ooc: Quick facts
Just a few quick facts about Shirley:
Abilities/Powers:
Shirley can perform magic if she makes a blood sacrifice to the Tuatha Dé Danann. Any spell she chooses requires blood and the larger or more involved the spell, the more blood sacrificed. After performing large spells she will either go into shock unless she has prepared herself beforehand or she'll become sick for a week or two with very severe iron deficient anaemia.
Breithniú - analysis: if Shirley obtains the blood of a person with their consent, she can learn about them but the blood must be freely given.
Claochlaigh - transform: Shirley is able to turn into one of the forms associated with being a banshee which is mostly commonly a hooded crow.
Seachmall - illusion: Shirley can summon an illusion of an object or a person. Depending on how much blood she sacrifices, the illusion can either be very faint and just an image or very real and able to be touched.
Scáth - shade/protection: One of her ward spells. This allows Shirley to hide herself or an object. No blood sacrifice is required.
Cosaint - safeguard: One of her ward spells. This protects Shirley's home should she need it and will only allow in persons of her choosing. In an emergency, she can use this spell on herself. No blood sacrifice is required.
Truailligh - contaminate: if Shirley inflicts a wound while invoking this curse, she can cause someone to become sick with some sort of virus or infection, mostly commonly a fever. The severity depends on how much blood she shed on her own knife in preparation but it rarely lasts longer than a week.
Gnáthaigh - haunt: If Shirley casts this, she will summon nightmarish visions to plague the victim for a week.
Shirley is also able to tell whether or not a person is alive or dead and to predict when a character will die if their death is imminent in the next three days as she will arrive either on their doorstep or the doorstep of those close to them and howl. This howl can be heard for miles and doesn't sound like any noise a human would. This is called Tairngreacht or prophecy. Shirley is at her most irritable in those three days as the howl manifests in the form of a migraine and she's very physically weak.
She's fluent in Irish and Scottish Gaelic as well, due to all the magic being passed down in those languages.
Strengths/Weaknesses:
Physically, Shirley is fairly weak by any standards and is not up to much in a fight as a side effect from the blood she has to sacrifice for her magic. She also tends to have a very poor immune system too and so she has a definite aversion to bad weather and if ill or injured it takes her a long time to full recover from it.
If she is cut by a silver knife, she'll be burned by it and her magic will desert her depending on how deep the wound is or how much contact she is in with it. Holy water will also cause a reaction although she can freely say Christian names and exorcism rituals.
If she casts too much magic, she will sometimes have it rebound upon her as a reminder that it is only there to aid her and that she shouldn't use it whenever she feels like it (this does not apply to her ward spells, prophecy or analysis) and normally one of the spells is cast on herself. This spell is usually either Truailligh (contaminate) or Gnáthaigh (haunt) and lasts a week but the intensity of the spell cast on her is far greater than when she casts it on others.
Shirley suffers from something like depression at times which is known as Dobrón (grief) and is something all banshee suffer from. This is most prevalent either when someone has just died or when someone she is in close contact with has lost someone recently. The weight of the death is passed on to her or the grief the other person bears is added to the collective grief of the other banshees in her line. This causes her the typical run of depression symptoms.
Each of her spells is sealed into her skin as special silver markings. If someone is able to damage them, she will be completely unable to use them until the wound has fully healed.
Her temper isn't always what it could be either and she takes an instant dislike to those she perceives to be stupid or ugly or lacking in any sort of fashion sense and she can be very judgemental of others for those reasons.
The full moon tends to mess with her magic and she tries not to perform spells on those nights as they will often backfire on her.
She really has a grudge against Christianity for what it did to Celtic mythology.
The only thing that makes her stronger is spending time in orbis alia (Otherworld) but that isn't an option here.
Abilities/Powers:
Shirley can perform magic if she makes a blood sacrifice to the Tuatha Dé Danann. Any spell she chooses requires blood and the larger or more involved the spell, the more blood sacrificed. After performing large spells she will either go into shock unless she has prepared herself beforehand or she'll become sick for a week or two with very severe iron deficient anaemia.
Breithniú - analysis: if Shirley obtains the blood of a person with their consent, she can learn about them but the blood must be freely given.
Claochlaigh - transform: Shirley is able to turn into one of the forms associated with being a banshee which is mostly commonly a hooded crow.
Seachmall - illusion: Shirley can summon an illusion of an object or a person. Depending on how much blood she sacrifices, the illusion can either be very faint and just an image or very real and able to be touched.
Scáth - shade/protection: One of her ward spells. This allows Shirley to hide herself or an object. No blood sacrifice is required.
Cosaint - safeguard: One of her ward spells. This protects Shirley's home should she need it and will only allow in persons of her choosing. In an emergency, she can use this spell on herself. No blood sacrifice is required.
Truailligh - contaminate: if Shirley inflicts a wound while invoking this curse, she can cause someone to become sick with some sort of virus or infection, mostly commonly a fever. The severity depends on how much blood she shed on her own knife in preparation but it rarely lasts longer than a week.
Gnáthaigh - haunt: If Shirley casts this, she will summon nightmarish visions to plague the victim for a week.
Shirley is also able to tell whether or not a person is alive or dead and to predict when a character will die if their death is imminent in the next three days as she will arrive either on their doorstep or the doorstep of those close to them and howl. This howl can be heard for miles and doesn't sound like any noise a human would. This is called Tairngreacht or prophecy. Shirley is at her most irritable in those three days as the howl manifests in the form of a migraine and she's very physically weak.
She's fluent in Irish and Scottish Gaelic as well, due to all the magic being passed down in those languages.
Strengths/Weaknesses:
Physically, Shirley is fairly weak by any standards and is not up to much in a fight as a side effect from the blood she has to sacrifice for her magic. She also tends to have a very poor immune system too and so she has a definite aversion to bad weather and if ill or injured it takes her a long time to full recover from it.
If she is cut by a silver knife, she'll be burned by it and her magic will desert her depending on how deep the wound is or how much contact she is in with it. Holy water will also cause a reaction although she can freely say Christian names and exorcism rituals.
If she casts too much magic, she will sometimes have it rebound upon her as a reminder that it is only there to aid her and that she shouldn't use it whenever she feels like it (this does not apply to her ward spells, prophecy or analysis) and normally one of the spells is cast on herself. This spell is usually either Truailligh (contaminate) or Gnáthaigh (haunt) and lasts a week but the intensity of the spell cast on her is far greater than when she casts it on others.
Shirley suffers from something like depression at times which is known as Dobrón (grief) and is something all banshee suffer from. This is most prevalent either when someone has just died or when someone she is in close contact with has lost someone recently. The weight of the death is passed on to her or the grief the other person bears is added to the collective grief of the other banshees in her line. This causes her the typical run of depression symptoms.
Each of her spells is sealed into her skin as special silver markings. If someone is able to damage them, she will be completely unable to use them until the wound has fully healed.
Her temper isn't always what it could be either and she takes an instant dislike to those she perceives to be stupid or ugly or lacking in any sort of fashion sense and she can be very judgemental of others for those reasons.
The full moon tends to mess with her magic and she tries not to perform spells on those nights as they will often backfire on her.
She really has a grudge against Christianity for what it did to Celtic mythology.
The only thing that makes her stronger is spending time in orbis alia (Otherworld) but that isn't an option here.