shoulder blades. The olive-colored scales are much like a snake’s: perpetually cool, and smooth to the touch. The small patch of scales that formed through her left eye gives her a sinister and dangerous expression. There were some smaller changes to her appearance as well, including the increased paleness of her skin, slight sharpening of her teeth, and an overall air of something otherworldly.

Aside from the scales, the other immediately noticeable change to her appearance is that Amaranth’s eyes are two different colors. Her right eye is the same bright blue color that she was born with, but her left eye is a pale gold. The blue eye is hers, but the golden eye belongs to Herpo the Foul. When she is channeling Herpo, she can see out of her gold eye with perfect vision. Her blue eye is completely blind.

Amaranth’s body is in a constant state of flux. Depending on how much dark magic she is using, she will become less and less human. The more dark magic she uses, the more the  scales cover her body, sometimes enveloping her completely if she pushes herself too far. Her hands become more and more like claws, similar to that of a dragon or a lizard, and she starts to look more and more like a monster. Once she stops using so much magic, the scales recede and she returns to her normal form, which is human, though with scales still. It is not uncommon for her to be working and as the minutes go on, the scales start to grow bigger and more pronounced and her hands to become more clawed.

MANNERISMS

Now that Amaranth has a snake soul living in her, she tends to talk to herself a lot. She often refers to Herpo as another person she shares a mind with, almost like she is his disciple. She has a tendency to speak in riddles and cryptic sayings. The thoughts make perfect sense to her, but when she says them out loud they sound like gibberish. This is a frustrating habit of hers when it comes to talking to others, but to her it really does seem like the most straightforward way to say things. To her, three-dimensional language cannot properly encompass Herpo’s fifth-dimensional thoughts. When she is channeling Herpo, her voice gets warped, like two voices talking over each other but saying the exact same thing, And even weirder, sometimes Amaranth’s tongue becomes forked as a result of her channeling too much magic, and it slips out to taste the air. She doesn’t even notice she does this.

PERSONALITY

Just because Amaranth is a dark presence does not mean that she is evil. Sure she has the capability to do a lot of damage, but she is a purist in her pursuit of knowledge. Courtesy of Herpo, she has gained a great deal of wisdom in a very short amount of time. With this wisdom comes the feeling that she is above the dichotomy of good and evil. She feels as if she is a neutral player in the game, allowed to help both sides as she sees fit.

Amaranth has matured substantially and is no longer as childish as she once was. While she will occasionally take part in whimsical pursuit or act a bit silly, it is very rare. She is much more wise and worldy now. She also acts with much more formality. As a person with very few friends or family left in the world, she has few chances to act causally or familiarity with anyone. Most of the people she meets with, she interacts with at a business capacity. She speaks very formally, though maintains much of her sarcastic wit. It's much more dry and cutting than it used to be, which suits her very well. When she is being sarcastic, she has a way of making some people feel very stupid, as if the answer is obvious. Sometimes she forgets that she has a slight advantage with the second mind in her body.

Though Amaranth is not a bad person by nature, she is most dangerous because she is ruthless and dangerously pragmatic. She does not side with good or bad, rather conforming to her own agenda. If she has decided what the right path is, she will take it regardless of who it helps or hurts. She is a consummate planner, acting much like a chess master who manipulates their pieces with only the endgame in mind. She tends to stay out of most "worldly" conflicts, seeing everything with a cool detached eye. Her actions are confident and decisive. She is no longer tied down by insecurity or hesitation. She makes her choices purposefully, believing her way to always be the correct way, even if it seems like it may not be. She’s become much more noble, haughty, and confident in all of her actions.

POWERS

Herpo’s horcrux served as a capsule for his soul. He created it with the intention of using it to find a vessel and come back to life centuries after he passed so that he could continue his work. But the horcrux, being one of the first ones ever made, was imperfect. When Amaranth ate it (which was not what he had expected her to do) instead of becoming possessed by that fragment of Herpo’s soul, it basically fused his consciousness into her brain, bringing with it of his memories and magical knowledge. Amaranth became a sentient vessel to Herpo’s soul.

The state of Amaranth's mind could be compared to amnesiac, but for memories that aren’t actually hers. The more immersed she becomes in Herpo’s research, the more the memories come back to her. Certain thoughts will trigger Herpo’s memories and following in his scientific footsteps will allow her to make sense of Herpo’s knowledge. As a result, she is able to pick up where his research left off with only a few delays before continuing his research.

THE ARCHIVE

Horcrux vessel manifests in many different way, the most prominent of which is Amaranth’s access to darker and more powerful magic than she ever had before, which she refers to as The Archive. Amaranth has in her possession the vast knowledge of everything that Herpo knew. She is a sentient vessel for his mind and all of the discoveries he made in his time are sealed away there. Though she knows of a lot of powerful magic, she can't currently perform the spells until she's advanced enough. Sometime she will gets snippets of information that make no sense and she has to decipher it in order to understand it. Her life is like a million small epiphanies, like suddenly remembering things she didn't even know she ever knew and putting it all together. Herpo doesn’t explicitly talk to her with words. They communicate through feelings and whispers and instinct. She doesn’t technically speak to him, she just moves as her instincts tell her to.

HIVE MIND

Millennia ago, Herpo pushed his consciousness out through the minds of one hundreds snakes all over the world, and in this way he has been able to gather information about the world as time passed, even though he was asleep. The descendants of those hundred snakes still serve him. While he was asleep, he was able to see through the eyes of his servants and the millennia that he lost to him were not necessarily empty. Herpo retains much of this knowledge, and thus, sometimes Amaranth is able to access it. Amaranth also has the capability of entering the minds of Herpo’s snakes and seeing what they see, given she has the magic power and her mind is letting her do it. She refers to being connected to so many snakes the Hive Mind.

SECOND SOUL POSSESSION

Because Amaranth is a Horcrux Vessel, sometimes the second soul takes over and she becomes possessed. She is completely awake while this is happening and can remember everything, but has very little control over what her body is doing. During this trance and while just channeling she is able to see out of her golden eye, and this is the only time she is able to see at all. When she is being possessed she has a lot of Herpo’s technical skills (potion making, reading and speaking ancient greek, etc.). There is a limit to the amount of stuff that she is able to do, but since Herpo’s soul is basically taking over her body, she gains almost 100% of his skillset. This is not a complete possession by Herpo himself (as that would be disastrous), but more of his soul resonating with hers and allowing her to do things she thought impossible. When she is channeling him, she refers to Herpo as “I”, speaking as if she was him.

LIMITATIONS

All of this great power comes at a serious cost. Amaranth can't access the majority of the Herpo's knowledge at the moment. It will slowly reveal itself to her, but it will take a lot of hard work. She only has access to a very, very small percent of Herpo's vast collection of knowledge. It is like being in a library: all of the information is there but she has to sort through it all to make sense of it.

Amaranth is essentially living for two. Her body is not built to support two souls and she tires very, very easily. Working eats all of her energy and she tends to pass out frequently from exhaustion. She is often in physical pain, which is her body buckling from the sheer strain of containing two souls in one body. As a result, Amaranth does not do anything quickly. She moves slowly and deliberately. She would not be able to protect herself in a fist fight because her body is extremely fragile. For this reason she avoids physical contact with all others. Amaranth is easily overwhelmed, and when this happens she either passes out or the second soul takes over.

She also has lost the ability to do most other types of magic, only able to do simple instinctive things like move objects. Just because she possesses the knowledge to perform all of Herpo's magic, doesn’t mean she can instinctively perform it. Her body's ability to do stronger magic is still very low, and much of the magic Herpo did was far too advanced for her relatively weaker body.

