PaperDuck
10-24-07, 04:46 AM
Name: Aix, formerly Sponsa Septesser
Age: 15 human + 2 duck.
Race: Duck (http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/information/Aix_sponsa.html). Formerly under a spell that turned her human.
Hair Color: None. Mottled brown plumage; see avatar.
Eye Color: Brown.
Height: 1'8" (~.5 m).
Weight: 25 oz. (~1.5 lb., ~.75 kg)
Occupation: Student of magic.
Personality
Aix is arrogant, judgmental and ironic, but actually very friendly. She is intelligent, with a natural head for numbers, keen magical and mundane intuition and an eidetic memory. She prefers to spend her time with people she considers to be her equals or "of worth" in some way - thus the arrogance and judgmentalness - but she attaches to these people easily and sometimes unconditionally. She's not above pretending to be friendly with unworthy people to obtain a favor; however, she draws a sharp distinction between those she acts friendly to and those she is actually attached to, using the former and almost revering the latter.
Appearance
Well... she's a duck. A keen observer might notice that this duck comports itself with a more dignified bearing than your average waddler, and a person versed in the ways of waterfowl might wonder what a forest duck was doing in the city, but in general the first sign someone would pick up that this duck is in any way unusual is when she opens her bill and speaks.
History
Aix hatched high in a tree in the woods of Concordia, in every respect a normal duckling. However, life can be difficult for any bird which is the youngest of its brood, as Aix was. Her little life was almost cut short on the day she hatched.
Now forest ducks nest in trees. The ducklings leave the nest within their first day of life; but the smallest and weakest of the birds sometimes cannot make it back up to the nest. Almost without exception, the result is the death of the duckling. Neither parent cares that the scrawniest of their children is gone, because that means there are more resources to go around to the children that are already more likely to succeed; and let's face it, ducks aren't generally all that bright.
But as this youngest duckling watched the day get darker, its ineffectual peeping and struggling becoming weaker as it shivered from cold and hunger, a miracle occurred. A young woman, the Widow Septesser, was passing through that part of the wood after gathering summer berries for a medicinal tea; and she heard poor Aix's mournful peeping, saw that the sun was setting soon, and knew that if she left the duckling where it was, it would die before the sun rose. So she gently picked it up and brought it back to her dwelling, a room in a shared house in the town of Underwood. She began to nurse the duckling back to health.
Now it was not known whether the Widow Septesser was or was not, in fact, a widow. It was true that she had been married, and that her husband was gone; but the details of his departure were unknown to the town, not that that stopped the gossips. All accounts agreed that Denn Septesser had intended on leaving his wife when he found out that she could not bear children; but accounts varied as to whether Maria Septesser had put up a fight to keep him. The general consensus was that she probably had, and this is why she was accorded the title of widow by the populace: if the witch had tried to keep him from leaving, the only way he would have been able to get out was in a pine box. Those that knew her better, however, took the opposite side - Maria was simply too kind, too in love with her husband, and too devastated herself at the news of her impotence, to have done anything of that kind.
So as this duckling she had rescued slowly grew strong again under the care of her herbs, a great, revolutionary, extraordinarily foolish idea came to the Widow Septesser. She was a witch and a brewer, and so she could not have a child - but she could still make one. Over the next week she gathered her power, not leaving her house, barely taking enough time to ensure the continued thriving of her new charge. On the eighth day, at high noon, the air of the entire quarter trembled with electricity; and once it had subsided, the cries of a newborn infant drifted faintly from the rooms of the Widow Septesser.
Sponsa Septesser was a quiet but enthusiastic child. Though in the first few years she seemed not to learn as quickly as other children, she caught up with the learning curve and had definitely surpassed it by the time she was ten - and if ever a person was stumped by a particular problem, they could count on Sponsa to view the situation from a completely different angle, and often to offer a surprisingly elegant solution. Despite or perhaps in part because of this, the townsfolk tended to avoid Sponsa if they could. Though she seemed a decent, friendly, helpful girl, the circumstances of her birth were enough to make anyone shiver - born out of wedlock to a sterile witch who never showed any sign of pregnancy! Obviously the work of a demon. She herself remained blissfully unaware of the suspicions of her neighbors, and assumed that the distance they kept from her was normal.
