Edensphere Application
PLAYER INFO
NAME: Joysweeper
LJ: joysweeper
AGE: 21
CONTACT: Email/AIM/MSN/Y!IM/GChat? joysweeper@hotmail.com (SURPRISE TWIST - this is now email and AIM.)
LOCATION/TIME ZONE: EST
CURRENT CHARACTERS, if any: Wedge Antilles/Rogue Leader, Juhani/Sylvar.
CHARACTER INFO
CHARACTER NAME: Keladry of Mindelan
SERIES: The Tortall Universe, specifically the Protector of the Small quartet.
RESERVED: Yes
WISHLIST: No
PERSONALITY:
Kel is mildly cheerful when in a good mood and otherwise very, very stoic. She was raised that way. To her, unrestrained displays of strong emotions are like picking your nose - you don't do that in public. She does understand that for most people it's not like that, but it's still something she won't do. Certainly she feels, and strongly, but she hides this under a blank expression and calm body language. Someone who knows her well can tell when she's hiding her feelings, and when her smile is purely social.
She also doesn't speak up much when she has nothing to contribute. Words said can't be unsaid, and someone has to listen to chatter. Might as well be her. She tends to think of complaints, and excuses, as whining. While she thinks of all kinds of snide comments and responses, she very rarely voices them - and even then, it's to close friends unless she's ordered to voice them or feels that people she's responsible for are at stake.
Together, those two traits make her seem shy, unfeeling, or impassive around strangers. When she was the first and only openly female page, her lack of reaction to insults, teasing, and attempts to make her quit earned her the nickname Yamani Lump. She's a friendly girl, really, and helpful to those who ask and sometimes those who don't, but quiet. People who she's friendly with get to see another side, one that participates in friendly teasing, sometimes even shows a little temper, but even it is fairly stoic.
Deeply hidden, usually, is a perverse streak. When she was a page she wore dresses to dinner to remind the people who didn't think she could cut it that she was still there. Often she thought of but never voiced snappy responses to people she didn't like. Those times she did voice them are rare, though more common once she was in charge and couldn't let insubordination pass - a trader who questioned her ability to manage a refugee camp by referring to her sex life was dryly questioned about how well his manhood was functioning and assigned to latrine duty. She's both embarrassed and, secretly, pleased to have friends who defend her to other people, but she doesn't want them getting into trouble about it.
In an emergency or just a chaotic situation she's proven able to take charge and lead with a cool head. Even when terrifying things are happening; being attacked by spider monsters, climbing a cliff while under attack by bandits, fighting a seemingly-invulnerable monster that no one's seen before, a mage causing chasms to open up in the earth... Even terrified, after her fear of heights was conquered she never froze for more than a second. If someone else leads she accepts this without any trouble; if she disagrees with her orders she may make a levelheaded protest but will follow them. Unless it means abandoning someone she's responsible for.
She's very fair. Kel understands that people who dislike her aren't necessarily bad people, and she's accepting of this. When hurt in training she doesn't blame her partners. When her training master constantly held her to an overly high standard she usually defended him as her friends criticized this, and believed that he would come around. Her knight-master taught her that the commander should be willing to take on all of the same chores tackled by the commanded, and she took this to heart. While running a refugee camp she put her name on every job list but the two most popular ones, hunting and fishing.
While she's afraid of heights, after being forced to climb down the outside of a hundred-foot tower to get her maid to safety she was cured of the crippling aspect of this fear. She'll never like heights, but neither do they disable her anymore, though for ES this might get reset partly.
Kel very much does not believe in the superiority of the strong over the weak. She's called the Protector of the Small because that's what she does - tries to protect the weak and the small no matter what cost it has to her. Admittedly in most modern fiction very few people explicitly think of commoners as lesser people than nobles, so the fact that she doesn't isn't terribly meaningful in a game. She will pull rank if she must, but that's because she's also pragmatic - she uses the tools for the job.
Though she eats meat, she has a great respect for animals. When she was young she'd nurse them back to health; in the books she fought a group of boys and a spiderlike monster to save a sack of kittens, she took on a mean destrier rather than let him be culled, and she stopped a cook from killing an ugly dog for stealing sausages. She also cared for a baby griffin despite it being a nasty, savage thing that left her hands covered in scars, though this was in part because she didn't think it would be fair to saddle anyone else with him.
When she found a boy in an inn who was being beaten by the innkeeper, she bought him off the innkeeper - pulling noble rank as she did so, when the innkeeper was recalcitrant - and made him her servant, also teaching him to read and defend himself. She's taught a lot of people to defend themselves, really, and enjoys it.
She will go to any length to care for and protect the people in her care. She risked repeating the four years of page training to find and save her maid. She risked desertion under fire and hanging for treason to find and bring back the people from her refugee camp after they were overrun and stolen away. In both cases Kel completely expected to have the punishments handed down on her - you're not supposed to not show up to take an examination, and you're not supposed to ignore a superior officer's orders and then vanish in the middle of a war. She knew what the punishments were both times. Both times she was very taken aback when they were waived because of why she'd done what she'd done.
Maybe it's because her father's an ambassador, but Kel's rather tolerant and doesn't show much fear in the face of the unknown or people more powerful than she. She understands that Yamani customs don't apply in Tortall. She got over having a seven-foot-tall lizardman as a teacher fairly soon. Mages don't frighten her, no matter their reputation or what she sees them do - she can look past the fact that Numair summoned many boulders from ten miles away and floated them into position and see that he's exhausted, and go to bring him water. She's mentioned to be the only one to pray for dead enemy soldiers, sent by their king to die so far from home.
She doesn't lose her temper. Kel gets angry, certainly, but she rarely displays it. In battlefield conditions she may snap at someone who's being dense, but by and large her reactions to insubordination are fairly measured. If she's going to snap at a friend for doing something stupid, she does it in private. Around people who don't like her she's stoic, sometimes resigned, and works as hard as ever.
Kel is direct, pragmatic, and polite in day-to-day matters; she understands things best if they're stated outright. She works hard at any task given and tends to hold herself to too-high standards.
Because she tends to form crushes on men who are helpful or friendly to her, crushes which fade with distance, she endlessly worries that she's fickle, and frets that they don't see her as someone to romance, though she wouldn't change her body to look more girlish. Fortunately she's able to keep her head and hide these crushes from the people in question, even if people who know her well can tell that she's developed feelings.
TIMELINE:
Her last appearance was in one of the Daughter of the Lioness books, in 462 HE. Just at the very end of the war with Scanra and two years after Lady Knight, so - right about then, when she's just shy of twenty years old.
BACKGROUND:
What you need to know of the 'verse: Tortall is the kingdom where this is set; to the north is hostile pseudo-Russian Scanra, to the west is the sea and the pseudo-Japanese Yamani Islands. In the distant past there had been lady knights, but for two hundred years it was men only. When a woman disguised herself as a boy, then a man, was knighted, and helped save the kingdom after being found out, the ban was officially lifted. Soon after that "immortals", mythical creatures who live forever unless killed, came back into the world due to the interference of mages.
