Cirrostratus
06-21-09, 12:47 AM
Name: Elina "Suncatcher" Ljungstrand
Age: 19
Race: Human
Hair Color: Light brown
Eye Color: Green
Height: 5'2"
Weight: 125
Occupation: Wizard
Personality: Elina, or Elli, as she is generally known, seems to be a very up-front, matter-of-fact woman, practically and painfully honest. The truth is simply that she sees things the way they are, doesn't like them the way they are, and wishes she could like them. She's a closet romantic who would love to have her head in the clouds (insert pointed look at younger siblings here), and she hides that out-of-character love of sap with pure snark. In other words, she's a brusque, sensible woman that hides several dozen romance novels under her bed. She has a mother-hen complex when it comes to her friends and those who seem to be getting the short-end of the stick, though she'll deny its anything noble.
Appearance: Elli is short and well proportioned; tending to the stocky side but in a pleasantly-rounded, distinctively female way. Her hair is the shade of brown that can be called light brown or dirty blond with the same amount of ease, all unruly ringlets and curls. She wears it cropped to chin length, framing her face. Her eyes are bright green flecked with gold, and deep-set, almost always hooded. She also has freckles - and, given her assigned post means she spends a lot of time outside, we're not just talking a few. Her smile, when she actually smiles, is broad and infectious, making her eyes sparkle. She wears an ankle-length dirty-white robe (not dirty-dirty, but dirty-white in color, like month-old snow; she keeps the robe fastidiously clean) with wide arms, sewn with runes in silver thread. The inner lining is a rainbow of iridescent silk. She generally wears a shabby Church Wizard uniform beneath that, with a family heirloom necklace and pair of her dad's old specs around her neck.
History: Elina was born in Gjovic, Salvar - a small, almost-no-name fishing village in the feifdom of Icewyne. She was, unluckily, the first grandchild of Tabita and Kalevi Strandssen, which meant that as her aunts and uncles (excepting her Uncle Caelric, but everyone pretty much agreed that he was weird so that was alright) and own parents went on to have more children, she became the unofficial babysitter for them all. From the age of five she was helping to chase after little ones and prevent them from getting hurt in all the manner that small children can get hurt in a town like hers.
Elli showed affinity to magic from early on, but it was all little things - candles going out when she was annoyed, for example, or the weather changing slowly but surely from winter to spring-like just in time for her birthday party, but turning back to snow and sludge before her cousin's party the very next day - but it was mostly harmless things that could be excused away whenever the village's priest poked his nose in.
Between years of child-chasing and subtle magic tomfoolery, it came as no surprise to anyone, really, when twelve-year-Elli put her foot down and demanded that she be allowed to do something else for once in her Sway-damn life! Her father was a patient one, really, and despite using Elli as free babysitting for years he really did want was best for her - she was packed off to Knife's Edge two years later with her grandmother's necklace and her pet ermine, once all the proper doors had been tried, looked through and deemed incorrect, and once she was the proper age for apprenticeship.
The next few years were strenuous, but so blessedly free of younger siblings and cousins that they just seemed to fly by. As time went on and she began to read more and more (would the Church wizards let her try anything practical until she had read practically every book in the libraries? Of course not), she began to slowly see that her country (which was never very stable in the first place) was sliding closer and closer to the brink of oh gods it burns, and she had plunked herself right smack dab in the middle of one of the worst places to be. So she did what came natural to almost-every Salvic native in her position: she kept her head down, and learned things at an ever-increasing frantic pace, becoming a model student and learning the theories and ideas behind her chosen path of magic quicker than her teachers (and she herself, to be honest) had originally thought possible. After four years of book study, two of them at the crazed pace, they finally deemed her ready to start the practical application -
Just in time for the cold war to turn hot. Elli had received maybe two months of training in weather magic before she was shoved back to her books, her teachers quick to assure her that, no, no, you'll be fine, you just need a little more grounding. It was obvious what they were really saying: We don't have the time to teach you, we're too busy screwing up your homeland. She was even given her Sourcerous name almost by accident, by a classmate instead of a mentor, when she discovered what a seemingly random jar could do. Or, rather, what she could do with said jar.