From the time when Sponsa was old enough to understand the words, Maria began to teach her the theory of magic. It was dreary work and quite difficult, for the Widow Septesser had used her entire store of power in the spell that had made Sponsa human; and since it had been the herbs that had rendered her sterile in the first place, she would not let her daughter touch the only branch of magic she knew which she could still demonstrate. So Sponsa, though hurt that she was not allowed to learn the arts of herbalism, studied magical theory diligently, not imagining that she was learning anything more than a set of formalisms - that what she was learning could later be put to use. It wasn't until she was thirteen years old that she spontaneously cast a spell, just materialized a puff of smoke, in the course of her studies. Once she realized, with her mother's encouragement, that she had indeed been responsible for this unusual occurrence, she set to work applying the other elements of theory she had learned as well. She had been studying the theory for so long that the power of this magic seemed intuitive to her - but she heeded her mother's warning that too great an expenditure of magical energy could leave one's power crippled, possibly never to recover, and only used her magic to perform small tasks and generally make her life easier.
One evening when she was fifteen years old, after working all day in the garden, Sponsa decided to experiment. Cleaning was among the first practical uses she had put her magic to, and so cleaning spells had become somewhat old hat to her. Instead of a normal cleaning spell, she decided she would try something more vague and see what happened - "Let me look the way I used to look." Immediately she felt her power draining from her with the blood from her face; and when she realized she couldn't stop what was happening to her, she passed out.
When she came to she found herself in the body of a duckling, barely a week old. When her mother saw her she broke down and confessed everything - weeping, she told Sponsa that she had been a duck all along, and that it was her conversion to a child that had sapped her magic all those years ago - that, in fact, her very name had been taken from the ancient name for the forest ducks, Aix Sponsa. Though her head was still light and her powers still weak, Sponsa managed to cast a spell which allowed her to speak - and comforted her mother, though she was still badly shaken herself.
Sponsa did not yet have enough knowledge of magic to turn herself back to human form - and even if she had known how she likely would have killed herself in the attempt, in her weakened child-state. It would be a long time, years, before she would be able to cast such a spell - and if she attempted it, it would probably be the last magic she would ever use. So after many tears and declarations of love, the mother and daughter decided that she had best learn how to live as a duck - and that the only way to do that was to return to the wild and learn from an adult duck. They located a nest with chicks a little younger than Sponsa, and smuggled her in - her scent disguised with herbs to mimic that of the already-present brood. She stayed with the family for a month, re-learning how to swim, how to fly, how to catch food; and after two months she was an adult.
Sponsa returned to the Septesser home and tearfully reunited with her mother; but it wasn't the same as it had been when she was human. She felt useless, unable to help with even the most menial tasks around the home - unable even to open the door for herself without using magic. After a few days of this, she knew she had to leave. After a heartwrenching explanation to her adoptive mother, she flew away out the window - leaving her old life and her old name behind her. She introduced herself to her new associates as Aix, the other half of the ancient duck name, and claimed to have always been a duck, even as she quested for the knowledge that would allow her to become human again.
Over the past year Aix has been having something of a change of heart. Some things that never made sense to her when she was a human feel very right now - for example, as a human she had worried about her apparent lack of attraction to any boys at all in the town. Now that she was a duck, she didn't need to worry about that - in fact, it even made sense, as no one would ever find it unusual that a bird was not attracted to humans! She has also realized how right it feels for her to be in her own body, and how privileged she is to be able to traverse not only the earth, but also the water and the air, unaided; in fact, she has become quite addicted to the sensation of flying, and has a hard time imagining getting a good night's sleep on dry land. For these reasons she has somewhat slowed her quest for the power required for her to retake her unnatural human form - though she is still pursuing it, as a duck's lifespan is somewhat too short for her tastes.