A mage lives in the capital of Tortall. She has magic with animals, and a side effect is that animals living in her general vicinity gradually acquire more and more human-type intelligence.
Keladry of Mindelan's family was only very newly enobled; her great-grandparents were commoners. Fief Mindelan lay in the northwest, not far from either Scanra or the Yamani Islands. She was the youngest child. Three of her brothers became knights. When she was very young, one of those brothers held her outside of the window of a tower, giving her a lasting fear of heights.
When Kel was four years old, her father, an ambassador, took himself and his family to the Yamani Islands, where they stayed for six years. She was mocked there by other children for being a clumsy, big outsider who didn't know much, but a young second-rank princess and her retinue made friends with her. While she was in a temple viewing a pair of sacred relics, Scanran raiders attacked. Her mother held them off with a glaive and kept the relics from capture, and this gained them the gratitude of the Emperor. The ambassador was able to negotiate a treaty between Tortall and the Yamani Islands, and then Kel and her family went back to Fief Mindelan.
Girls were officially allowed to become knights, and Kel's parents supported her when she wanted to try to enter the program - four years training and studying as a page at the palace, four years learning under a knight as a squire, then an Ordeal. But the training master sent back that if she became a page there would be a probationary period of one year. Kel went out walking to consider it, fought some boys who were trying to drown kittens, and then tried to fight a spiderlike monster that showed up to eat the kittens. After that, she decided to go and try for knighthood despite being under probation, so she wouldn't be helpless to stop something like that again.
At the palace, almost everyone wanted to see her fail. The training master constantly held her to standards higher than those he set for the boys. His star pupil arranged for her to receive practice weapons that were weighted, three times heavier than what the others got. Kel never complained out loud. She worked endlessly to build her muscles, get around pranks, and learn everything.
She did make friends with Neal, an older and very learned first-year page. When picking a horse she went with the mean Peachblossom in order to save him. Neal took her to a mage who spoke with animals, who helped Kel negotiate a deal with Peachblossom. If he behaved with her, she would take care of him. Kel also fed a flock of sparrows until they "adopted" her and eventually started to defend her, help defend others, and take orders.
Knights were not supposed to pick on the weak and the small, they were supposed to defend and protect them, but Kel saw a lot of bullying going on between older pages and new ones. She dedicated herself to stopping that, getting into many fights. Neal and, slowly, other friends eventually joined her, and it stopped.
At the pages' summer camping trip spiderlike monsters were discovered. When the sparrows who had followed her from the palace reacted to her wish that they could help find the monsters, Kel ended up leading a hunting party to find them. While the main group was fighting them, she watched the rear for any coming up to ambush and rallied the other watchers. Later the training master reluctantly allowed that she had passed the probationary period and could continue training.
Page training continued, though overt attempts to make her quit and bullying both decreased over time. She acquired a very ugly dog and an incredibly shy maid. In time her maid became less shy and fearful, and Kel taught her self-defense, as well as tutoring younger pages. Kel developed a crush on Neal that she was careful to hide.
Summer camp one year involved her group of pages stumbling upon a bandit camp in supposedly safe territory. Kel took charge of her group, killed a man, and got them holed up in a cave on a cliff until reinforcements arrived. She'd just turned twelve.
Part of page training involves the big examinations at the end of the fourth year; being late means repeating years. One of her enemies kidnapped her maid so that she would either have to repeat all four years or shirk her duty. Kel chose to find her maid, who was bound and gagged in the tallest tower in the Palace, and saved her. She had to lead them both down the damaged outer stair to get to the ground. Despite missing the examinations, Kel was allowed to take them later and became a squire; the training master had been impressed by the lengths she would go to for someone under her charge.
As a squire she was selected by Raoul of Goldenlake, a huge knight who commanded a company of the King's Own, a sort of small elite army unit. With them, Kel ranged all over the country, taking on bandits, hostile immortals, and natural disasters. Raoul's standard-bearer was the nephew of a traitor to the country, who'd been prevented from entering into a more prestigious branch of service due to his family history. He was jealous of Kel and tried to get her in trouble. She understood why he was jealous and didn't respond or tattle on him; eventually they reached an understanding.
It was because of some knights saying that this standard-bearer was a traitor like his aunt that Kel got into tournament jousting. She'd learned how and been good at it as a page, but she showed a real talent for it in tournaments. Around then Kel had a romance with Cleon, who'd been a page at the same time as she was, but ultimately this never went beyond heavy petting.
After helping keep bandits from pillaging a village, Kel found that one of them had been keeping a live baby griffin for its valuable feathers. Nobody can lie around a griffin, their feathers have illusion-breaking properties, and people who touch their babies will be savaged by their parents. Since she'd touched this one without knowing what it was, Kel decided to care for it until a mage could find and explain to its family; the mage couldn't take it and she didn't think it would be fair to make anyone else do it. The baby griffin gave her scars on every finger and attacked her regularly until it could be returned to its parents.
When the courts found who had hired thugs to kidnap her maid, Kel was incensed to find that the noble who did it, one of her tormenters from her first year, was able to get off with a fine he could easily pay. If she'd been kidnapped, the punishment would have been far more severe, and she believed that a mere fine, most of it paid to her and not the maid herself, was like saying the common folk were slaves, their lives paid in coin. She ended up talking to her king about changing the laws.
In her final year as a squire, Kel, her knight-master, and his small army were stationed at the border with Scanra, which was threatening to go to war. During this time Kel fought and with the help of a squad killed a device that looked like nothing she'd ever seen before, mechanical and vaguely rat- or insect-like. Opening its head and killing it released a child's spirit. There were reports of more of these killing devices being used by Scanrans against Tortall.
Every year, when she was in the capital, Kel touched the door to the Chamber of the Ordeal, and it gave her a vision of her current worst nightmare. When the time came for her Ordeal of Knighthood and she actually went inside, after making her live through a few more the Chamber showed her that these killing devices were made by a mage using dead children, and told her to stop him. Though she left the Chamber and was knighted, she regularly dreamed of what she'd seen.
Not long after that, she went back in to demand that the Chamber tell her where it was happening so that she could stop it. It couldn't, existing outside of her idea of time and space, telling her that it would come to her. She found this incredibly frustrating - she'd hoped to learn where this was so she could go, since she didn't want to leave whatever post she was assigned to.
That post she ended up assigned to was managing a fortified refugee camp, Haven, not far from the border. Kel resented the assignment, since it felt like she was being kept safe away from the war, but her former training master told her that she was the only one he trusted to do this. To lead so many fractious people who would inevitably be attacked, to manage them with respect and a sense of command.
