ooc: hadriel application
Dec. 19th, 2016 12:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pythonissamPLAYER
Player name: Mhairi
Contact: deathwailart @ plurk | bansheesquad#0389 @ discord
Characters currently in-game: n/a
CHARACTER
Character Name: Léonie Tremble
Character Age: 19
Canon: Original
Canon Point: End of written history
World Description:
It begins with the angels, with one that burned brighter and more beautiful than the rest that refused to bow to the creations of a Father. A first wife twisted in a garden, a second wife then that same husband tempted to eat the forbidden fruit. Exile, the first murder, the earth drinking deep of blood. War in heaven, demons, nephilim, angels falling and simply slipping away from the sight of heaven.
The demons whispered to the humans walking the earth, the angels lay with the sons and daughters of men, the nephilim were born and had children of their own, and many and more came together. And so that was how magic came to be in the first place; astral projection, dream walking, telepathy and telekinesis, flight and teleportation, weather and elemental manipulation, mind manipulation, shape shifting, invisibility, healing, necromancy, possession, enhanced strength and senses and perhaps even time travel. All that and much more. Oh and the monsters. That was the gift of a certain few. Sometimes the demons. Sometimes the nephilim. Sometimes the fallen. Sometimes the angels. Magic of course was hated, feared, loved, sometimes even all three of those at once. But the monsters…well those are plucked from the minds of dreamers, given shape and form to be set loose upon the world, some living as they will but so many more are hungry with many sharp teeth, preying upon man. In order to combat this or in the hopes they might be granted passage back to heaven, some angels and even those among the fallen have reached out to the sons and daughters of men to teach them holy rites and to bless them with strength, protection, courage, all the better to allow them to combat the demons, the monsters. The witches they believe to be in league with the darkness.
Which is, of course, a gross oversimplification because when the witches finally came about after generations and generations of magic, they made their own rules as they saw fit. Organising themselves into cabals (either by blood or by bond), then into larger covens, the witches decided to use what suited them. Cabals were more and more frequently made up of families of witches with bloodlines dating back generations, the covens coming together to trade skills and information. With hunters and angels after them, they needed to be careful, maintaining good relations with one another. So as time moved on, they learned to hide themselves and thrived. Technology and science? Easy for them to whisper a few words here and there, to concentrate hard enough and get the job done. The hunters were the ones living in the past.
Deals were often struck within cabals and covens, but often with demons, nephilm, fallen angels, even willing angels themselves for knowledge, power, whatever else a witch, a cabal, or a coven might need. They realised that marrying into a family without any magic would dilute the power in the blood, and that it could even cause it to fail so there were times that even the creatures they asked for aid became members of the family too.
As for angels (fallen and not), demons and the nephilim, age is only for the sake of appearances. Death must be through killing. An aspect of such beings with so much power being unable to die is that they've created a world for all those in possession of magic to venture to – a dream world, the astral plane, whatever you want to call where you go when you dream or leave your body, but only some can reach out and perceive it for what it is. Those with magic can be taught to to do this, wandering through minds at will to share information and knowledge, to arrange meetings where they can't be followed if the need is great. It can obviously allow them to control people. The truly skilled are called the weavers; when the next war comes, they are believed to be the leaders of the armies.
As magical bloodlines always had traditions, there was one moment that was truly a turning point. A few things had been learned by the witches long before the advent of anything modern: that outsider blood often diluted the magic, intermarrying between distantly related families produced much stronger families than marrying too close, and that even the least skilled woman witch was still far better than the most skilled man. There was a yong woman distraught at the thought of marriage for it would mean moving away to live with his family and leaving the own love of her life behind for the simple fact that she was a woman and they couldn't have children together. A demon heard. Demons always hear. This demon saw a chance to gain great power and influence so it slipped through into the world and taught her a ritual and a spell that could create a child; when you know all the ways to make and unmake a person, it's not so difficult. The price? The young man she was to marry as the demon's way to walk the world.
The witch accepted and nine months later not only was a daughter born but a new tradition with it. Bloodlines were then able to unite with magic if they chose to though many married men out of love or choice, but if it came down to guaranteeing a magical bloodline, brokering the ritual between two women commonly became the choice for the firstborn at least before subsequent children. The ritual is not a guarantee of a daughter but even the sons born of such magic are more talented than naturally born sons.
Witches were thought to have been wiped out thanks to the efforts of the hunters. All those witch trials? Hunters. Informed by angelic assistance until at last their influence waned, the witches closing ranks, the world moving on. In the modern world the witches are more careful to hide as best they can with glamours and other guises, using magic to influence what they can and to keep safe. There's demand for magic though; a careful whisper in the right ear and you're told where to go and who to meet. Stockbrokers do love their luck and fortune charms after all. The men in families are often the fences, slipping in where they can, listening to the whispers, and demons, nephilim and fallen angels who have contracts with families benefit from splitting deals with them. The hunters are returning though, massing in strength but the witches are smart and canny, ready, armed with combat prowess and a much stronger foothold in the world than the hunters know. The hunters are only mortal men and women made strong through angelic blessing (or that's what they claim) plagued by visions and often dying from prolonged contact with something so inhuman. The witches play the long game, same as the things that made them. If the hunters want a war, then it's war they will have but it'll be waged on the witches terms.
History:
Léonie is the second of Mirabelle and Jocelyn Tremble's four children after Séverine (six years older than Léonie) and before the twins Ambre and Anselm (six years younger). Mirabelle is something of a marvel in the apothecary and alchemical fields whereas Jocelyn is talented in dealing with monsters. They reside in the Tremble home that's belonged to Jocelyn's family for generations; both families on either side of Léonie's family have a respected heritage in the cabal and coven with Mirabelle running a 'traditional' medicine shop though of course if you know how to ask, she can provide you with whatever you might require, with customers from far and wide seeking her out. Jocelyn remains at home since there's something of a menagerie at the Tremble house, happy to take on the role of homemaker that way and to deal with the monsters or beasts in peace.
