Idieth
05-22-12, 09:54 AM
Name: Idièth "the Wrathless"
Job: Cheatyface Banker
Race: Lesser Fairy
Age: 61
Gender: Female
Hair Color: Golden Blonde
Eye Color: Emerald Green
Hgt / Wgt: 1'1" / 14 oz
Languages: Tradespeak, Fey
Weapons: Silver #8 Sewing Needle
Armor: None
From: Tenger Jerhel
Appearance
She is actually rather tall for a lesser fairy, but that isn't saying much when she has once been trapped down the shaft of a boot and proceeded to have a very bad day when someone put them on without checking its contents. Her height is a foot and an inch; she will vociferously insist upon the extra inch in conversation. The body curves generously in the right places but the overall effect is slim and tautly-muscled, because it is significantly harder to fly if one is wider than one is tall. Her feather-light, blonde hair spills down straight to the small of her back and is kept out of her face with a red hairband inexplicably topped with a pair of white bunny ears longer than her head is tall. Almost a third of that pixieish face is occupied by bright, quick, green eyes that have a faint inner light of their own. Strangely enough for something purported to be more than a half-century old, her skin has all the untouched smooth radiance of a newborn baby.
Two matching pairs of white, feathered wings extend from but are not physically connected to her back. Even fairies have the sense to know that feathers need preening and that their necks and arms don't bend around in the right direction or degree to actually do so, so it's obvious that wings can't actually grow directly out of the back. Instead, they hover about an inch off of the back and can be pulled about the same distance to the side for cleaning and preening. This has the unfortunate effect of confusing some curious people with more muscle than brains, who would try and pull them right off. It hurts just as much and doesn't mysteriously re-attach. Worse, she usually proceeds to have a very bad day when the removed wing angers the confused musclehead by disappearing in a puff of fairy dust.
While there were parts of her homeland that were clothing-optional, Idièth had emigrated from there some time ago. She usually wears a forest green vest and a matching above-knee skirt over a sleeveless white blouse closed with a big, red, poofy ascot. Around the same time that she left Tenger Jerhel, though, she picked up matching white thigh-high socks and over-elbow fingerless gloves, because it is uncomfortably cold out here, especially up in the air and the winds. She does not wear shoes.
She moves with avian twitchiness and has a high body temperature of around 105 degrees F.
Personality
Being a lesser fairy means that she is generally slightly smarter than a bag of rocks (those would be the least fairies). On the other hand, being as sharp as a ball, plus long periods spent under the worst luck, plus repeated treatment as a durable instrument of slapstick, plus a lifetime spent with the bored faries of the realm, has rendered her short-tempered, suicidally overconfident, easily distracted, frequently forgetful, habitually mischievious, and downright uninhibited. Things that make her fly instantly into a tiny rage include: mispronouncing her name, dying, losing an inch when mentioning her height, adding two ounces when mentioning her weight, having a boot thrown at her, dying, and mistaking her for something other than a fairy.
As far as fairy morality goes, hers is actually fairly reasonable compared to those such as the one who held that good is if your hair goes up and bad is if your hair goes down. Luck has always been a zero-sum matter, she is an incarnation of the natural force of luck, therefore she holds that everything else is also a zero-sum matter. Therefore, if she had received a gift from somebody, then she tries her hardest to give a gift - not necessarily to the same somebody. If she barked her shin on something, she'll be going around with a bat trying to hit somebody in the shin. There's a squashed bug somewhere each time shortly after she dies.
In a bizarre twist of gender-indiscriminate gold-digging, she likes to attach herself to whoever is willing to have their luck manipulated the most, because that lets her profit the most. Since she's profiting, though, it also means whoever she's attached to is the most unlucky person in the world. She doesn't like being with boring people who'd prefer their life to be predictable. For one thing, they're boring. For the other, they're cheapskates.
The only being that she has held any permanent loyalty to is the monarch of Tenger Jerhel,. Other people exist mostly for her convenience and to try to get luck off of. She's a bit afraid of shoes, especially boots, on account of keep getting stuck in them for some reason.
