Post by Misae on Nov 18, 2013 15:22:12 GMT -5
Misae Briard
"...What do you want me to say? Something about fire? I don't burn people, fire in its more pure form is just energy, that is what I use. Those who let loose flames to devour the world are just unrestrained and unimaginative."
"...What do you want me to say? Something about fire? I don't burn people, fire in its more pure form is just energy, that is what I use. Those who let loose flames to devour the world are just unrestrained and unimaginative."
NICKNAMES: // None
AGE: // 21
DATE OF BIRTH: // January 12th 2005
GENDER: // Female
ALIGNMENT: // Neutral
OCCUPATION: // Magus, Angakkuq
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HEIGHT: // 5'4
WEIGHT: // 113 lbs
EYE COLOR: // Blue
HAIR COLOR: // Brown
PIERCINGS: // None
TATTOOS: // None
DISTINGUISHING FEATURES: // Command Seal on the back of her left hand in somewhat triangular shape with each side being a half circle
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- Trait
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LIKES: //
DISLIKES: //
STRENGTHS: //
WEAKNESSES: //[/font][/ul]
At the time, the tradition of families for magecraft was relatively unknown, instead those born with the spark were taught by an Angakkuq, and only those who accidently showed they were capable. Many children with latent circuits were passed over, because there was no knowledge of how thaumaturgy came into being. Though, the Inuit were not stupid. They knew there was a connection between parents and children who had the ability to use magecraft, the idea of inbreeding and even the lack of viable population, as the villages tend to be spread out and the population fairly minimal made the European style progression of families nearly impossible, and it was never tried.
Bloodlines still survived, however, and the Briards were around at the first contact with Europeans, the Viking landings in Greenland. Though they were not there for that, the Angakkuqs did maintain a small network of communications that informed them of the world. Yet the Europeans were repelled, and the word ‘skraeling’ was chosen to describe them, and to call them weak when in their fear the Vikings never returned. Consulting the world, spirit journeys, and rituals were undertaken to seek knowledge of if they would return, who and what they were.
The answers varied as much as each personal Angakkuq’s opinion strangely, twisting the words of the spirits. Misae’s ancestor, a young woman at the time, took the stance that they should try to take the fight to them or at the least to sail across the seas.
She was offered a boat to go with, accompanied only by laughter.
In the end, the Great Discussion, the meeting of many from far and wide came to an end with the idea that they had dealt with them once, they could deal with them when they returned.
They were wrong.
When the Europeans returned to the shores of North America, they brought with them diseases, technology, devastation, and the Church. To the Inuit at the time, magic and shamanism was a way of life. They knew of the secret, and the people practiced openly as healers, guides, and defenders against the curses of the world.
However, the Church and the newly crafted Magus Association did not agree with this, they had moved Magecraft to hiding after a cold war. The First Nations, including the Inuit, were offered a choice: Join, or die.
Perhaps if they had worked together, or even come to the same decision, they could have retained their way of life. However each Angakkuq came to their own decision, and it was split. There was no universal defense, they could not muster their people to defend either, entranced by riches. Some joined, some hesitated and hid, and others, the majority, died. The purge of those who refused was systematic and only took twenty five years in an era before rapid transit.
To their shame, the Briard Family, that unnamed group of magi descended from a survivor of a horrible storm, decided to join the Europeans. They were promised much, and on the surface it seemed true. Construction of Crests were revealed to them, they were trained better, taught the ways of the Magus Association, spared by the Church. It was so good on the surface that the initial creator of the crest, tossed aside his old name, his old ways to join.
He became Jonathan Briard. And he was the cause of much, much suffering for his fellow Angakkuqs. It was him who was so entranced by riches and the tradition of something foreign that he betrayed gatherings, locations, and in the end for promises of more he joined in on the killings themselves. His last name became a curse that the family would be forever burdened with…
After his death it took two more generations for the family to finally realize that the Association was going out of their way to make life impossible for them. Their attempts to actually attend the tower were often stymied, they could not find any passage to Europe anywhere, and every time they just received a letter with ‘deep regrets’. Jonathan had been a hunting dog who was tossed away when his use was up.