And she did, even if she sometimes did have trouble getting them to listen to her. Haven wasn't terribly neat and certainly wasn't quiet, but she did run it capably. When Scanrans attacked with killing devices, she helped drive them back. Victories like this left her confident enough to leave her people to report back to her former training master in person.
While there, the young servant she'd adopted on the road to Haven found her to bring her the news that a huge raiding party, with many killing devices, had attacked and overrun the camp. Kel rushed back and searched the ruins in shock. Many defenders had been killed, but most of the population - including the two hundred refugee children - had been taken away.
Her training master, preoccupied with the rest of the war, ordered her to bury her dead and return, but Kel couldn't obey. Knowing full well what she was doing, she ordered the soldiers left with her to scout ahead and fled on horseback to start tracking. Friends she'd made as a page and while working with Raoul caught up with her and put themselves under her command; she couldn't get them to turn back, so she took command, crossed the border into Scanra, and liberated the surviving adults of Haven from slavers.
But the camp's children had been taken to the man who made children into killing devices. Some of Kel's force was set to taking the adults back into Tortall, some went with her in pursuit, taking out a few killing devices on the way. The town the mage was in was almost without children, since he'd taken them all. They had no option but to serve him or be killed, but the single child in the town - a girl who could see the future - helped persuade them to help Kel and her people.
They snuck into the castle, freed the children, killed the soldiers, and Kel confronted the mage, who offered to defect and offer his services to Tortall, meanwhile trying to enchant her. She refused and killed him - while she didn't think her king would accept the services of a man who made killing devices fueled by the souls of children he had murdered, it was better not to tempt him. Then she burned his castle and all of his notes, and broke her own rule about not leaving the enemy for carrion defilers for the soldiers who had served him.
After that she took the children and the town's population back to Tortall and submitted to judgment, fully expecting to be executed. But her former training master knew after the fact that he had given an order that would be disobeyed, and with all things considered - her punishment was to set up and get into working order a new fortified refugee camp, this time with the resources she hadn't had in Haven.
And she did this. The war wasn't over yet, but without the near-invulnerable killing devices and the fear they evoked, the Scanrans didn't have as much of an advantage. The new camp, New Hope, repelled all invaders and stood fast.
ABILITIES:
For a woman without any powers, Kel's very strong with enviable endurance, ability to withstand pain, and general combat skills. She's a tall girl, solid-waisted, with powerful shoulders and arms. She can fight competently at hand to hand and wield a bow, sword, spear, staff, axe, war hammer, or lance with the best of them, though her real skill lies with the glaive or naginata.
Fandom says that she does have one ability, that being the power to get her friends to hook up with each other, but that's only happened to six of them. And two of them were formally engaged beforehand, she just helped them warm up to each other.
I tend to infer from the books that she has slight wild magic. Not enough to require training, not even enough to simply speak to animals. Just enough affinity to have a better-than-average sense of what they feel or are trying to communicate just from watching them. And to make them understand what she feels or tries to tell them. It helps that the animals she's around have been exposed to enough wild magic to be unusually intelligent by human standards.
She's got various non-supernatural skills not directly related to combat, too. Kel is capable at fletching, or feathering arrows. She enjoys and is good at mathematics. She enjoys teaching or helping people with things she's good at, including self-defense for women. She can create accurate maps of terrain, after either walking it or studying it from a height. She was taught how to pitch her voice to carry over distance and noise and is okay at paperwork and supply and demand. As well, she has the skills for camping rough. Not to mention a talent for command.
Just don't ask her to try carpentry or plowing. It doesn't work well.
GAME INFO
EDENSPHERE NAME: Peachblossom
BIRTHDAY LOG: ...Think I'll pass unless any really interesting siblings pop up.
DREAM: (3rd person POV, please)
She sat alone on a stone bench in a sparse gray chapel, in front of an undecorated iron door.
She was terribly cold, from her toes to her scalp. Steam was pluming out of her nose and mouth as she breathed and rising from her skin; she wore undyed cotton garments that did nothing to keep her warm, and she was shivering, all of her skin puckered into gooseflesh. She kept her mouth open enough to keep her teeth from chattering against each other, not wanting the sound.
What lay beyond the door was alive, she knew. Or... alive might not be the best term. Aware, maybe. This far away, she was just barely in its power.
It was something great and terrible and utterly, utterly indifferent, with all the warmth and hatred of a force of nature. She desperately didn't want to be here with it, but she wanted this done.
She reached for the door. Somehow it seemed more real than anything else. When her fingers reached it, the world changed.
useless
not allowed to fight defend protect
kept safe
kept away could change things could help them
kept safe
kept safe live safe others fighting others dying could help them want to need to
female expected to be weak fragile can't be risked on the battlefield ability is a fluke tradition
needed greatly needed every blade to fight defend protect
can't go
kept safe
imprisoned
She opened her eyes, heard her breath coming harsher and faster, held in her anger. She was back in the unheated chapel, in front of the iron door, and the reality was back with her. They'd tried to tell her she couldn't do this, they'd tried to keep her safe when they needed every able body, including her. They'd almost kept her from this. But now she was here.
What she'd lived just now had never happened. Never like that. It had been a perfect illusion, from the creaking of the stuffed-leather padded chairs to the smell of the smoky fireplace to the condescending look in his eyes, like he was doing her a favor. But it hadn't happened. She didn't even know who he was; while she had been living it she had known who and where and everything, but those details were escaping now.
She'd gotten through what had happened, shown them that she was as capable as anyone. She'd get through this.
When she thought she was ready, she reached for the door again, with a little more force. It would not drive her away this easily.
high up
terribly high up
ground spiraling away far too far
can't look away
hold tightly don't let go can't move have to hold on can't look away
don't let go
don't let go
hands cramping don't let go can't look away far too far
don't let go hands cramping don't let go far too far
far too far don't let go hands cramping fingers numb slipping
slipping
grab can't reach slipping tearing free of fingers falling
falling
falling
This time as it ended she was gasping, still feeling a little bit of the lurch in her stomach. Bile rose in her throat and she swallowed repeatedly, staring fixedly at the flagstones. They were chilled, very solid, and comfortingly close. She was fine. She wasn't falling. She'd never been on a cliff that high.
It took her longer this time. She didn't want to do this. To see these things; they felt real, even if so many of the details escaped her the moment she pulled away. She studied her hands, covered in scars both fine and not-so-fine, and found her courage again.
When she told her arm to reach out and touch the door, it obeyed, even if it shook a little. This time she had the uncanny sense that something on the other side was reaching back.
can't
raiders men on horseback centaurs spidrens machines
can't defend
can't move bound with invisible ropes fight them they won't shift
can't even stand
raiders
the camp
not ready defenders are slow gates not locked
can't help them
overrun
fire panic screaming chaos
slaughter
can't help them can't get up can't do anything helpless
put to the torch
supposed to protect them
have to watch
raider laughing riding closer takes a child child screams
casual almost an afterthought
sword can't dodge it
pain falling bleeding out rider keeps going left here
dying in the dust
dying
everyone is dead or enslaved
couldn't stop them
dying
failed
Back in the chapel she blinked away hot stinging tears until they cooled on her cheeks, her expression as frozen as stone. She was breathing hard, great gasping sobs threatening to burst out, and she fought hard to control herself.