Background
Idièth first incarnated about sixty years ago in Tenger Jerhel at the foot of a hillock, amidst a patch of three-leaf clovers that an obsessive-compulsive least fairy had gone through earlier and tore one leaf off of every clover. She was immediately drafted into a passing gang of least fairies and spend the early years getting drunk, partying, having a turf war, attending a pageant, participating in a pogrom, exploring the world, chasing down small insects, running away from slightly larger insects, bathing, sleeping in a huddle, or many of the other things that she was generally expected to do. It took about a year less than usual for her to become entirely comfortable with the more violent side of life in that realm.
She distinguished herself in the royal eyes during the Incident With The Fake Crown That Was On Fire. There was a play put on one summer evening concerning the story of the monarch's grandmother and how she traveled to the Third Biggest Tree Within a Day's Flight to battle the Great Fire-Spitting Toad and recover the Flagon Of Fresh Milk. This was all entirely made-up, though, since the playwright's work had little to do with reality, which was the style in vogue that month. The key point of the incident was that there was a painted wooden crown that the lead actress was wearing, that the enormous Toad prop had been changed at the last minute by the stage manager from vomiting red confetti into actually breathing fire, and that Idièth was kind of dumb.
During the exciting battle scene in Act 11, 12-Act plays being also in vogue in that month, the Toad did its namesake and assailed the extremely surprised and uninformed monarch's grandmother. Seeing this, Idièth jumped out of the first row of the choir and flew very quickly to the aid. She successfully rescued the prop crown, still on fire, and smothered the flames with her own body. Then she reverently presented the singed crown, which she had mistaken for the real one, to the monarch, who was not wearing her actual crown while attending that play. Meanwhile, the lead actress burned screaming to death and there was a pause in the play while waiting for her to get back together and to find a new battle-gown to put on her. The monarch was tremendously amused and awarded Idièth her second set of wings and Lesser Fairy status there and then.
Idièth loved her new wings. They, along with her sporadic good luck, let her die a lot less often in the more violent fairy games. There were a lot fewer things in Tenger Jerhel that could touch her, things like thrown nets, a swarm of dagger-winged hornets, nets on handles, fly trap plants, stooping kestrels, webs of the bigger spiders, and the monarch's summons. The problem with being small, flying, and lucky is that you get picked to dance the Blade Dance, the Walnut Dance, and all the other dances where entire crowds of people show up with pointy bits and produce to chuck at you, generally timed to a snappy tune, to watch all the interesting shapes and flying that result from dodging it. It wasn't as if she had a choice to refuse; even the monarch found the activity amusing enough that she participated every other Tuesday. Idièth wasn't happy about this and threw a tantrum almost every time, but given her atrocious luck (by stubborn and misguided choice) and small size, she was simply a tiny ball of impotent fury. Hence the title "Wrathless" stuck.
One day, she was visiting a friend for tea and cake when the wing of the entire building suddenly found itself quite separated from the rest of the building and falling from several thousand feet up in the air. (see Itera) There was enough time to finish her cup of tea while in freefall, then the both of them flew out the window, past a screaming wingless Greater Fairy, laughed at her on the way, and went on to explore a world that felt so very different. They decided to split up for a bit to check out two different houses on opposite sides of the street in the first little hamlet that they came upon. Fairies being fairies and the world being so large and strange, they never saw each other again.
She was excited. Ever after having tasted what an extra set of wings can do for her, she's decided that she wants another set for more power. This required asking the monarch for it and, since it was so rare, she reasoned that it would be best done if she was having an extremely lucky day and the monarch was in a really good mood. As such, she had been collecting luck ever since to try to stock up for the day when she might get an audience for the monarch. Back home, there were very few who wanted to do business with her and she's always running herself with very bad luck in order to stock up more good luck. Idièth might not realize this, but it was exactly this bad luck that was causing her to keep failing and dying, losing chunks of her savings each time. Now, though, where better than in a world of gullible mortals?
Perhaps, in another few years of being chased down for fairy dust, chased down for confused eatings, and accidentally squished when sleeping under a petunia, Idièth might re-evaluate the whole business and decide to try to figure out how to get home.
Skills
Evasion [S]: Better on the wing than on the ground.
Awareness [A]: Better at keeping track of the surroundings than at fine details.
Singing [A]: Her breathy soprano used to lead two choirs, which were disbanded on account of fairies being fairies.