Skills
Racial
* Flight
* Swimming/Floating
* Waterproof
* Her vocalizations do not echo. Even when she speaks, as far as echoes go it's as though she's quacking.
* Cuteness. Let's face it, people like ducks.
Personal
* High intelligence
* Eidetic memory
Magic
* Extensive training in the theory of spell creation
* Some experience in spell execution
* Can make up simple spells on the fly.
* Wakes up each morning with a certain amount of magical power that she can use over the course of the day (15 + 1.7^LEVEL 'MP'). Note - this power isn't something she can keep track of or quantify. I'm only using MP notation because it's a good way for me to keep track of her actions, out of character.
* Can use more than her daily allotment of MP at the cost of future spellcasting. As long as Aix has at least 1 MP she can cast any spell by drawing on MP from the days to come. Each present-day MP costs 3 future MP, which will be drained from each day in turn, starting with the day after the one the spell is cast on. For example, if Aix at level 0 had 1 MP remaining and needed to cast Speech, a 10-MP spell, she could; but she would have accrued -27 MP. On the next day she would be unable to cast any spells at all; because she gets fifteen MP per day, after the first magicless day she would have -12 MP. On the second day she would only have 3 MP available to her, instead of the usual 15.
In terms of balance - a day without magic doesn't sound like much, but for a being without hands or a voice box, it's a big deal.
Aix's Commonly Used Spells
* Speech - This is an expensive spell that interprets the mental patterns in the subject's mind and replaces what the subject says with what the subject means to say in the minds of the listeners. The spell lasts until the subject loses consciousness. Because Aix must use this spell almost daily in order to communicate, she must be very careful of what other spells she uses: too many too-powerful spells could cause her physical, mental, emotional, or magical harm. Costs 10 MP.
* Open - Opens a single, simple, unlocked object designed to be opened. Costs .5 MP.
* Bag - Opens a small pocket of magic which can hold small objects such as coins or trinkets. She uses it to store her money if she needs to go buy anything. Costs 1 MP per opening.
Equipment
None. She has some money in her Bag, but that's about it.
Age: 15 human + 2 duck.
Race: Duck (http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/information/Aix_sponsa.html). Formerly under a spell that turned her human.
Hair Color: None. Mottled brown plumage; see avatar.
Eye Color: Brown.
Height: 1'8" (~.5 m).
Weight: 25 oz. (~1.5 lb., ~.75 kg)
Occupation: Student of magic.
Personality
Aix is arrogant, judgmental and ironic, but actually very friendly. She is intelligent, with a natural head for numbers, keen magical and mundane intuition and an eidetic memory. She prefers to spend her time with people she considers to be her equals or "of worth" in some way - thus the arrogance and judgmentalness - but she attaches to these people easily and sometimes unconditionally. She's not above pretending to be friendly with unworthy people to obtain a favor; however, she draws a sharp distinction between those she acts friendly to and those she is actually attached to, using the former and almost revering the latter.
Appearance
Well... she's a duck. A keen observer might notice that this duck comports itself with a more dignified bearing than your average waddler, and a person versed in the ways of waterfowl might wonder what a forest duck was doing in the city, but in general the first sign someone would pick up that this duck is in any way unusual is when she opens her bill and speaks.
History
Aix hatched high in a tree in the woods of Concordia, in every respect a normal duckling. However, life can be difficult for any bird which is the youngest of its brood, as Aix was. Her little life was almost cut short on the day she hatched.
Now forest ducks nest in trees. The ducklings leave the nest within their first day of life; but the smallest and weakest of the birds sometimes cannot make it back up to the nest. Almost without exception, the result is the death of the duckling. Neither parent cares that the scrawniest of their children is gone, because that means there are more resources to go around to the children that are already more likely to succeed; and let's face it, ducks aren't generally all that bright.