...and then her stupid crazy uncle had to go and get himself thrown in jail doing something so sway-blamedly stupid as trying to cause an uprising. Elli went, if possible, even further into her shell, not letting anyone know that she was related to that maniac, though if anybody had asked, she wouldn't have lied. She doesn't know if he's still okay - all she really knows is that, thanks to him and one of her mother's other brothers, her entire family (except, oh yes, her) has been turned upside down and more or less fled the country (again, except her).
Joy.
She's still in Salvar, still in Knife's Edge, but her loyalty walks just that. One of these days she's going to have fall over one side or the other for her own survival...
Skills:
Magic:
All the Basics: She's got four years worth of extreme reading in her. While she doesn't yet have the power or control to summon, say, a typhoon from a stream, she knows the idea behind how to do so. Kinda. Sorta. Ish. All she really needs is practice with the little things, and it'll all build up...she hopes, anyway.
Weather Manipulation: Elli's practical training had just begun when the war started. As a result, her powers are still developing. She is, like all weather mages, supposed to rely only on her staff and wand - but for reasons unknown she has become attached to her father's old glasses. If she loses or otherwise cannot use the glasses, her effectiveness is halved, if not quartered. She also needs to be absolutely still while working the weather.
Clear Skies: The name, so far, is somewhat inaccurate: she can only really clear a patch in the clouds wide enough to give her a patch of sunlight about six-feet by six-feet wide.
Fetch Storm: She can begin to gather storms, but at the moment the storms are extremely localized: about the same size as her sun patches, floating anywhere from six feet to fifteen feet in the air. These storms can be any typical storm (snow, rain, wind, thunder) and they generally last about ten minutes. She cannot call or influence cyclones and the like - she's tried, but they never last, and when they do (at a rate of about one-in-fifteen) they are a) not under her control and b) rather obviously laughing at her (or so she claims).
Manipulation: Her current best skill is manipulating storms that already exist into producing wind, snow, rain or lightening. However, once she has started precipitation, she cannot stop it for about six hours, and vice versa (once it's stopped, she can't start it). She cannot make a storm last longer than it would naturally, yet, and she can only call one lightening strike every hour. She can cause some weather to not effect her - during storms it is not odd to see her surrounded by a second skin of dry air. She can only do this for ten minutes at a time, but that's often long enough to get out of the elements. Sadly, it's not effective against things like hail, wind or lightening.
Parhelia: Elli's only true offensive capability, Parhelia (named for the false suns effect caused by high-altitude clouds) causes her to have up to three brilliantly-white spheres of unknown elemental makeup orbiting her. These spheres light anything they hit on fire (though it is not otherworldly-hot; these flames are easy to put out if one is attentive), and can be used for light or a rudimentary shield against projectiles. They last indefinitely (as long as Elli has access to sun or another source of light) or until they are used, and once they are used Elli needs ten minutes before she can recall them.
Wizard's Voice: A side-effect of certain wizard powers, Elli sometimes speaks with a Voice that seems softer than her natural speaking voice, but that can be heard and felt in the head as well as the ears. This Voice echoes, somewhat, sibilant and hissing: like snow blown over ice. It's not really useful for much, though (she would like to argue that most wizards only use their Voice to intimidate and to impress anyway) and she has yet to show any sign of mastering it at long range.
Don't Need A Weatherman...: Through her years of growing up watching out for her siblings, and her following years of Church-based training, Elli is above-average at predicting the weather - both short term (as in being absolutely certain that it's going to snow in the next three hours) and long term (as in being reasonably sure that it's going to be hot and sunny next week). She does this through a mixture of observing the current weather, and projecting what she knows about weather on top of that. This is, obviously, most accurate in places with somewhat static climates - the more unpredictable the weather, the less likely she is to successfully predict what is going to happen, weather-wise.