If Amaranth tries to do magic beyond her ken, she runs the risk of either being swallowed up by the second soul or being ripped apart from the inside out. Magic that is simply too strong will destroy her body and tear her soul apart. Alternatively, she is constantly in danger of losing her humanity and becoming a scaley, mindless beast if she lets the dark magic consume her, and when that happens, she knows that Herpo's is waiting for her to lose control of herself so that he can take over. Even though Amaranth is using his mind, she knows that to let him loose into the modern world would result in disaster. If Amaranth doesn't keep herself in perfect delicate balance all the time, she runs the risk of going mad. Insanity doesn't sound very palatable to her. She understands that ancient dark magic is unpredictable and very unforgiving, which deserves the respect of all those who do not want to be devoured by it.

As a result of her pursuit of knowledge, Amaranth has become very obsessive, occasionally dipping into the Mad Scientist territory. Nothing is more important than unraveling the mysteries of magic. She will work herself sick and keep going due to her demonic drive to learn more. It is as if the magic possesses her and she becomes a slave to Herpo's research.

POST-TRANSFORMATION

Once Amaranth transforms, her life’s mission becomes to continue Herpo the Foul’s work. She becomes a dark magic researcher and dedicates her life to unraveling the mysteries of magic, particularly the dark kind. Using both Herpo’s knowledge and her own considerable dark magic experience, she is able to make great strides in the various theories and discoveries of the dark magic universe. Her goal is to prove that dark magic is very powerful and very deadly, but also that it is one of the purest forms of magic. Dark magic intertwines itself with the soul, making it one with the user’s existence, coming from their deepest desires. She focuses on the science of magic, and what it is in its raw form. She is a neutral presence, believing in following the course of nature. She has inherited much of Herpo’s wisdom, but differs from him in the way she wants to use it. Herpo was obsessed with immortality, which is why he made the horcrux, and he wanted to rule the world. Amaranth’s desire is less megalomaniacal (though she certainly does have her moments). Her goal is to gain and spread knowledge of all kinds and make the world a wiser place.

Amaranth’s story quickly spreads among those with the right connections, known as the vessel for an ancient and powerful sorcerer, who is also now a very dangerous sorceress in her own right. Very few people know her true name, and even fewer refer to her by it. She has many titles and names, but is most commonly referred to as Medusa or The Oracle. As a depository of dark and ancient magical information, as well having a network of snake spies that stretches back for multiple millennia, she is the ultimate library. She can help people who come to her for information they thought lost or magic though to be impossible. She sees it as a challenge. Nothing gives her more satisfaction that solving a mystery and learning new magic.

She remains underground in Herpo’s lair, having made the network of tunnels and caverns her home. She rarely leaves the Underworld (what she calls her underground lair), but does get quite a few visitors. Ministry officials, criminals, people searching for answers—many people come to in hopes of accessing her knowledge. And she’s usually fine with this. Her goal is to share information, as opposed to hiding it. To take advantage of her hospitality is unwise though, as is trying to deceive her. She is a very powerful sorceress, one who people would be foolish to trifle with. Her belief in their fear is what allows her to give away the information so freely. Of course, finding the Underworld is not easy, nor is securing an audience with her.

In a way, Amaranth is a ministry asset. In return for her freedom, she consults with them on various dark magical matters and comminucates most of her findings to a small group of ministry officials. They do not interfere with her work or try to control her, and she continues to cooperate with them. She knows at this point, that she is more than capable of taking her own freedom back, but finds that unnecessary. She is content to be a ministry consultant, and has no desire to outright betray them as long as they do the same. Amaranth does follow her own moral code though, and will not hesitate to do something if she feels it is right, even if it goes up against the ministry’s agenda.

Now that she has a certain reputation, Herpo’s soul wants her to mimic antiquity, harkening back to the glory of Ancient Greece. He firmly believes it is better for her to maintain the dramatic, mysterious aura of the proper dark sorceresses of the era. As such, the lair and Amaranth herself are decorated in the ancient style. Her fashion choices are very ancient and ornamental when she is forced to make an appearance in the above world, and it is often risque and dramatic. Even when she is just researching in the lair, she wears flowing white robes and looks the picture of an ancient oracle. Her clothes and hair are almost gravity defying, seeming to always be billowing around her, to varying degrees of strength. This gives the illusion of snakes in her hair. Now, Amaranth definitely looks the part.

FUTURE PLOTS

1. As a condition her being allowed to do her research in peace, Amaranth, sometimes gives reports on her discoveries and lets herself be summoned for consultations to various ministry departments, one of which is Ingrid Trickett’s division. The two interact on a regular basis, though neither are thrilled about it.

2. She is like an ambassador of dark magic and will have to drag her antisocial ass out of the lair to make appearances and what not, sort of like random royalty being forced to show up at events.

3. Special people will be granted invitations to the lair (dark wizards and witches with friends in high places) if they want to talk to her or have access to any of the artifacts/ research materials in the lair. One of these is Rosaline Bane, who is invited to the liar for a short apprenticeship, due to Amaranth’s belief in her potential.

4. As Amaranth is not an expert at everything, there are many areas of dark science that she is unfamiliar with, even though Herpo knows a lot about them. As this is a barrier keeping her from accessing is making sense of much of Herpo's magic, she will be forced to call on experts in their fields to help her. Amaranth has always naturally been terrible at potions, so she calls upon an old friend, Zachary Incarnadine, for help her in many of these cases.

5. Herpo the Foul was around a very long time ago, alive for the rise of Ancient Greece. As a man of the snakes, he was once acquainted with the original Lamia. Lucina Tamboria/ Laura Palmer is a descended from the original Lamia, and when she has questions about her heritage, she comes to Amaranth for information.

6. This SF overall has a lot of potential for a lot of great plots. Now that the world is post-Voldemort, we will soon need a new Big Bad. Even if it isn’t Amaranth, I think there are a lot of directions we could go with this. I’m excited.

ROLE PLAY RESPONSE

Crusty, dusty eyes fluttered open as Amaranth woke from the dead. Her head was pounding painfully and her limbs ached as she tried to recall where she was. Why did she feel so… empty. When she thinks, there’s supposed to be something there, right? Everything felt hazy, like her memory was shrouded in a dense fog. Her body was somehow both numb and freezing. Amaranth looked around and found herself face to face with the giant white skull of some kind of monster. She shouted and then skittered backwards. Where was she? She had no memory of anything: how she got here, who she was, nothing.

Her skin was covered in dust and the sleeves of her long black coat were moth-eaten, like she had been here for a long time. She patted the dust from her coat, releasing large clouds of white into the air and she coughed, her throat feeling like it was full of chalk. And gods, her body was so sore from laying on the floor. She rolled her shoulders and massaged her neck, pausing when she felt something hard and scarred on the back of it. She traced the spiral shape burned into her flesh with her fingers, knowing there was something important about it but she just couldn’t… remember. Amaranth looked around the dark cave, taking in the curve of the black stone walls and the maw-like tunnel just to her right. Long pointed stalactites hung precariously overhead and sitting directly under the made her very nervous.
   
She had… been here before? Something about the cavern was intimately familiar, as if she this was her home. Amaranth got to her feet, dusting herself off and walking forwards. This tunnel… this was the right tunnel. Somewhere in her head was a memory of this tunnel, though there was a light at the other end. The image flickered in front of her as she walked down the tunnel. At the end was an expansive cave, too dark and large to see the end of. Another image flickered into her sight: the cave lit with flames, rows of tables and endless shelves of scrolls stretching out as far as the eye could see. In a second, the image disappeared and she was back in the dark.

Amaranth glanced at a bronze shield hanging on the wall and the shimmering image reflected back at her nearly made her jump out of her skin. Something about it was insanely familiar, though the rest made her stomach knot painfully. One bright blue eye and one glowing gold eye stared back at her, but that wasn’t what scared her. There was a patch of dark olive scales growing up her porcelain neck and through her left eye. When she blinked, she could feel the scales scraping against her eyelashes. But when she touched them, they were smoother and colder than she had expected them to be, more like a snake than a fish.