The family furiously withdrew from the Association, to the notice of absolutely no one, but still feared the power of the Church, which now had its roots down and still occasionally burnt out the shamans who could use magecraft and were using it obviously. Retreating once again past the Arctic Circle in shame they found no welcome there either. They had betrayed the villages, betrayed their healers, their wise men and women. The family tried changing their name, but it was impossible for them without massive manipulation of their own people, which the head at the time found incredibly distasteful.
They were cursed with their last name that Jonathan had been so proud of. Cursed to bear it till they disappeared from the world.
Eventually they ended up being vaguely connected to the Sea of Estray, the moving castle that wandered to their shores once, in isolation. Their dislike for the Association was shared by others there, so it felt almost welcoming.
It was there they heard of the mystery of the Grail war, spoken in secretive whispers, but they were always far too late, the battle far too gone to be joined. Until the Association, that Association they disliked so much nearly pulled the covers back on it, sort of at least. They heard about it beforehand this time, hosted in a place called Lucca. The head of the family, Misae, made resolution to leave the isolation of the frozen North and head to Italy.
One of the Briards would finally step on European soil.
(The crest of the Briards is only around 500 years old, compared to their thousand years of magecraft, and the practices put in place only occurred for a few generations, after contact with the Association. As such the average, with the crest for a Magus of the family is only around three hundred prana despite the age of the bloodline.)
MY HISTORY: //“Fire is life.” That was my first lesson, the first one I remember as my Mother blew gently on a black coal, encased in sand. To my surprise it flared to life, heating to a cherry red, before slowly cooling back down in the winter wind. My eight year old self was staring in amazement, there was no flow of prana that she used to bring it back to an ember. Just her breath.
“That will be your first task, to maintain life. To maintain your life, in even the harshest conditions. And that task of yours will never end.” I thought I was going to get the coal, to keep it burning throughout the day or something. Not at all. My mother simply dragged me outside and buried me neck deep in the snow, long out of sight of our small home.
“I’ll be back in three days. Live, if you can.” With those not-at-all helpful words she left me there. I guess I should say that at the time I lived far north of the Arctic Circle, we lived on Ellesmere to be precise. Further north than even Alert, our whalebone hut was completely warded against any accidental spotting, though the bounded field did nothing about the temperature. That was for the two of us to solve.
So it wasn’t just cold. That place is… inhospitable. Life is nearly impossible, and it snows nearly perpetually. That was the first problem, to keep myself from suffocating after being buried in the snow. Because that was not an ‘if I get buried in the snow’ it was ‘when’. Even if it isn’t snowing the winds blow it around, and it would cover me in a short time.
I bent my head down a little bit, pressing my lips close to the ground… well ice… but not touching, and exhaled, slowly and deliberately. My objective was to melt just a small path for air, and after a time I succeeded.
The second part of it was not succumbing to the cold itself. Even with the clothes we wore, the layered skins, it would not be enough to live for three days. Even with the insulation of the snow, eventually water would melt and then refreeze to my skin, giving me hypothermia as my body cooled. I had to use the one thing I knew that separated me from normal humans: my circuits. When activating them, the body temperature rises, enough to keep the cold from setting in and killing… though maintaining the flow for three days? That was the challenge.
The cold, howling air seemed to invite sleep when I had to focus on remaining alive like my ancestor so long ago. Mother had told me stories about him, and how he lived. It was only going over that, again and again and again that I was able to retain my concentration, and my will to survive. Three long days I breathed, drank dripping, melting snow, and focused, doing everything I could to stay awake. My body burned from the effort, my soul wanted to give way to death. Though it was not to be, when I could take no more of it, the third day had passed, and just as I felt sleep take me over, I felt a pulling sensation as my Mother tore apart the ice to free me.
I fell asleep while she carried me back to our hut.
Two entire days passed before I awoke, and the process to transfer the crest had already begun. I woke to being painted with blood along my body, and the first piece… was painful, and marked me with a dark slash across my skin. It hurt for weeks, and my shoulder spent most of that time bandaged so tightly it couldn’t move.