Léonie and her elder sister are extremely close despite their age gap, and it sometimes meant she could come off as older than her years as her sister would teach her spells, or take her along to lessons away from home if the twins were being particularly fractious. Léonie did spend a great deal of time around the monsters aiding Jocelyn and has something of a nightmare menagerie of her own: a pet pesanta from an aunt in Catalonia, some crows and magpies, a cat, and a collection of two-headed snakes. Asserting her will over them and using them as part of her spells was all part of growing up as well as learning to care for them. A witch was to be self-sufficient but also able to take care of her cabal and coven at all times too should anything go amiss. From Mirabelle she learned poisons and herblore too, though she never quite had a talent for necrobotany that her mother did. Outside of the home she was taught old languages such as Latin, Greek, Old English, runes, ciphers. At school she excelled in chemistry and biology since the witches had a use for such things. She also learned how to code as was required of witches living in a modern age when curses and skills could be shared even more easily than they had in the past.
At the age of sixteen, legally an adult in the eyes of witches – Léonie was approached by contacts of Séverine. With the hunters growing ever more bold to the point of becoming a true threat they had a need to train up more of their number once again, those with magic that could be put to good use, the ones with the composure that could be taught to handle themselves in the field. Her parents went to the cabal then to the coven but the decision ultimately rested with Léonie herself. She accepted. Nothing brings prestige like aiding your cabal and coven. Waiting until she finished her schooling, she still began her training before she was able to truly learn how to use her magic to a much more devastating effect. This meant having much more prolonged contact with demons, bending people to her will via any means necessary with her magic, unleashing monsters under her command, as well as learning how to fight with a knife to learn how to defend herself. It woke a part of her that had always been there but had never truly flourished until that moment. Taking her first steps into the world, she moved out of her childhood home and in with her sister to continue their partnership.
Soon she and her sister were out together, the shadow in the dreams of hunters, the time when they were most vulnerable, always with a smile like a knife on her face.
Personality:
Everything about Léonie is deliberate. There's something something of a performance about her; her mannerisms are one of someone speaking directly to you unless you're a very rare person she cares about. You're a player in some grander piece of hers. She likes phrase things just so, and she'll always be dressed to perfection because she understands the power of appearance. You have to feel powerful in order to be powerful. Part of that is dressing to seem just a little unsettling – taller, grander, a strangely lean line or just something off about her shape to give her any extra advantage she can when dealing with someone. When it comes to speaking she doesn't stutter, doesn't use filler words – if she needs to think, she'll think, or she'll phrase something to let you scramble to fill in the blanks if she can. She does love to phrase things as questions. Oh and she very rarely lies. Things can almost sound like a lie but they're usually truths told from a certain point of view because it's much more effective that way because the truth often hurts people far worse or causes them to question things far more. You can dismiss a lie. You can't dismiss a carefully told and well-placed truth quite so easily, can you?
Added to that, she will do her very best to find out what is a weakness to a person. She will file that away. Then she will exploit it. Maybe it'll be bit by bit, chipping away. Or maybe it'll be a pretty brutal evisceration. It depends on who you are, what you've done, why she's doing it. But a witch loves to find out secrets and Léonie in particular learned to pry secrets out of hunters and she honestly just loves to hurt people, she gets a very visceral sort of twisted pleasure in hurting someone then offering to 'help' them with her magic. (By making them her puppet, more on that below.)
There are a few tics or mannerisms Léonie has that are, again, part of her performance; when sitting she likes to lean forward and drum the fingers of both hands when making a point, she turns very sharply on her heels (both of them, in very sharp, very high heels) and if she's leaning in towards someone and her hair is down, she will lean forward so it blocks out everything else but the two of them. To unsettle them. She enjoys trying to creep people out with things like that. This is something Léonie definitely perfected and practiced around the hunters to unsettle them to a very great degree; it's worth bearing in mind that she's also a very pretty girl too but with her magic it gives something very much off about her. She enjoys that.
Loyalty is something she prizes and even if she doesn't agree with someone, she still sees loyalty as something to be respected, even with hunters when they refuse to give up their comrades, making her force it out of them with her magic instead. S he still hates hunters, considering them to be scum but the fact that they prove they do have a family almost like the extended families of witches is something to her. She is loyal to all her fellow witches because it is how they have survived into this age and in the face of a threat they must band together because they are family, united by the gifts they have. Above that though is her family. Threatening her family reveals a different side to her nature. The vicious part. S he will fight tooth and nail to keep her family safe from harm and her opinion there is nothing more fiercely protective than a woman defending what is hers. It's loyalty to her family and to her fellow witches that mark her out and she could best be described as lawful evil; there are rules to be obeyed (the word of her mother, the word of her elder witches) but she consorts with demons and her magic comes from them and she has done awful things. Léonie has twisted and even stolen souls from people and though she feels justified in her actions, she does know what she's doing on every level.
It isn't to say she is incapable of love, in fact she loves very deeply. Her mothers, her sisters and brother are all the most important people in her life and she would do anything to aid or protect them as needed. The word of her mothers and sister Severine is to be respected above all and she does so willingly; she trusts in their wisdom and enjoys having her lessons with them. She learned all her herb and plant based lore, including potions, poisons, tinctures, draughts and everything else from Mirabelle and from Jocelyn she learned how to tame beasts and harvest their parts and pieces. Severine has taught her how to hunt and to use her magic to devastating effect. Other witches have taught her many things and she has reached out to demons and the nephilim with the utmost care to learn more skills still. Joining up with Severine to kill hunters or better yet, to turn them into their puppets is something she does out of love and devotion.
At the core, Léonie knows what she is and that she is evil, enjoying that fact. Any denials and protests she might put forth are an act because they serve her purpose best, to pretend that no, no she is not any of those awful things and usually she only does this to break a captive or a subject. Or sometimes for fun. Manipulation on all levels is important for magic and to be able to weave a web around people. She has never flinched once in her lessons in all her life, always rapt and wide eyed alongside an older woman despite so much of her lessons involving how best to inflict suffering and harm upon others. Still, she does view hunters as evil too but that is because they dare to hurt her kind and believe that they are somehow pure when they have blood upon their hands and know how to hurt just as well as any witch does. It is the insistence of hunters that they are holy warriors with a purpose that has her believing they are the lowest of the low, little better than beasts with their denials of their true nature, at least in her eyes.
