Post by Salomé Chastain on Dec 3, 2010 7:51:12 GMT -5
Salomé
"Profanity has its own appeal."
"Profanity has its own appeal."
NICKNAMES: N/A //[/color]
AGE: 26 //[/color]
DATE OF BIRTH: April 14 //[/color]
GENDER: Female //[/color]
ALIGNMENT: True Neutral //[/color]
OCCUPATION: Magus //[/color]
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HEIGHT: 5'7" //[/color]
WEIGHT: 158 lbs. //[/color]
EYE COLOR: Red //[/color]
HAIR COLOR: Red/brown //[/color]
PIERCINGS: None //[/color]
TATTOOS: Command Seal on the left wrist //[/color]
DISTINGUISHING FEATURES: Two-tone hair that includes bright red isn't enough for you? Well, she's also a prolific smoker - there's usually one behind her ear.//[/color]
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- Distant
- Salomé doesn't always play well with others. She's not openly antagonistic, but it's hard to really get through to her. She'll gladly spend time with others, but only in the most superficial activities - a good meal being more likely than most suggestions to get her to spend time in your company. Don't expect much of a real connection, though - she's not interested in sharing anything more than a drink.
- Maternal
- Salomé loves kids. It's a rare soft spot in her hard shell. With children she tries to be bright and boisterous, and she'll gladly participate in their more ridiculous games and delusions.
- Temporal
- Life can end. Salomé is all too aware of this, and knows she is the end of the line for her branch of the family. Salomé lives every bit in the now, engaging in all the simple pleasures of life she is allowed. In particular, she snacks constantly.
- Chaste
- There's one particular earthly pleasure Salomé has little interest in. Barring all the drinking and carousing, her life is surprisingly pure. The modern concept of romance isn't really her flavor anyway, though she's got little enough objection to love - it's lust she finds distasteful.
LIKES:[/color]
Chestnuts
Wine
Children
Music
Hot chocolate //
DISLIKES:
Rain
Romance
History //[/color]
STRENGTHS: Strong, self-aware, practical, good defense, few restrictions, lots of Prana //[/color]
WEAKNESSES: Detached, not much direct offensive power, poor social skills //[/color]
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MY FAMILY LINE:[/color]
The Chastain is a young and dying offshoot of the Italian Castanea family. The Chastains are only three generations old, owing to a split 200 years prior when a Castanea moved to France, taking the Crest with him. Despite their young heritage, the combination of their three generations of refinement to the eight generations of Castanea family means that their combined heritage of eleven generations and nearly 750 years of history in magecraft means that the Chastain family has a strong history, averaging a surprising 12 PrC with an average of 25 circuits. This is mitigated by the small number of potential heirs in each generation - the Chastain heritage is somewhat sporadic in quality, and so each generation of Chastains has had many children in order to cull out a potential heir with abilities befitting the line.
Before the split, the Castaneas were a fairly successful family, but with eight generations, potential suitors were few and the family began to crumble with very few heirs. One of the Castaneas, Arduino Castanea, married into a young new family in France that took on his name, adjusted for the local language. However, this did not mean the death of the line - they survived, fading into the background as their power and influence waned - Arduino's departure had revitalized an old and dying heritage.
The Chastain specialty, also inherited and refined from the Castanea line, is protective magecraft. The hard shell perfected by the Castanea family has been refined, and Chastain barriers combine the fluidity of an active defense with a powerful wall. Chastain magecraft is characterized by a defense so strong as to serve as a form of offense in itself.//
MY HISTORY:
Salomé was born one of three, by a woman who was one of seven. The Chastain line had, up to this point, blossomed, and Salomé's enormous family held itself in tenuous balance, passing the crest along bitterly but often fairly, rare marriages eliminating the most troublesome of the lot. Her household was not unhappy but tense, a cold war established between a family of gifted mages.
Then an heir of the Castanea line appeared. Brought back into contact with the former family line, now ready to come to blows over the rights to the crest, the cold war became white hot. Salomé's life became chaos, soaked in blood as the two lines battled it out, a feud not merely between the lines but also within them - her mother was slaughtered in a duel with a favorite aunt, and it was Salomé herself who put an end to her jealous oldest sister. The lines, rather than unifying and finding an heir, shattered and turned into a conflagration.
Fighting desperately for her life and wishing that the bloodshed would end, Salomé established an alliance with her remaining sister and a cousin from the Castanea branch, pledging to end the war together and to select from between them an heir who would be unquestionably supported. The three of them managed to establish the end of the war through unquestionable brutality - no offshoot or bastard son could be allowed. At the age of 22, Salomé finally knew peace once more in her life.
A year later, that peace was shattered. Her cousin had already had a son, Celino Castanea, who Salomé supported as the future heir. But her older sister resented Celino, and when she became pregnant, her determination that her child must be the heir poisoned her against the other two. Jealousy turned to anger, and Salomé discovered with horror her sister's plans to destroy their alliance and kill both her cousin and young Celino. Salomé desperately tried to talk her down from this course of action, but the resentful woman would not back down, culminating in a duel where Salomé was forced to kill her sister.