Sewing: Her mother is a seamstress, and taught her just about all she knows. Elli is, however, still only an average seamstress - she's good enough to make her own clothes as long as the clothes are out of fairly normal fabric (linen, wool, etc), she hasn't learned how to make anything out of, say, silk or vlince yet. Her Church-training taught her a small series of useful signs that can be sewn into fabric for protection from the elements. Unfortunately, she can only sew two sets of runes into any particular garment before the fabric itself protests and does things like disintegrate at awkward times...
Fighting: She's got three uncles and a myriad of boy-cousins, all of whom (perhaps with the exception of Uncle Cael) know just how easy it is for men to be violent morons when it comes to women. She's been taught how to fight dirty by these men, and fight-dirty she shall, even if it is generally just to kick or stab to disable, and then run away. She is a purely average fighter with her dagger, slightly-below average in hand-to-hand, and far below average in quarterstaff or wand fighting.
Equipment:
Robe: Dirty white-gray woolen robe with wide arms, sewn with (primarily) ice-protection and (secondarily) fire-protection runes, lined with iridescent rainbow-colored silk. The ice-wards protect her for three direct hits from an ice-based skill up to one level higher than her current skill, while the fire only protects her from one direct hit at the same level. Will not be sold!
Second-Hand Wizard's Hat: A typical pointed Wizard's Hat in the same dirty-white color as her robe, with a alternate-dimension pocket just big enough to store her wand. Both the hat and robe were bought used, and the Hat tends to have an attitude. She suspects that its previous owner was either a much better wizard than her (and the hat knows and resents her) or a much worse wizard than her (and the Hat's just being a brat for its former owner's sake). Either way, the Hat occasionally refuses to return her wand to her as it is supposed to.
Wand: about a foot long, carved the same wood as her staff and stained the same way, with white, rune-etched leather wrapped around the end meant to be the handle. Used as a conduit for her spellwork - if she's forced to go without her wand, her effectiveness plummets, though she can still do some damage.
Necklace of Farvoice: a simple silver chain with a pendant worked into a realistic likeness of a moth with folded wings and small diamond-like stones set as eyes. This necklace earns its name by allowing Elle to talk to her mother mentally through it. The necklace only works at night, and it only works ten minutes at a time before it needs recharged for at least six hours. It has no further abilities, and will not be sold.
Sunjar: a mug-shaped carved-crystal jar with a screw-on cap that seems to soak in sunlight, storing it away. The jar seems empty and normal until it is in a dim or dark location - once someplace dark, the jar seems filled with liquid light. The Sunjar only stores enough light to allow Elli to perform Parhelia up to three times, and then it must have six hours in direct sunlight to fill again. It, also, has no other abilities and will not be sold.
Staff: six feet in length, stained silvery-gray, with the runes for weather control carved and burned into it. Its about the same durability as oak, and serves as both a focus and as a quarterstaff, though she is more apt to hurt herself with it if she uses it as a weapon. It holds no inherent magic.
Dagger: a simple steel dagger, about seven long, with a black-leather wrapped hilt.
Sewing Stuff: Exactly what it says on the tin. Ten or so spools of thread, two silver needles, a thimble and a pair of scissors, all carried in a small hardwood case.
Spectacles: A old, beat-up pair of her dad's glasses. The lenses are gone (and she doesn't need glasses anyway) and there is absolutely nothing special about them - other than the fact that she's had them since she was little and is so attached to them that she can't work the weather well without them. She wears them on a leather lanyard around her neck.
Barometer: Again, what it says on the tin. A simple, thin, four-inch tube of glass and copper, filled with mercury and water.
Goggles: Bronze and leather with red lenses, useful for adjusting her eyes to the dark or for observing clouds in brilliant sunshine. Not for use in combat, as the glass is very thin and shatters easily.
Familiar: Snövit, a white Ermine (http://www.flickr.com/photos/65164890@N00/1976605586/) that has been spelled to shift into an White Ermine Moth (http://www.flickr.com/photos/e3000/476491753/) at Elina's request. Snövit mostly does this to keep people from detecting her, but she occasionally uses this to steal shiny things.
Voice, Hat and Name concepts borrowed from Caden Law with his permission, relation to Cael Strandssen done with my permission, since I play both. Ha.