Though she knew it had never happened, her body ached, and she almost expected to feel dust in her hair, see blood soaking her clothing. She hadn't been able to save anyone.
She had to make it so that it never happened for real.
For a while she waited, hands clenching in the fabric of her trousers, until her heart rate had gone down and she was calm. Calmer. Stone. I am stone, she told herself, trying to will herself the serenity in these old, comforting images. My heart is a still mountain lake; these things will pass, and I will remain.
It was then that, like something out of a dream, the iron door swung open soundlessly. Beyond it was a small, boxlike chamber, almost a vault, the gray flagstones completely plain. It looked empty.
She knew it wasn't.
It wouldn't come to her. She had to come to it, she had to walk inside. Surrender herself to it on her own power, by her own will.
Anything could happen in there, and it would feel real - it would be real. Even more real than those visions; after all, those were only tests of courage, weren't they? When the visions ended, she was left unharmed, but in there if she failed she would die, or go mad, or-
But she had to do this. Swallowing hard, she tried to stand, and couldn't.
She couldn't make herself stand. Her feet weren't frozen to the floor, her legs were stiff from sitting unmoving in the cold but still worked. She just couldn't make herself stand to walk inside.
Imagine going this far and not being able to take the last steps. Literally! She could have laughed; might have, if she hadn't known it would be hard to stop. Hysterics might not hurt anyone and could make her feel better, but this wasn't the time or place.
She couldn't stay here. She wouldn't stay here, she wouldn't let them be right about her. Maybe she couldn't stand, but she thought she could feel it reach for her, and she reached back -
Maybe it was because the iron door wasn't in the way. This time the chapel stayed in place, not changing, and she stayed reaching out for something she couldn't see or touch. All that happened was that she heard someone familiar speaking to her, fondly but seriously, like a father having a serious discussion with his daughter.
The Ordeal is like a cutter of gemstones. The spirit inside - like the gods, it sees things in a way that seems cockeyed to we mortals. Maybe it is a god. But it will test you; it will find your flaws and hammer them open.
Should you survive your Ordeal, you will be sworn to protect those weaker than you, to obey your overlord, to live in a way that honors your kingdom and your gods. You may not ignore a cry for help. Rich and poor, young and old, male and female may look to you for rescue, and you cannot deny them.
This - she didn't know if this had happened or not, if this someone who she respected and trusted had said these words in this way. But it was true. It was true, and she wanted to be sworn to be that. She had to do this.
It was her duty.
She stood, a little bit shakily. Took a step towards the chamber. Another. What was inside wasn't reaching now. It knew she'd get there.
Another step and she'd be inside. Her hands were cold and stiff, but she still curled them into the tightest fists she could manage. She was afraid, of course she was afraid, but that didn't mean she had to show it.
She took that last step. The door silently closed behind her, leaving her in complete darkness. Beneath her feet the flagstones dissolved, and she fell, but slowly, drifting this way and that like a feather.
You won't break me, she thought, wincing at her own defiance. I've worked for this for years, I've made it through every trial. Is this the best you can do?
It... thought back, soundlessly, somewhere in that space behind her mind and her ears. Something in its... not a voice. It wasn't like any sensation she could remember feeling. Something suggested that it was faintly amused.
You mortals are like fish swimming in a globe of glass.
That globe is your world. You do not see beyond it.
I am all around that globe, everywhere at once.
I am in your yesterdays and tomorrows just as I am in your today, and it all looks the same to me.
She was cold, endlessly, achingly cold. The thing in the chamber had killed people before. Opened the door to reveal bodies with faces that had lost all hope of sunrise, or simply to show withered flesh and bared bones. It had driven people insane. And it had let plenty of others walk out, shaken and injured but alive and sane and ready to become -
Now we shall see.
JOURNAL SAMPLE: (General idea of your character's first journal entry)
[She has a thousand questions. Is this part of the Ordeal she dreamed about? What is this supposed to test, exactly? Why is her memory gone? Are these other people real, other people taking the Ordeal, or are they illusory? How does she pass? What is it she wants so badly to be?
And in those other visions - she hadn't known they were visions, and there'd been so much context in them. She'd known where she was, why she was there, and what she was doing in each of them; they had made sense, even if she couldn't remember any of that context now. Here? Not at all.
Of course, she doubts she'd get answers. These questions may get asked, but not here and now, not so publicly. She knows that on paper even more than in speech, what's said can't be unsaid.
Peach's penmanship is neat. There are nice regular margins and spacing between the words, and the letters themselves are rounded with occasional small serifs. It's businesslike, not terribly lovely or decorative handwriting, but it does seem to hint that the writer's had a little training in calligraphy.]
Does the mage who enchants these books have to cast the spell over and over again, or is there some fluid or compound that was magicked for this? They don't appear to be parchment.
I'm Peachblossom.
ASPIRATIONS:
I really don't care for any of the names I've been able to think of, so I'd like to give her back the name of her family's fief - Mindelan - quickly, and get her using it immediately after that.
I'd like her to come across some of her companion animals. Maybe not her monster horse Peachblossom, and maybe Jump, but definitely part of her flock of (not Tree-scale) sparrows. They're all pretty bright - they know who's her friend and who isn't, they know if someone's trying to trick her, they understand simple words and commands.
She might just end up with a crush on someone or other, simply because I love her falling in love and hiding it, but that should wait a bit.
Someday I'd kind of like to give her a fourth-floor memory of sparring with or just involving Alanna, while Cara is there, so Cara can see what became of Honor.
Because of this dream, I want her to have very different theories about the Sphere and the things that happen in it.
PLOT PERMISSIONS:
ES 4th Wall: Do mods/staff have permission to 4th wall your character with Edensphere's game elements? Negotiable.
Chara 4th Wall: Do players have permission to 4th wall your character with their own if s/he's capable of doing so? Negotiable.
ES Mysteries: Do mods/staff have permission to involve your character in Edensphere's back-story and world plot mysteries? WARNING: Such plots may result in character death.
Yes.
Memory Rec'v: Do mods/staff have permission to give your character others' memories and/or past logs via crystals, events, etc?
Yes.
Memory Distrib: Do mods/staff have permission to share your character's memories and/or past logs via crystals, events, etc?
Yes.
Dream Distrib: Do mods/staff have permission to share your character's dream(s) via Revolving Reveries and other plots or events?
Yes.
Your Wilderness: Do mods/staff have permission to transform the Wilderness into a place, setting, or environment that exists in your character's canon?