But the scales were on the backs of her hands too. She yanked at the collar of her coat and frantically unbuttoned it. How far did they go? She shed her coat entirely, then her shirt and pants and shoes until she was standing in her underwear, staring at a pale body covered in large patches of olive-green scales. They were fused with her flesh, as if she had grown them from her own skin. Am I a monster? What is happening?!

The more she stared at her reflection, the more her head hurt, as if something was trying to claw its way out through her left eye socket. What was happening to her? Something about this face staring back at her felt strange, like an old friend she hadn’t seen in years. She let out a little yelp when she suddenly realized she was supposed to be blind. She’d been blind for over five years. Then it all came back to her: Hogwarts, Kranovich, being a mercenary, the ministry, the basilisk, the…

“Oh Merlin,” she muttered painfully, closing her eyes. She’d eaten the basilisk eye.

As if on cue, she let out a blood curling scream and dropped to her knees, clutching her head as if someone had struck her. Images and memories swirled around her mind like a hurricane of thoughts, going too fast for her to see and making her feel so dizzy she thought she was going to puke. There were too many colors and sounds and sensations to handle and it was agonizing. Her brain was liquefying into molten metal and going to burst out the front of her head, the pressure behind her right eye building as she clasped a hand over it. What was happening to her?! Was she dying? Amaranth gasped for air, choking on her own tongue and then vomiting dark blood onto the stone floor with a sickening splat. These memories weren’t hers, but they were rushing into her in a tidal wave of excruciating sensation and she just wanted it to stop before her head split in two. Merlin, make it stop! She couldn’t take it much longer. She was going to explode--

And it stopped. Suddenly everything stopped and she was very, very still. After a deathly silent few seconds, Amaranth raised her head and looked around the lair, carefully drawing to her feet and wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. There was an cold tingling sensation as the scales grew until they covered the entirety of her forearms and across her cheeks. She threw her hands out and suddenly the line torches in the room flared to light, illuminating the huge room in a corridor of blazing blue flames. She could feel magic surging through her veins, ancient and dangerously powerful. She frowned. The magic was trapped beneath the skin. Inaccessible.

“Well. This was not supposed to happen,” she said dryly, examining her scaley skin. Her voice was strange and warped, like two voices speaking unison. She then looked down at her body, as if for the first time, and raised an eyebrow as she took in her petite figure. “Not the body I would have chosen, but I suppose it is a nice change of pace.” Amaranth waved her hand, summoning a white robe from somewhere else in the lair, then wrapped it around herself. But it was far too big, draping off her shoulders so she had to hold it closed in the front. She glanced around the lair, at the tall white marble columns holding up the glassy black stone ceilings, bright azure flames dancing along the walls. A wicked smile curled along her scaled lips and a forked tongue darted out experimentally.

“Well now. Let's see what this world has to offer, shall we?”

~ Approved. Please check your PMs. ^^

Name: The Oncoming Storm
Character name: Demeter Gray
Feature you are applying for: Harbinger Madin - Earth Elemental Council Leader, Second affinity: Hor

Overall, Demeter is a warm and loving individual who does her best to get on with everyone that she can. Some combination of hippy and zen master, Demeter is an octogenarian tree-hugger.

She was born to a family of arborealists who run a tree farm in Gloucestershire that provides wood for wands, brooms and other magical equipment and grew up playing in the artificial forest. She was fairly tomboyish in her youth, not afraid to get mucky or climb trees with her brothers. Over the years though her body and hormones betrayed her and she is now a much more motherly person in both figure and temperament. Once her parents decided it was time to retire, Demeter took over the running of the farm and given her naturally affinities for all things natural the arboretum has never flourished so well.

Motherly is indeed probably the most apt word to describe Demeter.  Although having never borne children of her own, Demeter has an insatiable maternal instinct that the council has fuelled over the years, be that for better or worse. She dotes on her nieces and nephews, and their children as if they were her own. Her great-nieces and –nephews are now becoming slightly embarrassed by auntie Demi, largely being in the late teens and early twenties but still being fussed over as if they were only eight or nine years old. This is compounded by the fact that the woman doing the fussing only appears to be around forty, rather than four times their own age. Her broodiness does not just extend to her own family however – children of friends, colleagues and even willing strangers on the street are treated to the soppy elemental’s excess affection, gifting small children with ice-cream for a nearby shop or whatever she can lay her hands on.

After a somewhat turbulent past, she has now decided that it is best to give not only this motherly attention but also respect to all living creatures, be they human or beast, plant or animal – regardless of how they may act.  Although she has a very strong moral compass (which as gotten her into trouble a number of times in her past), she has taught herself to see good and evil as an analogue to life and death.  Just as an ecosystem is delicately balanced and requires everything eventually to die in order that anything else might live, the world requires good and evil to be in balance. That isn't to say that good should not try to fight evil (indeed, Demeter is very vocal on the fact that it should constantly strive against adversity) but a recognition that there will always be evil and that quite possibly some people are just made that way.  As such it does not do to hold it against the wrongdoers personally - they are just fulfilling their part in the grand scheme of cosmic balance.

Despite this high falutin' philosophy, Demeter isn't really that intellectually gifted. She is much more driven by her emotions than reason and constantly has to battle to keep her emotions under control.  Demi has been through some awful things in her life and this world-view of a magical ecology is the best mechanism she has found for mitigating her grief at loss and her anger at injustice. It took her sixty years to find a satisfactory way of controlling her emotions and it was only through the study of the path of water that she was able to bridle these affects.  Even still, she has bouts of hot-headedness that can get her into a lot trouble, including shouting her head off at the leader of the council to the point that he challenged to a potentially deadly rite to settle their argument.

Demi is forthright with her views and relentless in trying to get them across.  She has learned that it pays to play the long game, stubbornly persisting in her arguments and adding to them as and when circumstances change. This works both ways though, and she will resist any challenges to the views she has held for a long time too, even though the person with whom she disagrees may have much more cogent arguments.  This comes from many facets of her personality - her run-of-the-mill intellect certainly does not her, but nor does her philosophy of balance which she has been known to use as a get-out-of-the-argument-free card: "Those are very good points you make, but I can't help but disagree. The world needs differing views - it is what drives progress and new understanding" and so on. Eventually she may come round to someone else's point of view, but it is a long and arduous process one faces if trying to change the earth elemental's mind.

Although she would never admit it openly, Demeter is fairly confident and self-assured about her general character and personality. She likes to think of herself as humble and unassuming (and particularly for other people to have this view of her), but in reality she thinks the world would be a much better place if everyone was like her. Demeter gently tries to push her students in that general direction, nurturing the aspects of herself that she recognises in them.

Ever since I first joined the site I have always been taken with the lore surrounding Elementals.  They are a uniquely MH construct and a part that I have wanted to get involved with for a very long time.

There is a good number of elementals active on the board already and the recent discussion in the Dev Pool has sparked a great interest in feature among the rest of the membership with a lot of people working on new elemental characters.  I see this feature giving me a lot of opportunities to thread with people whose other characters are not a good fit for my own. 

In particular I wanted to apply for Harbinger Madin because it is the politics of neutrality and balance that most intrigues me about the council. Demeter is a character that has to constantly battle to temper her emotional side with reason, and putting her in the position of harbinger intensifies this.  As a figurehead for the Earth Elementals she has to uphold the codex of the council, but feels that it is also her responsibility and prerogative to lobby for change to those ancient rules.  The mental gymnastics that Demeter has to perform to avoid cognitive dissonance and massive guilt are one of the most appealing aspects of the character for me, especially as she is not mentally gifted.

I chose the element of earth because it's nature is very different from my other sorted characters and it gives me beliefs and actions to explore that neither Zi nor Frey would ever entertain. Moreover the fact that earth's counter is Ice, the harbinger of which leads the council, and that Harbinger Madin would be second in common of the council makes the conflict for Demeter even more profound and engaging.