Age: 19
Race: Human
Hair Color: Light brown
Eye Color: Green
Height: 5'2"
Weight: 125
Occupation: Wizard
Personality: Elina, or Elli, as she is generally known, seems to be a very up-front, matter-of-fact woman, practically and painfully honest. The truth is simply that she sees things the way they are, doesn't like them the way they are, and wishes she could like them. She's a closet romantic who would love to have her head in the clouds (insert pointed look at younger siblings here), and she hides that out-of-character love of sap with pure snark. In other words, she's a brusque, sensible woman that hides several dozen romance novels under her bed. She has a mother-hen complex when it comes to her friends and those who seem to be getting the short-end of the stick, though she'll deny its anything noble.
Appearance: Elli is short and well proportioned; tending to the stocky side but in a pleasantly-rounded, distinctively female way. Her hair is the shade of brown that can be called light brown or dirty blond with the same amount of ease, all unruly ringlets and curls. She wears it cropped to chin length, framing her face. Her eyes are bright green flecked with gold, and deep-set, almost always hooded. She also has freckles - and, given her assigned post means she spends a lot of time outside, we're not just talking a few. Her smile, when she actually smiles, is broad and infectious, making her eyes sparkle. She wears an ankle-length dirty-white robe (not dirty-dirty, but dirty-white in color, like month-old snow; she keeps the robe fastidiously clean) with wide arms, sewn with runes in silver thread. The inner lining is a rainbow of iridescent silk. She generally wears a shabby Church Wizard uniform beneath that, with a family heirloom necklace and pair of her dad's old specs around her neck.
History: Elina was born in Gjovic, Salvar - a small, almost-no-name fishing village in the feifdom of Icewyne. She was, unluckily, the first grandchild of Tabita and Kalevi Strandssen, which meant that as her aunts and uncles (excepting her Uncle Caelric, but everyone pretty much agreed that he was weird so that was alright) and own parents went on to have more children, she became the unofficial babysitter for them all. From the age of five she was helping to chase after little ones and prevent them from getting hurt in all the manner that small children can get hurt in a town like hers.
Elli showed affinity to magic from early on, but it was all little things - candles going out when she was annoyed, for example, or the weather changing slowly but surely from winter to spring-like just in time for her birthday party, but turning back to snow and sludge before her cousin's party the very next day - but it was mostly harmless things that could be excused away whenever the village's priest poked his nose in.
Between years of child-chasing and subtle magic tomfoolery, it came as no surprise to anyone, really, when twelve-year-Elli put her foot down and demanded that she be allowed to do something else for once in her Sway-damn life! Her father was a patient one, really, and despite using Elli as free babysitting for years he really did want was best for her - she was packed off to Knife's Edge two years later with her grandmother's necklace and her pet ermine, once all the proper doors had been tried, looked through and deemed incorrect, and once she was the proper age for apprenticeship.
The next few years were strenuous, but so blessedly free of younger siblings and cousins that they just seemed to fly by. As time went on and she began to read more and more (would the Church wizards let her try anything practical until she had read practically every book in the libraries? Of course not), she began to slowly see that her country (which was never very stable in the first place) was sliding closer and closer to the brink of oh gods it burns, and she had plunked herself right smack dab in the middle of one of the worst places to be. So she did what came natural to almost-every Salvic native in her position: she kept her head down, and learned things at an ever-increasing frantic pace, becoming a model student and learning the theories and ideas behind her chosen path of magic quicker than her teachers (and she herself, to be honest) had originally thought possible. After four years of book study, two of them at the crazed pace, they finally deemed her ready to start the practical application -
Just in time for the cold war to turn hot. Elli had received maybe two months of training in weather magic before she was shoved back to her books, her teachers quick to assure her that, no, no, you'll be fine, you just need a little more grounding. It was obvious what they were really saying: We don't have the time to teach you, we're too busy screwing up your homeland. She was even given her Sourcerous name almost by accident, by a classmate instead of a mentor, when she discovered what a seemingly random jar could do. Or, rather, what she could do with said jar.