Yes.
NAME: Joysweeper
LJ: joysweeper
AGE: 21
CONTACT: Email/AIM/MSN/Y!IM/GChat? joysweeper@hotmail.com (SURPRISE TWIST - this is now email and AIM.)
LOCATION/TIME ZONE: EST
CURRENT CHARACTERS, if any: Wedge Antilles/Rogue Leader, Juhani/Sylvar.
CHARACTER INFO
CHARACTER NAME: Keladry of Mindelan
SERIES: The Tortall Universe, specifically the Protector of the Small quartet.
RESERVED: Yes
WISHLIST: No
PERSONALITY:
Kel is mildly cheerful when in a good mood and otherwise very, very stoic. She was raised that way. To her, unrestrained displays of strong emotions are like picking your nose - you don't do that in public. She does understand that for most people it's not like that, but it's still something she won't do. Certainly she feels, and strongly, but she hides this under a blank expression and calm body language. Someone who knows her well can tell when she's hiding her feelings, and when her smile is purely social.
She also doesn't speak up much when she has nothing to contribute. Words said can't be unsaid, and someone has to listen to chatter. Might as well be her. She tends to think of complaints, and excuses, as whining. While she thinks of all kinds of snide comments and responses, she very rarely voices them - and even then, it's to close friends unless she's ordered to voice them or feels that people she's responsible for are at stake.
Together, those two traits make her seem shy, unfeeling, or impassive around strangers. When she was the first and only openly female page, her lack of reaction to insults, teasing, and attempts to make her quit earned her the nickname Yamani Lump. She's a friendly girl, really, and helpful to those who ask and sometimes those who don't, but quiet. People who she's friendly with get to see another side, one that participates in friendly teasing, sometimes even shows a little temper, but even it is fairly stoic.
Deeply hidden, usually, is a perverse streak. When she was a page she wore dresses to dinner to remind the people who didn't think she could cut it that she was still there. Often she thought of but never voiced snappy responses to people she didn't like. Those times she did voice them are rare, though more common once she was in charge and couldn't let insubordination pass - a trader who questioned her ability to manage a refugee camp by referring to her sex life was dryly questioned about how well his manhood was functioning and assigned to latrine duty. She's both embarrassed and, secretly, pleased to have friends who defend her to other people, but she doesn't want them getting into trouble about it.
In an emergency or just a chaotic situation she's proven able to take charge and lead with a cool head. Even when terrifying things are happening; being attacked by spider monsters, climbing a cliff while under attack by bandits, fighting a seemingly-invulnerable monster that no one's seen before, a mage causing chasms to open up in the earth... Even terrified, after her fear of heights was conquered she never froze for more than a second. If someone else leads she accepts this without any trouble; if she disagrees with her orders she may make a levelheaded protest but will follow them. Unless it means abandoning someone she's responsible for.
She's very fair. Kel understands that people who dislike her aren't necessarily bad people, and she's accepting of this. When hurt in training she doesn't blame her partners. When her training master constantly held her to an overly high standard she usually defended him as her friends criticized this, and believed that he would come around. Her knight-master taught her that the commander should be willing to take on all of the same chores tackled by the commanded, and she took this to heart. While running a refugee camp she put her name on every job list but the two most popular ones, hunting and fishing.
While she's afraid of heights, after being forced to climb down the outside of a hundred-foot tower to get her maid to safety she was cured of the crippling aspect of this fear. She'll never like heights, but neither do they disable her anymore, though for ES this might get reset partly.
Kel very much does not believe in the superiority of the strong over the weak. She's called the Protector of the Small because that's what she does - tries to protect the weak and the small no matter what cost it has to her. Admittedly in most modern fiction very few people explicitly think of commoners as lesser people than nobles, so the fact that she doesn't isn't terribly meaningful in a game. She will pull rank if she must, but that's because she's also pragmatic - she uses the tools for the job.
Though she eats meat, she has a great respect for animals. When she was young she'd nurse them back to health; in the books she fought a group of boys and a spiderlike monster to save a sack of kittens, she took on a mean destrier rather than let him be culled, and she stopped a cook from killing an ugly dog for stealing sausages. She also cared for a baby griffin despite it being a nasty, savage thing that left her hands covered in scars, though this was in part because she didn't think it would be fair to saddle anyone else with him.
When she found a boy in an inn who was being beaten by the innkeeper, she bought him off the innkeeper - pulling noble rank as she did so, when the innkeeper was recalcitrant - and made him her servant, also teaching him to read and defend himself. She's taught a lot of people to defend themselves, really, and enjoys it.
She will go to any length to care for and protect the people in her care. She risked repeating the four years of page training to find and save her maid. She risked desertion under fire and hanging for treason to find and bring back the people from her refugee camp after they were overrun and stolen away. In both cases Kel completely expected to have the punishments handed down on her - you're not supposed to not show up to take an examination, and you're not supposed to ignore a superior officer's orders and then vanish in the middle of a war. She knew what the punishments were both times. Both times she was very taken aback when they were waived because of why she'd done what she'd done.
Maybe it's because her father's an ambassador, but Kel's rather tolerant and doesn't show much fear in the face of the unknown or people more powerful than she. She understands that Yamani customs don't apply in Tortall. She got over having a seven-foot-tall lizardman as a teacher fairly soon. Mages don't frighten her, no matter their reputation or what she sees them do - she can look past the fact that Numair summoned many boulders from ten miles away and floated them into position and see that he's exhausted, and go to bring him water. She's mentioned to be the only one to pray for dead enemy soldiers, sent by their king to die so far from home.
She doesn't lose her temper. Kel gets angry, certainly, but she rarely displays it. In battlefield conditions she may snap at someone who's being dense, but by and large her reactions to insubordination are fairly measured. If she's going to snap at a friend for doing something stupid, she does it in private. Around people who don't like her she's stoic, sometimes resigned, and works as hard as ever.
Kel is direct, pragmatic, and polite in day-to-day matters; she understands things best if they're stated outright. She works hard at any task given and tends to hold herself to too-high standards.
Because she tends to form crushes on men who are helpful or friendly to her, crushes which fade with distance, she endlessly worries that she's fickle, and frets that they don't see her as someone to romance, though she wouldn't change her body to look more girlish. Fortunately she's able to keep her head and hide these crushes from the people in question, even if people who know her well can tell that she's developed feelings.
TIMELINE:
Her last appearance was in one of the Daughter of the Lioness books, in 462 HE. Just at the very end of the war with Scanra and two years after Lady Knight, so - right about then, when she's just shy of twenty years old.
BACKGROUND:
What you need to know of the 'verse: Tortall is the kingdom where this is set; to the north is hostile pseudo-Russian Scanra, to the west is the sea and the pseudo-Japanese Yamani Islands. In the distant past there had been lady knights, but for two hundred years it was men only. When a woman disguised herself as a boy, then a man, was knighted, and helped save the kingdom after being found out, the ban was officially lifted. Soon after that "immortals", mythical creatures who live forever unless killed, came back into the world due to the interference of mages.