When slighted, she has two reactions, depending on the circumstances she finds herself in. If she is capable of exacting revenge and putting that person in their place at that moment then she will with an eerie calm the entire time - her anger is a cold, quiet thing, accompanied by an imperious glare and a smirk. If she is unable to react at that time or if the slight is great enough to merit a stronger reaction then she is able to pour herself into rituals and spells to greatly harm that individual (and sometimes others too) by way of curses and nightmares. In this way she is petty because, given the way she thinks of herself and all witches as above normal people in terms of what they can do, it is very easy to slight her. Even watching your wording around her is important, not that she would tell you but people who are loose in how they speak baffle her to the point of revulsion because it's a sign of idiocy, to be so imprecise. S till, it often gives her an advantage because people can slip and give her information that will help her to exploit them better.
Her empathy with others outside of her family is a limited thing and much of it again is an act so she can better gain something - witches are possessive creatures and in much the way some will hoard money or goods, they often hoard knowledge or secrets. She'd be the first to admit that she has very few friends because she doesn't think that she needs them. What she needs are minions or people she can manipulate so she fakes friendship to get what she wants. She isn't always good at it though and sometimes she'll slip or give people the "wrong" (meaning they see what she's really like and not the image she wants to project) impression that she's cold and rather ruthless. Still, if someone has true talent, knowledge or power then they can gain her interest and cement themselves as a friend. Meaning that she'll come to their aid or harm someone who hurts them because they have hurt what is "hers".
Inventory: Weapons, pets, the kitchen sink? If it's on your character at the time of their canon point and it can fit through an 8' by 4' hole, then they can bring it in. Vehicles, large mechs, and pet elephants, however, will have to stay at home.
Wearing; 1, 2, 3
Makeup bag with the usual suspects for The Witch Aesthetic
Rider-Waite tarot deck, well used and well loved
Jewellery; 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
- A5 leatherbound notebook + 3 pens
- knives
I would really love if she could bring her pesanta, Orpheus, with her but I will totally understand if she cannot have him.
Abilities:
As a witch born of a long line of witches on either side of her family, her talents are not inconsiderable, especially for her young age. But before explaining her magic, a few distinctions have to be made regarding a person. A person in her world is split into three parts:
physical body: a container for the soul
soul: the person (you are a soul and what you have is a body, not the other way around)
spirit: the driving force/animation/life energy
All three of these need to be in balance or a person is not considered to be whole, a crucial part of how Léonie's particular magic works. The only exceptions to these rules are angels or demons, neither of whom possess souls as such (there is debate surrounding fallen angels and nephilim regarding whether or not they possess souls) given that angels were created prior to the existence of souls with the first demons being fallen angels and all other demons being humans who sould their souls or were corrupted. All three parts are connected in the end but the body is considered to be the least essential part as harm to it won't affect the soul and/or spirit to the same extent as harming either of those would do to the other as well as the body. The mind of course is also important but the definition varies between witches, usually depending on age, how old (or young) their bloodline is; the mind essentially encompasses all three but to witches, even spells that would look as though they work on the mind are working on the level of one of the other components or all three.
Even though witches are free to pick and choose their magic according to preferences or what runs in the family, all witches do possess similar degrees of skill in some areas that are considered to be essential to their survival.
♚ herbs & lore: herb lore and knowledge of plants, potions, poisons etc are vital for a witch. They know how to grow plants no common or even experienced gardener will recognise. Witches can use their magic to influence the effect a plant might have but having knowledge of them is vital. Leonie's own knowledge is even more enhanced by way of her mother Mirabelle being an alchemist and apothecary.
♛scrying & reading: cards, bones, entrails - she knows how to do this for herself and for the right price she can do it for others although there is absolutely no compulsion on her to actually tell you the truth. This also involves knowledges of stones and signs and other areas of magic associated with physical objects. This is more the 'ritual' side of magic and as much of the magic is the art in itself and the performance as the objects assembled.
♚ technology: as a young witch, compared to even her mothers' generation, she's far more comfortable at using modern (current era) technology in her magical practices. Boiling up a potion in a kettle? No big deal. Cursing a device or transferring a curse through a device and keeping it anonymous through the mindpush? Memetic curses are a huge deal to young witches. The young generation of witches are very good at working with demons willing to climb up the ranks with things like QR codes that convey curses. They can hold covens and gatherings with skype; this gives them an advantage over the hunters who still tend to use more old-fashioned techniques and well, these girls are damn good at making sure hunters can't find their grimoires online - seriously, why scour a tome until your eyes bleed in some old library if you can ctrl + f it from your phone having coffee with the girls? The way the witches use their magic basically means that unless you know both magic and technology, you won't get any info out of their devices or computers.
♛ magic: Léonie's magic is centred around entropy, influencing the order and disorder in a system, usually - almost exclusively - in favour of disorder. Entropy magic is mostly about the soul or spirit though it can and does affect the body too. There are no flashy spells of lightning and fire for her but though her magic is subtle, it it no less destructive. Spells aren't named for her like 'weakness hex' or 'nightmare' but I've sorted them into categories to better explain them.
the scales: this sort of magic involves having life in one hand and death in the other. This can cover the reanimation of a corpse - usually just an empty shell that moves as she dictates, necromancy is not a skill she's hugely versed in, it's more a subset of other spells - to serve her until she ends the spell or the corpse is destroyed in some other way. It can also involve the draining of life from others, sapping their physical strength, their spirit or even their soul until it's hers to command and it's a common tool to weaken a person. She can even 'hold' someone's life in her hands which not only causes damage but it will significantly weaken their soul and spirit through the idea that they are wholly at her mercy.
the grasping hand: whilst it looks similar to the magic mentioned above, this is where magic can seep into a person and pull at them (like the personal magic she would use on her own property) that will slowly permeate into a person. It can range from weakness to even paralysis, afflicting the body, spirit, soul or all three.
the clouded mind: these spells might look like mind spells but they wouldn't be classed as such by her even though they involve going into the 'head' in some aspects. It's a combination of the soul and the spirit that are primarily affected: confusion and disorientation, a victim plagued with nightmares in sleeping or waking, hallucinations (usually visual or auditory), nightmares someone can't wake from or they might be awake and trapped in them to the point they're experiencing another reality.
