The Rollicking Crab
01-29-09, 03:29 PM
Name: Moondrop Daisy-Floss Meadowdew (Mia, or Maia. Stage name; The Rollicking Crab.)
Age: 17
Race: Human
Hair Color: Treacle-dark
Eye Color: Watery blue-grey
Height: Shorter than average
Weight: Bony and skeletal
Occupation: Court Jester (unemployed)
Appearance: Maia’s most recognizable feature is her hair – kept short and neat, curling around her face like an animal’s fur. She compares the colour to thick dark chocolate, or aged oakwood, but it resembles nothing so much as treacle, or perhaps the rich brown of fresh compost. It fits her small, pointed face as a glove fits a hand, and is generally kept back in a cap so as not to be burnt or to otherwise get in her way. Her nose is short and snub, her lips are thin, and her eyes are thickly lashed. They are piercing too, in a way that bluish-grey eyes rarely are, shrewd and unsettling.
Her limbs are long, too long for her short frame, which gives her a curiously skeletal, doll-like appearance, as does her extremely thin figure. When not ‘on the job’, she is often compared to a spider or some other scuttling insect. She has remarkable grace when she moves, walking fluidly, the muscles taut and easily visible beneath her pale skin.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking she is beautiful, though, because she is most definitely not. Her features are remarkable in the way that an example of fine architecture is remarkable – angular, striking and artistic, but not beautiful in a womanly, natural way. Her features have a certain immovability to them, like a rocky cliff wall. When she smiles or frowns, you can almost hear the bones creaking in protest.
When not ‘on the job’, she wears sensible clothes; black or grey long skirts, tunics, thick wool jumpers and cloaks. She’s usually covered in ink-stains of different colours from her little story-writing hobby, and her fingers are often raw with accidental burns. When she’s ‘on the job’, it’s a different story. She has a multitude of glittering costumes, in every hue imaginable, and makeup to match them all. She dubs herself ‘The Rollicking Crab’ and plasters her face in chalky paste, before covering it in colour and eccentric, often grotesque, designs. She goes barefoot, with perhaps a silk cape for warmth if necessary, and if her patter and jokes weren’t so resoundingly mirthless, she’d be a fantastic and ethereal creature.
History: Maia’s parents had tried for many years to have children before eventually producing Maia; and so, they weren’t exactly young. Her father, Robert, was in his fifties, and her mother Cynthia was barely younger. Robert was a moneylender and had been brought up that way from an early age. He had quickly displayed a skill for mathematics and had enjoyed his schooling and later on, his job. When Maia was five, she found herself being sent to a school...for Jesters. She wasn’t too upset about it though; after all, she’d always loved performing to her friends, her family, to strangers. She thought it would be fun to be funny.
It wasn’t.
The first lesson they taught was the harshest of all. They took out your spirit, scrubbed any humour out of it with steel wool and then put it back upside down. Metaphorically, of course. By the end of the first year, Maia had stopped laughing, and her smile was no longer one of childish joy – smiles were now just contortions of the face.
After that, things got easier. She learnt to juggle, with five balls – ten – with apples, or shoes, or small dead jellyfish. She learnt to throw her voice from one side of a stage to the other, and to make the sounds of animals, birds and other, more vulgar natural occurrences. She learnt to mimic voices and accents, exaggerating them to near-rude levels, and to leap and dance and spin with extraordinary agility.
When she could no longer count her years on ten fingers, Maia began learning the art of fire – eating it, throwing it, conjuring it. It was all trickery – no magic involved – so it was more difficult than she had imagined. She was constantly dropping the torches or letting the flames lick too close to her hair – which eventually she had to cut short. Fire seemed to hate her. Flames never obeyed her, sometimes seeming to go against the wind to burn her skin and singe her hair. It hated her – but she loved it.
Her parents were proud of her. She graduated with flying colours, one of the top Fools and Jesters in her class, and was awarded not only the Jester’s Hat that marked her achievement, but also the special Bell’d Shoes that indicated she had received special commendations in tomfoolery and shenanigans. Young, and relatively free, she emerged into the Real World like a newly fledged butterfly, unaware of what lay outside.
Her parents were living in a small village, so she was forced to seek employment elsewhere. After journeying around awhile, she found herself in a large-ish city, with the leader calling himself the King. He had a real castle, with stone battlements and terraces, and a moat, and he had a real gold crown and sceptre. It was good enough for Maia.