Horrified, Salomé has retreated to Italy with the crest, using a house owned by one of the deceased Castaneas, and has pledged both to herself and her cousin that she will never have children, so that no more blood is shed between those too young to fully understand. For three years she lived in comfort, until she saw an opportunity to make good on her pledge and her goals by taking control of the Holy Grail and ensuring the unification of the family through its magic. //[/color]
MY GOALS: Salomé intends to use the Holy Grail to bind the ability of the Castanea line to continue, allowing them only one child as an heir per generation. A curse from the Holy Grail ought to hold weight and bind their family together around this single heir. //[/color]
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RANK: N/A //[/color]
ELEMENT: Fire //[/color]
EXPERTISE:
Barriers - As per the Chastain specialty, Salomé is a skilled crafter of defensive magics.
Situational Awareness - Her heritage has left Salomé with an overdeveloped sense of killer intent. Bordering occasionally on paranoia, Salomé is good at picking out danger to herself.
Cooking //[/color]
MAGIC CIRCUITS: Salomé is an exceptional member of the excellent Chastain line, and has 15 PrC and 30 circuits, resulting in 450 maximum prana. //[/color]
SPELLS:
Pomme de Terre [Apple of the Earth] (Fire)
Rank: E
Cost: 5 Pr
Range: 5m
Effect: A unique refinement of the classic fireball crafted by Salomé, this is her primary offensive spell. The spell requires a small amount of some wet, organic material to burn - the material is superheated and then released. Upon striking a target, tension is provided that finishes the explosive process, causing the material to become a deadly flaming shrapnel bomb. Though only slightly stronger than a normal fireball, additional prana is required in order to carefully control the explosive process and ensure that the material remains burning after impact for maximum damage. Most small, hand-held objects cost the minimum five prana - the larger her target object, the more prana it requires for the combustion process to begin - something about the size of a small melon would require 7 prana, and something the size of a watermelon or decent-sized pumpkin would likely require nine or more. Anything larger than that would be impractically large for the speed of the spell.
Frictional Barrier (Fire)
Rank: C
Cost: 28
Range: Self
Effect: The trademark spell of the Chastain family, the Frictional Barrier is a powerful protection from nearly any physical attack. Attacks that approach the magus are attacked by friction, rapidly slowing them and subjecting them to extreme heat - enough to melt bullets to nothing. Even objects which survive the heating effects are naturally slowed as friction adds resistance to their movement. However, its effectiveness depends on mass - a massless object will not suffer friction and thus the Frictional Barrier is less than ideal against these attacks.
Heated Response (Fire)
Rank: C+
Cost: 37
Range: 3m
Effect: The magical equivalent to the Frictional Barrier. When an invasion of hostile magic is detected by the field the magus projects, a shield is projected to defend from these attacks. More significantly, the line the attack followed is traced by the prana of the caster, creating a ray of flame that chases back towards the source for three meters. Each ray created this way costs another 12 prana on top of the cost of the spell, and unlike the shield, requires that the path of the attack is clearly detectable - abilities which conceal prana usage or offensive magecraft will foil the tracking abilities of the ray. In terms of offense, the ray acts like the flame lance spell.
Weather The Storms of Hell: The Sevenfold Veil (Flame)
Rank: A
Cost: 112
Range: 5m radius, centered on self
Effect: An extremely complex spell developed through the refinement of a single barrier over eleven generations, the Sevenfold Veil is a barrier designed not to protect, but to destroy. The Sevenfold Veil relies on differential heating of the atmosphere over a five-meter wide area, creating an incredible drain on the magus responsible and requiring an involved 4-verse chant.
The end result, though, is magnificent - air currents manipulated by rapid differential heating creating a massively high-pressure storm system, the entire area around the magus turning into a vibrant display of rainbow colors as light is refracted endlessly in the turbulent, violently hot storm system.
Should any object pierce this area, the vacuum created by its presence will be filled with a crushing force more than enough to tin-can most modern cars, and heat similar to that of the Firewater spell, decimating anything foolish enough to attack the barrier. Even large objects can be redirected if not destroyed. The activation of the Sevenfold Veil is often heralded with terrible crashing and groaning as objects already inside the radius are consumed.
Only objects with some magical protection, such as Noble Phantasms, can hope to penetrate the barrier without significant damage. Alternatively, it could theoretically be pierced if the object projected enough force to create a stable vacuum in the barrier.
The barrier is difficult to maintain, and will apply a constant drain on the magus so long as it is activated - the maintenance drain is slightly less severe than the effort involved in casting, but Salomé can still only maintain the barrier for roughly 20 seconds before it becomes a mortal threat to herself. //[/color]
PLAYER'S NAME: Finn Mac Cool/Sword and Soul //[/color]
FACE CLAIM: Atlas, Megaman ZX //[/color]
OTHER CHARACTERS: Finn Mac Cool //[/color]
MISC. INFORMATION: //[/color]
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