Profile
Hestia Eikthyrnir
Age
34
pronouns
She/Her
species
Horse
height
5'3"
Attitude
Practical
Class
Wild Mage - Herbwife
Discip.
03
Power
02
Corrupt.
00
Cost
002
Herb Magic
Hestia can encourage plant growth and accelerate a plant to bloom, but her speciality lies in enchanting seeds with intentional effects. She can grow and brew a shashu tea to inspire colorful dreams at night, she can embue magehorn to boost a mage's inate talent, and a bare salad of her yolkbud blooms can save a man from starvation. She has to plan her intention well in advance, but once the plant has bloomed, she can keep reaping the effect for as long as she cares for the plant. Her potion-making from her garden intensifies the effects, or mixes them together as she sees fit.
Her favorite seed she ever cultivated was for the Witch of Thorns. The thorn wall allows in guests according to a secret phrase that Hestia thought fitting at the time, much to her friend's eternal dismay.
Cost
Magic use consumes a valuable material.
Hestia has to pour her magic into her plants, allow them to grow, and use them as ingredients in her potions. Her magic is not quick, but it doesn't hurt or tire her like other fellow mages she knows.
Personality
Hestia is a deeply down-to-earth in more ways than one. She can lose herself in her work very easily and finds comfort in the routine. Housekeeping gives her a sense of satisfaction in knowing every facet of her own house like the back of her hand. It's her kingdom, down to every nail she's hammered in herself, to every notch in the wall made from her siblings long ago.
She's also incredibly realistic to a painful degree. She tears apart tales of fancy for the kernel of reality underneath, as she's seen the depths of "fantasy" and has gotten her fill of that genre through personal experience, thank you very much. She struggles with improvising creativity on the spot after cutting her playful childhood short, and she knows her jokes are painfully terrible as a result, often falling flat from trying too hard, but she makes up for it with her seemingly endless patience. Nothing is tedious to her, and she can listen to someone for hours if given the opportunity.
That's not to say she's endlessly forgiving. She bears a short temper for callous insults and has absolutely no fear in reprimanding anyone who crosses her, wielding a sharp tongue as a weapon where her short stature and relatively peaceful magic won't suffice. She's utterly pragmatic and views difficulty as a problem to solve and overcome, and uses that strength to protect a rather delicate heart underneath her stoic demeanor. She's doesn't want to be this painfully shy when meeting new people, but living a solitary life for so long has left its mark on her social skills. She fears the ill opinion of others she wants to impress far more than she wants to admit, and has difficulty reaching out to make new friends. The recent mage-hatred hasn't helped in that regard, and her obvious mage signs has garnered her more silent judgement than affection as of late.
[319 Words]
Her Garden
- From the Flora Ivratensis:
- Yolkbuds - Tastes like early morning sunshine. Eating it as-is will soothe hunger. A tea made from its petals will cure common illnesses, and a base potion from it will improve one's overall health (barring wounds).
- Songwort - Tastes like honey. Eating it as-is raise one's mood. A tea made from its petals will give one peace and clarity of mind, along with the desire to sing for some reason. A base potion from it will inspire even the darkest artist to create, or the down-trodden warrior to rise and fight aother day.
- Witchleaf - Tastes like mint. No matter what form this plant is in, it will heal any wound. Potions only serve to make its dual effects more potent, for it holds a curse along with it. After one is healed from it, a subtle addiction grows until the ills they suffered come back with a vengeance. Hestia was not in a good headspace when enchanting this seed.
History
Hestia keeps her past to herself, and it only shows when she lets details slip here and there. She's only lived 30 odd years, but Hestia was truly born in the year 1098, when mage protectors were a new concept and monsters were a whisper on the horizon.
Her childhood was simple enough, though harder than it should've been. She was the eldest and was relied upon by her widowed mother to watch over her two younger siblings, Oleanna and Olivander, who were twins. Any fanciful whims she left behind in making sure there was dinner on the table, keeping Olivander's cruel streak in check, and keeping the garden with Oleanna, who showed more of a penchant for things that grew from rot than seedlings Hestia encouraged to sprout.
When Hestia was sixteen, her mother married a man from Siregal who made promises of sweeping them all away from their provincial cottage life, and Hestia had her reservations. Yes, they had none of the luxuries their neighbors might've, being tenants of the local lords, but maybe that suited Hestia just fine. She had no interest in packing up their home to live in a new country where the weather was different and her plants would wither under the stronger sun.
It'd also mean she'd leave her only friend behind. Visiting Cayenne was her moment of reprieve from the stress of being responsible so early in her life, and she learned the begininngs of her magic under her sarcastic tutelage. Hestia didn't mind the bite. She took her salt in good humor, and made some of her best (and darkest) enchantments for her.
She didn't mean to disappear. On her way to tell Cayenne that she would be moving north, a luring siren voice from a still lake stopped her in her tracks. She was barely aware of striding into the lake to follow the woman with mulberry lips under the water, and everything after that was more like a dream than anything she could describe.
The realm under the water didn't follow rules of logic. The sky was below her feet, the trees whispered foul things, and the woman, Morgan, ruled as queen. Time slipped from her with every offered temptation of sweet-smelling fruits and fine wine pressed to her lips, but memories of her mother's tales at the hearth warning against what threatened to steal you away kept her from accepting.
When Morgan's amusement finally ran out, Hestia's first memory was coughing up lake water on the shore and stumbling back home as fast as her feet could carry her. But the house she'd grown up in lay abandoned, full of a hundred years of dust. Her family had moved (she'd learned from Oleanna's forgotten journal) but not to Siregal. Hestia missed the civil war that'd broken out shortly after her disappearance, and her mother had cut ties with the man after learning he'd merely used her as an escape from his own sins. To flee from his increasingly desperate advances, she'd taken the twins and fled, but Oleanna's journal didn't say where to.
Alone for the first time in her life, Hesita remained in the dust of her old home for a long time before rising to her feet, rolling up her sleeves, and making the house hers. Patches in the roof were repaired through her own effort, the unruly yard was hacked back and tamed, and furniture was repaired rather than bought anew. But still, her pantry was desolately empty, and she couldn't sustain herself on yolkbud forever.
Thus started her business of potion-making, only charging enough to pay for her own necessities. Never had she been a woman of luxury, and over the years, she grew proud of herself for saving a modest hoard buried in the corner of her house.
But gods above, was she lonely. After ten years of living on her own, she started fantasizing of her own family, of hearing laughter through the yard again, of telling her own stories at the hearth to her children, warning them of what could steal them away if they weren't careful.
Too used to a solitary lifestyle, she visited the local matchmaker to look for someone who could match her quiet, modest life, and the man introduced to her was Verek Eikthyrnir, a man with a heart as big as his stature.
She's still learning how to share her lifestyle with him, and finds herself terribly shy around him most of the time. But she's trying. And it's nice to have company again, after so long on her own.
[765 Words]
-Summoning Circle. 5/21/2022. She begins with +3 Discipline, +2 Power.
-Mending Scroll 5/21/2022. She can easily upkeep her own house if things show wear and tear, and has lived alone for a long time with this ability.
-Familiar Scroll 5/21/2022. She gathers seeds for her garden through calling her familiar, Arimanius. Or at least, she thinks she does - she's not sure if she calls a mouse, or the same one to run her errands, but she calls them Arimanius all the the same.
-Imbue Magic Amulet 5/21/2022. A skill rather than an object. This is what allows her to make potions with her herbs.