The King, who was rather old, vague and feeble, accepted her offer immediately and she was employed for four years. She was given a regular allowance, food and lodging, and all the props, costumes and personal items she needed. It was an ideal set-up, and every day she thanked the Gods (that she didn’t believe in) that she was so happy.
But good things never last – not the real ones, anyway, and this was no different. In a great celebration of the King’s eightieth birthday, Maia finally decided to get out her torched and use the fire skills she’d learnt at Jesters’ School. Needless to say, it ended badly. The King was burned, and burned badly. He didn’t make it through the night. Maia received a severe burn to her arm, leaving disfigured, scarred skin there, and she was quickly ejected from the castle as the Prince inherited his throne.
He preached at her constantly – that it was time for the modern age to begin; that Jesters and Fools were a thing of the past; that he had a comedian and he was much funnier than she could ever hope to be. Comedian? Ha! He didn’t wear a glittering outfit – he wore trousers and a shirt, and he sat on a stool and made insulting jokes about personal issues. It wasn’t what she’d call a funny person, oh no sirree.
Insulted and desperate, she left the city to search for new employment. It was difficult. There just didn’t seem to be any Kings left anymore! Now, there were mayors, and runaway Princes, and Queens who liked tea and not merriment. She felt like a oddment, a freak, a piece of a bygone age trying to fit in the shiny, clean, smooth modern times.
And so, she continues to search for a Royal personage, or at least an aristocrat, to entertain, and so she continues to pawn her glittering costumes and her elaborate props.
Skills: Trained as a Jester, the Rollicking Crab has very few skills, and little of use.
Acrobatics: Has a high level of agility, able to do acrobatics and daredevil gymnastics. These are mostly harmless and cannot be adapted into a battling technique.
Fire manipulation: She has a very poor ability to juggle torches of fire and to ‘breathe’ fire. No magic is involved, just trickery, so it can’t be used for battle, unless she had pre-lit torches with her.
Equipment: Nothing ‘nifty’ except a few torches, many expensive costumes, a small harmless knife that she bought for ornamental value (to use in shows) rather than for offensive weaponry.
Familiars: A rather battered old rabbit lives in her pocket; she used to use it in tricks, but now it’s too old to be used. She’s rather attached to it though.
I'm keeping it brief; a lot will be revealed through roleplay and a lot of the information is useless in any other form anyway.
Age: 17
Race: Human
Hair Color: Treacle-dark
Eye Color: Watery blue-grey
Height: Shorter than average
Weight: Bony and skeletal
Occupation: Court Jester (unemployed)
Appearance: Maia’s most recognizable feature is her hair – kept short and neat, curling around her face like an animal’s fur. She compares the colour to thick dark chocolate, or aged oakwood, but it resembles nothing so much as treacle, or perhaps the rich brown of fresh compost. It fits her small, pointed face as a glove fits a hand, and is generally kept back in a cap so as not to be burnt or to otherwise get in her way. Her nose is short and snub, her lips are thin, and her eyes are thickly lashed. They are piercing too, in a way that bluish-grey eyes rarely are, shrewd and unsettling.
Her limbs are long, too long for her short frame, which gives her a curiously skeletal, doll-like appearance, as does her extremely thin figure. When not ‘on the job’, she is often compared to a spider or some other scuttling insect. She has remarkable grace when she moves, walking fluidly, the muscles taut and easily visible beneath her pale skin.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking she is beautiful, though, because she is most definitely not. Her features are remarkable in the way that an example of fine architecture is remarkable – angular, striking and artistic, but not beautiful in a womanly, natural way. Her features have a certain immovability to them, like a rocky cliff wall. When she smiles or frowns, you can almost hear the bones creaking in protest.
When not ‘on the job’, she wears sensible clothes; black or grey long skirts, tunics, thick wool jumpers and cloaks. She’s usually covered in ink-stains of different colours from her little story-writing hobby, and her fingers are often raw with accidental burns. When she’s ‘on the job’, it’s a different story. She has a multitude of glittering costumes, in every hue imaginable, and makeup to match them all. She dubs herself ‘The Rollicking Crab’ and plasters her face in chalky paste, before covering it in colour and eccentric, often grotesque, designs. She goes barefoot, with perhaps a silk cape for warmth if necessary, and if her patter and jokes weren’t so resoundingly mirthless, she’d be a fantastic and ethereal creature.