Having previously chatted to the Goblin Queen about what happens when a witch or wizard acceeds to the harbingership, I think it would be really interesting to play out. Even though harbingers are chosen according to prophesy, there are a series of trials and ordeals that they must complete to prove that they are sufficiently powerful, educated, reliable and worthy to take office.

Demeter is also very much ready to get involved with the elemental plots as discussed in the dev pool. The kidnapping of discipuli is particularly troubling to her as she feels very protective towards the younglings in the council. Demeter is unlikely to be much help in discovering where the children are being held, but once they are located she will spearhead an extraction mission herself. She will ensure that the children are brought home safely and spend as much time as it requires with them to undo the brainwashing.

In the meantime of course, the Rogues have a further plan to invade and occupy Inverness. This will leave the loyal concil elementals without a base, and with Peter Alva inexplicably absent, it will fall to Harbinger Madin, i.e. Demeter, to organise and rally the council. She will encourage remaining elementals to join forces and create a island haven to act as their new headquarters.  Although the basis for this island would be the banned spell Demin Insula, she will weigh the options and decide that it is banned for reasons of promoting imbalance, but as the island will be an elemental safe-haven, the other five elements will also contribute greatly to its creation and achieve balance. She hopes this endeavour will give the displaced council elementals a renewed sense of cameraderie and shared endeavour, and a place to call home.

Further to re-establishing order in their new home, Demeter wants a balanced council. With half of the harbingers absent or missing, there will be three elements unaccounted for in the council leadership.  In the interests of open and balanced debate, she will invite zealots or acolytes of those unrepresented elements to assume seats on the council leadership. They will then be able to have full council meetings to discuss matters that concern the council - for example, planning on how to retake Inverness.

Demeter reached her mind out to her most extreme leaves and coiled them back into buds. All over her current form, the borad oak leaves folded themselves up into neat little bundles of green.  the buds hardened off and shrank back into the twigs and stems from which they had erupted.  For a brief period it was difficult to tell which bald branches belonged to the baringer-elect and which were those of the trees grown in the shrine of earth and tended by the acolytes, but as Demeter continued to morph back into her human form, the rapid movement and apparently backwards growth indicated that which would soon be flesh.  Twigs shrank into branches, branches into boughs and the boughs themselves were drawn back into the main trunk, excepting two that drooped down opposite one another, adjoining the trunk at just a few feet from the ground.  The bark of the tree began to smooth itself and lighten in colour as a humanoid shape became visible. Once all vestiges of flora had been disappeared, all that remained was a woman standing arms aloft, the eyes on her upturned head gently closed giving her face a look of peace.

She lowered her head and opened her eyes, stepping out from between the other trees as her bare feet squelched over the leaf-mould. The acolytes who she had come to know well over her past seven decades in the council helped Demeter into the harbinger's regalia, though she chided them for their solemnity and reverence.  The shrine of Earth had always been a rather informal affair under her predecessor, those with an affinity for that element being much more down-to-earth than some of the more cerebral elementals, and Demeter had no intention of lording it over her 'subordinates' any more than the last Harbinger did. These were her friends, to many of them she was as close if not closer than she was to her own family, and she certainly did not want them kowtowing to her in the slightest. Nevertheless, the regalia were a bit clumsy to don by herself and so she did allow them to help her on with certain parts of them.

Demeter hovered just inside the threshold of the madin shrine, listening to the hubbub of the gathered elementals outside. This day had been a long time coming; she had been preparing for it for a decade and everyone at the council had been hugely supportive, but it was still quite difficult to pluck up the courage to take those first steps out into the courtyard and in front of the whole council. She took a deep breath and counted down from ten, centering her thoughts and quashing her emotions. Once she reached one, she exhaled and started walking forward. The acolytes of the shrine started to applaud and Demeter couldn't help but smile. She had spent a few years as one of them earlier in her life and it warmed her heart that they were so pleased for her. She turned her head back towards the earth shrine and shot a playful glare at her companions, only now noticing that one of them had cast some variation of the spell madin adaugesco and the path from the shrine to here was sprouting with flowers.

Facing forward again before she started laughing at the ridiculousness of it all, suddenly it didn't seem so daunting.  She looked around as she continued on her journey to the central courtyard, smiling serenely at everyone. Once she reached the centre, she held up her hands and waited for the noise to die down.


"Thank you all, you are so very kind.  It is with mixed feelings that I stand before you today.  Harbinger Gavin Evans was a dear friend and mentor to me, and his return to his element is a great loss to me personally and to us all.

"Nevertheless, we must remember that all things must pass so that the circle of life and the balance of the elements can be maintained. Having returned to the earth, the late Harbinger will go on to nourish and support all manner of creatures, which I know he was looking forward to.

"I do not pretend to be in any position to replace him, but I hope that his legacy will live on through me and I will endeavour to discharge my duties in a way that he would be proud.

Demeter's demeanour softened and she abandoned the lofty public address voice she had been using. Instead she simply smiled and spoke in a much more casual manner. "I've never really been one for speeches, so lets get on with this." She raised her voice again once more to properly kick off the proceedings. "Which element will issue the first challenge?"

Name: The Oncoming Storm
Character name: Demeter Gray
Feature you are applying for: Harbinger Madin - Earth Elemental Council Leader, Second affinity: Hor

Overall, Demeter is a warm and loving individual who does her best to get on with everyone that she can. Some combination of hippy and zen master, Demeter is an octogenarian tree-hugger.

She was born to a family of arborealists who run a tree farm in Gloucestershire that provides wood for wands, brooms and other magical equipment and grew up playing in the artificial forest. She was fairly tomboyish in her youth, not afraid to get mucky or climb trees with her brothers. Over the years though her body and hormones betrayed her and she is now a much more motherly person in both figure and temperament. Once her parents decided it was time to retire, Demeter took over the running of the farm and given her naturally affinities for all things natural the arboretum has never flourished so well.

Motherly is indeed probably the most apt word to describe Demeter.  Although having never borne children of her own, Demeter has an insatiable maternal instinct that the council has fuelled over the years, be that for better or worse. She dotes on her nieces and nephews, and their children as if they were her own. Her great-nieces and –nephews are now becoming slightly embarrassed by auntie Demi, largely being in the late teens and early twenties but still being fussed over as if they were only eight or nine years old. This is compounded by the fact that the woman doing the fussing only appears to be around forty, rather than four times their own age. Her broodiness does not just extend to her own family however – children of friends, colleagues and even willing strangers on the street are treated to the soppy elemental’s excess affection, gifting small children with ice-cream for a nearby shop or whatever she can lay her hands on.

After a somewhat turbulent past, she has now decided that it is best to give not only this motherly attention but also respect to all living creatures, be they human or beast, plant or animal – regardless of how they may act.  Although she has a very strong moral compass (which as gotten her into trouble a number of times in her past), she has taught herself to see good and evil as an analogue to life and death.  Just as an ecosystem is delicately balanced and requires everything eventually to die in order that anything else might live, the world requires good and evil to be in balance. That isn't to say that good should not try to fight evil (indeed, Demeter is very vocal on the fact that it should constantly strive against adversity) but a recognition that there will always be evil and that quite possibly some people are just made that way.  As such it does not do to hold it against the wrongdoers personally - they are just fulfilling their part in the grand scheme of cosmic balance.

Despite this high falutin' philosophy, Demeter isn't really that intellectually gifted. She is much more driven by her emotions than reason and constantly has to battle to keep her emotions under control.  Demi has been through some awful things in her life and this world-view of a magical ecology is the best mechanism she has found for mitigating her grief at loss and her anger at injustice. It took her sixty years to find a satisfactory way of controlling her emotions and it was only through the study of the path of water that she was able to bridle these affects.  Even still, she has bouts of hot-headedness that can get her into a lot trouble, including shouting her head off at the leader of the council to the point that he challenged to a potentially deadly rite to settle their argument.