All three can combine together into the curses (or hexes) where physical afflictions appear such as sores or sickness or any sort of physical malady. Curses can leave someone vulnerable - often used first to increase the success of other spells) to the point that even protections placed upon them are gone i.e. a blessing from a holy person. There are misdirections where everything goes wrong from getting lost to losing items to a door not opening to a gun jamming or running out of ammo at a crucial moment. Bad luck can even be lethal. Handy if you want to cover up a violent act don't you think?
♚ souls: the main 'point' of her magic is in the manipulation of a soul. Everything she does helps to weaken someone's soul through making them beg her to stop and to promise to do as she pleases. These are done through rituals combined with spells and a measure of isolation in cages or in being left alone in the dark, sometimes with a small touch of physical harm. It is part magic, part act and she has mastered it to such a degree that she can turn someone into a broken puppet, utterly loyal to her to the point they can no longer be thought of as a person but more of a thing. Sometimes the soul is utterly ripped out if it's part of a deal to be handed to a demon - or it's so damaged that the body moves. The spirit is usually left there, not intact, but to allow a puppet to keep moving for longer than it would without one. This can be reversed but it's the one part of her magic that will leave a permanent mark on a person, either from a pain that won't go away to simple nightmares and a feeling that something happened that they can't remember.
♛ beasts: growing up in a household of magical beasts (and having a pet manticore as a child) then she is good at taming and bending beasts to her will so that she can unleash them on others. Beast mastery works in much the same way as turning a person into a puppet really: it's about her will overpowering a beast, the difficulty ranging from how much closer to human and/or sentient a creature is e.g. a melusine is far harder to control than a wolf
♚ dreaming: dreams are hugely important like the mentioned dream walking and she believes a great deal in signs and symbols in her dreams. Witch dreams are very lucid dreams, something they are taught, so she remembers and reacts with them with great clarity. Away from home she won't be able to use her dreaming the way it's mentioned further up in the world info.
♛misc.: has a good deal of knowledge of religion and mythology (mainly Judeo-Christian religion with classical Greek and Roman mythology given where she's grown up) because it's the sort of thing that's expected of her but European comes before anything else because it was easier for her to get her hands on it. She has some light combat skills in using a knife, mainly to slash/stab and unarm people but she relies heavily on her magic so she's not going to be winning any fights with it. Plus she isn't the most physically fit girl in the world so there's that. In terms of languages she speaks French and English, knows Latin and Greek, and she can read Old English runes just for magic.
In terms of weaknesses, she has all the standard weaknesses of a normal person: she can get sick, she doesn't have immunity to fire and ice etc, she can't fly, she doesn't have super strength. She knows a bit of combat but she's a slender young woman so she can easily be overpowered physically. Her magic is about making sure she doesn't have to fight up close in the first place and if she does it's about going for the weak points so she'll fight dirty if she has to.
Magically, there are several things that can harm her/ward her off: brass bells, holy water and holy objects, running water (she can use a vehicle or a bridge but she can't leap over/cross through it), charms of protection will stop her from harming people, iron will seriously hurt her, rowan and salt will also work. The catch is that it must be used with intent. She can quote the bible happily, she can handle rowan and salt - what matters is that you really want to get rid of her when you try it and it extends to buildings such as churches where old ones out of or infrequently used are fine but actively used churches can be painful to impossible for her to enter. If someone does something with the intent to drive out a witch, she can be driven out even if it wouldn't be considered to be a standard sort of way of getting rid of a witch in her world. Wards however must be kept fresh - old wards can be stepped over/walked through and so on.
Perhaps most importantly: any spell she inflicts, any curse or hex, can all be undone by her as easily as they were inflicted in the first place. However, there is nothing - unless you inflict a spell upon her or use an object - to compel her to tell the truth about anything. What better way to ensure survival when your back is against the wall and to lie, saying that harming or killing a witch will cause any spell she has ever rendered to become absolutely permanent.
(Before any of her magic is used, I will discuss it with players and there's a full permissions post for them to opt in or out of things she might carry out! I'm good with nerfing/dulling down her powers.)
Flaws:
Honestly, she is a genuinely terrible person. If we're looking at alignments she's firmly on the evil spectrum and the thing that makes her lawful is abiding to the rules of her family, coven and cabal where you're obedient to your elders etc. She is a possessive creature as in nine times out of ten you will never be a friend to her no matter the closeness, you will be a thing that is hers and how dare someone harm you. She enjoys inflicting hurts upon others such as the hunters but also upon innocent people when she can get away with it and she frequently can, at least at home. Her magic involves nightmares and entropy so it's the sort of magic where she can apply it with far fewer fingers being pointed back at her.
Emotional manipulation is something that she thrives on. She. Loves. It. Genuinely she is just not a pleasant person; she might be able to look incredibly sweet but she isn't. It's part of the game. She will lure you in and she will take great pleasure in forcing someone to come back to her when she's manipulated things just to her liking.
And she has killed. She's killed before, she'll kill again. She can dress it up how she likes but she didn't really grant people nice deaths. Or she makes some of her victims get involved in the deaths of their friends by binding them to her will with magic. Leonie has literally stolen the will of a person to turn them into something that is essentially a puppet, bound utterly to her that has to obey her commands usually in a sort of scenario where a tiny part of them is kind of trapped behind glass in their own mind screaming. Sometimes she likes to bring them back when they do a terrible thing to have them witness it. Put them back under. Have them beg for it. Break them again. It's all about power and control for her.
Oh and she is a spiteful nasty little thing. If you slight her then you might not know about it immediately but it's there. It's waiting for you. Simmering away on the backburner until the time is right for her to unleash that and probably not just on you because where would be the fun in that? That's not hurtful enough is it? She has to drag in the people you love either by hurting them, or making them see you be hurt. She isn't a nice girl at all.
SAMPLES
Action Log Sample: We only require one sample in Hadriel, and it can either be in paragraph or bracket form. The sample must be at least 300 word minimum and should demonstrate your character's thoughts and introspection. You may link samples from our monthly Test Drive Meme as well.
