Approachable • Benevolent • Enthusiastic • Creative • Confident
Pushover • Nosy • Self-indulgent • Mischievous • Dyssemic
• • •
Marigold is quite the extroverted gal. She’s easy to get acquainted with as she likes to be up everyone's business and know what they are up to out of curiosity.
Making some smalltalk is no biggie. However, she sometimes forgets that a conversation is between two or more people and not you yourself blabbing away about your interests.
While Mari isn’t the biggest cook she loves turning stuff into jelly and baking something sweet now and then.

Sharing makes her feel good and getting complimented about something she has crafted makes her feel even better. If Marigold sees the opportunity to get somebody to eat she sure will try and make them leave their conversation with a jar of goods or two. She just REALLY wants you to try her jam ok! And preferably, tell her it's the best thing you've ever had.
So anyway- conversation hijacking and factspitting aside, Marigold can be a good natured and generous friend who will make soup for you if you're sick.

Marigold thrives off of words of affirmation and greatly dislikes being alone all day. In her efforts to be totally the best neighbour in Little Olympia Mari might lose sight on boundaries sometimes, including her own. Think of forgiving the unforgivable in fear of losing somebody you thought of as a friend. At least she's short enough to easily receive a well deserved thwack on the head.

Altho she likes to crack a joke, Marigold doesn’t do well on sarcasm directed towards her. It’s best to tell her what you mean (kindly) straight up to prevent annoyances and hurt feelings. She’ll take her peppy demeanor elsewhere.

WEAPON
weapon name Stick | ραβδί | ravdí
special abilities Celestial bronze mancatcher. The spikes are sharp enough to take out an eye as long as the circomference fits around the monsters head... or steal some fruit from a tree if you'd like. Other than that it serves as a fine as a blunt force object.
mist form A carved twig souvenir shop pencil with her name engraved on it. The pencil is too clunky to comfortably write with and the point would have to be sharpened with a knife. Marigold made the mistake once of leaving it amongst her desk decor. The panic of thinking you have lost your god-given weapon is not worth the aesthetics.

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KEY
Her camp halfblood necklace that got repurposed into being a cute beaded bracelet. It only has 5 beads in different colours. Going to camp is a dear memory for Marigold as she was used to living her life quite secluded.

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MAGICAL ITEM
There's nothing here yet...

GLUTTONY INDUCEMENT
The consuming of Mari's handmade goods may work as an distraction for monsters as they might get too focussed on eating to pay attention to who opposes them.

CHLOROKINESIS
Marigold can manipulate the speed at which the ovary of a plant grows into a fruit. The energy that gets released with the rapid growth makes it that blossoms turn into bombs. The plant has to have fertilized ovule(s) for this to work as she cannot manipulate them to be pollinated. Cherrybombs anyone?

MY MYCORRHIZA

Marigold is able to call upon the fast system of mycellia (fungi) in the soil. These may give her information about her environment, plant health, or even be used as elaborate tripwires and vines when commanded to.

FATAL FLAW

OVERZEALOUSNESS Marigold thinks she can make a calculated risk but frankly... she's bad at math. Being used to problemsolving by herself she might get over-confident and take on too big of a risk.

THE GIFTBASKET
Matteo Melis was quite an odd one in the family; a very soft yet chaotic man whose interest in nature didn’t align with his families wishes. In an attempt to escape the machismo culture he left home at age 18 to backpack around America.
Doing several oddjobs to pay for what had to be paid he didn't live in luxery but he was happy and appriciative of what he had. His dream was to be part of a sustainable commune, city nomads maybe. Matteo could be a provider but sadly he didn’t do well under authority.

In his early 20’s he ended up working at a farm-to-table picking orchard out in the middle of nowhere. Matteo is a jack of all trades master of none type of guy. Handyman, gardener, farmer, cook: he’ll enjoy taking up all these roles with a big smile! Altho the kitchen cabinet handles might be fixed by repurposing old cutlery. Which… had its charm.
The owner of the orchard was an elderly woman who had to move closer to her family in the city soon as it became impossible to take care of her health while driving such long distances. After all, while Matteo had enough love in his heart to cook for a lady who wasn’t his own Nonna and help her up the stairs… He was no doctor and sure as hell didn’t know or want to know how to insert a catheter. The idea of having to move on from this place was quite upsetting for Matteo. Had he really settled down? No. But with the freedom he was granted in these fields as a gardener while living comfortably in the old converted farm shed felt too good to give up. With the ladies family having no interest in this plot of land so far from the city that generated basically no income for them he was able to strike a deal. Was it using up most of his savings? Yes. Would he have to pay interest? Also yes. Will he be in debt? Oh, likely. But it felt like it would be worthwhile to him, even tho it got lonely without old lady sometimes.

It took some time but the picking orchard became quite a lovely hidden spot. It smelled good, the building Matteo did the upkeep himself for was pretty charming in all its wonkiness and he even sometimes thought of becoming a chef. A dream he wouldn’t chase, but still lived a little as he would cook with fresh produce for guests… if they stayed.