A mage lives in the capital of Tortall. She has magic with animals, and a side effect is that animals living in her general vicinity gradually acquire more and more human-type intelligence.
Keladry of Mindelan's family was only very newly enobled; her great-grandparents were commoners. Fief Mindelan lay in the northwest, not far from either Scanra or the Yamani Islands. She was the youngest child. Three of her brothers became knights. When she was very young, one of those brothers held her outside of the window of a tower, giving her a lasting fear of heights.
When Kel was four years old, her father, an ambassador, took himself and his family to the Yamani Islands, where they stayed for six years. She was mocked there by other children for being a clumsy, big outsider who didn't know much, but a young second-rank princess and her retinue made friends with her. While she was in a temple viewing a pair of sacred relics, Scanran raiders attacked. Her mother held them off with a glaive and kept the relics from capture, and this gained them the gratitude of the Emperor. The ambassador was able to negotiate a treaty between Tortall and the Yamani Islands, and then Kel and her family went back to Fief Mindelan.
Girls were officially allowed to become knights, and Kel's parents supported her when she wanted to try to enter the program - four years training and studying as a page at the palace, four years learning under a knight as a squire, then an Ordeal. But the training master sent back that if she became a page there would be a probationary period of one year. Kel went out walking to consider it, fought some boys who were trying to drown kittens, and then tried to fight a spiderlike monster that showed up to eat the kittens. After that, she decided to go and try for knighthood despite being under probation, so she wouldn't be helpless to stop something like that again.
At the palace, almost everyone wanted to see her fail. The training master constantly held her to standards higher than those he set for the boys. His star pupil arranged for her to receive practice weapons that were weighted, three times heavier than what the others got. Kel never complained out loud. She worked endlessly to build her muscles, get around pranks, and learn everything.
She did make friends with Neal, an older and very learned first-year page. When picking a horse she went with the mean Peachblossom in order to save him. Neal took her to a mage who spoke with animals, who helped Kel negotiate a deal with Peachblossom. If he behaved with her, she would take care of him. Kel also fed a flock of sparrows until they "adopted" her and eventually started to defend her, help defend others, and take orders.
Knights were not supposed to pick on the weak and the small, they were supposed to defend and protect them, but Kel saw a lot of bullying going on between older pages and new ones. She dedicated herself to stopping that, getting into many fights. Neal and, slowly, other friends eventually joined her, and it stopped.
At the pages' summer camping trip spiderlike monsters were discovered. When the sparrows who had followed her from the palace reacted to her wish that they could help find the monsters, Kel ended up leading a hunting party to find them. While the main group was fighting them, she watched the rear for any coming up to ambush and rallied the other watchers. Later the training master reluctantly allowed that she had passed the probationary period and could continue training.
Page training continued, though overt attempts to make her quit and bullying both decreased over time. She acquired a very ugly dog and an incredibly shy maid. In time her maid became less shy and fearful, and Kel taught her self-defense, as well as tutoring younger pages. Kel developed a crush on Neal that she was careful to hide.
Summer camp one year involved her group of pages stumbling upon a bandit camp in supposedly safe territory. Kel took charge of her group, killed a man, and got them holed up in a cave on a cliff until reinforcements arrived. She'd just turned twelve.
Part of page training involves the big examinations at the end of the fourth year; being late means repeating years. One of her enemies kidnapped her maid so that she would either have to repeat all four years or shirk her duty. Kel chose to find her maid, who was bound and gagged in the tallest tower in the Palace, and saved her. She had to lead them both down the damaged outer stair to get to the ground. Despite missing the examinations, Kel was allowed to take them later and became a squire; the training master had been impressed by the lengths she would go to for someone under her charge.
As a squire she was selected by Raoul of Goldenlake, a huge knight who commanded a company of the King's Own, a sort of small elite army unit. With them, Kel ranged all over the country, taking on bandits, hostile immortals, and natural disasters. Raoul's standard-bearer was the nephew of a traitor to the country, who'd been prevented from entering into a more prestigious branch of service due to his family history. He was jealous of Kel and tried to get her in trouble. She understood why he was jealous and didn't respond or tattle on him; eventually they reached an understanding.
It was because of some knights saying that this standard-bearer was a traitor like his aunt that Kel got into tournament jousting. She'd learned how and been good at it as a page, but she showed a real talent for it in tournaments. Around then Kel had a romance with Cleon, who'd been a page at the same time as she was, but ultimately this never went beyond heavy petting.
After helping keep bandits from pillaging a village, Kel found that one of them had been keeping a live baby griffin for its valuable feathers. Nobody can lie around a griffin, their feathers have illusion-breaking properties, and people who touch their babies will be savaged by their parents. Since she'd touched this one without knowing what it was, Kel decided to care for it until a mage could find and explain to its family; the mage couldn't take it and she didn't think it would be fair to make anyone else do it. The baby griffin gave her scars on every finger and attacked her regularly until it could be returned to its parents.
When the courts found who had hired thugs to kidnap her maid, Kel was incensed to find that the noble who did it, one of her tormenters from her first year, was able to get off with a fine he could easily pay. If she'd been kidnapped, the punishment would have been far more severe, and she believed that a mere fine, most of it paid to her and not the maid herself, was like saying the common folk were slaves, their lives paid in coin. She ended up talking to her king about changing the laws.
In her final year as a squire, Kel, her knight-master, and his small army were stationed at the border with Scanra, which was threatening to go to war. During this time Kel fought and with the help of a squad killed a device that looked like nothing she'd ever seen before, mechanical and vaguely rat- or insect-like. Opening its head and killing it released a child's spirit. There were reports of more of these killing devices being used by Scanrans against Tortall.
Every year, when she was in the capital, Kel touched the door to the Chamber of the Ordeal, and it gave her a vision of her current worst nightmare. When the time came for her Ordeal of Knighthood and she actually went inside, after making her live through a few more the Chamber showed her that these killing devices were made by a mage using dead children, and told her to stop him. Though she left the Chamber and was knighted, she regularly dreamed of what she'd seen.
Not long after that, she went back in to demand that the Chamber tell her where it was happening so that she could stop it. It couldn't, existing outside of her idea of time and space, telling her that it would come to her. She found this incredibly frustrating - she'd hoped to learn where this was so she could go, since she didn't want to leave whatever post she was assigned to.
That post she ended up assigned to was managing a fortified refugee camp, Haven, not far from the border. Kel resented the assignment, since it felt like she was being kept safe away from the war, but her former training master told her that she was the only one he trusted to do this. To lead so many fractious people who would inevitably be attacked, to manage them with respect and a sense of command.