But as this youngest duckling watched the day get darker, its ineffectual peeping and struggling becoming weaker as it shivered from cold and hunger, a miracle occurred. A young woman, the Widow Septesser, was passing through that part of the wood after gathering summer berries for a medicinal tea; and she heard poor Aix's mournful peeping, saw that the sun was setting soon, and knew that if she left the duckling where it was, it would die before the sun rose. So she gently picked it up and brought it back to her dwelling, a room in a shared house in the town of Underwood. She began to nurse the duckling back to health.
Now it was not known whether the Widow Septesser was or was not, in fact, a widow. It was true that she had been married, and that her husband was gone; but the details of his departure were unknown to the town, not that that stopped the gossips. All accounts agreed that Denn Septesser had intended on leaving his wife when he found out that she could not bear children; but accounts varied as to whether Maria Septesser had put up a fight to keep him. The general consensus was that she probably had, and this is why she was accorded the title of widow by the populace: if the witch had tried to keep him from leaving, the only way he would have been able to get out was in a pine box. Those that knew her better, however, took the opposite side - Maria was simply too kind, too in love with her husband, and too devastated herself at the news of her impotence, to have done anything of that kind.
So as this duckling she had rescued slowly grew strong again under the care of her herbs, a great, revolutionary, extraordinarily foolish idea came to the Widow Septesser. She was a witch and a brewer, and so she could not have a child - but she could still make one. Over the next week she gathered her power, not leaving her house, barely taking enough time to ensure the continued thriving of her new charge. On the eighth day, at high noon, the air of the entire quarter trembled with electricity; and once it had subsided, the cries of a newborn infant drifted faintly from the rooms of the Widow Septesser.
Sponsa Septesser was a quiet but enthusiastic child. Though in the first few years she seemed not to learn as quickly as other children, she caught up with the learning curve and had definitely surpassed it by the time she was ten - and if ever a person was stumped by a particular problem, they could count on Sponsa to view the situation from a completely different angle, and often to offer a surprisingly elegant solution. Despite or perhaps in part because of this, the townsfolk tended to avoid Sponsa if they could. Though she seemed a decent, friendly, helpful girl, the circumstances of her birth were enough to make anyone shiver - born out of wedlock to a sterile witch who never showed any sign of pregnancy! Obviously the work of a demon. She herself remained blissfully unaware of the suspicions of her neighbors, and assumed that the distance they kept from her was normal.
From the time when Sponsa was old enough to understand the words, Maria began to teach her the theory of magic. It was dreary work and quite difficult, for the Widow Septesser had used her entire store of power in the spell that had made Sponsa human; and since it had been the herbs that had rendered her sterile in the first place, she would not let her daughter touch the only branch of magic she knew which she could still demonstrate. So Sponsa, though hurt that she was not allowed to learn the arts of herbalism, studied magical theory diligently, not imagining that she was learning anything more than a set of formalisms - that what she was learning could later be put to use. It wasn't until she was thirteen years old that she spontaneously cast a spell, just materialized a puff of smoke, in the course of her studies. Once she realized, with her mother's encouragement, that she had indeed been responsible for this unusual occurrence, she set to work applying the other elements of theory she had learned as well. She had been studying the theory for so long that the power of this magic seemed intuitive to her - but she heeded her mother's warning that too great an expenditure of magical energy could leave one's power crippled, possibly never to recover, and only used her magic to perform small tasks and generally make her life easier.
One evening when she was fifteen years old, after working all day in the garden, Sponsa decided to experiment. Cleaning was among the first practical uses she had put her magic to, and so cleaning spells had become somewhat old hat to her. Instead of a normal cleaning spell, she decided she would try something more vague and see what happened - "Let me look the way I used to look." Immediately she felt her power draining from her with the blood from her face; and when she realized she couldn't stop what was happening to her, she passed out.
When she came to she found herself in the body of a duckling, barely a week old. When her mother saw her she broke down and confessed everything - weeping, she told Sponsa that she had been a duck all along, and that it was her conversion to a child that had sapped her magic all those years ago - that, in fact, her very name had been taken from the ancient name for the forest ducks, Aix Sponsa. Though her head was still light and her powers still weak, Sponsa managed to cast a spell which allowed her to speak - and comforted her mother, though she was still badly shaken herself.