Hiding [B]: When not flying and giving off that distinctive wing thrum.
Swimming [B]: It's just like flying underwater, hey?
Pastries [B]: She is rather good at making intricate-shaped pastries with fillings.
Tea Brewing [C]: Prefers red tea to anything else, really.
Needlework [C]: Whether sewing, stitching, or eye-stabbing, she's pretty good with needles.
Throwing [C]: She's decent at chucking very small rocks at very small targets.
Sharp Mind[D]: About as sharp as a ball.
Wrestling [E]: She's good enough to wrestle down a mouse. Maybe.
Literacy [F]: She can probably recognize her name, but you set the letters apart and she's clueless.
Abilities
Fairy Dust to Fairy Dust: Lesser Fairies are barely a step up from Least Fairies, they have more intelligence and personality than simple incarnations of natural forces, but have not yet manifested so much independence as to avoid decomposing into fairy dust every time that they die. Upon death, she explodes into a cloud of magical energy and fairy dust. Additionally, parts of her body detached from her also becomes a smaller cloud of magical energy and fairy dust.
The gathered luck from all of her adventures is contained in this cloud. Inhaling or anointing oneself in this fairy dust grants 50% good luck for however much time it takes to consume half of the banked luck. For example, if she had 100 points banked up, then there will be 1 minute of 50% good luck by using the dust. If not used or bottled, the luck is lost to the winds.
5-10 minutes after exploding, she reconstitutes from the magical energy in a hopefully safe place within 50 feet of the point of death. She only retains half of her banked luck, the other half having been either lost or taken. She is generally very upset about this sort of thing happening.
Winged Flight: She has four wings, shaped like a hummingbird's, that flap about 20 times per second and allow her to hover and move in any direction. The wing loading is sufficient for her to lift up to 3 pounds for short distances, though she usually can't travel long-distance with more than about 8 ounces of stuff on her. Her wingspan is 2 feet and she cannot fully fly with less than that much clearance. The maximum speed is 40 feet per second and can reach it in a 1/10 of a second. Maximum altitude is about 500 feet above ground. 2 minutes' flight time at maximum performance in battle.
Manipulate Luck: Being an incarnation of the natural force of luck, she is able to manipulate the luck of anybody and anything through a zero-sum system. She is able to bestow a specific amount of good or bad luck for a specific duration at a specific time and often uses this as part of the magical contract operation that she uses to skim good luck off of the world. The product of the range in feet (0.1 for contact), the duration in minutes, the magnitude in percent success, and the number of targets must be equal to or less than 200. This increases with the square of her level. For example, a valid invocation is 20% adjustment in luck for 2 minutes for 1 person from 5 feet away. Another one is a 10% adjustment in luck for 30 minutes for 5 people, given with a touch. She's fond of kissing for sealing the contact-range contracts.
Luck is banked and she cannot go negative. Therefore, she has to bestow some quantity of bad luck before she would have some quantity of good luck to give. She usually wants to skim an extortionate profit for herself whenever making these contracts. For example, to get a zero-sum 10% good luck for 10 minutes for a fight later, she would probably charge 10% bad luck for half an hour, banking the difference as good luck for herself. It almost never works to try to tide over the bad luck by sitting still and doing nothing, since bad things usually find a way to happen to the victim regardless.
Detriments
Atrocious Luck: She is always trying to bank good luck by giving herself bad luck all the time, such that it has become an ingrained force of habit. Unless specifically held in abeyance, she suffers from 50% bad luck.
Rather Small: She's 1/5th the size of a person and therefore has 1/25th the proportional strength of a well-exercised woman, so she has the strength to dead-lift about 6 pounds.
Iron Vulnerability: Contact with iron, including iron alloys and steeled iron, inflicts excruciating pain on her. Actual wounds made with iron continue to hurt until closed and heal extremely slowly.
Wood Powerlessness: Contact with certain types of wood, but not oils extracted from the plant, lock out the use of her luck manipulation but does not dispel existing effects. This lasts as long as the contact does. The plants are: witch hazel, rowan, and mulberry.
Brass Bells: The sound of brass bells pitched to any octave of C-sharp mesmerizes her and denies her from acting except for autonomous actions like breathing and hovering. The ringing from two such brass bells pitched one octave apart sends her directly to sleep.
