Empatheias App

[plied_magic]

⌈ PLAYER SECTION ⌉
Player: Stareyes
Contact: beccastareyes @ plurk
Age: 31
Current Characters: Aerich/Temma


⌈ CHARACTER SECTION ⌉
Character: Sandrilene fa Toren
Age: 14
Canon: Circle of Magic
Canon Point: Between Magic Steps and Will of the Empress

Background: Full Details

Sandry was born to nobility: her mother was related to the Namornese royal family, and her father was the nephew of the Duke of Emelan. Her mother was the equivalent of a count, but neither of Sandry's parents had any interest in governing land. Instead, they used the income from her lands to travel. Sandry grew up seeing much of the world, but was isolated from many other noble children her own age (lest her parents' ideas rub off on them). This gave her a lack of classism, in that she noticed that the merchant, poor and foreign children she played with were no different from her. Her parents also kept company with the -- nomadic merchants who didn't intermarry

Sandry's parents died in a smallpox epidemic when she was ten. Her nurse, Pirisi, was a mage who hid Sandry in a storeroom to protect her from a riot. Sandry had to hear the mob tear Pirisi apart, as Pirisi was a member of the minority Tsaw'ha group. Sandry's thread magic emerged when she was afraid that she would die alone in the storeroom in the dark, and she desperately tried to keep her lamp going. Instead, she managed to call her lamp light to her embroidery floss by braiding it. Sandry also developed a strong fear of the dark.

Sandry was discovered by Niklaren Goldeye, a mage known for his ability to see the invisible. She was sent to her great uncle's castle in Summersea, Emelan, who suggested she live at the Winding Circle temple, which ran a school. Sandry didn't make friends with the nobility and was moved from her dorm to Discipline cottage, run by the Dedicates Lark and Rosethorn with two other girls and a boy. It slowly came out that all four had magical abilities tuned to common objects, and Lark and Rosethorn were both mages of that sort. In particular, Lark was also a thread mage and took Sandry on as a student, which delighted Sandry (who had been considered too high class to do much beyond embroider).

Sandry was determined to knit the four children living in Discipline into a friendship. Daja, an outcaste Tsaw'ha girl with smith magic, humored her, while Tris, a merchant's daughter whose talent for lightning left her abandoned at Winding Circle, and Briar, a former street kid and plant mage, didn't trust a high-class girl being nice. Sandry was slowly able to convince the four that they could trust one another. Then, after trying to get a dog they rescued out of a hole, the four were trapped in a cave in. Tris could sense an earthquake coming, and none of the four's magic was able to block it. Using her friends to keep her fear of the dark from overwhelming her, Sandry used her spindle to spin their magical talents into one thread, so that all of them could use their magic in concert. This left them with a telepathic bond and talents that intermingled. In order to control their talents better, Sandry had to magically re-weave some boundaries between their talents.

Sandry and her friends were certified as fully-trained mages when they were teens, and Briar, Tris and Daja left to learn more. Sandry remained in Summersea as her uncle had suffered a heart attack and she was worried he'd not take proper care of himself. She set about assuming some of the duties of running the duchy. Recently, she took on a student, as the policy is that any mage who discovers a youth with magic must train them until a better teacher is found. Pasco's magic is expressed via dance, but Sandry was the person who realized that his 'lucky dancing' was actual magic.

Sandry also had to deal with a merchant turf war turned into serial murder. While the city's guard were anxious to keep her out of it, Sandry's ability to see magic (learned from Tris) and manipulate magic became crucial to catch the group, who had a mage capable of working unmagic, a sort of anti-magic that could confound spells and corrupted everything it touches. After Pasco's inability to stay out of trouble while helping Sandry with their trap to catch the murderers forced her to choose between letting the murderers go and making sure Pasco was safe by letting the trap kill the murderers, she chose to protect her student. Between the death and the unmagic, Sandry has things adding to her nightmares.

Personality: Sandry acts fearless most of the time. She's pretty brave (just with a phobia of the dark and who has seen some shit). She seems to have no perception that something is not her business (read: she's a busybody and Briat constantly notes she sticks her nose where it doesn't belong) or that she can't do things -- because she's a girl, a noble, or anything else. Some of that probably comes from being a noble's daughter, but some of it is just Sandry. This also manifests as a bossy streak. While Sandry isn't detailed oriented, she is the sort of person who has a very set vision of what is going to happen and works to make it so. Her experience as a teacher and a foster-sister has mellowed her out (a bit) as was trying to nursemaid her uncle (who is also stubborn, but thankfully finds it amusing that his teenaged grand-niece is being a mother hen). She's now aware that some problems need to be a bit more delicately handled. For instance, Pasco was quite insistent that Sandry was wrong about his magical talent, so she had to be both persistent and accept that he wasn't going to come around as soon as he heard that. And remember that he liked dancing, so learning dancing magic was something he wanted (once he was convinced he had it, and his family was convinced that no, dance magic is a thing, I don't care what you think you know about mages).