Sponsa did not yet have enough knowledge of magic to turn herself back to human form - and even if she had known how she likely would have killed herself in the attempt, in her weakened child-state. It would be a long time, years, before she would be able to cast such a spell - and if she attempted it, it would probably be the last magic she would ever use. So after many tears and declarations of love, the mother and daughter decided that she had best learn how to live as a duck - and that the only way to do that was to return to the wild and learn from an adult duck. They located a nest with chicks a little younger than Sponsa, and smuggled her in - her scent disguised with herbs to mimic that of the already-present brood. She stayed with the family for a month, re-learning how to swim, how to fly, how to catch food; and after two months she was an adult.
Sponsa returned to the Septesser home and tearfully reunited with her mother; but it wasn't the same as it had been when she was human. She felt useless, unable to help with even the most menial tasks around the home - unable even to open the door for herself without using magic. After a few days of this, she knew she had to leave. After a heartwrenching explanation to her adoptive mother, she flew away out the window - leaving her old life and her old name behind her. She introduced herself to her new associates as Aix, the other half of the ancient duck name, and claimed to have always been a duck, even as she quested for the knowledge that would allow her to become human again.
Over the past year Aix has been having something of a change of heart. Some things that never made sense to her when she was a human feel very right now - for example, as a human she had worried about her apparent lack of attraction to any boys at all in the town. Now that she was a duck, she didn't need to worry about that - in fact, it even made sense, as no one would ever find it unusual that a bird was not attracted to humans! She has also realized how right it feels for her to be in her own body, and how privileged she is to be able to traverse not only the earth, but also the water and the air, unaided; in fact, she has become quite addicted to the sensation of flying, and has a hard time imagining getting a good night's sleep on dry land. For these reasons she has somewhat slowed her quest for the power required for her to retake her unnatural human form - though she is still pursuing it, as a duck's lifespan is somewhat too short for her tastes.
Skills
Racial
* Flight
* Swimming/Floating
* Waterproof
* Her vocalizations do not echo. Even when she speaks, as far as echoes go it's as though she's quacking.
* Cuteness. Let's face it, people like ducks.
Personal
* High intelligence
* Eidetic memory
Magic
* Extensive training in the theory of spell creation
* Some experience in spell execution
* Can make up simple spells on the fly.
* Wakes up each morning with a certain amount of magical power that she can use over the course of the day (15 + 1.7^LEVEL 'MP'). Note - this power isn't something she can keep track of or quantify. I'm only using MP notation because it's a good way for me to keep track of her actions, out of character.
* Can use more than her daily allotment of MP at the cost of future spellcasting. As long as Aix has at least 1 MP she can cast any spell by drawing on MP from the days to come. Each present-day MP costs 3 future MP, which will be drained from each day in turn, starting with the day after the one the spell is cast on. For example, if Aix at level 0 had 1 MP remaining and needed to cast Speech, a 10-MP spell, she could; but she would have accrued -27 MP. On the next day she would be unable to cast any spells at all; because she gets fifteen MP per day, after the first magicless day she would have -12 MP. On the second day she would only have 3 MP available to her, instead of the usual 15.
In terms of balance - a day without magic doesn't sound like much, but for a being without hands or a voice box, it's a big deal.
Aix's Commonly Used Spells
* Speech - This is an expensive spell that interprets the mental patterns in the subject's mind and replaces what the subject says with what the subject means to say in the minds of the listeners. The spell lasts until the subject loses consciousness. Because Aix must use this spell almost daily in order to communicate, she must be very careful of what other spells she uses: too many too-powerful spells could cause her physical, mental, emotional, or magical harm. Costs 10 MP.
* Open - Opens a single, simple, unlocked object designed to be opened. Costs .5 MP.
* Bag - Opens a small pocket of magic which can hold small objects such as coins or trinkets. She uses it to store her money if she needs to go buy anything. Costs 1 MP per opening.
Equipment
None. She has some money in her Bag, but that's about it.