Apparently I was now worthy of the crest, worthy to be a Magus. I don’t know what my mother would have done had I died, she had no other children and I never saw my Father, still have never seen him. Whether he was cast out, or left, or died I have no idea and she never talked about him no matter how I pressed. Only the history of our family, how to survive, and magecraft. Occasionally she would mention how proud of me she was, how much she was looking forward to seeing my potential.
And see it she did, when the crest was fully transferred to me, it didn’t take me long to learn the magecraft of our family, bought with the blood of our kin by the original creator of the last name I hold. Western, European style magecraft, all trace of our heritage wiped out when Jonathan betrayed his kin and kind to the invaders.
Maybe that was why it was just us two. Perhaps my Mother wanted our family to die out in obscurity, like we lived in it. Even now tribes and villages were unfriendly, she said, memory of our name long ingrained as a traitor. But removing it would belie our duties, our responsibility for our past trespasses.
That is why we learned, and why the line had to continue.
My training continued with my Mother until I turned fourteen, in fact the very day of my birth that year my Mother was nowhere to be found. I searched for her fruitlessly for hours, until I found her meditating by the shore, cold waves breaking and freezing against the ice.
I… have never been one for long term meditation but something held me there, made me sit beside her in our field, four talismans, since she no longer bore the crest, engraving the corners. Even the wind was still within it, her Mastery of it far beyond mine at the time. Energy itself was still, waiting with held breath as much as I.
It took hours before it finally took its breath, as a great spiraling presence rose from the sea, shattering ice and sending breaking waves against the shore. It was a great thing of stone, and willpower. I could feel its very presence, it was unique. The spray did not freeze against it, and the winds parted around it as it rose, finally, waiting. Waiting for something.
With a smile my mother gestured to the shore, and there stood a rowboat which I swear had not been there before. She guided me to it, and I went with her without response. With a sweeping gesture, and not a tear in her eye, she turned and walked away, letting me make my way to the floating castle.
I was greeted by an old man, wizened, with a smile on his face. He spoke to me in Inukitut and invited me inside from the small dock.
To put it lightly… the place was a marvel to me. I had never met another person other than my mother, only seen them from a distance. Even though I know now that the Sea of Estray doesn’t really have that many people the sheer amount to me at the time was overwhelming. Nor had I seen something constructed of stone, nor as large, not with as much headroom and did I mention It’s a moving castle!?
It was an incredible place and I learned much there, made friends, made enemies, rivals, and much more in my five years there before I finally saw my home again. I saw many countries, places, learned many languages, theories, magecraft, and how what I hated in the end was the Clocktower. The Sea of Estray was part of the association, but they differed on many key opinions. They were still… vaguely racist, but not as much as the stories I heard told of the Tower.
Then, they finally returned to the place I had joined them, and I took a small break from my studies to visit my Mother…
She didn’t greet me on the shore, which surprised me at first. But how could she know I had returned, right? So I made my way to our hut, but it was nearly torn apart by the winds, and the field was down. My first step inside was covered in darkness; the fire was out. So I relit it and there found my mother lying dead on the bed. She was not old, but her corpse was long gone. At least a year dead, and I couldn’t identify what killed her. Beside her lay a letter… in a strange, spidery hand. It was like she had aged rapidly, and it was so unfamiliar.
I didn’t believe it was hers. I still don’t. But I read it all the same, and everything it had in it was the truth. It spoke of the Grail Wars, and how our family sought redemption. A removal of the curse of our Name. A thousand other things that sounded nothing like my mother, but pretended to be her. It begged me to participate, and at first I chose not to, and just burnt down the house I lived in for so long, and returned to the Sea of Estray.
Yet no matter how I thought it behind me, I heard the words of that War in whispers throughout the hall. The Association had declared it ‘open’. A chance for Akasha, a chance to know everything. It was that last bit that got me. I wanted to know what had happened, and so I ended up in Italy, Lucca to be precise, just before the War began in earnest…
MY GOALS: // Find out what happened to her Mother when she was gone.