And she did, even if she sometimes did have trouble getting them to listen to her. Haven wasn't terribly neat and certainly wasn't quiet, but she did run it capably. When Scanrans attacked with killing devices, she helped drive them back. Victories like this left her confident enough to leave her people to report back to her former training master in person.
While there, the young servant she'd adopted on the road to Haven found her to bring her the news that a huge raiding party, with many killing devices, had attacked and overrun the camp. Kel rushed back and searched the ruins in shock. Many defenders had been killed, but most of the population - including the two hundred refugee children - had been taken away.
Her training master, preoccupied with the rest of the war, ordered her to bury her dead and return, but Kel couldn't obey. Knowing full well what she was doing, she ordered the soldiers left with her to scout ahead and fled on horseback to start tracking. Friends she'd made as a page and while working with Raoul caught up with her and put themselves under her command; she couldn't get them to turn back, so she took command, crossed the border into Scanra, and liberated the surviving adults of Haven from slavers.
But the camp's children had been taken to the man who made children into killing devices. Some of Kel's force was set to taking the adults back into Tortall, some went with her in pursuit, taking out a few killing devices on the way. The town the mage was in was almost without children, since he'd taken them all. They had no option but to serve him or be killed, but the single child in the town - a girl who could see the future - helped persuade them to help Kel and her people.
They snuck into the castle, freed the children, killed the soldiers, and Kel confronted the mage, who offered to defect and offer his services to Tortall, meanwhile trying to enchant her. She refused and killed him - while she didn't think her king would accept the services of a man who made killing devices fueled by the souls of children he had murdered, it was better not to tempt him. Then she burned his castle and all of his notes, and broke her own rule about not leaving the enemy for carrion defilers for the soldiers who had served him.
After that she took the children and the town's population back to Tortall and submitted to judgment, fully expecting to be executed. But her former training master knew after the fact that he had given an order that would be disobeyed, and with all things considered - her punishment was to set up and get into working order a new fortified refugee camp, this time with the resources she hadn't had in Haven.
And she did this. The war wasn't over yet, but without the near-invulnerable killing devices and the fear they evoked, the Scanrans didn't have as much of an advantage. The new camp, New Hope, repelled all invaders and stood fast.
ABILITIES:
For a woman without any powers, Kel's very strong with enviable endurance, ability to withstand pain, and general combat skills. She's a tall girl, solid-waisted, with powerful shoulders and arms. She can fight competently at hand to hand and wield a bow, sword, spear, staff, axe, war hammer, or lance with the best of them, though her real skill lies with the glaive or naginata.
Fandom says that she does have one ability, that being the power to get her friends to hook up with each other, but that's only happened to six of them. And two of them were formally engaged beforehand, she just helped them warm up to each other.
I tend to infer from the books that she has slight wild magic. Not enough to require training, not even enough to simply speak to animals. Just enough affinity to have a better-than-average sense of what they feel or are trying to communicate just from watching them. And to make them understand what she feels or tries to tell them. It helps that the animals she's around have been exposed to enough wild magic to be unusually intelligent by human standards.
She's got various non-supernatural skills not directly related to combat, too. Kel is capable at fletching, or feathering arrows. She enjoys and is good at mathematics. She enjoys teaching or helping people with things she's good at, including self-defense for women. She can create accurate maps of terrain, after either walking it or studying it from a height. She was taught how to pitch her voice to carry over distance and noise and is okay at paperwork and supply and demand. As well, she has the skills for camping rough. Not to mention a talent for command.
Just don't ask her to try carpentry or plowing. It doesn't work well.
GAME INFO
EDENSPHERE NAME: Peachblossom
BIRTHDAY LOG: ...Think I'll pass unless any really interesting siblings pop up.
DREAM: (3rd person POV, please)
She sat alone on a stone bench in a sparse gray chapel, in front of an undecorated iron door.
She was terribly cold, from her toes to her scalp. Steam was pluming out of her nose and mouth as she breathed and rising from her skin; she wore undyed cotton garments that did nothing to keep her warm, and she was shivering, all of her skin puckered into gooseflesh. She kept her mouth open enough to keep her teeth from chattering against each other, not wanting the sound.
What lay beyond the door was alive, she knew. Or... alive might not be the best term. Aware, maybe. This far away, she was just barely in its power.
It was something great and terrible and utterly, utterly indifferent, with all the warmth and hatred of a force of nature. She desperately didn't want to be here with it, but she wanted this done.
She reached for the door. Somehow it seemed more real than anything else. When her fingers reached it, the world changed.
useless
not allowed to fight defend protect
kept safe
kept away could change things could help them
kept safe
kept safe live safe others fighting others dying could help them want to need to
female expected to be weak fragile can't be risked on the battlefield ability is a fluke tradition
needed greatly needed every blade to fight defend protect
can't go
kept safe
imprisoned
She opened her eyes, heard her breath coming harsher and faster, held in her anger. She was back in the unheated chapel, in front of the iron door, and the reality was back with her. They'd tried to tell her she couldn't do this, they'd tried to keep her safe when they needed every able body, including her. They'd almost kept her from this. But now she was here.
What she'd lived just now had never happened. Never like that. It had been a perfect illusion, from the creaking of the stuffed-leather padded chairs to the smell of the smoky fireplace to the condescending look in his eyes, like he was doing her a favor. But it hadn't happened. She didn't even know who he was; while she had been living it she had known who and where and everything, but those details were escaping now.
She'd gotten through what had happened, shown them that she was as capable as anyone. She'd get through this.
When she thought she was ready, she reached for the door again, with a little more force. It would not drive her away this easily.
high up
terribly high up
ground spiraling away far too far
can't look away
hold tightly don't let go can't move have to hold on can't look away
don't let go
don't let go
hands cramping don't let go can't look away far too far
don't let go hands cramping don't let go far too far
far too far don't let go hands cramping fingers numb slipping
slipping
grab can't reach slipping tearing free of fingers falling
falling
falling
This time as it ended she was gasping, still feeling a little bit of the lurch in her stomach. Bile rose in her throat and she swallowed repeatedly, staring fixedly at the flagstones. They were chilled, very solid, and comfortingly close. She was fine. She wasn't falling. She'd never been on a cliff that high.
It took her longer this time. She didn't want to do this. To see these things; they felt real, even if so many of the details escaped her the moment she pulled away. She studied her hands, covered in scars both fine and not-so-fine, and found her courage again.
When she told her arm to reach out and touch the door, it obeyed, even if it shook a little. This time she had the uncanny sense that something on the other side was reaching back.
can't
raiders men on horseback centaurs spidrens machines
can't defend
can't move bound with invisible ropes fight them they won't shift
can't even stand
raiders
the camp
not ready defenders are slow gates not locked
can't help them
overrun
fire panic screaming chaos
slaughter
can't help them can't get up can't do anything helpless
put to the torch
supposed to protect them
have to watch
raider laughing riding closer takes a child child screams
casual almost an afterthought
sword can't dodge it
pain falling bleeding out rider keeps going left here
dying in the dust
dying
everyone is dead or enslaved
couldn't stop them
dying
failed
Back in the chapel she blinked away hot stinging tears until they cooled on her cheeks, her expression as frozen as stone. She was breathing hard, great gasping sobs threatening to burst out, and she fought hard to control herself.