Sandry's broad travels means she lacks a lot of the social divides. It also helps that her foster-siblings are from different social classes than she is. She finds nobles who lord it over commoners disgraceful, and one of the few times she pulls rank is to shut them up: for instance, when other girls were giving Daja a hard time for being a Tsaw'ha, Sandry pretty much said 'I rank all of you, I say she's all right, and anyone who doesn't like it can go jump in the lake'. She also isn't terribly fond of other -isms. As her uncle doesn't have much tolerance for such things either, Emelan seems to be one of the less terrible places to live, though slums still exist in Summersea. Sandry does forget that not everyone is as terrifyingly brave as she is, which her siblings have to remind her of. It's not that she thinks the poor need to rise up or they have only themselves to blame, but her first instinct is to go in with metaphorical guns blazing to help, rather than figure out a more delicate approach. Have I mentioned that Sandry is bull-headed? Because she is.

Sandry is a good-hearted, cheerful person who likes people and wants to be friends with them. She knew most of her uncle's staff as well as insisting that everyone at Discipline would be friends and she was going to make this a thing well before Tris or Briar accepted it. She's happy to chat about your life and is the sort who learns everyone's names and families. Thanks to living with Tris, Briar and Rosethorn, being cranky is not terribly discouraging to her. She's also extremely loyal and devoted when it comes to friendship.

Sandry's flaws are generally her bull-headedness, as this can manifest as trouble as well as determination. The incident where this comes into sharpest contrast is later in canon than her pull point: Sandry gets into a conflict with her cousin, the Empress of Namorn, who wants to use Sandry's unmarried status as a pawn for political alliances. Sandry naturally tells her cousin off, but her cousin threatens to tax Sandry's holdings in Namorn to keep Sandry from heading back to Emelan. In addition, her steward (another cousin) lacked the legal authority to handle some of the problems. It takes a lot of personal growth from Sandry to accept that either she needs to stay in Namorn to manage her holdings and keep her cousin from being a jerkass to her people, or cede her holdings in Namorn to her steward so he could handle the things she couldn't remotely. Sandry wanted to both live in Emelan and not have to concede anything in Namorn because of a jerkass Empress, but realized that she was hurting others by her actions. At fourteen, Sandry hasn't had that kind of growth. She's aware that sometimes her stubbornness is a pain, but is still convinced she's usually right when she feels strongly. And, while Sandry is aware of her privilege, she still has it and can sometimes forget that not all people have an accepting family, wealth, noble status and generally the expectation that if you make a fuss, people will listen to you.

This can also play into a bossy streak. While having peers her age has moderated this, Sandry tends to assume she's going to be the leader and people should listen to her. Since her foster-siblings don't care if someone is leading, this usually isn't a problem (they let her lead, but she also listens to them when they object to an idea), but pitting her against another take-charge person will lead to sparks flying if there's disagreement.

Sandry's fear of the dark is also noteworthy. It comes from being sealed in a cellar during the plague to keep her safe. She regularly has nightmares when stressed, can't sleep without a light on, and has to carry a piece of enchanted crystal (made by her foster-sisters) to make sure she always has a nightlight. If left alone in the dark, she is likely to panic. Other people help, because they can focus her attention on something else. Working with unmagic added another dimension to this -- the feeling of having her life sucked out by something that looked dark to her magical vision gave her nightmares of drowning; the draining sensation one gets from removing one's crystal will remind her of that, and she'll be as worried about that crystal as her nightlight.

Abilities: Sandry is well-educated and has taken on increasing political and economic duties for her great-uncle. But let's talk about her magic.

Sandry is what's known as an ambient mage. While academic mages use their body's power via symbols and incantations, ambient mages draw power from certain things in the environment, and work via will and associations. For instance, Lark is able to control a waterspout that Tris accidentally summoned by linking it with some blue yarn on a spindle.

Sandry's magic is focused on thread and textiles. This means she can control plant and animal fibers enough to weave far more quickly than normally possible (though this takes a lot more energy) or bind and disable people. She also can work spells into cloth or embroidery, either by focusing on the task while spinning or weaving, or later by using oils and herbs on existing cloth. Examples of spells are making Daja's clothing fire-proof, but as a habit, most of her clothing never wrinkles or stains. She can even do things like call light into thread. Many ambient abilities are ill-defined because of this: Sandry's need a fiber anchor, but she can do a lot more with them.

Sandry's other talent comes for working with magic itself, something that no other thread mage is known to do. Sandry could call the magical essences of her siblings and herself from thread they carried with them, and use that to push their abilities back into shape. She also can make thread or even things like nets out of raw magic (or unmagic). From this, she gained Tris's ability to see magic as silvery light. In general, it's stronger when the magic is active.

Alignment: Thras. Sandry is brave, but she also acknowledges that things scare her, and that's all right. Like the dark.

Other: Sandry's talent is interwoven with her three foster-siblings. They have an telepathic link and have shown their ability to use massive levels of magic when working together. As none of them are in the game, it's not important at the moment, but I want to mention it in case we get one.

⌈ SAMPLE SECTION ⌉
Sample: http://empatheias-ooc.dreamwidth.org/52814.html?thread=4723022#cmt4723022
http://empatheias-ooc.dreamwidth.org/52814.html?thread=4722766#cmt4722766 (I've been hoping this one would get into conflict more, but it is what it is.)
http://empatheias-ooc.dreamwidth.org/52814.html?thread=4730702#cmt4730702

Questions: None!