A little after a year of running the improvised picking orchard show is when Matteo met a woman he’d call ‘’Dee’’. A sweet and gorgeous lady who became a regular of the hard to find orchard with a brain full of archicultural knowledge that made Matteo wish his vocabulary was more extensive than it was. To keep this long story short: ah sweet summer of love with some cherrypie by the lake. As quick as the relationship started it also ended with Dee having to move on.

While Matteo wasn’t fully unaware of Dee being ‘’special’’. He didn’t expect a baby in a basket to be delivered as a late parting gift in July. It made him try to call his own mom for the first time in a while with the terrible reception the orchard had. He named her after the flowers in the window box planter that sported the same orange colour as the sheen of her hair: Marigold.
• • •
CHILDHOOD
Marigold was raised like a ‘’free-range child’’ allowed to be independent… as long as it was within the orchards boundaries. Ofcourse the expected pro’s and cons of this type of parenting came with it.
Even if Mari was off hammering stuff together to make climbing up a tree for the apples easier without fear, she still remained papa’s little princess.
Mari got home schooled as Matteo figured the flexibility of it would fit their lifestyle better, which lacked structure… and kept lacking structure. While Mari wouldn’t able to tell you who the presidents of America were but she has plenty of field knowledge about what mushrooms will have you dead if you eat them and which ones make you see the dead.

• • •
CLAIMING
Marigold's claiming was quite comical in hindsight. Back when it happend she was convinced she had to 1 vs 1 a rabid racoon in the middle of the night.

She had snuck out from her bed because she was having some sweet cravings for blackberries. Climbing out the window -which wasn't that spectacular considering the house only had one floor- Mari had shoveled towards the bushes near her window while using the flashlight of her phone to watch where she was going. It was then that she was greeted with a growl and a pair of glowing eyes; somebody else was occupied with the blackberry bush and did NOT appriciate being disturbed. With a little eep she had dropped her phone in the mud and stepped backwards with the rustling of little evil raccoon hands coming closer.

Thank god a warm golden light suddenly lit up above. At the moment itself Mari thought it was the motion sensor porch light but... that thing had been broken and remained unfixed cause they didn't have the right bulb in the shed anymore.

Somehow it effectively made the raccoon back off and Mari took the oppertunity to go back inside while leaving her phone on the ground. Her dad had asked why it was in the mud the next morning, he almost stepped on it! Marigold told her papa the little embarassing story... to which Matteo seemed to respond a little proud yet also concerned. Later that day he had one of his kinda like sheep smelling friends over, Mari didn't pay their adult convo in the kitchen much mind. Peering in once ever so often through the kitchen window from outside, picking out some fruit for whatever jam concoction she wanted to make that day felt like a more pleasant activity than peeping on adults talking.

• • •
CAMP HALFBLOOD
As Mari never really traveled far (nor really alone) it was quite scary to leave her trusted Orchard home. Yet getting to hang with other kids that were like you was so exciting! Matteo knew the time would come and he had been putting it off until Mari got claimed by her godly mother. While she did have the occasional pal at the orchard and her dad took time to expore the area with her, the satyrs were getting impatient. It was time to cut that methaphorical umbellical coard!

And so, off she went. While having some questionmarks at the fighting and maybe not making it over age 20 part, Marigold LOVED the rowdy scout like nature of the camp. So she really was a demigod huh?! What more could she do!

Because she was claimed before setting foot in camp halfblood, Mari didn't spend time in Hermes cabin. It was fun to finally know what that strange golden light meant from a year ago tho.

Her first year she only stayed during the summer. Figuring how some more structure in her life actually did Marigold quite well she became a year rounder after. Marigold had her little moments of homesickness and tried to keep contact with home in any way she could. Making scrapbooks to collect camp memories became one of her hobbies and a way to show it off to her dad.

QUESTS Around age 16 Marigold recieved her first and only CHB quest together with her pal Kairon and her not-pal some Mister D's kid who was looking for any kind of approval from father. They were to retrieve a celestial bronze boar vessel with mysterious liquid in it for Mister D himself. The road was long and absolutely not without trouble as the two lost their partner (totally not on purpose) and walked into a monster den. Luckily they got back to camp alive with a gently used (dented) boar vessel and some new scars. While Mister D got his weird boar juice, he didn't seem too happy with it at all.


• • •
LITTLE OLYMPIA
After Marigold time at Camp Halfblood was over it felt almost odd to return home to the orchard. Marigold didn't really know what she wanted to do with her life. One part of her wanted to stay at the orchard for a while. But there was also the urge to go and explore the rest of the world. However, she didn't want to travel alone which held her back from persuing this. Maybe she would go to college? Maybe not just yet.

Mari stuck around helping her dad out like back when she was a little kid. The orchard truely flourished with her presence, attracting both wanted and unwanted visitors. When the blossom on the trees became more aromatic so became Mari's blessings for monsters. Luckily she recieved a message from a to her unknown writer about a place called ''Little Olympia''. She would be safe there and have time to think about what to do with her life a little longer. But more importantly, her father and the orchard would be safer too with her not around. She already had the key in her possesion, all left to do was leave. And so she did.

QUESTS Who knows what might happen. . .