Job: Cheatyface Banker
Race: Lesser Fairy
Age: 61
Gender: Female
Hair Color: Golden Blonde
Eye Color: Emerald Green
Hgt / Wgt: 1'1" / 14 oz
Languages: Tradespeak, Fey
Weapons: Silver #8 Sewing Needle
Armor: None
From: Tenger Jerhel
Appearance
She is actually rather tall for a lesser fairy, but that isn't saying much when she has once been trapped down the shaft of a boot and proceeded to have a very bad day when someone put them on without checking its contents. Her height is a foot and an inch; she will vociferously insist upon the extra inch in conversation. The body curves generously in the right places but the overall effect is slim and tautly-muscled, because it is significantly harder to fly if one is wider than one is tall. Her feather-light, blonde hair spills down straight to the small of her back and is kept out of her face with a red hairband inexplicably topped with a pair of white bunny ears longer than her head is tall. Almost a third of that pixieish face is occupied by bright, quick, green eyes that have a faint inner light of their own. Strangely enough for something purported to be more than a half-century old, her skin has all the untouched smooth radiance of a newborn baby.
Two matching pairs of white, feathered wings extend from but are not physically connected to her back. Even fairies have the sense to know that feathers need preening and that their necks and arms don't bend around in the right direction or degree to actually do so, so it's obvious that wings can't actually grow directly out of the back. Instead, they hover about an inch off of the back and can be pulled about the same distance to the side for cleaning and preening. This has the unfortunate effect of confusing some curious people with more muscle than brains, who would try and pull them right off. It hurts just as much and doesn't mysteriously re-attach. Worse, she usually proceeds to have a very bad day when the removed wing angers the confused musclehead by disappearing in a puff of fairy dust.
While there were parts of her homeland that were clothing-optional, Idièth had emigrated from there some time ago. She usually wears a forest green vest and a matching above-knee skirt over a sleeveless white blouse closed with a big, red, poofy ascot. Around the same time that she left Tenger Jerhel, though, she picked up matching white thigh-high socks and over-elbow fingerless gloves, because it is uncomfortably cold out here, especially up in the air and the winds. She does not wear shoes.
She moves with avian twitchiness and has a high body temperature of around 105 degrees F.
Personality
Being a lesser fairy means that she is generally slightly smarter than a bag of rocks (those would be the least fairies). On the other hand, being as sharp as a ball, plus long periods spent under the worst luck, plus repeated treatment as a durable instrument of slapstick, plus a lifetime spent with the bored faries of the realm, has rendered her short-tempered, suicidally overconfident, easily distracted, frequently forgetful, habitually mischievious, and downright uninhibited. Things that make her fly instantly into a tiny rage include: mispronouncing her name, dying, losing an inch when mentioning her height, adding two ounces when mentioning her weight, having a boot thrown at her, dying, and mistaking her for something other than a fairy.
As far as fairy morality goes, hers is actually fairly reasonable compared to those such as the one who held that good is if your hair goes up and bad is if your hair goes down. Luck has always been a zero-sum matter, she is an incarnation of the natural force of luck, therefore she holds that everything else is also a zero-sum matter. Therefore, if she had received a gift from somebody, then she tries her hardest to give a gift - not necessarily to the same somebody. If she barked her shin on something, she'll be going around with a bat trying to hit somebody in the shin. There's a squashed bug somewhere each time shortly after she dies.
In a bizarre twist of gender-indiscriminate gold-digging, she likes to attach herself to whoever is willing to have their luck manipulated the most, because that lets her profit the most. Since she's profiting, though, it also means whoever she's attached to is the most unlucky person in the world. She doesn't like being with boring people who'd prefer their life to be predictable. For one thing, they're boring. For the other, they're cheapskates.
The only being that she has held any permanent loyalty to is the monarch of Tenger Jerhel,. Other people exist mostly for her convenience and to try to get luck off of. She's a bit afraid of shoes, especially boots, on account of keep getting stuck in them for some reason.