Demi is forthright with her views and relentless in trying to get them across.  She has learned that it pays to play the long game, stubbornly persisting in her arguments and adding to them as and when circumstances change. This works both ways though, and she will resist any challenges to the views she has held for a long time too, even though the person with whom she disagrees may have much more cogent arguments.  This comes from many facets of her personality - her run-of-the-mill intellect certainly does not her, but nor does her philosophy of balance which she has been known to use as a get-out-of-the-argument-free card: "Those are very good points you make, but I can't help but disagree. The world needs differing views - it is what drives progress and new understanding" and so on. Eventually she may come round to someone else's point of view, but it is a long and arduous process one faces if trying to change the earth elemental's mind.

Although she would never admit it openly, Demeter is fairly confident and self-assured about her general character and personality. She likes to think of herself as humble and unassuming (and particularly for other people to have this view of her), but in reality she thinks the world would be a much better place if everyone was like her. Demeter gently tries to push her students in that general direction, nurturing the aspects of herself that she recognises in them.

Ever since I first joined the site I have always been taken with the lore surrounding Elementals.  They are a uniquely MH construct and a part that I have wanted to get involved with for a very long time.

There is a good number of elementals active on the board already and the recent discussion in the Dev Pool has sparked a great interest in feature among the rest of the membership with a lot of people working on new elemental characters.  I see this feature giving me a lot of opportunities to thread with people whose other characters are not a good fit for my own. 

In particular I wanted to apply for Harbinger Madin because it is the politics of neutrality and balance that most intrigues me about the council. Demeter is a character that has to constantly battle to temper her emotional side with reason, and putting her in the position of harbinger intensifies this.  As a figurehead for the Earth Elementals she has to uphold the codex of the council, but feels that it is also her responsibility and prerogative to lobby for change to those ancient rules.  The mental gymnastics that Demeter has to perform to avoid cognitive dissonance and massive guilt are one of the most appealing aspects of the character for me, especially as she is not mentally gifted.

I chose the element of earth because it's nature is very different from my other sorted characters and it gives me beliefs and actions to explore that neither Zi nor Frey would ever entertain. Moreover the fact that earth's counter is Ice, the harbinger of which leads the council, and that Harbinger Madin would be second in common of the council makes the conflict for Demeter even more profound and engaging.

Having previously chatted to the Goblin Queen about what happens when a witch or wizard acceeds to the harbingership, I think it would be really interesting to play out. Even though harbingers are chosen according to prophesy, there are a series of trials and ordeals that they must complete to prove that they are sufficiently powerful, educated, reliable and worthy to take office.

Demeter is also very much ready to get involved with the elemental plots as discussed in the dev pool. The kidnapping of discipuli is particularly troubling to her as she feels very protective towards the younglings in the council. Demeter is unlikely to be much help in discovering where the children are being held, but once they are located she will spearhead an extraction mission herself. She will ensure that the children are brought home safely and spend as much time as it requires with them to undo the brainwashing.

In the meantime of course, the Rogues have a further plan to invade and occupy Inverness. This will leave the loyal concil elementals without a base, and with Peter Alva inexplicably absent, it will fall to Harbinger Madin, i.e. Demeter, to organise and rally the council. She will encourage remaining elementals to join forces and create a island haven to act as their new headquarters.  Although the basis for this island would be the banned spell Demin Insula, she will weigh the options and decide that it is banned for reasons of promoting imbalance, but as the island will be an elemental safe-haven, the other five elements will also contribute greatly to its creation and achieve balance. She hopes this endeavour will give the displaced council elementals a renewed sense of cameraderie and shared endeavour, and a place to call home.

Further to re-establishing order in their new home, Demeter wants a balanced council. With half of the harbingers absent or missing, there will be three elements unaccounted for in the council leadership.  In the interests of open and balanced debate, she will invite zealots or acolytes of those unrepresented elements to assume seats on the council leadership. They will then be able to have full council meetings to discuss matters that concern the council - for example, planning on how to retake Inverness.

Demeter reached her mind out to her most extreme leaves and coiled them back into buds. All over her current form, the borad oak leaves folded themselves up into neat little bundles of green.  the buds hardened off and shrank back into the twigs and stems from which they had erupted.  For a brief period it was difficult to tell which bald branches belonged to the baringer-elect and which were those of the trees grown in the shrine of earth and tended by the acolytes, but as Demeter continued to morph back into her human form, the rapid movement and apparently backwards growth indicated that which would soon be flesh.  Twigs shrank into branches, branches into boughs and the boughs themselves were drawn back into the main trunk, excepting two that drooped down opposite one another, adjoining the trunk at just a few feet from the ground.  The bark of the tree began to smooth itself and lighten in colour as a humanoid shape became visible. Once all vestiges of flora had been disappeared, all that remained was a woman standing arms aloft, the eyes on her upturned head gently closed giving her face a look of peace.

She lowered her head and opened her eyes, stepping out from between the other trees as her bare feet squelched over the leaf-mould. The acolytes who she had come to know well over her past seven decades in the council helped Demeter into the harbinger's regalia, though she chided them for their solemnity and reverence.  The shrine of Earth had always been a rather informal affair under her predecessor, those with an affinity for that element being much more down-to-earth than some of the more cerebral elementals, and Demeter had no intention of lording it over her 'subordinates' any more than the last Harbinger did. These were her friends, to many of them she was as close if not closer than she was to her own family, and she certainly did not want them kowtowing to her in the slightest. Nevertheless, the regalia were a bit clumsy to don by herself and so she did allow them to help her on with certain parts of them.

Demeter hovered just inside the threshold of the madin shrine, listening to the hubbub of the gathered elementals outside. This day had been a long time coming; she had been preparing for it for a decade and everyone at the council had been hugely supportive, but it was still quite difficult to pluck up the courage to take those first steps out into the courtyard and in front of the whole council. She took a deep breath and counted down from ten, centering her thoughts and quashing her emotions. Once she reached one, she exhaled and started walking forward. The acolytes of the shrine started to applaud and Demeter couldn't help but smile. She had spent a few years as one of them earlier in her life and it warmed her heart that they were so pleased for her. She turned her head back towards the earth shrine and shot a playful glare at her companions, only now noticing that one of them had cast some variation of the spell madin adaugesco and the path from the shrine to here was sprouting with flowers.

Facing forward again before she started laughing at the ridiculousness of it all, suddenly it didn't seem so daunting.  She looked around as she continued on her journey to the central courtyard, smiling serenely at everyone. Once she reached the centre, she held up her hands and waited for the noise to die down.


"Thank you all, you are so very kind.  It is with mixed feelings that I stand before you today.  Harbinger Gavin Evans was a dear friend and mentor to me, and his return to his element is a great loss to me personally and to us all.

"Nevertheless, we must remember that all things must pass so that the circle of life and the balance of the elements can be maintained. Having returned to the earth, the late Harbinger will go on to nourish and support all manner of creatures, which I know he was looking forward to.

"I do not pretend to be in any position to replace him, but I hope that his legacy will live on through me and I will endeavour to discharge my duties in a way that he would be proud.

Demeter's demeanour softened and she abandoned the lofty public address voice she had been using. Instead she simply smiled and spoke in a much more casual manner. "I've never really been one for speeches, so lets get on with this." She raised her voice again once more to properly kick off the proceedings. "Which element will issue the first challenge?"