Player name: Mhairi
Contact: deathwailart @ plurk | bansheesquad#0389 @ discord
Characters currently in-game: n/a
CHARACTER
Character Name: Léonie Tremble
Character Age: 19
Canon: Original
Canon Point: End of written history
World Description:
It begins with the angels, with one that burned brighter and more beautiful than the rest that refused to bow to the creations of a Father. A first wife twisted in a garden, a second wife then that same husband tempted to eat the forbidden fruit. Exile, the first murder, the earth drinking deep of blood. War in heaven, demons, nephilim, angels falling and simply slipping away from the sight of heaven.
The demons whispered to the humans walking the earth, the angels lay with the sons and daughters of men, the nephilim were born and had children of their own, and many and more came together. And so that was how magic came to be in the first place; astral projection, dream walking, telepathy and telekinesis, flight and teleportation, weather and elemental manipulation, mind manipulation, shape shifting, invisibility, healing, necromancy, possession, enhanced strength and senses and perhaps even time travel. All that and much more. Oh and the monsters. That was the gift of a certain few. Sometimes the demons. Sometimes the nephilim. Sometimes the fallen. Sometimes the angels. Magic of course was hated, feared, loved, sometimes even all three of those at once. But the monsters…well those are plucked from the minds of dreamers, given shape and form to be set loose upon the world, some living as they will but so many more are hungry with many sharp teeth, preying upon man. In order to combat this or in the hopes they might be granted passage back to heaven, some angels and even those among the fallen have reached out to the sons and daughters of men to teach them holy rites and to bless them with strength, protection, courage, all the better to allow them to combat the demons, the monsters. The witches they believe to be in league with the darkness.
Which is, of course, a gross oversimplification because when the witches finally came about after generations and generations of magic, they made their own rules as they saw fit. Organising themselves into cabals (either by blood or by bond), then into larger covens, the witches decided to use what suited them. Cabals were more and more frequently made up of families of witches with bloodlines dating back generations, the covens coming together to trade skills and information. With hunters and angels after them, they needed to be careful, maintaining good relations with one another. So as time moved on, they learned to hide themselves and thrived. Technology and science? Easy for them to whisper a few words here and there, to concentrate hard enough and get the job done. The hunters were the ones living in the past.
Deals were often struck within cabals and covens, but often with demons, nephilm, fallen angels, even willing angels themselves for knowledge, power, whatever else a witch, a cabal, or a coven might need. They realised that marrying into a family without any magic would dilute the power in the blood, and that it could even cause it to fail so there were times that even the creatures they asked for aid became members of the family too.
As for angels (fallen and not), demons and the nephilim, age is only for the sake of appearances. Death must be through killing. An aspect of such beings with so much power being unable to die is that they've created a world for all those in possession of magic to venture to – a dream world, the astral plane, whatever you want to call where you go when you dream or leave your body, but only some can reach out and perceive it for what it is. Those with magic can be taught to to do this, wandering through minds at will to share information and knowledge, to arrange meetings where they can't be followed if the need is great. It can obviously allow them to control people. The truly skilled are called the weavers; when the next war comes, they are believed to be the leaders of the armies.
As magical bloodlines always had traditions, there was one moment that was truly a turning point. A few things had been learned by the witches long before the advent of anything modern: that outsider blood often diluted the magic, intermarrying between distantly related families produced much stronger families than marrying too close, and that even the least skilled woman witch was still far better than the most skilled man. There was a yong woman distraught at the thought of marriage for it would mean moving away to live with his family and leaving the own love of her life behind for the simple fact that she was a woman and they couldn't have children together. A demon heard. Demons always hear. This demon saw a chance to gain great power and influence so it slipped through into the world and taught her a ritual and a spell that could create a child; when you know all the ways to make and unmake a person, it's not so difficult. The price? The young man she was to marry as the demon's way to walk the world.
The witch accepted and nine months later not only was a daughter born but a new tradition with it. Bloodlines were then able to unite with magic if they chose to though many married men out of love or choice, but if it came down to guaranteeing a magical bloodline, brokering the ritual between two women commonly became the choice for the firstborn at least before subsequent children. The ritual is not a guarantee of a daughter but even the sons born of such magic are more talented than naturally born sons.
Witches were thought to have been wiped out thanks to the efforts of the hunters. All those witch trials? Hunters. Informed by angelic assistance until at last their influence waned, the witches closing ranks, the world moving on. In the modern world the witches are more careful to hide as best they can with glamours and other guises, using magic to influence what they can and to keep safe. There's demand for magic though; a careful whisper in the right ear and you're told where to go and who to meet. Stockbrokers do love their luck and fortune charms after all. The men in families are often the fences, slipping in where they can, listening to the whispers, and demons, nephilim and fallen angels who have contracts with families benefit from splitting deals with them. The hunters are returning though, massing in strength but the witches are smart and canny, ready, armed with combat prowess and a much stronger foothold in the world than the hunters know. The hunters are only mortal men and women made strong through angelic blessing (or that's what they claim) plagued by visions and often dying from prolonged contact with something so inhuman. The witches play the long game, same as the things that made them. If the hunters want a war, then it's war they will have but it'll be waged on the witches terms.
History:
Léonie is the second of Mirabelle and Jocelyn Tremble's four children after Séverine (six years older than Léonie) and before the twins Ambre and Anselm (six years younger). Mirabelle is something of a marvel in the apothecary and alchemical fields whereas Jocelyn is talented in dealing with monsters. They reside in the Tremble home that's belonged to Jocelyn's family for generations; both families on either side of Léonie's family have a respected heritage in the cabal and coven with Mirabelle running a 'traditional' medicine shop though of course if you know how to ask, she can provide you with whatever you might require, with customers from far and wide seeking her out. Jocelyn remains at home since there's something of a menagerie at the Tremble house, happy to take on the role of homemaker that way and to deal with the monsters or beasts in peace.