Background
Idièth first incarnated about sixty years ago in Tenger Jerhel at the foot of a hillock, amidst a patch of three-leaf clovers that an obsessive-compulsive least fairy had gone through earlier and tore one leaf off of every clover. She was immediately drafted into a passing gang of least fairies and spend the early years getting drunk, partying, having a turf war, attending a pageant, participating in a pogrom, exploring the world, chasing down small insects, running away from slightly larger insects, bathing, sleeping in a huddle, or many of the other things that she was generally expected to do. It took about a year less than usual for her to become entirely comfortable with the more violent side of life in that realm.
She distinguished herself in the royal eyes during the Incident With The Fake Crown That Was On Fire. There was a play put on one summer evening concerning the story of the monarch's grandmother and how she traveled to the Third Biggest Tree Within a Day's Flight to battle the Great Fire-Spitting Toad and recover the Flagon Of Fresh Milk. This was all entirely made-up, though, since the playwright's work had little to do with reality, which was the style in vogue that month. The key point of the incident was that there was a painted wooden crown that the lead actress was wearing, that the enormous Toad prop had been changed at the last minute by the stage manager from vomiting red confetti into actually breathing fire, and that Idièth was kind of dumb.
During the exciting battle scene in Act 11, 12-Act plays being also in vogue in that month, the Toad did its namesake and assailed the extremely surprised and uninformed monarch's grandmother. Seeing this, Idièth jumped out of the first row of the choir and flew very quickly to the aid. She successfully rescued the prop crown, still on fire, and smothered the flames with her own body. Then she reverently presented the singed crown, which she had mistaken for the real one, to the monarch, who was not wearing her actual crown while attending that play. Meanwhile, the lead actress burned screaming to death and there was a pause in the play while waiting for her to get back together and to find a new battle-gown to put on her. The monarch was tremendously amused and awarded Idièth her second set of wings and Lesser Fairy status there and then.
Idièth loved her new wings. They, along with her sporadic good luck, let her die a lot less often in the more violent fairy games. There were a lot fewer things in Tenger Jerhel that could touch her, things like thrown nets, a swarm of dagger-winged hornets, nets on handles, fly trap plants, stooping kestrels, webs of the bigger spiders, and the monarch's summons. The problem with being small, flying, and lucky is that you get picked to dance the Blade Dance, the Walnut Dance, and all the other dances where entire crowds of people show up with pointy bits and produce to chuck at you, generally timed to a snappy tune, to watch all the interesting shapes and flying that result from dodging it. It wasn't as if she had a choice to refuse; even the monarch found the activity amusing enough that she participated every other Tuesday. Idièth wasn't happy about this and threw a tantrum almost every time, but given her atrocious luck (by stubborn and misguided choice) and small size, she was simply a tiny ball of impotent fury. Hence the title "Wrathless" stuck.
One day, she was visiting a friend for tea and cake when the wing of the entire building suddenly found itself quite separated from the rest of the building and falling from several thousand feet up in the air. (see Itera) There was enough time to finish her cup of tea while in freefall, then the both of them flew out the window, past a screaming wingless Greater Fairy, laughed at her on the way, and went on to explore a world that felt so very different. They decided to split up for a bit to check out two different houses on opposite sides of the street in the first little hamlet that they came upon. Fairies being fairies and the world being so large and strange, they never saw each other again.
She was excited. Ever after having tasted what an extra set of wings can do for her, she's decided that she wants another set for more power. This required asking the monarch for it and, since it was so rare, she reasoned that it would be best done if she was having an extremely lucky day and the monarch was in a really good mood. As such, she had been collecting luck ever since to try to stock up for the day when she might get an audience for the monarch. Back home, there were very few who wanted to do business with her and she's always running herself with very bad luck in order to stock up more good luck. Idièth might not realize this, but it was exactly this bad luck that was causing her to keep failing and dying, losing chunks of her savings each time. Now, though, where better than in a world of gullible mortals?
Perhaps, in another few years of being chased down for fairy dust, chased down for confused eatings, and accidentally squished when sleeping under a petunia, Idièth might re-evaluate the whole business and decide to try to figure out how to get home.
Skills
Evasion [S]: Better on the wing than on the ground.
Awareness [A]: Better at keeping track of the surroundings than at fine details.
Singing [A]: Her breathy soprano used to lead two choirs, which were disbanded on account of fairies being fairies.
Hiding [B]: When not flying and giving off that distinctive wing thrum.