Though she knew it had never happened, her body ached, and she almost expected to feel dust in her hair, see blood soaking her clothing. She hadn't been able to save anyone.
She had to make it so that it never happened for real.
For a while she waited, hands clenching in the fabric of her trousers, until her heart rate had gone down and she was calm. Calmer. Stone. I am stone, she told herself, trying to will herself the serenity in these old, comforting images. My heart is a still mountain lake; these things will pass, and I will remain.
It was then that, like something out of a dream, the iron door swung open soundlessly. Beyond it was a small, boxlike chamber, almost a vault, the gray flagstones completely plain. It looked empty.
She knew it wasn't.
It wouldn't come to her. She had to come to it, she had to walk inside. Surrender herself to it on her own power, by her own will.
Anything could happen in there, and it would feel real - it would be real. Even more real than those visions; after all, those were only tests of courage, weren't they? When the visions ended, she was left unharmed, but in there if she failed she would die, or go mad, or-
But she had to do this. Swallowing hard, she tried to stand, and couldn't.
She couldn't make herself stand. Her feet weren't frozen to the floor, her legs were stiff from sitting unmoving in the cold but still worked. She just couldn't make herself stand to walk inside.
Imagine going this far and not being able to take the last steps. Literally! She could have laughed; might have, if she hadn't known it would be hard to stop. Hysterics might not hurt anyone and could make her feel better, but this wasn't the time or place.
She couldn't stay here. She wouldn't stay here, she wouldn't let them be right about her. Maybe she couldn't stand, but she thought she could feel it reach for her, and she reached back -
Maybe it was because the iron door wasn't in the way. This time the chapel stayed in place, not changing, and she stayed reaching out for something she couldn't see or touch. All that happened was that she heard someone familiar speaking to her, fondly but seriously, like a father having a serious discussion with his daughter.
The Ordeal is like a cutter of gemstones. The spirit inside - like the gods, it sees things in a way that seems cockeyed to we mortals. Maybe it is a god. But it will test you; it will find your flaws and hammer them open.
Should you survive your Ordeal, you will be sworn to protect those weaker than you, to obey your overlord, to live in a way that honors your kingdom and your gods. You may not ignore a cry for help. Rich and poor, young and old, male and female may look to you for rescue, and you cannot deny them.
This - she didn't know if this had happened or not, if this someone who she respected and trusted had said these words in this way. But it was true. It was true, and she wanted to be sworn to be that. She had to do this.
It was her duty.
She stood, a little bit shakily. Took a step towards the chamber. Another. What was inside wasn't reaching now. It knew she'd get there.
Another step and she'd be inside. Her hands were cold and stiff, but she still curled them into the tightest fists she could manage. She was afraid, of course she was afraid, but that didn't mean she had to show it.
She took that last step. The door silently closed behind her, leaving her in complete darkness. Beneath her feet the flagstones dissolved, and she fell, but slowly, drifting this way and that like a feather.
You won't break me, she thought, wincing at her own defiance. I've worked for this for years, I've made it through every trial. Is this the best you can do?
It... thought back, soundlessly, somewhere in that space behind her mind and her ears. Something in its... not a voice. It wasn't like any sensation she could remember feeling. Something suggested that it was faintly amused.
You mortals are like fish swimming in a globe of glass.
That globe is your world. You do not see beyond it.
I am all around that globe, everywhere at once.
I am in your yesterdays and tomorrows just as I am in your today, and it all looks the same to me.
She was cold, endlessly, achingly cold. The thing in the chamber had killed people before. Opened the door to reveal bodies with faces that had lost all hope of sunrise, or simply to show withered flesh and bared bones. It had driven people insane. And it had let plenty of others walk out, shaken and injured but alive and sane and ready to become -
Now we shall see.
JOURNAL SAMPLE: (General idea of your character's first journal entry)
[She has a thousand questions. Is this part of the Ordeal she dreamed about? What is this supposed to test, exactly? Why is her memory gone? Are these other people real, other people taking the Ordeal, or are they illusory? How does she pass? What is it she wants so badly to be?
And in those other visions - she hadn't known they were visions, and there'd been so much context in them. She'd known where she was, why she was there, and what she was doing in each of them; they had made sense, even if she couldn't remember any of that context now. Here? Not at all.
Of course, she doubts she'd get answers. These questions may get asked, but not here and now, not so publicly. She knows that on paper even more than in speech, what's said can't be unsaid.
Peach's penmanship is neat. There are nice regular margins and spacing between the words, and the letters themselves are rounded with occasional small serifs. It's businesslike, not terribly lovely or decorative handwriting, but it does seem to hint that the writer's had a little training in calligraphy.]
Does the mage who enchants these books have to cast the spell over and over again, or is there some fluid or compound that was magicked for this? They don't appear to be parchment.
I'm Peachblossom.
ASPIRATIONS:
I really don't care for any of the names I've been able to think of, so I'd like to give her back the name of her family's fief - Mindelan - quickly, and get her using it immediately after that.
I'd like her to come across some of her companion animals. Maybe not her monster horse Peachblossom, and maybe Jump, but definitely part of her flock of (not Tree-scale) sparrows. They're all pretty bright - they know who's her friend and who isn't, they know if someone's trying to trick her, they understand simple words and commands.
She might just end up with a crush on someone or other, simply because I love her falling in love and hiding it, but that should wait a bit.
Someday I'd kind of like to give her a fourth-floor memory of sparring with or just involving Alanna, while Cara is there, so Cara can see what became of Honor.
Because of this dream, I want her to have very different theories about the Sphere and the things that happen in it.
PLOT PERMISSIONS:
ES 4th Wall: Do mods/staff have permission to 4th wall your character with Edensphere's game elements? Negotiable.
Chara 4th Wall: Do players have permission to 4th wall your character with their own if s/he's capable of doing so? Negotiable.
ES Mysteries: Do mods/staff have permission to involve your character in Edensphere's back-story and world plot mysteries? WARNING: Such plots may result in character death.
Yes.
Memory Rec'v: Do mods/staff have permission to give your character others' memories and/or past logs via crystals, events, etc?
Yes.
Memory Distrib: Do mods/staff have permission to share your character's memories and/or past logs via crystals, events, etc?
Yes.
Dream Distrib: Do mods/staff have permission to share your character's dream(s) via Revolving Reveries and other plots or events?
Yes.
Your Wilderness: Do mods/staff have permission to transform the Wilderness into a place, setting, or environment that exists in your character's canon?
Yes.