Léonie and her elder sister are extremely close despite their age gap, and it sometimes meant she could come off as older than her years as her sister would teach her spells, or take her along to lessons away from home if the twins were being particularly fractious. Léonie did spend a great deal of time around the monsters aiding Jocelyn and has something of a nightmare menagerie of her own: a pet pesanta from an aunt in Catalonia, some crows and magpies, a cat, and a collection of two-headed snakes. Asserting her will over them and using them as part of her spells was all part of growing up as well as learning to care for them. A witch was to be self-sufficient but also able to take care of her cabal and coven at all times too should anything go amiss. From Mirabelle she learned poisons and herblore too, though she never quite had a talent for necrobotany that her mother did. Outside of the home she was taught old languages such as Latin, Greek, Old English, runes, ciphers. At school she excelled in chemistry and biology since the witches had a use for such things. She also learned how to code as was required of witches living in a modern age when curses and skills could be shared even more easily than they had in the past.
At the age of sixteen, legally an adult in the eyes of witches – Léonie was approached by contacts of Séverine. With the hunters growing ever more bold to the point of becoming a true threat they had a need to train up more of their number once again, those with magic that could be put to good use, the ones with the composure that could be taught to handle themselves in the field. Her parents went to the cabal then to the coven but the decision ultimately rested with Léonie herself. She accepted. Nothing brings prestige like aiding your cabal and coven. Waiting until she finished her schooling, she still began her training before she was able to truly learn how to use her magic to a much more devastating effect. This meant having much more prolonged contact with demons, bending people to her will via any means necessary with her magic, unleashing monsters under her command, as well as learning how to fight with a knife to learn how to defend herself. It woke a part of her that had always been there but had never truly flourished until that moment. Taking her first steps into the world, she moved out of her childhood home and in with her sister to continue their partnership.
Soon she and her sister were out together, the shadow in the dreams of hunters, the time when they were most vulnerable, always with a smile like a knife on her face.
Personality:
Everything about Léonie is deliberate. There's something something of a performance about her; her mannerisms are one of someone speaking directly to you unless you're a very rare person she cares about. You're a player in some grander piece of hers. She likes phrase things just so, and she'll always be dressed to perfection because she understands the power of appearance. You have to feel powerful in order to be powerful. Part of that is dressing to seem just a little unsettling – taller, grander, a strangely lean line or just something off about her shape to give her any extra advantage she can when dealing with someone. When it comes to speaking she doesn't stutter, doesn't use filler words – if she needs to think, she'll think, or she'll phrase something to let you scramble to fill in the blanks if she can. She does love to phrase things as questions. Oh and she very rarely lies. Things can almost sound like a lie but they're usually truths told from a certain point of view because it's much more effective that way because the truth often hurts people far worse or causes them to question things far more. You can dismiss a lie. You can't dismiss a carefully told and well-placed truth quite so easily, can you?
Added to that, she will do her very best to find out what is a weakness to a person. She will file that away. Then she will exploit it. Maybe it'll be bit by bit, chipping away. Or maybe it'll be a pretty brutal evisceration. It depends on who you are, what you've done, why she's doing it. But a witch loves to find out secrets and Léonie in particular learned to pry secrets out of hunters and she honestly just loves to hurt people, she gets a very visceral sort of twisted pleasure in hurting someone then offering to 'help' them with her magic. (By making them her puppet, more on that below.)
There are a few tics or mannerisms Léonie has that are, again, part of her performance; when sitting she likes to lean forward and drum the fingers of both hands when making a point, she turns very sharply on her heels (both of them, in very sharp, very high heels) and if she's leaning in towards someone and her hair is down, she will lean forward so it blocks out everything else but the two of them. To unsettle them. She enjoys trying to creep people out with things like that. This is something Léonie definitely perfected and practiced around the hunters to unsettle them to a very great degree; it's worth bearing in mind that she's also a very pretty girl too but with her magic it gives something very much off about her. She enjoys that.
Loyalty is something she prizes and even if she doesn't agree with someone, she still sees loyalty as something to be respected, even with hunters when they refuse to give up their comrades, making her force it out of them with her magic instead. S he still hates hunters, considering them to be scum but the fact that they prove they do have a family almost like the extended families of witches is something to her. She is loyal to all her fellow witches because it is how they have survived into this age and in the face of a threat they must band together because they are family, united by the gifts they have. Above that though is her family. Threatening her family reveals a different side to her nature. The vicious part. S he will fight tooth and nail to keep her family safe from harm and her opinion there is nothing more fiercely protective than a woman defending what is hers. It's loyalty to her family and to her fellow witches that mark her out and she could best be described as lawful evil; there are rules to be obeyed (the word of her mother, the word of her elder witches) but she consorts with demons and her magic comes from them and she has done awful things. Léonie has twisted and even stolen souls from people and though she feels justified in her actions, she does know what she's doing on every level.
It isn't to say she is incapable of love, in fact she loves very deeply. Her mothers, her sisters and brother are all the most important people in her life and she would do anything to aid or protect them as needed. The word of her mothers and sister Severine is to be respected above all and she does so willingly; she trusts in their wisdom and enjoys having her lessons with them. She learned all her herb and plant based lore, including potions, poisons, tinctures, draughts and everything else from Mirabelle and from Jocelyn she learned how to tame beasts and harvest their parts and pieces. Severine has taught her how to hunt and to use her magic to devastating effect. Other witches have taught her many things and she has reached out to demons and the nephilim with the utmost care to learn more skills still. Joining up with Severine to kill hunters or better yet, to turn them into their puppets is something she does out of love and devotion.
At the core, Léonie knows what she is and that she is evil, enjoying that fact. Any denials and protests she might put forth are an act because they serve her purpose best, to pretend that no, no she is not any of those awful things and usually she only does this to break a captive or a subject. Or sometimes for fun. Manipulation on all levels is important for magic and to be able to weave a web around people. She has never flinched once in her lessons in all her life, always rapt and wide eyed alongside an older woman despite so much of her lessons involving how best to inflict suffering and harm upon others. Still, she does view hunters as evil too but that is because they dare to hurt her kind and believe that they are somehow pure when they have blood upon their hands and know how to hurt just as well as any witch does. It is the insistence of hunters that they are holy warriors with a purpose that has her believing they are the lowest of the low, little better than beasts with their denials of their true nature, at least in her eyes.