History: Maia’s parents had tried for many years to have children before eventually producing Maia; and so, they weren’t exactly young. Her father, Robert, was in his fifties, and her mother Cynthia was barely younger. Robert was a moneylender and had been brought up that way from an early age. He had quickly displayed a skill for mathematics and had enjoyed his schooling and later on, his job. When Maia was five, she found herself being sent to a school...for Jesters. She wasn’t too upset about it though; after all, she’d always loved performing to her friends, her family, to strangers. She thought it would be fun to be funny.
It wasn’t.
The first lesson they taught was the harshest of all. They took out your spirit, scrubbed any humour out of it with steel wool and then put it back upside down. Metaphorically, of course. By the end of the first year, Maia had stopped laughing, and her smile was no longer one of childish joy – smiles were now just contortions of the face.
After that, things got easier. She learnt to juggle, with five balls – ten – with apples, or shoes, or small dead jellyfish. She learnt to throw her voice from one side of a stage to the other, and to make the sounds of animals, birds and other, more vulgar natural occurrences. She learnt to mimic voices and accents, exaggerating them to near-rude levels, and to leap and dance and spin with extraordinary agility.
When she could no longer count her years on ten fingers, Maia began learning the art of fire – eating it, throwing it, conjuring it. It was all trickery – no magic involved – so it was more difficult than she had imagined. She was constantly dropping the torches or letting the flames lick too close to her hair – which eventually she had to cut short. Fire seemed to hate her. Flames never obeyed her, sometimes seeming to go against the wind to burn her skin and singe her hair. It hated her – but she loved it.
Her parents were proud of her. She graduated with flying colours, one of the top Fools and Jesters in her class, and was awarded not only the Jester’s Hat that marked her achievement, but also the special Bell’d Shoes that indicated she had received special commendations in tomfoolery and shenanigans. Young, and relatively free, she emerged into the Real World like a newly fledged butterfly, unaware of what lay outside.
Her parents were living in a small village, so she was forced to seek employment elsewhere. After journeying around awhile, she found herself in a large-ish city, with the leader calling himself the King. He had a real castle, with stone battlements and terraces, and a moat, and he had a real gold crown and sceptre. It was good enough for Maia.
The King, who was rather old, vague and feeble, accepted her offer immediately and she was employed for four years. She was given a regular allowance, food and lodging, and all the props, costumes and personal items she needed. It was an ideal set-up, and every day she thanked the Gods (that she didn’t believe in) that she was so happy.
But good things never last – not the real ones, anyway, and this was no different. In a great celebration of the King’s eightieth birthday, Maia finally decided to get out her torched and use the fire skills she’d learnt at Jesters’ School. Needless to say, it ended badly. The King was burned, and burned badly. He didn’t make it through the night. Maia received a severe burn to her arm, leaving disfigured, scarred skin there, and she was quickly ejected from the castle as the Prince inherited his throne.
He preached at her constantly – that it was time for the modern age to begin; that Jesters and Fools were a thing of the past; that he had a comedian and he was much funnier than she could ever hope to be. Comedian? Ha! He didn’t wear a glittering outfit – he wore trousers and a shirt, and he sat on a stool and made insulting jokes about personal issues. It wasn’t what she’d call a funny person, oh no sirree.
Insulted and desperate, she left the city to search for new employment. It was difficult. There just didn’t seem to be any Kings left anymore! Now, there were mayors, and runaway Princes, and Queens who liked tea and not merriment. She felt like a oddment, a freak, a piece of a bygone age trying to fit in the shiny, clean, smooth modern times.
And so, she continues to search for a Royal personage, or at least an aristocrat, to entertain, and so she continues to pawn her glittering costumes and her elaborate props.
Skills: Trained as a Jester, the Rollicking Crab has very few skills, and little of use.
Acrobatics: Has a high level of agility, able to do acrobatics and daredevil gymnastics. These are mostly harmless and cannot be adapted into a battling technique.
Fire manipulation: She has a very poor ability to juggle torches of fire and to ‘breathe’ fire. No magic is involved, just trickery, so it can’t be used for battle, unless she had pre-lit torches with her.
Equipment: Nothing ‘nifty’ except a few torches, many expensive costumes, a small harmless knife that she bought for ornamental value (to use in shows) rather than for offensive weaponry.
Familiars: A rather battered old rabbit lives in her pocket; she used to use it in tricks, but now it’s too old to be used. She’s rather attached to it though.
I'm keeping it brief; a lot will be revealed through roleplay and a lot of the information is useless in any other form anyway.