...and then her stupid crazy uncle had to go and get himself thrown in jail doing something so sway-blamedly stupid as trying to cause an uprising. Elli went, if possible, even further into her shell, not letting anyone know that she was related to that maniac, though if anybody had asked, she wouldn't have lied. She doesn't know if he's still okay - all she really knows is that, thanks to him and one of her mother's other brothers, her entire family (except, oh yes, her) has been turned upside down and more or less fled the country (again, except her).
Joy.
She's still in Salvar, still in Knife's Edge, but her loyalty walks just that. One of these days she's going to have fall over one side or the other for her own survival...
Skills:
Magic:
All the Basics: She's got four years worth of extreme reading in her. While she doesn't yet have the power or control to summon, say, a typhoon from a stream, she knows the idea behind how to do so. Kinda. Sorta. Ish. All she really needs is practice with the little things, and it'll all build up...she hopes, anyway.
Weather Manipulation: Elli's practical training had just begun when the war started. As a result, her powers are still developing. She is, like all weather mages, supposed to rely only on her staff and wand - but for reasons unknown she has become attached to her father's old glasses. If she loses or otherwise cannot use the glasses, her effectiveness is halved, if not quartered. She also needs to be absolutely still while working the weather.
Clear Skies: The name, so far, is somewhat inaccurate: she can only really clear a patch in the clouds wide enough to give her a patch of sunlight about six-feet by six-feet wide.
Fetch Storm: She can begin to gather storms, but at the moment the storms are extremely localized: about the same size as her sun patches, floating anywhere from six feet to fifteen feet in the air. These storms can be any typical storm (snow, rain, wind, thunder) and they generally last about ten minutes. She cannot call or influence cyclones and the like - she's tried, but they never last, and when they do (at a rate of about one-in-fifteen) they are a) not under her control and b) rather obviously laughing at her (or so she claims).
Manipulation: Her current best skill is manipulating storms that already exist into producing wind, snow, rain or lightening. However, once she has started precipitation, she cannot stop it for about six hours, and vice versa (once it's stopped, she can't start it). She cannot make a storm last longer than it would naturally, yet, and she can only call one lightening strike every hour. She can cause some weather to not effect her - during storms it is not odd to see her surrounded by a second skin of dry air. She can only do this for ten minutes at a time, but that's often long enough to get out of the elements. Sadly, it's not effective against things like hail, wind or lightening.
Parhelia: Elli's only true offensive capability, Parhelia (named for the false suns effect caused by high-altitude clouds) causes her to have up to three brilliantly-white spheres of unknown elemental makeup orbiting her. These spheres light anything they hit on fire (though it is not otherworldly-hot; these flames are easy to put out if one is attentive), and can be used for light or a rudimentary shield against projectiles. They last indefinitely (as long as Elli has access to sun or another source of light) or until they are used, and once they are used Elli needs ten minutes before she can recall them.
Wizard's Voice: A side-effect of certain wizard powers, Elli sometimes speaks with a Voice that seems softer than her natural speaking voice, but that can be heard and felt in the head as well as the ears. This Voice echoes, somewhat, sibilant and hissing: like snow blown over ice. It's not really useful for much, though (she would like to argue that most wizards only use their Voice to intimidate and to impress anyway) and she has yet to show any sign of mastering it at long range.
Don't Need A Weatherman...: Through her years of growing up watching out for her siblings, and her following years of Church-based training, Elli is above-average at predicting the weather - both short term (as in being absolutely certain that it's going to snow in the next three hours) and long term (as in being reasonably sure that it's going to be hot and sunny next week). She does this through a mixture of observing the current weather, and projecting what she knows about weather on top of that. This is, obviously, most accurate in places with somewhat static climates - the more unpredictable the weather, the less likely she is to successfully predict what is going to happen, weather-wise.