When slighted, she has two reactions, depending on the circumstances she finds herself in. If she is capable of exacting revenge and putting that person in their place at that moment then she will with an eerie calm the entire time - her anger is a cold, quiet thing, accompanied by an imperious glare and a smirk. If she is unable to react at that time or if the slight is great enough to merit a stronger reaction then she is able to pour herself into rituals and spells to greatly harm that individual (and sometimes others too) by way of curses and nightmares. In this way she is petty because, given the way she thinks of herself and all witches as above normal people in terms of what they can do, it is very easy to slight her. Even watching your wording around her is important, not that she would tell you but people who are loose in how they speak baffle her to the point of revulsion because it's a sign of idiocy, to be so imprecise. S till, it often gives her an advantage because people can slip and give her information that will help her to exploit them better.
Her empathy with others outside of her family is a limited thing and much of it again is an act so she can better gain something - witches are possessive creatures and in much the way some will hoard money or goods, they often hoard knowledge or secrets. She'd be the first to admit that she has very few friends because she doesn't think that she needs them. What she needs are minions or people she can manipulate so she fakes friendship to get what she wants. She isn't always good at it though and sometimes she'll slip or give people the "wrong" (meaning they see what she's really like and not the image she wants to project) impression that she's cold and rather ruthless. Still, if someone has true talent, knowledge or power then they can gain her interest and cement themselves as a friend. Meaning that she'll come to their aid or harm someone who hurts them because they have hurt what is "hers".
Inventory: Weapons, pets, the kitchen sink? If it's on your character at the time of their canon point and it can fit through an 8' by 4' hole, then they can bring it in. Vehicles, large mechs, and pet elephants, however, will have to stay at home.
Wearing; 1, 2, 3
Makeup bag with the usual suspects for The Witch Aesthetic
Rider-Waite tarot deck, well used and well loved
Jewellery; 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
- A5 leatherbound notebook + 3 pens
- knives
I would really love if she could bring her pesanta, Orpheus, with her but I will totally understand if she cannot have him.
Abilities:
As a witch born of a long line of witches on either side of her family, her talents are not inconsiderable, especially for her young age. But before explaining her magic, a few distinctions have to be made regarding a person. A person in her world is split into three parts:
physical body: a container for the soul
soul: the person (you are a soul and what you have is a body, not the other way around)
spirit: the driving force/animation/life energy
All three of these need to be in balance or a person is not considered to be whole, a crucial part of how Léonie's particular magic works. The only exceptions to these rules are angels or demons, neither of whom possess souls as such (there is debate surrounding fallen angels and nephilim regarding whether or not they possess souls) given that angels were created prior to the existence of souls with the first demons being fallen angels and all other demons being humans who sould their souls or were corrupted. All three parts are connected in the end but the body is considered to be the least essential part as harm to it won't affect the soul and/or spirit to the same extent as harming either of those would do to the other as well as the body. The mind of course is also important but the definition varies between witches, usually depending on age, how old (or young) their bloodline is; the mind essentially encompasses all three but to witches, even spells that would look as though they work on the mind are working on the level of one of the other components or all three.
Even though witches are free to pick and choose their magic according to preferences or what runs in the family, all witches do possess similar degrees of skill in some areas that are considered to be essential to their survival.
♚ herbs & lore: herb lore and knowledge of plants, potions, poisons etc are vital for a witch. They know how to grow plants no common or even experienced gardener will recognise. Witches can use their magic to influence the effect a plant might have but having knowledge of them is vital. Leonie's own knowledge is even more enhanced by way of her mother Mirabelle being an alchemist and apothecary.
♛scrying & reading: cards, bones, entrails - she knows how to do this for herself and for the right price she can do it for others although there is absolutely no compulsion on her to actually tell you the truth. This also involves knowledges of stones and signs and other areas of magic associated with physical objects. This is more the 'ritual' side of magic and as much of the magic is the art in itself and the performance as the objects assembled.
♚ technology: as a young witch, compared to even her mothers' generation, she's far more comfortable at using modern (current era) technology in her magical practices. Boiling up a potion in a kettle? No big deal. Cursing a device or transferring a curse through a device and keeping it anonymous through the mindpush? Memetic curses are a huge deal to young witches. The young generation of witches are very good at working with demons willing to climb up the ranks with things like QR codes that convey curses. They can hold covens and gatherings with skype; this gives them an advantage over the hunters who still tend to use more old-fashioned techniques and well, these girls are damn good at making sure hunters can't find their grimoires online - seriously, why scour a tome until your eyes bleed in some old library if you can ctrl + f it from your phone having coffee with the girls? The way the witches use their magic basically means that unless you know both magic and technology, you won't get any info out of their devices or computers.
♛ magic: Léonie's magic is centred around entropy, influencing the order and disorder in a system, usually - almost exclusively - in favour of disorder. Entropy magic is mostly about the soul or spirit though it can and does affect the body too. There are no flashy spells of lightning and fire for her but though her magic is subtle, it it no less destructive. Spells aren't named for her like 'weakness hex' or 'nightmare' but I've sorted them into categories to better explain them.
the scales: this sort of magic involves having life in one hand and death in the other. This can cover the reanimation of a corpse - usually just an empty shell that moves as she dictates, necromancy is not a skill she's hugely versed in, it's more a subset of other spells - to serve her until she ends the spell or the corpse is destroyed in some other way. It can also involve the draining of life from others, sapping their physical strength, their spirit or even their soul until it's hers to command and it's a common tool to weaken a person. She can even 'hold' someone's life in her hands which not only causes damage but it will significantly weaken their soul and spirit through the idea that they are wholly at her mercy.
the grasping hand: whilst it looks similar to the magic mentioned above, this is where magic can seep into a person and pull at them (like the personal magic she would use on her own property) that will slowly permeate into a person. It can range from weakness to even paralysis, afflicting the body, spirit, soul or all three.
the clouded mind: these spells might look like mind spells but they wouldn't be classed as such by her even though they involve going into the 'head' in some aspects. It's a combination of the soul and the spirit that are primarily affected: confusion and disorientation, a victim plagued with nightmares in sleeping or waking, hallucinations (usually visual or auditory), nightmares someone can't wake from or they might be awake and trapped in them to the point they're experiencing another reality.