Swimming [B]: It's just like flying underwater, hey?
Pastries [B]: She is rather good at making intricate-shaped pastries with fillings.
Tea Brewing [C]: Prefers red tea to anything else, really.
Needlework [C]: Whether sewing, stitching, or eye-stabbing, she's pretty good with needles.
Throwing [C]: She's decent at chucking very small rocks at very small targets.
Sharp Mind[D]: About as sharp as a ball.
Wrestling [E]: She's good enough to wrestle down a mouse. Maybe.
Literacy [F]: She can probably recognize her name, but you set the letters apart and she's clueless.
Abilities
Fairy Dust to Fairy Dust: Lesser Fairies are barely a step up from Least Fairies, they have more intelligence and personality than simple incarnations of natural forces, but have not yet manifested so much independence as to avoid decomposing into fairy dust every time that they die. Upon death, she explodes into a cloud of magical energy and fairy dust. Additionally, parts of her body detached from her also becomes a smaller cloud of magical energy and fairy dust.
The gathered luck from all of her adventures is contained in this cloud. Inhaling or anointing oneself in this fairy dust grants 50% good luck for however much time it takes to consume half of the banked luck. For example, if she had 100 points banked up, then there will be 1 minute of 50% good luck by using the dust. If not used or bottled, the luck is lost to the winds.
5-10 minutes after exploding, she reconstitutes from the magical energy in a hopefully safe place within 50 feet of the point of death. She only retains half of her banked luck, the other half having been either lost or taken. She is generally very upset about this sort of thing happening.
Winged Flight: She has four wings, shaped like a hummingbird's, that flap about 20 times per second and allow her to hover and move in any direction. The wing loading is sufficient for her to lift up to 3 pounds for short distances, though she usually can't travel long-distance with more than about 8 ounces of stuff on her. Her wingspan is 2 feet and she cannot fully fly with less than that much clearance. The maximum speed is 40 feet per second and can reach it in a 1/10 of a second. Maximum altitude is about 500 feet above ground. 2 minutes' flight time at maximum performance in battle.
Manipulate Luck: Being an incarnation of the natural force of luck, she is able to manipulate the luck of anybody and anything through a zero-sum system. She is able to bestow a specific amount of good or bad luck for a specific duration at a specific time and often uses this as part of the magical contract operation that she uses to skim good luck off of the world. The product of the range in feet (0.1 for contact), the duration in minutes, the magnitude in percent success, and the number of targets must be equal to or less than 200. This increases with the square of her level. For example, a valid invocation is 20% adjustment in luck for 2 minutes for 1 person from 5 feet away. Another one is a 10% adjustment in luck for 30 minutes for 5 people, given with a touch. She's fond of kissing for sealing the contact-range contracts.
Luck is banked and she cannot go negative. Therefore, she has to bestow some quantity of bad luck before she would have some quantity of good luck to give. She usually wants to skim an extortionate profit for herself whenever making these contracts. For example, to get a zero-sum 10% good luck for 10 minutes for a fight later, she would probably charge 10% bad luck for half an hour, banking the difference as good luck for herself. It almost never works to try to tide over the bad luck by sitting still and doing nothing, since bad things usually find a way to happen to the victim regardless.
Detriments
Atrocious Luck: She is always trying to bank good luck by giving herself bad luck all the time, such that it has become an ingrained force of habit. Unless specifically held in abeyance, she suffers from 50% bad luck.
Rather Small: She's 1/5th the size of a person and therefore has 1/25th the proportional strength of a well-exercised woman, so she has the strength to dead-lift about 6 pounds.
Iron Vulnerability: Contact with iron, including iron alloys and steeled iron, inflicts excruciating pain on her. Actual wounds made with iron continue to hurt until closed and heal extremely slowly.
Wood Powerlessness: Contact with certain types of wood, but not oils extracted from the plant, lock out the use of her luck manipulation but does not dispel existing effects. This lasts as long as the contact does. The plants are: witch hazel, rowan, and mulberry.
Brass Bells: The sound of brass bells pitched to any octave of C-sharp mesmerizes her and denies her from acting except for autonomous actions like breathing and hovering. The ringing from two such brass bells pitched one octave apart sends her directly to sleep.