[carys]~ approved![/carys]

Name: Tori
Character name: Simon Ainsworth
Feature you are applying for: Zealot Garth // Second Affinity Typh

Description of the character: On the surface, Simon Ainsworth is quiet. Although he is friendly and will hold a conversation with those who approach him, he's definitely not the type to start a conversation with those he doesn't know. He's rather shy towards those that introduce themselves to him, although this is more because he's not sure what to say at times, not because he's afraid to talk to people. Simon tends to open up to those that talk to him after a few minutes of conversation, after he gets more comfortable around them. The more comfortable Simon is with a person, the more he talks to them, although he does usually tend to try to keep to himself.

Whether he knows the person or not, when Simon gets talking about a subject that he finds interesting or fascinating, he doesn't stop. He'll talk someone's ear off if they let him. As a man who studies a lot on the things he finds interesting, Simon could probably talk for hours and hours unless someone cuts him off. He's very passionate about certain things, and once he finds something that he likes he generally immerses himself in learning about whatever it is until he knows everything there is to know about whatever it is. He's rather eccentric and unconventional in the way he does things - he prefers to walk to the beat of his own drum when he does things as to doing them the way others do them. He generally finds that he works better if he does things his own way.

When it comes to doing work, Simon much prefers being on his own. Although he can work in a group with others if it's required, he's much more efficient when he's working on his own. It takes some time to get Simon to be open to working with others - much more than it does for the man to open up and talk to people comfortably. He finds that working on his own gives him more freedom to do with his work as he pleases, and more time to think around problems he might come across.

Simon's very creative and idealistic in the way he thinks - his only limit is his own mind. He pushes himself to think outside the box and come up with solutions to problems he might stumble upon, although it isn't hard for the forty one year old to come up with a unique, new idea. Simon isn't afraid to ask questions to help him think through things. Being a curious person by nature, Simon likes to know the ins and outs of things and how they work. The former Ravenclaw isn't afraid to push himself to work harder and find out more things, and finds that the more he generally pushes himself, the better it is for him, as he generally does more and finds out more about whatever he's trying to do or find information on. He's a dreamer as well - usually his imagine takes him places he'd never thought he could go before. It's not uncommon for the man to start daydreaming on occasion.

He's also very self-aware, although not overly absorbed in himself. Simon knows just how intelligent he is, although he's never once thought himself better than any other wizard for any reason what so ever.

Application: After I was done with Pascal's elemental application, I was honestly so sure that I'd never have another elemental-based-SF on this site for a while. Apparently, though, I was wrong, because when we started talking about the elemental plots in the Dev Pool, this guy showed up and didn't seem to want to move out.

I've always adored ice as an element - it was one of the ones that I thought was absolutely enticing when I first joined. For a while I was actually going back and forth between air, earth, and ice for this guy here, but the more I thought about it and the more I fleshed him out, the more he became fitted to the ice element. Kind of quiet and shy, super smart when it came to certain things, overly creative and kind of eccentric in the way he did things. I chose air as his second affinity because of some of his secondary, not as "out there" traits. His curiosity, educatedness, and sophisticated nature are the ones that made me feel like air was a good fit for his second affinity.

With the plots being presented for Simon and his element, I definitely think it would add to his character as opposed to take away from it. With the big plot coming up, as well as some of the few I've talked to other drivers about beforehand, I think the opportunities to use Simon's SF practically will be great.

Future plots:
     big elemental plot: Simon will be heavily involved with the board wide Dev Pool plot, involving the taking of disupuli elementals as well as Inverness itself. With the absence of Peter Alva and a couple of the other harbingers, zealots will stand up in their place. Simon, being the oldest played zealot, will stand in Peter Alva's position, speaking for the ice elementals and helping with council decisions when it comes time for the Rouge elementals to make their move on the council. This will place a lot more responsibility on Simon's shoulders than he's used to, as well as make him work in a team, which is something he isn't really comfortable with yet.

     aias: The Traveler's Light's Aias will also be a big part of Simon's future plots. The Traveler's Light and I had previously talked about Aias and Simon being friends, as we both think they would have gotten along if one hadn't been on the council and the other, a rouge. Even when we talked about them trying to convince the other to join their side, we decided it would be a civil debate as opposed to flinging elements around. Therefore, we decided they would be mates. Having a friend that's a rouge would be a major development point for Simon. On one hand, he'll want to turn Aias in, as he's fighting for the opposing side, but on the other, he'll want to protect him, as he knows it's hard for him to find a friend that he can really, really get along with. For this reason, he'll try to help Aias hide later on, when the whereabouts of rouges are questioned.

     taimi: Mamma Bear's Taimi, a rouge, is also a friend of Aias's. After a meeting with Aias, Simon will run into Taimi, who will try to convince Simon to join the rouge side. Although he's by the council's side 100%, Simon will heavily consider changing sides, if only for a moment. Although he'll stay aligned with the council, it will definitely cause a moment of confusion for Simon, which will make him question whether he's right or not.

     zina: Taylor's Zina is a young Discipulus Garth, who's been trained by Simon for a while. Since Zina doesn't have her biological parents around, she'll kind of see Simon, her teacher and an older man of her element, as a sort of father figure. Since Simon knows it's very unlikely he'll have children of his own, due to the fact that he doesn't want to go through the emotional damage of losing someone he loves, Simon will accept Zina as his sort-of-daughter. Seeing as Zina will eventually turn rouge, it will cause Simon to further question whether the council is right or not, and open up new plot opportunities for Simon to try to get Zina to return to the council in the future.

     zoé: With the absence of Peter Alva, in addition to stepping up to his post, Simon will also be helping teach some of his students. One of these will be Soufflé Girl's Zoé, who he'll become closer with after a while. After the kidnapping of the disciplus students, Zoé will escape and come to Simon to seek refuge. Simon will, of course, take Zoé in, and the two will eventually help get the other students back.

I also plan to talk to others if his app gets accepted. At the moment, I've just been a little keen to get Simon here up and going.

RP sample using the feature: It was cold in his bedroom - nothing else was to be expected of Simon Ainsworth, however. Cold was comfort for the older man - it's crisp nature provided the perfect climate for Simon to think in, as well as work in. Hotter climates, tropical and more southern climates made the man clammy - gross and sweaty and sticky. Those were no working climates, not at all. Simon always found that he could only focus on the sweat that would build on the back of his neck as opposed to the work that he would try to concentrate on. He always kept his flat cold, even if it did sometimes make his guests uncomfortable.

The forty one year old was hunched over one of many books on elementals that he owned or had borrowed, studying the words that laid on it's pages. This time, he was getting ready for the harbinger trials of Demeter Gray, one of the older Madin elementals that Simon had come to know and respect. She was twice his age, if not a bit more, and she definitely knew what she was talking about when it came to her element.

With the mumbling of the spell, "Garth Figura," and a wave of his hand, an ice statue of a man formed at the former Ravenclaw's side. Simon flipped to the next page of the book on the desk in front of him, his eyes scanning the paper at a quick rate. Nothing he seemed to be looking at had anything to do with the former harbinger trials of harbinger elementals, nothing in the stacks of pages that laid out on his desk, having been moved there the previous day from the bookshelves in his other room. He figured there had to be a log somewhere, with each and every trial that had ever been used since the beginning of the council. It wasn't like Inverness to have trials without keeping track of them. "Garth Demonus." Simon mumbled shortly after turning the page again.

The statue that had previously been standing static next to Simon's desk had come to life, stepping forward as Simon looked over at it for just a second before looking down to his book again. He'd smiled slightly as he read the next words - the Demonus spell had been one he'd struggled with for a while, but one that he'd gotten a hold of a while back. It was still amazing for the man when he'd gotten it right, even if he had before. "I need the copy of the log book on elementals in Inverness from the living area," The English man told the statue.

It was only a few short moments before an older book was placed by Simon's side. The brunette closed the book he'd been looking at before, in order to open the one that had been placed at his side. "Thank you." He spoke shortly, staring at the book in front of him. "If you could get me a cup of Earl Gray, that would be lovely..."