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EQUIPMENT: //
RANK: // Attended Sea of Estray not the Clock Tower, as such she does not have a proper Rank.
ELEMENT: // Fire (Energy)
EXPERTISE: //
MAGIC CIRCUITS: //
SPELLS: //
Full Body Reinforcement (Fire)
Rank: C
Cost: 20
Range: Self
Effect: Self reinforcement for combat, allowing the caster to exceed the limitations for a normal human body through reinforcement of the muscles, tendons, ligaments, bones, nerves, sensory and internal organs.
Revelation (Fire)
Rank: E
Cost: 8
Range: Temporarily blinding within full view range (~30 meters) but can be seen from a long, long way away
Effect: A single action spell that instantly causes the caster to burn away the air around them in a flash of excitement that produces a blinding light to anyone looking at them. While not powerful, its uses in combat are substantial, as blinding your opponent tends to allow you to hit them fairly hard, or get away. Incredibly obvious however, and learning it can be fairly dangerous as it can cause permanent blindness if the user doesn’t have the two brain cells clicking together to close their eyes, or if the reaction is done too close to skin can provide minor burns.
Defended against by closing one’s eyes. Still though, that could get you punched, and some minor effects of the flare may carry through depending on proximity.
Perdition (Fire)
Rank: D
Cost:
Range: Self
Effect: An intention defensive layer that allows a small section of clothing or her skin to burn away to minimize the damage from an attack that actually lands. Based on the idea of ablation for defense, instead of taking large amounts of damage, this minimizes the damage from most forms of energy attacks, though tends to have only a lesser effect on solid projectiles. One line, lasts 3 minutes.
Creation (Fire)
Rank: C
Cost:
Range: Touch or Self
Effect: A pulse of kinetic energy, as well as a causing of actualization of the energy inside a human body. This converts fat to calories, and can even force the chemical energy inside food to be converted quickly. This rejuvenates the target, makes them tireless (Could die from this if they were low in energy to start), swift, rapid metabolic healing as well as activation of the adrenal gland. Can cause hyperactivity, shakes, extreme hunger, weightloss, and in extreme cases… death. Obviously resistible, but this is the healing technique of Briard family, and can be used as such if another magus does not attempt to resist it.
This spell can also allow one to eat however much of whatever they want with no penalty, since they can use it to burn off the calories.
Absolution (Fire)
Rank: A
Cost: Varies
Range: 5m radius from her heart.
Effect: Fire does not just govern flames, or heat, but the lack of heat, and kinetic energy. Ice and water are the same thing, merely transformed, and this crown jewel of the Briard’s magecraft puts that idea into practice. A 5m omnidirectional zone is created around the caster in which kinetic energy is nearly completely controlled by her. An ultimate defense against projectiles, she can stop, diffuse, or weaken anything that relies on energy. Bullets stop dead in their tracks, fire peters out as the molecules that feed it lose their excitement, water freezes or ice melts, wind dissipates, even lightning finds it difficult to spread when the sheer control allows the user to approach absolute zero, or even reverse that and excite the molecules of the air to consume the zone in a ball of fire.
This defense does have its weaknesses though. The response, while quick to anything that tries to cross its border, is not instantaneous. Lightning will get through, as it is incredibly fast, but its damage will be lessened fairly effectively the farther away the user is in the zone of Absolution. In addition, as direct interference it will have basically zero effect on an actual magus trying to walk through, though a normal or untrained may die or pass out on crossing the threshold. This zone forces an opponent, if they want to fight the user, to do it up close and personal.
Reduced to Seven Lines, this is an instant Bounded Field that used to be constructed with the aid of the talisman, but eventually the information in the talisman itself was assimilated into the crest, making the body of the user the talisman. However this is not a mobile field. When placed, it cannot be moved, so others could take advantage of it.
The original form of this was a stillness field designed to aid meditative trances, and silence all sound.
FACE CLAIM: //Korra, The Legend of Korra
OTHER CHARACTERS: //
MISC. INFORMATION: //
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