All three can combine together into the curses (or hexes) where physical afflictions appear such as sores or sickness or any sort of physical malady. Curses can leave someone vulnerable - often used first to increase the success of other spells) to the point that even protections placed upon them are gone i.e. a blessing from a holy person. There are misdirections where everything goes wrong from getting lost to losing items to a door not opening to a gun jamming or running out of ammo at a crucial moment. Bad luck can even be lethal. Handy if you want to cover up a violent act don't you think?
♚ souls: the main 'point' of her magic is in the manipulation of a soul. Everything she does helps to weaken someone's soul through making them beg her to stop and to promise to do as she pleases. These are done through rituals combined with spells and a measure of isolation in cages or in being left alone in the dark, sometimes with a small touch of physical harm. It is part magic, part act and she has mastered it to such a degree that she can turn someone into a broken puppet, utterly loyal to her to the point they can no longer be thought of as a person but more of a thing. Sometimes the soul is utterly ripped out if it's part of a deal to be handed to a demon - or it's so damaged that the body moves. The spirit is usually left there, not intact, but to allow a puppet to keep moving for longer than it would without one. This can be reversed but it's the one part of her magic that will leave a permanent mark on a person, either from a pain that won't go away to simple nightmares and a feeling that something happened that they can't remember.
♛ beasts: growing up in a household of magical beasts (and having a pet manticore as a child) then she is good at taming and bending beasts to her will so that she can unleash them on others. Beast mastery works in much the same way as turning a person into a puppet really: it's about her will overpowering a beast, the difficulty ranging from how much closer to human and/or sentient a creature is e.g. a melusine is far harder to control than a wolf
♚ dreaming: dreams are hugely important like the mentioned dream walking and she believes a great deal in signs and symbols in her dreams. Witch dreams are very lucid dreams, something they are taught, so she remembers and reacts with them with great clarity. Away from home she won't be able to use her dreaming the way it's mentioned further up in the world info.
♛misc.: has a good deal of knowledge of religion and mythology (mainly Judeo-Christian religion with classical Greek and Roman mythology given where she's grown up) because it's the sort of thing that's expected of her but European comes before anything else because it was easier for her to get her hands on it. She has some light combat skills in using a knife, mainly to slash/stab and unarm people but she relies heavily on her magic so she's not going to be winning any fights with it. Plus she isn't the most physically fit girl in the world so there's that. In terms of languages she speaks French and English, knows Latin and Greek, and she can read Old English runes just for magic.
In terms of weaknesses, she has all the standard weaknesses of a normal person: she can get sick, she doesn't have immunity to fire and ice etc, she can't fly, she doesn't have super strength. She knows a bit of combat but she's a slender young woman so she can easily be overpowered physically. Her magic is about making sure she doesn't have to fight up close in the first place and if she does it's about going for the weak points so she'll fight dirty if she has to.
Magically, there are several things that can harm her/ward her off: brass bells, holy water and holy objects, running water (she can use a vehicle or a bridge but she can't leap over/cross through it), charms of protection will stop her from harming people, iron will seriously hurt her, rowan and salt will also work. The catch is that it must be used with intent. She can quote the bible happily, she can handle rowan and salt - what matters is that you really want to get rid of her when you try it and it extends to buildings such as churches where old ones out of or infrequently used are fine but actively used churches can be painful to impossible for her to enter. If someone does something with the intent to drive out a witch, she can be driven out even if it wouldn't be considered to be a standard sort of way of getting rid of a witch in her world. Wards however must be kept fresh - old wards can be stepped over/walked through and so on.
Perhaps most importantly: any spell she inflicts, any curse or hex, can all be undone by her as easily as they were inflicted in the first place. However, there is nothing - unless you inflict a spell upon her or use an object - to compel her to tell the truth about anything. What better way to ensure survival when your back is against the wall and to lie, saying that harming or killing a witch will cause any spell she has ever rendered to become absolutely permanent.
(Before any of her magic is used, I will discuss it with players and there's a full permissions post for them to opt in or out of things she might carry out! I'm good with nerfing/dulling down her powers.)
Flaws:
Honestly, she is a genuinely terrible person. If we're looking at alignments she's firmly on the evil spectrum and the thing that makes her lawful is abiding to the rules of her family, coven and cabal where you're obedient to your elders etc. She is a possessive creature as in nine times out of ten you will never be a friend to her no matter the closeness, you will be a thing that is hers and how dare someone harm you. She enjoys inflicting hurts upon others such as the hunters but also upon innocent people when she can get away with it and she frequently can, at least at home. Her magic involves nightmares and entropy so it's the sort of magic where she can apply it with far fewer fingers being pointed back at her.
Emotional manipulation is something that she thrives on. She. Loves. It. Genuinely she is just not a pleasant person; she might be able to look incredibly sweet but she isn't. It's part of the game. She will lure you in and she will take great pleasure in forcing someone to come back to her when she's manipulated things just to her liking.
And she has killed. She's killed before, she'll kill again. She can dress it up how she likes but she didn't really grant people nice deaths. Or she makes some of her victims get involved in the deaths of their friends by binding them to her will with magic. Leonie has literally stolen the will of a person to turn them into something that is essentially a puppet, bound utterly to her that has to obey her commands usually in a sort of scenario where a tiny part of them is kind of trapped behind glass in their own mind screaming. Sometimes she likes to bring them back when they do a terrible thing to have them witness it. Put them back under. Have them beg for it. Break them again. It's all about power and control for her.
Oh and she is a spiteful nasty little thing. If you slight her then you might not know about it immediately but it's there. It's waiting for you. Simmering away on the backburner until the time is right for her to unleash that and probably not just on you because where would be the fun in that? That's not hurtful enough is it? She has to drag in the people you love either by hurting them, or making them see you be hurt. She isn't a nice girl at all.
SAMPLES
Action Log Sample: We only require one sample in Hadriel, and it can either be in paragraph or bracket form. The sample must be at least 300 word minimum and should demonstrate your character's thoughts and introspection. You may link samples from our monthly Test Drive Meme as well.