^{((NOTE: There's nothing in the guide that states how Garth Demonus works, so I took some liberties. I hope it's alright!))}

Name: Taylor (C!)
Character name: Kyllikki Kirkkomäki
Feature you are applying for: Disciplus Madin
Description of the character:

Perhaps the most prominent trait that Kyllikki Kirkkomäki has is her intensely energetic and happy-go-lucky nature. She has an incredible ability to brush off insults and doesn't let anything anybody else says bother her or get her down. That being said, Kylli can be self-critical, though this applies solely to academics and wand work. When she was younger, Kylli would compare herself to both her Aki and Kaisa who excelled at wand work when she didn't. Her self-criticism has become less frequent as she ages, but she will still sometimes compare herself to Aki who is more intelligent. Nonetheless, the blonde has a very bubbly personality that some might feel exhausting because of her seemingly limitless energy.

An optimist through and through, Kylli not only sees and hopes for the best, but she expects it as well, refusing to see bad in anything. Kyllikki is very talkative. Not just to her friends or family, but to everybody, even complete strangers. To her, strangers are just friends she hasn't met yet. Kylli is incredibly naive and gullible, though this is not to say that she isn't smart, the blonde just doesn't have very much life experience and can be influenced extremely easily. She's quite open-minded which only adds to her gullibility because it doesn't take very much in order to change her mind or plant new ideas. It doesn't help that she's extremely friendly and will try to befriend anyone and everyone. Once she makes friends with someone, they have her full trust and there really isn't much that one can do to lose her trust. With trust comes loyalty. Kyllikki would say that she would go to the ends of the Earth and back, which is completely true. There's no limit to what she would do for her friends.

Ever honest, Kylli doesn't see much point in lying. This is partially because she wears her heart on her sleeve; every emotion and intent is clear through her facial expressions and how she speaks. Even though the blonde has tried many times to hide her emotions nothing has worked and it is still obvious what her emotions and intents are. That being said, Kylli is very intuitive and can usually tell what others are thinking or if they are lying. The blonde has a high work ethic and is very reliable and hard working. If she says she'll do something, it will be done, not only quickly, but also to the best of her ability. In addition, Kyllikki rather enjoys working and will often volunteer to do work.

Application:

Kyllikki was the first character whose muse entered into my head when I joined the site, and she is probably the only character who hasn't undergone major personality changes with time and sheet writing. Not only has she stayed pretty much the same but I always have muse for her. The question is, why didn't I make Kylli as my first character? The answer is simple. She has always been Finnish and would therefore attend Durmstrang. As a brand new member, the Russian school was pretty intimidating. So I let her sit while I worked on other characters. Now, just because she hasn't changed much, doesn't mean that she hasn't developed, because she really has grown and she has changed a little bit, but only in minor things.

Is being an elemental an essential part of her character? Of course not. Kyllikki would function mostly as well without this feature, and I'll sort her and play her regardless, so why am I applying? When I was looking over the vast list of special features one day, I discovered elementalism. Being a feature completely unique to MH I was, of course, curious as to what the feature was, so I read the guide. I thought the feature was ingenious, and so very in depth, but it didn't really occur to me that any of my characters might have it. As Kylli began to develop and become more shaped, however, something about elementalism kept nagging at me. I began to consider her with the feature, and it added some depth! It added struggles! Now, as stated once before, I will play her regardless, but she just won't have nearly the same depth without being an elemental as she would with the feature.

It added to her character, yes, and yet, I was still on the fence of whether or not I would apply for the feature. I went back and forth several times between starting her application, and deciding against it, each time becoming more and more convinced that I should at least try to apply for it. In all honesty, the thing that really made me apply for it now (because I would have applied for her to have it eventually) was all the talk about an elemental plot, which gave me extra muse for Kyllikki and I decided to go for it.

Kyllikki is, by no means, the perfect example of an earth elemental, but she wasn't meant to be. That would defeat the purpose. She does have a lot of the same attributes, she's kind, hard working, and honest, but there are also differences; she's very gullible and naive, easy to influence, and incredibly energetic. Despite these differences, I chose earth because I believe that it fits her character well.

Future plots:

The first and biggest plot that Kyllikki will participate in is, of course, the very large, board wide elemental plot being discussed in the Dev Pool. The plan is for a large chunk of the discipli to get kidnapped, brainwashed, and turned to the rogue side. Essentially, this will give the rogues enough strength to attempt a take over of Inverness. A large battle will ensue and in the end, the rogues will win and capture Inverness.

Kyllikki is extremely trusting and naive so when approached by Mamma Bear's fire elemental Taimi, will hang on to her every word. Tai will then convince Kylli that she would be better off on the rogue side, and by the end, Kyllikki will practically go along willingly. Kylli will then be kidnapped by Tai and will be brainwashed to fight with the rogues. Honestly, it probably won't take much to get her on the rogue side because she's incredibly gullible, and she'll help with taking over Inverness. While stuck at the rogue compound, she will see a lot of her friends there, some of which will try to convince her to return to the Council side.

Taylor and I have discussed possibilities between Kyllikki and Zina, and have decided that if their applications are approved, Zina will end up being the first person that Kylli will ever dislike. Kyllikki, who has a large family, will be talking to Zina about them. This will cause Zina, who doesn't have much family, to become highly irritated and will blast Kylli with an ice spell. This will be highly damaging to Kyllikki, as ice would be her counter element. Kylli will then go through first a stage of fright where she will be afraid of Zina, and will end up disliking her. This will be a great time of confusion for Kyllikki as she has never met a person that she doesn't like, and will be struggling to understand her feelings. After Kylli is iced, she will have this intense fear of ice elementals and will become rather cautious around them. Soufflé Girl's Zoé, whose element is ice, will try to convince Kyllikki that she doesn't have to be afraid of all ice elementals.

RP sample using the feature:
 
Kyllikki Kirkkomäki was extremely happy that classes were out for the day. Her final class of the school day was Curse Breaking and she was terrible at it. She knew why, of course, so she wasn't too upset with herself. While Kylli did think it would be nice if she could pull off the simplest of spells with her wand, she knew that she was excellent in other areas of magic. Unfortunately, those areas had to be kept a secret from most everybody else.

Kylli hummed to herself as she skipped out onto the grounds. She needed something to do until dinner. Unfortunately, it wasn't a weekend, so she couldn't go to Belushya Guba, she had already read her newest shipment of books, and she really didn't want to do homework just yet. There was always something to do outside. Maybe she would climb a tree. Yes, she would climb a tree and write to her father.

As she approached the perfect tree to climb, Kylli noticed a patch of assorted flowers that had obviously been eaten by some animal. It made sense, and Kylli wasn't sad that the flowers were destroyed, but it sure wasn't aesthetically pleasing, all those dead plants. She could do something about the dead area though, as long as nobody was around. Kyllikki glanced around, just to be absolutely certain that she was alone before kneeling down before the patch and muttering, "Madin Adaugesco." She sat back on her heels to watch the spell run it's course.

A few minutes later, the once dead patch of land, was now abundant in flowers and other foliage. At least she was good at some magic. It was gratifying, she had to admit, although disappointing that she couldn't show anyone else. Secrets were horrible, and difficult to keep for Kylli. She just wanted to talk about everything, and be completely open, but she had learned to keep away from certain subjects because they would raise questions, and Kyllikki had never been able to pull off a convincing lie. She had been lucky thus far, that was for sure, and she was even luckier that nobody had caught her today. There was no way she could explain what had happened to the dead patch without spilling her guts and letting out her secret.

Name: Tori
Character name: Simon Ainsworth
Feature you are applying for: Zealot Garth // Second Affinity Typh

Description of the character: On the surface, Simon Ainsworth is quiet. Although he is friendly and will hold a conversation with those who approach him, he's definitely not the type to start a conversation with those he doesn't know. He's rather shy towards those that introduce themselves to him, although this is more because he's not sure what to say at times, not because he's afraid to talk to people. Simon tends to open up to those that talk to him after a few minutes of conversation, after he gets more comfortable around them. The more comfortable Simon is with a person, the more he talks to them, although he does usually tend to try to keep to himself.