Sewing: Her mother is a seamstress, and taught her just about all she knows. Elli is, however, still only an average seamstress - she's good enough to make her own clothes as long as the clothes are out of fairly normal fabric (linen, wool, etc), she hasn't learned how to make anything out of, say, silk or vlince yet. Her Church-training taught her a small series of useful signs that can be sewn into fabric for protection from the elements. Unfortunately, she can only sew two sets of runes into any particular garment before the fabric itself protests and does things like disintegrate at awkward times...
Fighting: She's got three uncles and a myriad of boy-cousins, all of whom (perhaps with the exception of Uncle Cael) know just how easy it is for men to be violent morons when it comes to women. She's been taught how to fight dirty by these men, and fight-dirty she shall, even if it is generally just to kick or stab to disable, and then run away. She is a purely average fighter with her dagger, slightly-below average in hand-to-hand, and far below average in quarterstaff or wand fighting.
Equipment:
Robe: Dirty white-gray woolen robe with wide arms, sewn with (primarily) ice-protection and (secondarily) fire-protection runes, lined with iridescent rainbow-colored silk. The ice-wards protect her for three direct hits from an ice-based skill up to one level higher than her current skill, while the fire only protects her from one direct hit at the same level. Will not be sold!
Second-Hand Wizard's Hat: A typical pointed Wizard's Hat in the same dirty-white color as her robe, with a alternate-dimension pocket just big enough to store her wand. Both the hat and robe were bought used, and the Hat tends to have an attitude. She suspects that its previous owner was either a much better wizard than her (and the hat knows and resents her) or a much worse wizard than her (and the Hat's just being a brat for its former owner's sake). Either way, the Hat occasionally refuses to return her wand to her as it is supposed to.
Wand: about a foot long, carved the same wood as her staff and stained the same way, with white, rune-etched leather wrapped around the end meant to be the handle. Used as a conduit for her spellwork - if she's forced to go without her wand, her effectiveness plummets, though she can still do some damage.
Necklace of Farvoice: a simple silver chain with a pendant worked into a realistic likeness of a moth with folded wings and small diamond-like stones set as eyes. This necklace earns its name by allowing Elle to talk to her mother mentally through it. The necklace only works at night, and it only works ten minutes at a time before it needs recharged for at least six hours. It has no further abilities, and will not be sold.
Sunjar: a mug-shaped carved-crystal jar with a screw-on cap that seems to soak in sunlight, storing it away. The jar seems empty and normal until it is in a dim or dark location - once someplace dark, the jar seems filled with liquid light. The Sunjar only stores enough light to allow Elli to perform Parhelia up to three times, and then it must have six hours in direct sunlight to fill again. It, also, has no other abilities and will not be sold.
Staff: six feet in length, stained silvery-gray, with the runes for weather control carved and burned into it. Its about the same durability as oak, and serves as both a focus and as a quarterstaff, though she is more apt to hurt herself with it if she uses it as a weapon. It holds no inherent magic.
Dagger: a simple steel dagger, about seven long, with a black-leather wrapped hilt.
Sewing Stuff: Exactly what it says on the tin. Ten or so spools of thread, two silver needles, a thimble and a pair of scissors, all carried in a small hardwood case.
Spectacles: A old, beat-up pair of her dad's glasses. The lenses are gone (and she doesn't need glasses anyway) and there is absolutely nothing special about them - other than the fact that she's had them since she was little and is so attached to them that she can't work the weather well without them. She wears them on a leather lanyard around her neck.
Barometer: Again, what it says on the tin. A simple, thin, four-inch tube of glass and copper, filled with mercury and water.
Goggles: Bronze and leather with red lenses, useful for adjusting her eyes to the dark or for observing clouds in brilliant sunshine. Not for use in combat, as the glass is very thin and shatters easily.
Familiar: Snövit, a white Ermine (http://www.flickr.com/photos/65164890@N00/1976605586/) that has been spelled to shift into an White Ermine Moth (http://www.flickr.com/photos/e3000/476491753/) at Elina's request. Snövit mostly does this to keep people from detecting her, but she occasionally uses this to steal shiny things.
Voice, Hat and Name concepts borrowed from Caden Law with his permission, relation to Cael Strandssen done with my permission, since I play both. Ha.