Whether he knows the person or not, when Simon gets talking about a subject that he finds interesting or fascinating, he doesn't stop. He'll talk someone's ear off if they let him. As a man who studies a lot on the things he finds interesting, Simon could probably talk for hours and hours unless someone cuts him off. He's very passionate about certain things, and once he finds something that he likes he generally immerses himself in learning about whatever it is until he knows everything there is to know about whatever it is. He's rather eccentric and unconventional in the way he does things - he prefers to walk to the beat of his own drum when he does things as to doing them the way others do them. He generally finds that he works better if he does things his own way.

When it comes to doing work, Simon much prefers being on his own. Although he can work in a group with others if it's required, he's much more efficient when he's working on his own. It takes some time to get Simon to be open to working with others - much more than it does for the man to open up and talk to people comfortably. He finds that working on his own gives him more freedom to do with his work as he pleases, and more time to think around problems he might come across.

Simon's very creative and idealistic in the way he thinks - his only limit is his own mind. He pushes himself to think outside the box and come up with solutions to problems he might stumble upon, although it isn't hard for the forty one year old to come up with a unique, new idea. Simon isn't afraid to ask questions to help him think through things. Being a curious person by nature, Simon likes to know the ins and outs of things and how they work. The former Ravenclaw isn't afraid to push himself to work harder and find out more things, and finds that the more he generally pushes himself, the better it is for him, as he generally does more and finds out more about whatever he's trying to do or find information on. He's a dreamer as well - usually his imagine takes him places he'd never thought he could go before. It's not uncommon for the man to start daydreaming on occasion.

He's also very self-aware, although not overly absorbed in himself. Simon knows just how intelligent he is, although he's never once thought himself better than any other wizard for any reason what so ever.

Application: After I was done with Pascal's elemental application, I was honestly so sure that I'd never have another elemental-based-SF on this site for a while. Apparently, though, I was wrong, because when we started talking about the elemental plots in the Dev Pool, this guy showed up and didn't seem to want to move out.

I've always adored ice as an element - it was one of the ones that I thought was absolutely enticing when I first joined. For a while I was actually going back and forth between air, earth, and ice for this guy here, but the more I thought about it and the more I fleshed him out, the more he became fitted to the ice element. Kind of quiet and shy, super smart when it came to certain things, overly creative and kind of eccentric in the way he did things. I chose air as his second affinity because of some of his secondary, not as "out there" traits. His curiosity, educatedness, and sophisticated nature are the ones that made me feel like air was a good fit for his second affinity.

With the plots being presented for Simon and his element, I definitely think it would add to his character as opposed to take away from it. With the big plot coming up, as well as some of the few I've talked to other drivers about beforehand, I think the opportunities to use Simon's SF practically will be great.

Future plots:
     big elemental plot: Simon will be heavily involved with the board wide Dev Pool plot, involving the taking of disupuli elementals as well as Inverness itself. With the absence of Peter Alva and a couple of the other harbingers, zealots will stand up in their place. Simon, being the oldest played zealot, will stand in Peter Alva's position, speaking for the ice elementals and helping with council decisions when it comes time for the Rouge elementals to make their move on the council. This will place a lot more responsibility on Simon's shoulders than he's used to, as well as make him work in a team, which is something he isn't really comfortable with yet.

     aias: The Traveler's Light's Aias will also be a big part of Simon's future plots. The Traveler's Light and I had previously talked about Aias and Simon being friends, as we both think they would have gotten along if one hadn't been on the council and the other, a rouge. Even when we talked about them trying to convince the other to join their side, we decided it would be a civil debate as opposed to flinging elements around. Therefore, we decided they would be mates. Having a friend that's a rouge would be a major development point for Simon. On one hand, he'll want to turn Aias in, as he's fighting for the opposing side, but on the other, he'll want to protect him, as he knows it's hard for him to find a friend that he can really, really get along with. For this reason, he'll try to help Aias hide later on, when the whereabouts of rouges are questioned.

     taimi: Mamma Bear's Taimi, a rouge, is also a friend of Aias's. After a meeting with Aias, Simon will run into Taimi, who will try to convince Simon to join the rouge side. Although he's by the council's side 100%, Simon will heavily consider changing sides, if only for a moment. Although he'll stay aligned with the council, it will definitely cause a moment of confusion for Simon, which will make him question whether he's right or not.

     zina: Taylor's Zina is a young Discipulus Garth, who's been trained by Simon for a while. Since Zina doesn't have her biological parents around, she'll kind of see Simon, her teacher and an older man of her element, as a sort of father figure. Since Simon knows it's very unlikely he'll have children of his own, due to the fact that he doesn't want to go through the emotional damage of losing someone he loves, Simon will accept Zina as his sort-of-daughter. Seeing as Zina will eventually turn rouge, it will cause Simon to further question whether the council is right or not, and open up new plot opportunities for Simon to try to get Zina to return to the council in the future.

     zoé: With the absence of Peter Alva, in addition to stepping up to his post, Simon will also be helping teach some of his students. One of these will be Soufflé Girl's Zoé, who he'll become closer with after a while. After the kidnapping of the disciplus students, Zoé will escape and come to Simon to seek refuge. Simon will, of course, take Zoé in, and the two will eventually help get the other students back.

I also plan to talk to others if his app gets accepted. At the moment, I've just been a little keen to get Simon here up and going.

RP sample using the feature: It was cold in his bedroom - nothing else was to be expected of Simon Ainsworth, however. Cold was comfort for the older man - it's crisp nature provided the perfect climate for Simon to think in, as well as work in. Hotter climates, tropical and more southern climates made the man clammy - gross and sweaty and sticky. Those were no working climates, not at all. Simon always found that he could only focus on the sweat that would build on the back of his neck as opposed to the work that he would try to concentrate on. He always kept his flat cold, even if it did sometimes make his guests uncomfortable.

The forty one year old was hunched over one of many books on elementals that he owned or had borrowed, studying the words that laid on it's pages. This time, he was getting ready for the harbinger trials of Demeter Gray, one of the older Madin elementals that Simon had come to know and respect. She was twice his age, if not a bit more, and she definitely knew what she was talking about when it came to her element.

With the mumbling of the spell, "Garth Figura," and a wave of his hand, an ice statue of a man formed at the former Ravenclaw's side. Simon flipped to the next page of the book on the desk in front of him, his eyes scanning the paper at a quick rate. Nothing he seemed to be looking at had anything to do with the former harbinger trials of harbinger elementals, nothing in the stacks of pages that laid out on his desk, having been moved there the previous day from the bookshelves in his other room. He figured there had to be a log somewhere, with each and every trial that had ever been used since the beginning of the council. It wasn't like Inverness to have trials without keeping track of them. "Garth Demonus." Simon mumbled shortly after turning the page again.

The statue that had previously been standing static next to Simon's desk had come to life, stepping forward as Simon looked over at it for just a second before looking down to his book again. He'd smiled slightly as he read the next words - the Demonus spell had been one he'd struggled with for a while, but one that he'd gotten a hold of a while back. It was still amazing for the man when he'd gotten it right, even if he had before. "I need the copy of the log book on elementals in Inverness from the living area," The English man told the statue.

It was only a few short moments before an older book was placed by Simon's side. The brunette closed the book he'd been looking at before, in order to open the one that had been placed at his side. "Thank you." He spoke shortly, staring at the book in front of him. "If you could get me a cup of Earl Gray, that would be lovely..."

^{((NOTE: There's nothing in the guide that states how Garth Demonus works, so I took some liberties. I hope it's alright!))}

~ Approved